خاتمه: یکی بود، یکی نبود

I figured if I’m gonna do this, I’ll end it the way I started it.

What is Tajikistan? I mean I’ve been here for nine months; surely I’ve got some idea of what’s going on here. Right?

Right?

Tajikistan is…amazing. This is a country where the country itself is physically breathtaking. Where everywhere you go has snow-capped peaks, or pristine green valleys, or barren moonscapes. Where you can see ruins thousands of years old, as well as some astounding Soviet-era engineering projects.  Where frozen lakes still exist in the middle of May, and it’s a damn good idea to start sipping water out of rocks.

Anyone can see those pictures though, on Google or Facebook or whatever.

Tajikistan is…broken. It’s corrupt, to the point that if it weren’t for the daily paying of bribes and fees, I’m pretty sure this place would completely collapse. It’s a place where the smells of rotting garbage, human waste, and body order all merge and mingle together. This is where decades of mismanagement and the siphoning of resources have made people seemingly hopeless and apathetic to their future. Where the government, which is a bloated and corrupt monstrosity, promotes a history that never really was, creating a medieval-Iranian Disneyland façade that barely covers the tense situation of an unfinished civil war underneath.

But you can see or read that in any article from any number of visitors and scholars about Central Asia.

So what the hell is this place?

It’s a country. It’s got villages and towns. It’s got families who are beyond poor who will invite you into their house or apartment and feed you like a king. It’s got people who will rob you blind without batting an eye. It’s got drug-traffickers and teachers; it’s got prostitutes and missionaries. It’s not good, it’s not bad. It’s just…a country. You live here, your optimism dies, but your pessimism dies too. Everywhere is gray.

And how could it be anything else? No place can be all good, or all bad. A country is only the sum of its parts, and the experiences you have there. And my God, the experiences. There’s been crossing borders, getting detained, surprising hash, breathtaking vistas, unforgettable friends, a few good shitheads, delicious food, diving into a new language…where does it end?

Well, let’s say our goodbyes:

To the staff at American Councils (Nisso, Faridun, Khurshed, Professors Saeidi, Muhabbatov, and Boymatov):

برای همه که من یاد میگرفتم، که من تجربه میکردم، و همه کمکشان...من فارسی کافی ندارم. خیلی ممنون!

To my host family, Baba and Bibi, Safarbi, Rahmon, Rasul, Samina, and Zuhro: You guys will never see this,

 but you took me in as one of your own for way longer than you were supposed to, put up with my occasional shenanigans, and fed me ungodly amounts of food. I survived for nine months pretty much solely because of you guys, so truly from the bottom of my heart, I will never forget any of you.

To Joely and Soo: The “Three Musketeers”, as we have been affectionately nicknamed by Nisso, we had a year of intestinal problems, translation snafus, harassment from the locals, frustration with the professors; a year of drinking too much vodka, eating osh, seeing awesome mountains, and learning a new language and culture. I’ve seen the new batch of students, and I gotta say, we got off pretty well.

To the ladies and gents of AIESEC Tajikistan: I won’t lie, I didn’t help much, and you guys have a lot of work you need to do. But the future can always be now, and if you treat the other interns and partners like you treated me, it’ll be a damn fine one.

To Sharaf and Mirzo: You guys were proper mates, damn fine friends, and the two people I probably saw the most outside of classes. I damn well better be seeing more of you guys outside of Tajikistan, or at least seeing you guys when I come back.

To Vander, Jean, Yasaman, Lieke, and Mehdy: The AIESEC crew. Adding the ever needed international flair to my nine months here, I couldn’t be happier to have gotten to know you guys. I wish you all the best in the future, and maybe we’ll see each other again.

To Andy, Grace, Areebah, Clement, Audrey, Umed, and people whose names I forgot because of drinking too much: You all came to Tajikistan for different reasons, but you were all incredibly awesome, and I was glad to meet each and every single one of you.   

به عادل، علی، و آقای باعسمت: میدونم که من این ترم خیلی شلوغ بودم، اما برای همه کمکتان و شوخ هایتان، خیلی ممنون و مرسی!

To my students, one and all: Teaching you guys was something I never expected to love, but seeing you all slowly but sure improve in English was, without a doubt, one of my favorite parts of Tajikistan. I wish all of you the best in your future studies, and only wish that I could've helped you more...

To anyone I might have forgotten: Please forgive me, I didn’t expect to be writing this for a few months

 more, but you were probably pretty awesome, so…yeah, sorry to see you go!

So now we’re done. Hopefully, at least one of you readers decides to come to Tajikistan, and figure out 

whether I’m a complete liar or not. At the very least, I promise you’ll have an interesting time.

Ташаккуру Худо ҳафиз

This was by no means how I’d planned to end things. But this is how I started, and how I progressed these many weeks and months. So this seems more apt than anything else.

First, there were supposed to be another two months to take care of everything, tie up all the loose ends. 

Now, I’m looking at two weeks, and that’s the absolute maximum. Two weeks to see what’s left to see (albeit, not terribly much). Two weeks to say goodbyes. Two weeks to eat good osh and qurutob.

