May 29, 2012

I had partially completed the visa application for the Kazakhstan embassy and attached the required photo to it before Eraj came by at 9:00am. There was an additional form in Tajik and English so convoluted that I couldn’t ascertain what it was they needed to know as most of the questions were the same as the visa application per se. When we arrived at the office, we encountered one of the Mother Theresa nuns waiting to submit her paperwork. Since Eraj’s Russian, by his own admission, is not the most fluent, we requested her assistance after I approached her to find out what kind of work they did in Tajikistan. Their order does not run orphanages or nursing homes as I remember their doing in Panama, but just a soup kitchen. I wonder whose decision that was.

The embassy clerk informed me she was going on vacation and my visa would be processed sometime next week. When I told her I’d be out of town and unable to pick it up then, she was unmoved reiterating she needed at least a week for the government of Kazakhstan to approve the visa even if I had had one issued just a few months ago. We left the embassy and went to the Museum of Antiquity, a place I had been meaning to visit but never found the time to do so. As a foreigner, I was charged 20.00 somoni and Eraj 5.00, and we were given plastic booties to place over our shoes. The place was deserted and Eraj asked the young woman giving us our receipt if there was a guide to explain the exhibits. She responded that the service was limited to groups visiting the museum, but agreed to come along with us turning on and off the lights for each room as we visited it. Despite the fact that there self-standing air conditioning units in various parts of the museum, none of them were on despite the humidity present that day.

There was little of interest to me except for a huge sculpture of the Hindu god Ram and his consort Sita that had been found in Panjikent whose heads had been loped off by the Arab invaders in repudiation of the worship of images. The crowning piece of this museum is one of the largest reclining Buddhas found in an area near Afghanistan and which needed to be divided into 92 pieces to transport it to the museum. Its construction is nearly identical to the one made of gold that I saw in Thailand.

It was time for lunch and we went to the Uyghur’s restaurant not without first stopping at what Eraj considered a big bookstore, but was it was really a stationery place selling a few textbooks. He could not understand my idea of a place selling books, especially recent publications, exclusively, which speaks highly about the lack of a reading public here in the capital.

Ryan invited a few of us for dinner again and given the fact that I hardly have anything to cook at home, I accepted and was joined by Hillary, a guy she brought along who barely said two sentences the entire evening, Dagmara and Sitora, who told me she had graduated from the PedInst back in 2004. She felt her experience had been a great one because she was part of cohort group that received additional classes paid by the Aga Khan Foundation which provides this type of financing for students from the Pamir Region who are followers of their branch of Islam. Sitora had gone on to obtain a scholarship to study in Buffalo, New York and was static about her experience there.

I recruited Nigina to try and call my landlady one more time as Jamshed had let me down and never texted me about it. She tried from her phone and mine with no success, and I decided I would just send an email to real estate agent notifying her I was moving out and making arrangements to return the key. No word from Corrie yet. I began to wonder if something had happened in China as I can’t believe she hasn’t checked her email in more than a week.

As I was preparing to say goodbye, Eraj called to say Daler, his wife and daughter and himself were driving around the city and wanted to include me in the outing. I said yes and, they picked me up in just a few minutes. We went past the PedInst and I refused to even look in that direction. Eraj’s wife had never seen the city at night and we decided to go to the new civic center where the government is still in the process of building a complex of hotels, parks, playgrounds, plenty of fountains and green areas. Their equivalent to our White House is already finished as is the recently inaugurated National Library. I had been there once on a very hot day and had not enjoyed the walk, but now the evening was cool and noise level down. There were many families strolling around with children in tow and many couples cuddling on benches.

                                  Enjoying the evening breezes with Daler.

I suggested taking a picture of Eraj and his family in front of one of the most recognizable monuments in the plaza, and he turned down my offer indicating he had not notify his mother in Khulob they’d be going out for such an outing and didn’t want for her to find out through photographs. I tried to contain my smirk at the thought of getting prior approval for a stroll in the park, but convinced him later on to allow me to take the photos just for my record. His wife was more than happy to pose as was Daler. The wife had to carry the baby almost the entire time as she began to fuss and cry if either Daler or Eraj picked her up for long. I did feel sorry for her. I also noticed they had shaved the baby's hair supposedly to keep her cool during the summer months.