July 8, 2012

I was up at the crack of dawn and couldn’t complain about getting up so early because when I looked up on my way to the pit toilet, I saw the sun just coming out and kissing the peaks of the Pamir Mountains on the Afghani side of the border. Since I had no Internet connection once again, I settled down to write the overdue letter to my friend Stephanie until it was time for breakfast.

Mavluda told me the cooks had caved in and cooked the butter tea, made with milk, butter and salt, that the students had been clamoring for since they got here. They made rice pudding just for me and it was the usual bland kind, so I wasn’t disappointed. We played “Concentration”, “Where am I” and finally tried to get the students to write a paragraph about “The best meal ever”, but if felt like pulling teeth as they weren’t even used to answering the 5Ws in regards to the topic. I felt a bit frustrated seeing the quality of the writing as they couldn’t even spell “juice” or and kept calling me to ask for translation of words I had no idea what they meant in their Pamiri dialect, Sudgni. I had asked Mavluda why she never addressed the students in English except when in the classroom and in my presence as they obviously needed more exposure to spoken English and that’s what the camp was supposed to provide. She seemed taken aback by my comment and muttered something about it being easier that way.

My mood lifted immediately after I was notified that a wedding was taking place in the village at 1:00pm and I was welcome to attend it in the company of Vilna, our village volunteer who knew the bride, and Schanoz to serve as my interpreter. The bride’s house was just a few minutes from the camp, and we found the backyard already full of guests sitting on the ground under the trees to avoid the scorching mid-day sun. The bride was the daughter of one of the camp’s cooks and she immediately came to us to find me seat at a table under some partial shade. The table was groaning with food that had been covered with a tablecloth to avoid the army of flies flitting around us, and I decided on the spot to avoid any of the salads, most of which contained mayonnaise, just in case as I had no idea how long the long had been laid out there.

The bride and groom arrived exactly at 1:00pm, I guess no photo shoot around war memorials had taken place as they do in Dushanbe, and the music started immediately. The groom was sat at a tapchon with his aunt and best friend while the bride occupied a different one surrounded by her former classmates and girlfriends. The rest of the groom family didn’t attend the event as they were busy preparing a reception for the couple later on in the afternoon. Plov was served accompanied by the same dry and tough bread I dislike so much as it hurts my gums and the roof of my mouth when I try to eat it. The portion of plov was very generous and quite tasty, so I ate most of it and had some watermelon for dessert. The green tea was transparent and there was no sugar around, so a couple of sips did it for me.

I noticed that although the bride was not bowing down to her guests every so often, she kept her head down and was not allowed to eat or drink in front of her guests just like the other brides I had observed. Schanoz told me she was supposed to look despondent about leaving her family home and eating or drinking anything would contradict such posture. The groom, on the other hand, was eating heartily while chatting with his friends. Oh, the injustice of it all. The band was quite good and the cook insisted I dance at least once with her and I had to comply in spite of the heat. At least they had reserved the dance area for place under a tree providing generous shade. After people saw me dancing, and gave me some thumbs up for being able to follow the beat, an older guy invited me to dance. I was pleasantly surprised to see guys and girls dancing together, although without touching each other, instead of the segregated dancing that takes place in Dushanbe.

It was time for the bride to change into another outfit to make the trip to her in-laws’ house and we followed her inside to watch the poor thing put on another dress, a red velvet one, on top of the one she was already wearing and then the complicated process of wrapping seven shawls around her head and shoulders that could only be removed by the in-laws when she got to their house. I don’t know how the bride didn’t pass out in the July heat once the process was over although her married sister did walk with her trying to fan her face the whole time. In the meantime, the guys were busy loading the bride’s dowry (carpets, duvets, pillowcases and the like) and her hope chest filled with her trousseau into the top rack of an SUV.

Back at the camp, Mavluda informed me she had taken the students swimming at the river, or swimming pool as they like to call it, and there were no other activities planned. I returned for dinner to find a few tablespoons of overly cooked rice floating in that disgusting gravy with three little chunks of tough beef on top. I took one taste of it and it wasn’t even hot. I refused to eat, and Mavluda offered to walk with me to the truck stop restaurant where I had another bowl of lagman soup, also greasy and only lukewarm, and some kolcha bread. Mavluda had been to the States and sympathized with me as she was not able to eat everything she was offered while staying there for over five months.