Second, the frantic nature of it all. Offices to visit, bills to pay, tickets to book, friends to meet up with, a family to say goodbye to; it’s almost too much. I don’t know where to begin, although I do know where it ends.

If it hasn't become clear already, things have come crashing down, as they often tend to do. Before, I planned to spend two months more in Dushanbe, teaching English, and getting to enjoy a country I've grown to truly and genuinely love. Instead, problems with visas and finances have given me until the middle of June (at the latest) to condense everything I still had planned, and then bolt back to the mother country, figurative tail between my legs, in defeat.

I don’t know how to feel. Anyone who’s talked to me in the last few hours might call me ‘angry’, ‘frustrated’, ‘depressed’, or something along those lines. And yeah, those feelings are definitely there. But after thinking about this for most of today (because there’s seriously nothing else to do while my passport is being withheld and I’m stretching each somoni for all it’s worth), I think I've figured out what the problem is: I’m scared.

Hell, I’m goddamn terrified. I’m terrified because these last nine months have been, without the doubt, the single greatest thing I have ever done with my life. Each and every day has been part of an adventure that I could’ve never imagined in a million years. Even now, the memories stand out:

I've been able to see some of the beautiful, if not otherworldly, scenery that I believe exists across two continents and eight countries. I've learned a language to the point that transitioning between it and my native tongue is something that can happen accidentally if I’m not careful. I've met everyone from missionaries to drug traffickers, and found all (but the bureaucrats) to be among the kindest and most genuine people I will likely ever have the pleasure to meet. I've been detained (but NOT arrested, huge difference there) by the secret police, been drunk enough to turn a colleague into a mistake before sobering up and turning them into one of the best friends I've ever had, thrown up in prison, and dislocated a finger/cracked bones fighting the dastardly Kyrgyz. I've had my breath taken away (in some cases literally) on the Roof of the World, by poetry so beautifully recited it brought tears to my eyes, and by a family that has metaphorically (although I don’t doubt it could be literally) fought to keep me around and in one piece.

These things, these experiences, of which the above are merely a summary, were just…I’m shockingly at a loss for words. I don’t know, and cannot say, whether this was a “life-changing” journey or not. I still think I’m a shithead, but that’s me. And maybe that’s ok. But my point is this is what I’m scared of. I've lived this life, knowing fully that it will be temporary, and now I crave more. And I’m horrified at the prospect that I’ll be crossing the Atlantic in a few weeks, never getting another opportunity to return, and that I’ll spend the rest of my life in “Fortress America”, my wanderlust tearing me apart from the inside-out.

But blog-writer (since I assume at least one of my readers doesn't know my name…I know, unlikely, but let me have my delusions), you might be saying, don’t be dramatic, of course you’ll leave America at some point! Well “reader” (since again, I’m pretending people have actually been reading this, a laughable idea, I know), first off, unless you’re offering me a job overseas, hush. Second, that might be true, but again, doing what? I have no real discernible skills, the language I've spent the last nine months intensively studying is spoken by three countries, two of which would arrest me on/soon after entry. So really, and I do mean really, what choices do I have?

I've never been one to consistently argue that things happen for a preordained reason. But after the failure of my State Department internship in Yerevan, all of my employment plans in Tajikistan, and attempts to travel to Iran, maybe there’s a reason I should go back home? Maybe it’s just coincidence that every plan I've had has fallen through? I do, however, know this. Even through all the depression, the sadness, the anger, the frustration, and the nerve-wracking tensions; I do not for a second regret a single thing about these last nine months.

Do I wish I could have done more? Of course.

Are there things I haven’t finished? Naturally.

But re-reading my memories of this place and thinking about the things not fit for post, I can’t help but laugh like a madman, until tears are streaming down my cheeks. This trip was amazing, my life here was amazing, and to hell with it, I’ll be back to Dushanbe. Can’t think of anything but the grave that’ll keep me away.

I only have to say this one more time, so let me finally explain what I've been saying all this time. First, we have “Ташаккур”, which means “Thank you”. The suffix “у” is just ‘and’, and finally ‘Худо ҳафез’ (which might need to be ‘Худо ҳафиз’, never said I was good at Cyrillic) literally means “God protect (you)”, but it translates to “Good bye”.

So to anyone out there in the cold, dark world of cyberspace who may be skimming this, know that you've reached the end. Of this adventure, in any case…

Truly to all of you: Ташаккуру Худо ҳафез/ ҳафиз

ماجرای تابستانم، بخش سوم: قرقیزستان

Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyzstan.

This was my second Central Asian country (out of 5 or 6, depending how you count), and was a chance for me to see whether the five post-Soviet republics were made from the same cloth, or truly unique and individual countries. It was also a chance to see if I genuinely liked the region, or if Tajikistan had just been a fluke.

When we last left off, I was crossing into Kyrgyzstan at the border post of Bor Dobo, having recently picked up a new (hopefully temporary) travel companion. And as soon as we left Tajikistan, as in roughly 30 seconds after, I learned about one of the horrific realities of Central Asia. For you see, while there are five constituent republics in Central Asia, each with its own native language, and there are numerous ethnic minorities in those republics, one thing manages to keep any tangible support of cross-border cooperation and community alive.

And that is Russian.

