June 8, 2012

Despite its drawbacks, I slept quite well in the cellar-like room we had settled in. There was no water when I turned on the faucet to brush my teeth, so I had to use the remaining bottled water to do so. I stepped into the courtyard and saw the young guy, who seemed to be in charge of everything there, and asked him for a teakettle full of hot water. He replied in English to give him ten minutes and brought it into the room later on. Eraj did not even stir, and decided to use the little bit of privacy to catch up with my blog entries although I was in fact worried about being able to find another hotel room given the fact that the festival had been widely advertised in Dushanbe and a lot of foreigners were expected to descend into the city.

Eraj began to stir around nine and we didn’t leave the room until ten to return to the same restaurant we’d gone to the night before. The server recognized us and handed us the menu with photos offering us porridge, an omelet, something called “pancakes”, but folded like crepes and hot dogs. I settled for the omelet asking the serving if they could grate some cheese before folding it, the pancakes, just to see what it’d turned out to be, and coffee. Eraj ordered the hot dogs and we nibbled on fresh fruit, cherries, apricots and plums, placed on a platter. My “omelet” was a flat mess of fried eggs with four thin slices of cheese place all around it while slices of tomatoes and sprigs of cilantro decorated the center. It was completely cold to boot. Just based on what they done with it, I decided to cancel my order for pancakes.

Eraj asked the server for recommendations for another hotel nearby and she turned to two men nearby that immediately switched into gear, got us into their car, and took us to a guest house nearby. The affable owner showed us a large room with a twin bed and a large couch, attached bath and a desk with two chairs. There was a fan and even a TV with satellite reception. We promptly said yes, and he got us a taxi to take us back to the falling down hotel to get our bags.

It was time then for some more sightseeing and we got into a mini-van, a tiny one indeed, to reach the market, a beehive of people and vehicles offering little in terms of attractiveness. The heat was unbearable and I suggested we take a detour and visit the Rudaki Museum to at least be in a cool place. As usual, we were the only ones in and the three women working there fell upon us offering me shawls, jewelry, stamps and other handicrafts, and refused to understand that I wasn’t there to do any shopping, and just to look around and stay cool for a bit. The museum had no air conditioning and I wondered how they manage to keep artifacts from disintegrating. At least the exhibits had been organized in chronological order and included photos of a film made about Rudaki’s life as well as an opera. One inscription I read mentioned that a site nearby had been declared a UNESCO Heritage Site and the woman serving as a tour guide responded with alacrity that she could get us taxi to take us there. We had nothing to do until the five o’clock festival started and for 50.00 somoni or about $10.00, it seemed worthwhile. We sat in the lobby waiting for a while and I almost fell asleep from the stupor the heat was inducing in me.

The young taxi driver must have decided that this one trip needed to take place in a flash as he took off like a bat out of hell raising a cloud of dust behind him. I told Eraj I didn’t feel comfortable and since I was paying 60.00 somoni I wanted to have at least a chance to appreciate the scenery. The driver appeared miffed by my comment, but I didn’t care. We arrived at a godforsaken area surrounded by a rusted fence, still sporting the original lock, but where people had created an opening on the side. Some raised platforms could be seen in the distance and when I asked the taxi driver what they were, he responded he had no idea. To me, they appeared as covers for excavation points even though everything else around was just an overgrown pasture field. A sign indicated we were at the right place, but it was written in English, French and Spanish. I wonder what the locals make of it, or whether they look at the place as impassively as the three donkeys making their rounds among the excavation pits. A group of field workers returning home posed for a picture and having nothing else to look, we returned to town.

We went to lunch at a restaurant adjacent to the market where we sat in one of the outdoor tapchons and enjoyed the finest views of the brown hills in the background. I got to have the first decent meal since been on the road as the flat bread was soft and fresh, the plov decent, the salad tasty and they even made me 3-1 coffee that could have passed for the real thing. The bill came up to 26.00 somoni, or a little more than $5.00, even after ordering a big bottle of water to go, and I thought a mistake had been made in the accounting, but the server said no. We took a mini-van to the stadium where the festival was to begin at five and where the streets surrounding it were already blocked by the police. Even at this time, the sun was shining fiercely and I dreaded the idea of sitting on a bench until it went down. Eraj had the brilliant idea of telling the police officer guarding the entrance that he was escorting a foreigner who was part of the organizing committee and we made it through four of those checkpoints ending up sitting in the shaded area to the right of the VIP section. I had to give him kudos for his chutzpah.

We had to sit through the usual series of speeches, made worse this time because they had to be interpreted into several languages: German, as they were the ones organizing the festival, Russian, Tajik, Uzbek and English. It was then time for the national anthem and finally huge numbers of pre-teen girls dressed in the national atlas dress ran into the field and formed circles while carrying a miniature cradle and doll in their arms. At the stage, a group of mothers showed them the proper way to put a baby to sleep and then sang a lullaby that seemed to last forever. The girls, meanwhile, rocked their “babies” back and forth while singing along. Talk about an early indoctrination in the business of becoming a mother.

We were treated to another spectacle reflecting the emphasis this culture places on the role of women as simply wives and mothers as hundreds of young women came out into the field dressed as brides and carrying an elaborate pouch in their hands. They were followed by even more young women wearing a wedding veil who circled the entire stadium throughout the performance, holding the veil away from their faces as they would have done on the day of their wedding. On the stage, a new bride was being shown how to handle everyday chores such as sifting the flour and making perfect bread.

The climax of the evening was the performance of a popular singer called Nigina who was showered with bouquets of roses from her fans. I found her voice to be on the thin side and her songs too slow to really get the fans dancing on the stands or even singing along. She took a break and introduced her brother, a lackluster young guy with no stage presence whatsoever who seemed to be lip singing the whole time, and went for a change of wardrobe. She sang a couple more songs, this time a bit more up tempo, and even I got up and danced a bit while everybody around me stared.

No transportation was available as we exited the stadium and we walked back to the guesthouse.