May 19, 2012

Heavy rain and thunder woke me up this morning and then I remembered my promise to cook breakfast for the entire family. Since my original plan had been to stay for just one night, I didn’t have any coffee available and had to settle for something in packet called “Vanilla Chocolate Coffee” that Zoir had picked up in Dushanbe. We then walked to the better supplied of the two stores in the village to get eggs, salami, tomato paste and hot sauce. Except for carrots and potatoes, the stores do not carry any fresh fruit or other vegetables, so that if the villagers don’t grow it, they don’t eat it. Zoir didn’t know what garlic was and I simply had to make do without it. The salami turned out to be baloney, the bland one with no flavor whatsoever. Cooking twenty eggs along with the chunks of baloney and the mushrooms we had picked along the mountain trails was quite a task, but everyone loved it and neighbors were called in to sample the delicacy. Zoir himself had three servings with lots of hot sauce and didn’t seem to be concerned about anybody else getting a fair share of the dish.

After breakfast, it was time to visit with some nearby neighbors including the one who started a fish pond on his backyard, but had ran out of money. I told Zoir about micro financing NGOs such as Kiva and Finca which they could apply to for a loan at modest interest rates. Zoir is not interested in anything that has to do with computers or the Internet and immediately asked that I find out for him how to go about securing a loan. We went back to the house and while waiting for lunch, I must have fallen deeply asleep for the family had their meal in another room so as not to disturb me. When I woke up, I was in for another unpalatable soup, osh tupac it was called, with strips of dough cooked in a milky broth. I could barely eat a few tablespoons before setting it aside. The neighbor across the street, and mother to my seamstress, insisted I go over to her house to see it. I warned Zoir I didn’t want to eat anything else, but to no avail as out came the korpachas, tablecloth and some very tasty pieces of fried beef alongside French fries and cauliflower dipped in eggs and deep fried. The woman, who is five years my junior, complained about her health and missing teeth while refusing to believe I was older than she was.

I had threatened Zoir that if he didn’t take me back to Dushanbe that day, I was leaving on my own. He went into a deep sleep while I packed, and I just asked his younger brother to help me secure a taxi as I needed to get back to the city. Zoir was alerted as to the situation and asked me for a few minutes to refresh himself and then he offered to return with me. I had decided to offer his mother $50.00 for all the trouble and cooking she had put herself through for me and because I knew that the upcoming wedding was going to put a heavy financial burden on them. The younger son had already mentioned to me that his father was a lazy man who spent his hours either asleep or chewing noz, the slightly narcotic plant consumed around here to derived energy. The mother has a bad leg and other ailments after delivering 11 children, including a pair of twins. One daughter died at the age of seven and she still has three young ones at home. At first, she refused the money, but I put it into her bra and signaled it was my choice.

She had packed a bag for me with chaka, flat bread, green onions and other herbs from her garden. The father came to the taxi stand to say goodbye and we were finally on our way in a rickety car that even stalled a couple of times. On the other hand, the driver was considerate enough to stop for me when I wanted to catch a particular sight of wild poppies growing by the roadside.

Once in Dangara, it was time to negotiate with the taxi driver to head back to Dushanbe and the group that gathered around us was quickly outmaneuvered by a stocky, brash younger guy that pointed to his newer vehicle and offered to take us for the same amount we had paid coming in: 30 somoni each. I noticed that he drove like a bat out of hell and seemed not the least concerned about the numerous police checkpoints intended as payment booths for bribes. When I told him through Zoir that I wanted to make it to Dushanbe in one piece, he displayed his police ID badge and told he had graduated from the police academy as an officer and no one was going to stop him for a bribe. He spent the entire ride pointing out the make and model of every car and truck and asking me for the prices in the dollars of the ones sold in the States. At least the exercise served as a distraction until Zoir asked the driver to pull over by the side of the road and I thought he had done so to urinate or something, but he was actually vomiting and rinsing his mouth with water he had carried in a large bottle.

When he came back into the car, he insisted he was fine, but he had mentioned on Thursday that he was getting lightheaded at times. He’s the stoic kind and wouldn’t hear about seeing a doctor. We were about to enter Dushanbe when he requested another stop and took much longer to return. The driver got irritated and yelled at him to either get in the car or find another way home. Zoir’s face was pale and his nose and lips red. When we were dropped in the center of town, he insisted on walking home with his bags as riding in a taxi would make him dizzy and nauseous again, so he wanted for me to find a taxi and make my way home. I refused reminding him his condition could cause him to fall on the street receive worse injuries and insisted on walking with him to the flat he shares with two of his brothers.

So here I was dragging my school bag, shoulder bag and the other one his mother had packed for me and getting into a dark building with broken steps and terrible odors coming from the communal toilet. He knocked on the door, but no one answered and then he found his key and opened the door into what I would generously termed a studio apartment where the front entry had been separated from the sleeping one by a sheer curtain. On the left side, they had fashioned a sort of kitchen with another hot plate, some dishes and glasses while on the right, there was bike leaning against the door and assorted pairs of shoes. I could see now how embarrassed he had been to let me see his living conditions and he felt even worse when I requested to use the toilet as I couldn’t hold it anymore and he escorted me to another pestilent squat toilet with no doors for privacy and no flushing mechanism. I asked his other brother to accompany me to get into a taxi as a way to let him know that Zoir didn’t feel way, but he wouldn’t hear of it and insisted on coming down to the street to put me in a taxi himself.

My heart was breaking for him as could not even imagine how he manages to always appear immaculate in his attire, how I had never seen him eating anything on campus and how controlled his behavior was overall. It must take a great deal of strength to make your way out of a village like Pushing and into the PedInst in spite of a lousy education and penniless parents.