You may recognize that I do not know Russian in anything beyond the most of basic levels. So when I asked the Kyrgyz truck driver his name (absentmindedly in Tajiki), he responded with a prompt Shto, or ‘what’ in Russian. It took me roughly a minute after that to realize I knew completely nothing about Russian, at which point I broke out my trusty (if never-before-used) Russian-English phrasebook, with a hope at starting some basic conversation.

If you don’t know anything about Russian, let me explain it like this. Pronunciation and spelling aren't terrible. Russian grammar…might make you consider biting a bullet.  And there are a lot of things that phrasebooks don’t help with, grammar being one of them. As we drove along, I was being talked at in Russian, having no idea how to respond, secretly hoping that the town we were heading to wasn't that far away at all…

…and as luck would turn out, it wasn't. We were headed for Sary Tash, which is the first village after crossing the border. Granted, that was almost an hour away, but still, not that terrible. As we pulled into the town, I was praying to whatever God lounges around in the border spaces of Central Asia that Shorat and the jeep was still there. So walking into the grounds of the town’s only “Ashkana” (if you recognize the word, yes, there is a story there), I was more than ecstatic to see Shorat and the driver, who started laughing and said what amounted to “Took you long enough!”

Now the drive from the border was fairly uneventful, although I will admit that Kyrgyzstan is a beautiful country. I’ve heard it called the “Switzerland of Central Asia”, and with its countless snow-capped mountains, emerald valleys, and pristine (looking) rivers and lakes, I can see the resemblance. The other thing about Kyrgyzstan is, well, you can quite plainly see the cultural differences between it and neighboring Tajikistan. There are numerous reasons for this, for instance, the Kyrgyz were traditionally nomads, as opposed to the sedentary, ‘urban’ Tajiks. As a result, things like yurts (traditional Kyrgyz nomad dwelling) and horses (and related horse products) are still huge in Kyrgyzstan.

So, after some 12 hours, the jeep arrives in Osh. Located in the Ferghana Valley (which in itself is occasionally a bit of a shitshow), Osh is Kyrgyzstan’s second-largest city, and, to my surprise, pretty much reminded me of one of Tajikistan’s provincial capitals, Kulob. We pulled into the main bazaar, and I spent the next few hours exchanging currency from the Tajik somoni (1 USD=4.87 TJS) to the Kyrgyz som (1 USD=48.10 KGS…I love exchange rates), and wandering the market, before enjoying a meal of lagman, the Central Asian/Kyrgyz/Dungan/whatever vinegary-spicy-filling noodle dish that is, to be honest, phenomenal everywhere in Kyrgyzstan.

Seriously, go to Kyrgyzstan, and at some point, order lagman. They have other good food, but lagman was probably my favorite.

Originally, I had planned to spend a day or so in this city, just seeing what there was to explore. To 

understand why I decided against that, let’s explain a bit of recent Kyrgyz history. Unlike the majority of the post-Soviet republics, Kyrgyzstan has had a political turbulent streak following the Soviet collapse. More specifically, look up “color revolution”, and Kyrgyzstan is the only country to have not one, but two. Hell, this place is nicknamed Central Asia’s “island of democracy”, and the predictable timetable for revolutions (once every five years or so), is the butt of several jokes I heard in Bishkek. The last revolution, held in 2010, had the very positive effect of establishing an at-least “semi-democratic” regime which is still that way today. However, 2010 also had a good deal of nastiness. In particular, the city of Osh (and Jalal-Abad, which I will also visit) saw major violence erupt between the Kyrgyz majority and the sizable Uzbek plurality. And by “major violence”, I mean the government in Bishkek was asking Russia, the old colonial overlord, to come in and fix thing. The aftermath of said violence is still a major sociopolitical issue today.

Now what does this have to do with me? Well, as previously mentioned, I don’t know Russian or Kyrgyz. Something else that happened to be an issue in Kyrgyzstan is that no one knew where I was from. In Tajikistan, I’d gotten used to the predictable answers (top two these days are “Iranian” and “German”). Kyrgyzstan, however, seemed to be thinking more regionally, like “Russian” or even (and I loved this) “Tajik”. So when a particularly angry looking Kyrgyz gent yelled “Uzbek” and poked me in the chest (several variants of this incident did occur within about 15 minutes of one another) , I realized that maybe Osh should be for another time…

Making my way to the vehicle bazaar, knowing full well that there were overnight mashrutkas to Bishkek, I was amazed when I found the woman from Karakol from earlier in the day. In broken Tajiki, she explained she’d found a car to Bishkek and asked if I’d like to tag along. Now, I should’ve said no, I should’ve found my own. But the events of a few moments prior were still in my head, so I said ‘Sure, why not’, and we were off.

I need to establish that the ride itself wasn't a bad one. An hour or so drive to Jalal-Abad for the “best shashlik in Kyrgyzstan” (dear Kyrgyz, please stick to lagman), then 7-8 hours to Bishkek. The driver and I seemed to get along after he asked me “What’s your name” in Russian, and I, mishearing him, said “I’m good/khorosho”, leading to him calling me “Mr. Khorosho” the entire ride. But nothing, and I literally mean nothing, could have made my ride worse than the young child I have previously referred to as the “child from hell”. You see, Kyrgyz woman had a baby, who I’d previously been sharing a jeep with for 12 hours. So, understandably, as this kid got into hours 14 and 15 in a moving vehicle, he got…well, ‘fussy’ is a polite word to describe it. There are times to accept fussiness. 11 PM when you’re trying to sleep is not that time…

When I finally dozed off at about 3 AM, I definitely had dreams of throwing that baby off a cliff. They were 

great dreams.

