Samarkand It’s about 1 in the morning on Sunday. I’ve just returned from Samarkand, the one-time capital of the vast empire of Tamerlane the Great (as someone said to me recently, “14th century despot turned folk hero.”) You can see his tomb in the photo at right. I traveled to Samarkand with my colleague Melissa and her friend Laura with a dual purpose: to meet with a woman who runs a women’s crisis center and to visit the ruins of Registan to take photos for my future web site. Laura had arranged a driver for us to make the four-hour journey to Samarkand from Tashkent, haul us from spot to spot in Samarkand, and then return us to the Uzbek capital. The driver, a giant teddybear of a man named Rafshan, was to collect Melissa and me at 6 in the morning. I had gathered several bottles of distilled water and some bland animal crackers to soothe my stomach on the journey. I’ve discovered that, as I get older, my digestive tract’s ability to remain calm on long, bumpy car trips diminishes. Almost an hour late, Rafshan, looking troubled and disheveled, appeared and, without a word, took our bags and ushered us into his huge, old Mercedes. The drive to Samarkand was quiet, enhanced by a copy of k.d. lang’s Ingenue in the cassette player. It was a unusual juxtaposition of cultures, but somehow the twangy and torchy music meshed with the passing images of people toiling in bean and cotton fields, the occasional random camel or herd of thin milk cows lifting their heads to stare at us. (My favorite bit was the little boy, all grins, sitting on a donkey in the middle of the road, waving at us with one hand, and flipping us the bird with the other!) An hour out of Tashkent, we stopped at a local bazaar to buy hot bread and ripe, dark plums for breakfast. This particular market is well-known for its dried river fish. Knowing what I know about the state of the local environment, I can’t say I was enticed by the thought of gnawing on a mummified piece of local river life. Oh, I cannot find the words to properly express to you the aroma of a whole market full of dried fish, slowly baking in 110 degree heat. ‘Unpleasant’ just doesn’t do it. As we left the market, a group of women, all wrapped in ragged silk and glittery, yet dirty scarves, approached us, begging. They were refugees from Tadjikistan, where ethnic fighting has caused tremendous upheaval. Many of the refugees end up in the outskirts of Uzbek cities, begging and stealing to survive. When one of the women approached me, open hands outstretched, I had to tell her—truthfully—that I literally had no money on me. (My money was locked in the Mercedes.) When I showed the woman my empty pockets, she frowned, and started to wave me away. Then, her eyes seemed to glaze over, and she reached a hand out toward my face. In a quiet voice she said, “You have a long road ahead of you to reach your fate.” Then she simply walked away. In a vague state of confusion, I got into the car. I puzzled over the woman’s words and nibbled distractedly at a plum. While I pondered, both Laura and Melissa nodded off in the heat of the un-air conditioned car. When we finally reached Samarkand, we discovered that our driver didn’t know the city at all. He asked us for directions (!) to Registan, the ruins at the city center. The ruins are the highest structures in town, so I just pointed at them and said, “That way.” Ha ha. Bad choice—Rafshan *really* thought I knew where to go. By the time we’d negotiated all the one-way winding streets that stood between us and Registan, we were a good hour late for our meeting with the Women’s Crisis Center director, Madlyuba (who was happy to meet us, regardless.) Women in Uzbekistan—particularly in rural Uzbekistan—have a hard lot in life. The environment is basically patriarchal and governed by many of the strict mores of an Islamic culture. Despite the leveling atmosphere of 70 years of Soviet “equality for all,” Uzbek women do not share full status with Uzbek men. A tragic tradition in Uzbekistan is self-immolation. In some rural communities, if a woman is found, after marriage to be “unacceptable” to her husband or his family (i.e., if she is discovered to not be a virgin at the time of marriage or if she is unable to have children), she is encouraged to end her life by setting herself ablaze. While this practice is not nearly as widespread as it used to be, it still exists. Women who survive their ordeal by fire are shunned and often refused medical assistance, as they are outcasts, and die slow, miserable deaths. When I first heard of this years ago, I had recurring nightmares of beautiful, dark women, twisting and dancing in flames, their eyes wide and their mouths open, but silent. Madlyuba spoke eloquently on the subject of the difficulty of women’s lives in the changing Uzbek social structure and the Women’s Crisis Center’s efforts to provide a healthy environment for abused and discarded women. I felt strange, as I had not arranged the meeting—and I knew that my employers had no funds to assist the center in its work. I did not want to give Madlyuba false hopes of American assistance, but, by the end of