December 29, 2011

Went to my conversation class at Caritas making my way through the remaining snow and deeply rutted roads full of mud that radiate from Rudaki. Since the topic was childhood, it gave me a chance to learn about the way children are reared in Tajikistan and to hear them wax nostalgically about  about the days of the Soviet era as being more prosperous, when there were more cultural events to take part in and children were registered for after school activities such as ballet and gymnastics. They made quite a few references to the civil war that took place between 1992-1997 and how unsafe it was to step out of the house when they were teenagers.

When I mentioned that my Skype connection was not working properly, one of them offered to cut me a CD with the program so I could bypass the online download. They also gave me a box of chocolate as a New Year’s present. They all planned on gathering with family members to exchange present that day.

After not having had a manicure in about three months, my nails had started to look like talons. I went down Rudaki Street determined to find a beauty salon where to get my nails done but had forgotten that apparently every woman in Dushanbe was getting ready to receive the new year in style and the salons were packed. One of them asked me to wait for 25 minutes in a cramped space where two beauticians were blowing drying hair, a sound that grates on my nerves. Salons here have no ventilation system and thus the smells of hair coloring and nail polish become nauseating after a while. I decided it was best for me to just find a sturdy nail file and do it myself. After trying several shops, I found a metal file that should last me a while and got my manicure done later on in the evening.

There was an assembly of Santa Claus in front of the New Year’s Eve’s tree including a couple dressed in the traditional Asian robe as opposed to the Santa suit. Lots of freelance photographer were hanging around waiting the take photos of families visiting the tree.

Based on Corrie’s suggestion, I stopped at an Iranian fast foot place close to the Rohat Teahouse. It lacked in ambience completely with only six tables pushed against the walls and a few tourist posters. The young woman who handed me a menu seemed to be a relative and to, an inherent hazard, have no idea on how to serve customers. Corrie said her friend raved about the sandwiches and so I order a tongue one, French fries and a yogurt drink typical of Iran. The server came back to say they were out of it and I order tea instead. The sandwich could have contained dog meat for all I knew since the filling was an indistinguishable brown mass topped with a scant amount of chopped tomatoes and lettuce. No condiments of any kind were included to make the sandwich more palatable and the bread had not been toasted. The fries were soggy as if they had been fried in too cold oil and I had to use two napkins to blot out some of it. The tea was the usual weak variety served everywhere. Another place to write off my list of restaurants in the Dushanbe area.

Daroush called to find out if I was home so he could come by and request my assistance with one of his English papers. This one deals with war rugs, something I had never heard of before. I told him I could try and to something about it over the weekend and he dropped it off a short time later.

I watched the movie “Ronin”, one starring Robert De Niro and an extremely violent one at that. I’m not even sure there was a point to this movie, but having De Niro in it made it passable. I also finished reading “The Bean Trees”, a delightful novel by Barbara Kingsolver that I recommend to everyone.