7 AM, I entered Bishkek, and, as is no doubt becoming predictable, my plan forward was nebulous as best. I’d been talking with members of AIESEC Kyrgyzstan about maybe meeting up while I was in Bishkek, but as I was currently without phone or internet, my current plan amounted to telling the driver (who thought I was batshit insane at this point) that I would meet my friend later in the day, and there was no problem. So after a bit of back-and-forth using my phrasebook as a translator, he dropped me off, and it was up to run through my checklist:

1.       Buy a return ticket to Dushanbe

2.       Buy a sim card

3.       Re-establish contact with AIESEC Kyrgyzstan

4.       Find a place to live

The first two were easy enough, if not totally entertaining for the woman at the ticket agency who found my attempts to speak Russian at least incredibly hilarious. The third also wasn't terrible, and soon I found myself sitting in the park in front of the Kyrgyz Philharmonic, lounging in the shade of the trees, people-watching, and appreciating the awesomeness of the statue of Manas, Kyrgyzstan’s national hero, preparing to stab a dragon on horseback.

This is a good time to talk about Bishkek itself.  I’d imagine Bishkek to look a lot like Dushanbe, after all both are cities that were made to exist by Russian/Soviet officials, and should probably follow the same parameters. And this was kind of true, and parts of Bishkek, especially near Osh Bazaar and the Autovoksol, look exactly like their counterparts in Tajikistan. But everything else…Bishkek just felt livelier, more developed, and it was so green. Another huge difference related to the fact that Kyrgyzstan, with its genuine changes of power, didn't have propaganda quotes and pictures of the president on every street corner and major building. Granted, instead they had statues of Manas everywhere, but I’ll be fair, Manas might not have been real, but he’s way more intimidating than Ismail Somoni. Similarly, the people, in both their actions and their dress are far less traditional than their counterparts in Dushanbe. Sometimes, I had to genuinely remind myself that I was still in Central Asia, and not in some part of Turkey, or Eastern Europe.

So what did I do in Bishkek? Well, for this, I need to thank AIESEC Kyrgyzstan, and my…interesting host Anvar for all of their help in navigating the city, in making sure I understood what exactly was going on (most of the time), and for in general just being an awesome bunch. Thanks to these guys, I got to see some things which were certainly Kyrgyz (beshbarmak, Osh Bazaar, being chronically late for absolutely everything), and some things which were a bit more…international (salsa night).

We find ourselves now at my last day in Bishkek. I’d had a pretty good day thus far, from being able to get a surprising discount at the bazaar by accidentally learning that the words for “cheap” and “expensive” were virtually the same in Kyrgyz and Tajiki (as stated earlier, the word ‘Ashkana’ in Kyrgyz, which means ‘restaurant’, corresponds to ‘oshkhona’ in Tajiki, just an example of how Persian words have diffused into the Central Asian Turkic languages), to being able to see and more of that fine city. I’d gotten back to Anvar’s house, and was planning to go to sleep since I had to be at Manas International the next morning at around 6.

Anvar, however, had other ideas.

As I’m packing everything up, Anvar asks me something. It’s worth mentioning Anvar barely speaks English, and I barely speak Russian, so naturally I have no idea what he’s asking me. I ask what, and he hits me. It becomes clear that Anvar wants to box. Now, I don’t box, and I've never really been one for fighting, so why I decided to go along with this is honestly beyond me. And why we decided to stop playing around, and actually started beating the hell out of one another is, again, beyond me. I do, however, know one thing. 

After 30 minutes or so, I took a swing at his face.

And my hand cracked.

The pain I felt within the next few minutes was, putting it mildly, excruciating. Feeling my right hand balloon up wasn't much better. And naturally, because I've already proven I’m not the smartest person in the world, I said I’d wait until I got back to Dushanbe to get it looked at or fixed. I mean after all, my flight was at 9 the next day, and I could just grab a mashrutka from the airport to the clinic. What could go wrong?

Let me count the ways…

First off, it rapidly became clear that doing nothing about it was a terrible idea. But I got to the airport and on the flight without major (additional) problems. The problem began when we landed…in Osh. Apparently, due to “bad weather” in Dushanbe, we were forced to sit in the airport at Osh for about 4-5 hours. By now, the pain was enough that I bought a small bottle of vodka and was just drinking that trying to numb everything up (that also worked, so it’s not alcoholism).

We land in Dushanbe, roughly 4 hours late, and as we start filling through Customs, I remember that I’m going to have problems because of the shenanigans in Kyzyl-Art. And sure enough, I get pulled out of line and questioned as to what exactly is going on. Now this wouldn't have been terrible under normal circumstances, but again, something is severely wrong with my hand, and I’m doing my best to not flip out and murder these otherwise helpful customs agents. But finally, after an hour of waiting for Kyzyl-Art to pick up, I was finally able to leave the airport, and head to the hospital.