the meeting, I found myself giving my personal word to help publicize her efforts in the U.S. and try to put her in touch with women’s groups that might be able to work with the center and find funds to build their programs. The kind words and tight hug I received from Madlyuba strengthened my resolve to find them some help somewhere. It was a bit disconcerting after the meeting to switch gears and be a tourist, but that’s what I did. For almost three hours Melissa, Laura and I strolled around Registan, an amazing arrangement of mosques and madrassahs, tiled in brilliant blues, yellows, and whites. The cells that once housed Islamic scholars have been turned into little souvenir kiosks, selling antiques, textiles, knives, and traditional clay figures. All the vendors are polite, and you only hear their “no pressure” sales call for your attention as you pass them by. I have this strange attraction to funky hats (and I look dreadful in hats, mind you) and, every time I’m in Uzbekistan, I have to buy at least one or two of the round (or squared and foldable) hand-embroidered prayer hats favored by the men of Uzbekistan. The hats are called “tubitekas” (or, as my friend James says, “Chubby Checkers”) and they are almost always too small for my head, but look very spiffy hanging on a wall. This time, I found myself lured into buying two lovely antique tubitekas and a camel saddle kit bag made from an old kilim (flatweave carpet.) Very nice—and I have no idea where I’ll find space to display them in my already overcrowded apartment... I had brought a duffel bag full of items I made for my very very small business, figuring that Registan would make a wonderfully exotic backdrop for web site photos. Enlisting my companions as models, I snapped a zillion photos of jackets, lamps, and—using myself as a model, since I didn’t want anyone else to die from the heat—a winter coat! This was a relatively successful venture, except that I was rather graphically propositioned several times by local men who apparently found me overwhelmingly attractive... the feeling was not mutual. Now, if only I could have the same effect on American men, I would be delighted! By the end of the afternoon, our little group was exhausted and, lulled into sleepiness by heaping plates of plov (pilaf—the national dish of Uzbekistan—pearl rice cooked in purified cooking oil and mixed with carrots, onions, and mutton) and lukewarm bottles of Coke, we were more than happy to flop into Rafshan’s Mercedes. About an hour outside of Samarkand, Rafshan finally spoke up, apologizing for his gruff manner, explaining that, the previous evening, his girlfriend had been attacked and robbed by street thugs who slashed her face and neck with razor blades—they were angry that she did not have much money on her. I didn’t know what to say. I was shocked that he’d decided to drive us in light of what had happened—I found myself babbling apologies to him, my degree of discomfort rising throughout our drive. He just shrugged, and kept saying that she was still alive, despite losing a great deal of blood, sleeping with the “aid of narcotics,” and that I shouldn’t worry. ...And he really needed the 100 bucks that this drive would net him. Had Rafshan only known... his car became a casualty of the poorly maintained Uzbek highway system. Two hundred kilometers from Tashkent, Rafshan blazed over a section of road with foot-deep divots in it—one of those divets—approached at 140 kph—took out the McPherson strut on the right front side of the car. ...the four hour ride to Tashkent became 8 hours, as Rafshan, frustrated to the point of tears, drove for five minutes, got out and fiddled with the wounded strut for 10 minutes, threw rocks and cursed at the sky, and got back in for five more minutes of driving. As I started to write this, we’d only just returned to Tashkent—I called the people in the city of Nukus to tell them that I was canceling my trip to see their fair, lice-infested city, in favor of a relatively mellow Sunday that did not include any long-distance travel. I think they were disappointed—they’d probably planned to slaughter a sheep in Melissa’s and my honor—I would have been expected to eat the eye or the brain, most likely (gifts of respect to the honored guest.) However, our Nukus host let me know that he was sick, and it was probably a good thing that we were not coming. All in all, I think I’m glad I’ve canceled out. I intend to sleep for a long, long time tomorrow, followed by a massage at the local sports complex. I wonder how Rafshan’s girlfriend is. I wonder how much it’s going to cost him to have his Mercedes repaired. I’m certain that the $100 I gave him at the end of our journey will barely begin to cover the car repairs. It’s late, I’m tired, and I should sign off. Maybe one more entry before I head home next Saturday. <<Previous chapter | Next chapter>> main | lamps | clothing | Uzbek fans | about | sizing links | feedback/ordering info | travel stories Copyright © 1998 Compass Rose Studios Site design and HTML by Qdesign of Bethesda, Maryland. If you experience any problems with this site, please let us know.