April 14, 2012

I had a fabulous day from beginning to end when I got up at 5:00am to be ready to be picked up at 6:00 by the taxi driver arranged by Eraj. I sat at the front to avoid motion sickness and Corrie and Eraj shared the back seat. We couldn’t have asked for more perfect weather for our trip as we made our way out of the city through Faizabad, Bagdad and other smaller towns. Eraj requested we make a stop at a roadside stand to have a bite for breakfast and I was more than happy to do so as I had only brought a couple of energy bars and some mandarin oranges. Farmers were offering a variety of herbs, displayed in bundles set on the ground, but I couldn’t identify any of them. We moved on to where some women were cooking what looked like porridge and asked Eraj what the choices were. To my surprise, one of them was a savory one with beans, corn and pieces of tripe. Corrie, who had ordered the same thing, quickly transferred her pieces of tripe to my bowl. Eraj bought one of the bundles and the vendor gave him some salt to go with it. I tried a piece of it, without the salt, but found pretty sour and stringy. We later realized that the herb in question was rhubarb sold while still green.

We were treated to the most beautiful scenery I’ve seen so far in Tajikistan as we had a clear view of the mountains and hills on both sides of the car and, except for a couple of rough patches of road, we could relax and chitchat all the way to the city for the almost four hour long ride. Students were milling around outside the American Corner when we got there and so we went straight to work providing three different speaking activities for them including the “Find someone who…” that has proven to stomp everyone, even Umed, the professor at the PedInst in Khulob who Eraj approached for an answer and couldn’t respond. Eraj used my camera to take some photos and became trigger happy until he read the “Low battery” signal and came to me for help. Unfortunately, a replacement battery or the charger was not something I thought about when I was packing last night. James would kill me to hear this as he sternly warned me to always carry the replacement battery fully charged.

We went to Eraj’s house for lunch and were treated to the usual display of a long table groaning with food. So as not to break the long standing pattern, only Eraj, Daler, his best friend and taxi driver, Corrie and I sat at the table while his mother, wife, cousin and little nieces came and went bearing assorted dishes. His wife is 22 years old, older than him by a few months, and they have an 11 months cutie of a daughter who doesn’t recognize Eraj and refuses to be held by him as he can only afford to visit once month.

 Eraj had told me his family owned an 11-room house and I was expecting something similar to Pariso’s house: a three or four story house with all modern convenience. Instead, I found a one-story L-shaped collection of rooms with the kitchen and toilet at opposite ends. The kitchen holds one of those three-burner gas stove like the one we grew with in the Dominican Republic. The toilet was a squat one with wooden planks and stank to high heaven. There was a separate bath next to the kitchen with a gas stove to heat up water and a concrete stoop next to the drain. It reminded so much about my childhood as they even had water set out in the sun to warm up all day.

Eraj’s grandfather was a famous poet in the region and the house a hold library dedicated to him as well as a bust on the garden grounds. He was also an academician who taught at the local PedInst. There is another statue of him in the center of the town and everyone seemed to know Eraj. We returned to the American Corner after lunch to hold more activities, this time with a group of high school students. When we did “The Name Game” activity, a student told me he couldn’t think of a body part beginning with the letter “U”. I quickly answer there was one and only men had it. The guy looked at me alarmed and I compounded the situation by saying I wasn’t talking about the penis, but the urethra. He turned bright red and told me he had never heard a women say that word aloud in his short life and would pretend he hadn’t heard the offending term. I was laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes.

We went back to the house as we were all tired from having had to get up so early and the long drive. Eraj’s wife set out the korpachas in one of the rooms facing the kitchen garden and Corrie went promptly to sleep while I rested my eyes. When we got up, Eraj’s mother had prepared a meatball soup for us with no seasonings whatsoever along fried sambusas with that I could barely eat. When I told him that would be enough for dinner and to tell his mother not to cook anything else, he replied he was not entitled to tell his mother what to do in her house. Touché. One of his uncles joined us and insisted on my having a drink of cognac with him. This was the first time I have seen alcohol openly displayed on a table as we were given a choice of cognac, vodka or wine. Daler returned later on to take us to see a couple of sights before the sun went down. We got to the Somoni Monument just as the sun was setting and were treated to a magnificent view of the entire town. We then went to another park where some famous poet is buried and a nice mausoleum was built surrounded by ornately carved gazebos connected to the PedInst and the medical university.

We went back to the house to find the table set up once again for us to eat mantu. There was more flat bread, yogurt, fresh fruit, dried fruit, more juices, and, of course, tea. I had one of the dumplings just to be polite and refused to drink anything so as not to have to get up and use the bathroom as I didn’t even have a flashlight with me. Corrie was gracious enough to offer to walk with me if there was indeed such a need.

Eraj informed me that his wife, a comely, very short woman, had prepared a bath for me. I managed just fine and was able to floss my teeth, brush them and bathe without any assistance and thus I was shocked to find the woman leaning against the wall by the garden waiting on me in case I needed anything. I was able to read for a little bit before Corrie returned from her bath and we both went to sleep not before commenting on the strange relationship between Eraj and his wife as we never saw them talking or touching and she seemed more like a servant than a wife. Moreover, Eraj’s brother is older than him and still single, but his mother is in active pursuit of a bride and they hope to get him marry this summer. Eraj did say his wife was a former classmate and that when the family decided his mother needed help, they selected her, the daughter of someone the family knew, to become his wife. Strange indeed.