I was back.

---

And that sums up my Pamir Highway trip. I met some interesting people, made some awesome friends, saw some of the most beautiful scenery I believe the world has to offer, and experienced things that people live and die without ever seeing. I also dislocated my finger and fractured the joint, along with a few other bones.

I’d call it a win.

Many thanks to everyone who helped to make this trip possible.

As always: Ташаккуру Худо ҳафез

ماجرای تابستانم، بخش دوم: در میان مرز

There are a number of places where I think it’s completely ok to have no idea what’s going to happen, and something as simple as going forward can be an exciting challenge.

Kyzyl-Art is not one of those places.

Let’s start from the beginning. After driving for several hours (and our pit stop in Karakol), we finally arrived at the Kyzyl-Art/Bor Dobo Pass.  This place has a long name, but it’s pretty underwhelming. Some 4000 meters (give or take) up, when we pulled up in our jeep, there was literally nothing. An old Russian sign welcoming travelers into Gorno-Badakhshan. A burnt-out yurt and vehicle garage. Some storage containers converted into offices and a barracks. And absolutely nothing else for miles around.

Now, as we were handing in our passports and identification to the guards, my new travel companion Shorat promptly got up, grabbed his rather large bag, and exited the jeep. This seems like an appropriate point to mention that I’m 99% certain that Shorat (obviously not his real name) was trafficking heroin. Before the border, there were a few hints that this might be the case. When asked what he did for a living, the most detailed answer I eventually got was “exports from Afghanistan”. Alright, yes, Afghanistan does export things, but what exports does it have that “don’t get checked at the border”, to paraphrase my friend. But still, this guy might have a mystery Jeep that was somehow smaller on the inside than it should’ve been, and he might be incredibly protective of the “mystery shed” at his place in Murghab, but that doesn't mean anything…right?

Well, then we got to the Narcotics office on the border. And the officer on duty asks to see our bags. While I’m arguing in my head if Tajikistan is nationalist enough that me selling out the “dirty, drug-dealing Kyrgyz” might keep me from getting detained/shot, Shorat calmly reaches into his bag and pulls out…more US cash than I've seen in months. He proceeds to give sizable wads of dollar bills to every single person running security there. And everyone seemed to know this was coming, and was chatting with Shorat like they were old buddies.

So yeah…that happened. Thinking there was no way we could have any problems after that, we moved onto passport control. For Shorat, the driver, and the Kyrgyz woman we’d picked up in Karakol, no problems.

For me…alright, here we go, new story.

I get called into the barracks/passport area by one of the guards, who asks me to explain what exactly I’m doing at Kyzyl-Art. So I start saying, in Tajiki/Farsi, my plan to travel the Pamir Highway from Dushanbe to Osh, and then continue up to Bishkek, before flying back to Dushanbe. When asked about how my visa was going to expire on the 28^th, I explained that I’d talked to the visa office, and they’d said everything was fine, and I could leave and re-enter with the same visa. So the guard stamped my passport, and said quite calmly I now needed a new visa to re-enter Tajikistan…

You may be wondering what the hell just happened.

So this is almost entirely the fault of an unfortunate coincidence in the Persian language, and Tajikistan in general. To understand this, you need to know the clause “dar Dushanbe”. This consists of the preposition “dar”, which means “in” or “on”, and Dushanbe, which can be the name of the capital of Tajikistan…or the word for Monday (hence, punny blog title). So when I told the passport guy that I’d talked to the visa office last week ‘dar Dushanbe’, I meant that I’d talked to the office in Dushanbe. The officer thought I’d meant I’d talked to the visa office on Monday, and the office in Bishkek at any rate. So naturally, why would I need my same visa?

As you might imagine, I was starting to shit bricks, when the situation decided to get a tad bit worse. The driver from the jeep comes to me and says they have a schedule they need to keep, so they’re leaving. You know, without me. So I find Shorat, somehow smoking at 4000 meters, and ask what exactly is going on.  He confirms that, yes, they are on a schedule and need to leave. However, I’m “not supposed to worry”, because they’ll wait in a town in southern Kyrgyzstan for me, and I just have to tell whoever picks me up to take me there. No big deal, right, let’s just start hitchhiking in Central Asia? What could go wrong?

In retrospect, I probably could’ve just applied for the visa in Bishkek. But at the moment, I figured the most logical course of action was to ask for whoever was in charge at Kyzyl-Art, and see if we could figure this out. I find this guy sitting at his “office” in the burnt-out garage, drinking something (as we’ll find out, no one’s quite sure what it is), and try explaining what happened. I feel like giving myself some credit here, maybe it was the thin air, or the travel exhaustion, or the fact I was operating in my third language, but I was reasonably calm and collected as the commander told me to come back with him to the barracks. He then proceeds to genuinely beat the shit out of the recruit in charge of stamping passports, yelling about someone could be so stupid as to not realize that ‘Dushanbe’ could mean two things in a country which has a capital named, well, that.

So frightening abuse of military personnel aside, we all sit down around the table with my passport, and try to figure out what to do. An eraser can’t get rid of the stamp. Spit can’t rid of the stamp. I won’t let them use a knife to “scrape the ink off.” Finally, the recently-beaten recruit says he has an idea. He disappears for a bit, before coming back with a jug of some clear liquid. After a few minutes of literally scrubbing my passport, the stamp is blurred enough that they’re able to write something hastily over it. The commander then says that, if I have problems re-entering Tajikistan (SPOILERS: I do), I can tell them to call the Kyzyl-Art post, and they’ll explain everything.

One problem down, one to go.

Waiting for a truck or jeep or something to be heading north, the guards start asking me questions, where are you from, how old are you, stuff like that. However, upon learning that my birthday was yesterday, the commander jumps up, salutes, screams “ZODRUZ MOBARAK!” (Happy birthday), and hands me the jug of clear liquid. Now at this point, there’s a bit of confusion. The commander calls the liquid “vodka”, the recruits ask why he’s making me drink “benzin”. And after a few sips, and a massive urge to vomit that morning’s yogurt and shir-chai, I’m inclined to agree with the recruits, that shit was not made for consumption.

While I hate doing these, it’s time for a retrospective. I must’ve waited for about an hour or two at Kyzyl-Art for someone going north to show up. And, between chatting with the grunts on/off duty, playing Russian card games, and drinking utterly gut-wrenching mixtures of chai and “vodka”, I was genuinely enjoying myself. Yeah, I was worried as hell about how exactly I was getting into Kyrgyzstan, but that would be then, and this would be now.

Eventually, a fuel truck headed north did show up, and with the commander as an intermediary, I was able to negotiate my passage into Kyrgyzstan. Crossing into Kyrgyzstan itself would prove majorly uneventful, aside from some jokes about my last name, and references to me being a doppelganger of Peter Parker (while a common occurrence in Kyrgyzstan, a first for me overall), I was in a new country without too much hassle.

Time for the fun to start…

ماجرای تابستانم، بخش اول: بدخشان

Eight days. Two countries. Five cities.

Last week, I departed on my long-awaited trip along the Pamir Highway, travelling via various means from my home for the last eight months, through the mountains in the Pamirs, passing over the “roof of the world”, before entering our northern neighbor Kyrgyzstan and crossing through that own country’s Tian Shan mountains, through the city of Osh, before taking the final stretch of road to the capital of Bishkek. I expected it to be a week I’d never forget.

I don’t think I realized quite how crazy it’d be…

Due to the sheer extensiveness of this story (and…other factors), I’ll be breaking this into three posts, each detailing a different place: Tajikistan/Badakhshan, the border, and Kyrgyzstan. Given I’m a sucker for chronological order, we’ll be starting at the beginning…

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On the morning of the 13^th, I went to a hidden away parking lot near the airport, and sought out a mashrutka. My destination: Khorugh, the capital of the autonomous Gorno-Badakhshan province, the first stop on my route to Bishkek. After a few minutes of negotiation, I found a van headed east, and was all ready…to sit and wait. For four hours. You see, one of the gents who was going to Khorugh had lost his personal ID, and since entry into Badakhshan is heavily regulated, we couldn’t go until he found it. So we sat, and we sat, and we sat, but eventually everything sorted itself out and we were off!

After an hour or two of driving, I’d become fairly well acquainted with the guy sharing the backseat with me, Edik, and his wife; but I’d realized one tiny, and slightly disturbing fact…we were going the wrong way. Badakhshan, and by extension Khorugh, are located in the east of the country. As we passed Nurak, Kulob, and Muminobod, it became clear we were driving south, and thus taking an incredibly roundabout way into Khorugh. And for a journey that can take up to two days, “roundabout” isn’t necessarily a good thing.

By the time we finally entered Badakhshan proper, I was already planning on how exactly I was going to take the mashrutka and everyone in it down with me as we plunged into the raging river separating Tajikistan from its equally lovely neighbor, Afghanistan. But there were some positives. The mountains that the route weaved through were absolutely stunning, and verdant hills were made even lovelier by a paved road. And at night…by the time the sun was finally down, the number of stars in the sky were beyond counting. It was simply amazing.

Rolling in at about 2 AM, after nearly 16 hours on the road, I rapidly realized there was a problem. My plan had been to stay with the family of a friend for the 2-3 days I was expecting to stay in Khourgh. Only problem was that, several hours prior, the contact number I’d been given had “stopped being in service”, meaning I was, effectively, without a place to stay. Shit was probably one of the nicer things I was having going through my head. But remember how I said I was getting chummy with that guy Edik? Well, as he and his wife made quite clear, there was no way they were going to let their new friend sleep on the street his first night in Khorugh. So yeah, felt like a bit of a dick for wanting to drive them into the river a few hours before…

When the morning came, I was off. How to describe Khorugh…now this part is tough. On one hand, the people of Khorugh proved to be a marvelous bunch. As opposed to the titular Tajik nationality, Khorugh is primarily populated with ethnic Pamiris, a group of closely related Eastern Iranian peoples who, among other things, have their own (radically different) language(s) and their own sect of Islam. Oh, and they really don’t like being talked to in Tajiki, that was a lesson I learned a little late. Now, contrasting this, the “city” of Khorugh is nothing but a glorified village. After walking through the entire town within the course of 90 minutes, and realizing to my horror it was just as expensive as Dushanbe, I did the only reasonable thing I could think of: I walked through the garbage dump at the edge of town and into the surrounding hills, armed with only a bottle of water and my Farsi translation of Romulus der Grosse.  Those several hours I spent alone with my thoughts, watching the town following the river below, were easily some of the nicest in my trip.

However, that night I returned to the “city” and, after resettling in the Pamir Lodge, which is actually awesome and worth checking out if you’re ever in the region, making friends with Steffan, the Dutchman who’d ridden a damn motorcycle from Amsterdam to Khorugh, and meeting the Josh Kucera (internationally renowned post-Soviet security policy scholar) in an Indian restaurant doing interviews for an upcoming article, it was time for a decision.

For you see, it was May 15. Meaning it was my birthday, and I had a choice to make. Did I want to find something to do in the nearby Wakhan Valley, or did I want to press onwards to my next destination, Murghab? After learning that a taxi to the Wakhan was about $100 (and proceeding to learn that Pamiris really don’t like it when you curse them out in Tajiki), Murghab it was!

My trip to Murghab was certainly different than my trip to Khorugh, mainly due to the fact that Murghab (and eastern Badakhshan as a whole) is radically different than the western half. For it’s in the eastern half of the province that the so-called “roof of the world” is located. And let me just say, the vast moonscape-like plains, snow capped mountains, and pristine alpine lakes we passed were…I guess awe-inspiring is a good word. The other major difference with this part of the country is the ethnic makeup. In the west, they’re Pamiri, which at least looks Tajik. In the east, they’re Kyrgyz, and if you’re unfamiliar with the difference, spend a few minutes on Google Images, you’ll be in for a treat.

Now I got to have three experiences with the Pamiri Kyrgyz, all of which are worth mentioning:

First was in the tiny (and I do mean tiny) village of Alichar. Located in quite literally the middle-of-freakin’-nowhere, when we pulled into the village, I had no idea what was going on. I was the only non-Kyrgyz in the van, and therefore the only one who, in the last six hours, had only been able to figure out that joq meant ‘no’. So I was confused, out-of-breath (more on that next), and was equally surprised when the older guy sitting next to me (honestly, I’m half tempted to call him ‘Kyrgyz Merlin’ based on how he looked, but what he did next would make feel like a complete shithead if I did that) gestures for me to go into one of the houses. Now, I won’t mince words, the Kyrgyz in the Pamirs have a tough life. There’s jackshit of practical use up there, if there’s a problem, it’s a several hour drive anywhere helpful, and it was below freezing in the middle of May. So what happened in this house? The family of the aforementioned older Kyrgyz guy had made us dinner. Not gonna lie, literally don’t have the words to express the gratitude I felt for so many things at that moment. Might not have been a birthday cake, but it was a damn fine meal regardless. Also, they offered to find me a “proper, Kyrgyz wife”.  So there’s that…

(Off topic, but really thinking I should start telling people I’m married.)

Anyways, second was that night. As we pulled into Murghab at about 10 PM, it was pitch black and below freezing. And, once again, I had nowhere to stay. Adding insult to injury, the fact I was now 3500 meters (~11,000 feet) above sea level meant that even a light stroll would leave me winded, and I was left with the conclusion that I was probably pretty screwed. Then, I met my salvation: Shorat. This guy, who knew Tajiki well enough that we’d been conversing much of the ride, said he would not only invite me into his home, but would arrange transportation for me to Osh the next day. Not bad, especially for guy who (as I’ll later describe) I’m pretty sure was a drug-trafficker.

The morning of the 16^th, after learning that Murghab, unlike the rest of Tajikistan, runs on Kyrgyz time (i.e. UTC +6, not +5), Shorat, the driver, and I set off for Osh. We continued on our way until we reached Karakol. Now Karakol is three things:

1.       A military checkpoint

2.       A village that serves as a way station for truckers and hitchhikers

3.       An alpine crater lake that was, like most of the year, frozen when we got to it

And it was here at Karakol, apparently picking up two people who I would learn were bound for Bishkek (including the “child from hell”…), an old woman came up to the jeep and started knocking on the window. After a short conversation in the melodious Kyrgyz language, Shorat told me the woman wanted me to come with her. Already weary about secret marriage proposals, I was hesitant, but I went. What I found was a small bowl of fresh-made yak yogurt and naan, and an old Kyrgyz babushka frantically encouraging me to eat. No idea what she was saying to me as I eating away, but it was a/another damn fine meal, and more hospitality than I’d been expecting.

Through the mountain passes we drove, 5000 meters above sea level, through wind-slept plateaus and snow-covered hills. As we approached the border though, I had no idea how “interesting” the guards at Kyzyl-Art were going to make my trip…

به زندگی سابقم، خداحافظ

Well, it’s come to this. Today’s my last day of classes in Tajikistan, followed by three days of exams (and one day of “We curbstomped the Nazis”), and then…I’m done.

It’s hard to believe that the focus of my life for the last 8 months is finally over. It literally seems like a few weeks ago that I couldn't understand anything anyone was saying, and I was struggling to order food at a restaurant.  Now I find myself teaching English classes in Farsi and arguing theology with a missionary from the Islamic Republic. I would never say I’m fluent in Farsi (as I become rapidly aware anytime I actually try talking to anyone about anything beyond politics, religion, food…you get the idea), I can survive here fairly well, which is nice.

Hell, this program has become like a family for me. Maybe it’s because there were, at maximum, three students at all times, but I see my professors here as almost family, and I’m probably living with one of them this summer. These are people who would, and I’m completely serious, would call me at random points on the weekend and see if I (or the other students) were doing anything.

This program has certainly had its ups and downs, but it’s been one hell of a ride, and easily one of the best things I've ever done with my life. And the best part?

I've still got three months left in Central Asia.

This will be my last update for a while. I've got exams to finish up, and then it’s a week-10 days in Badakhshan and Kyrgyzstan. Pending my return from that, I’ll be back, hopefully with plenty of stories for you good folks.

As always: Ташаккуру Худо ҳафез

زمین سبز و کاسه های سبز

So this was supposed to be about my day-long excursion to Kulob, the capital of Tajikistan’s southern Khatlon province, a historically significant city, and the place of origin for my host family.

I’m going to be talking about grass and cow stomachs. I swear, the two are related, just bear with me.

Kulob is roughly a three-and-a-half hour drive from the capital, and given that Khatlon is Tajikistan’s agricultural heart and it’s springtime for the country, the road south is absolutely beautiful. Literally, everything is a bright and verdant green, the sun is shining, and it’s amazing. And one of the stops on the way to Kulob is Nurak (or Nurek), home to a massive hydroelectric complex that was so beautiful, apparently Soviet-era Tajikistan felt like writing poems about it (I’m seriously not making that up, go find them, they exist). And, at Nurak at around 8:00 AM yesterday morning, I came face-to-face with what will be the subject of most of this update.

As I’d had to get up and be ready by 6:30 this morning, I’d only managed to scarf down some Russian hot dogs (of worthy mention, dear Russians, if you’re going to use artificial skins for your sausage, please do what we do in the West and make the damn thing edible, because “peeling” my morning breakfast is both horrifying and time-consuming) and chai before having to be on my way. So when our guide/administrator suggested stopping for food, I eagerly agreed. After all, given that the typical “Tajik breakfast” seemed to be either fried eggs, or some variant of milk and rice, what was the worst that could happen?

Let’s meet shurbo-e alafi and shurbo-e shekam.

The former is a soup (shurbo=soup) that is made of…you guessed it, alafi. But what is alafi? You may notice it looks similar to a word in English, alfalfa. Because that’s what it is. It’s grass. Shurbo-e alafi is “grass soup”. And for the latter, what is shekam? Stomach, in this case, cow stomach; being the base of a soup with little more than some lentils to absorb the taste of…well, more alafi, as well as some other tastes…and now I should fess up. Both of these soups were actually delicious. Hell, I ordered the shurbo-e shekam when I realized that adding meat would be the only way to make the shurbo-e alafi any better. The soups came with a salad (called shakarob in Tajiki) of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, hot peppers, and greens that you could compare to salsa, the ever present and always delicious naan, and a sauce I’m told is called satsavi. For any Iranians reading, it’s like a notably sour fesenjoon sauce; for any Georgians/fans of Georgian food, you know what I’m talking about; for everyone else, get on one of the two aforementioned boats. But seriously, aside from the cow stomach making the soup taste very…gastric (?), I loved every minute of my breakfast.

But now here was the weirder part. We get to this museum-castle reconstruction thing at a place called Hulbuk, and, after seeing the ruins of an old fort in the shadow of a mountain of salt, we were called over to a shack by an old bearded gentleman. Since this is hardly a random occurrence in Tajikistan, our group followed him down to a prepared pot of…shurbo-e alafi, accompanied in this case by powdered red pepper. And again, it was good, although by this point I was getting a tad full…

And this brings me to my point with these stories. Tajikistan breaks down into three basic regions: Khujand, Khatlon, and Badakhshan. These regions have their traditional stereotypes, the academic and "know-it-all" Khujandis, the agricultural and “backwards” Khatlonis, and the “what the hell are you doing here” Badakhshanis. As I've said multiple times, Tajikistan claims two national dishes, osh and qurutob. But here’s the thing, you can find osh from Bulgaria to China. So that’s not really “Tajiki”. You know what is? Shurbo-e alafi. No one (according to my professor and the people I talked to at the way station in Nurak) else in the region thought that making the grass they've been feeding their livestock into soup was a good idea. But it totally was, this shit’s delicious. And here’s my point (I think?), I jerk around with Tajikistan and Tajiks, going from admiring them to thinly-veiled insults. But stuff like shurbo-e alafi and qurutob, which are genuinely unique, and pretty damn good to boot, show that if you have to put money on someone doing the best with what they've got, I’d say the Tajiks are a pretty safe bet.

As for the rest of Kulob…I don’t know, I think the problem is that I’m comparing it to Khujand, the other large city in Tajikistan. And that’s not fair, I was in Khujand for three days, and in Kulob for only three hours. So I’ll just leave it at “I’ll go back and give it another shot.” Look forward to that one.

As always: Ташаккуру Худо ҳафез