شما سوال کردید، من جواب میدهم...

With midterms coming up next week, and a shocking number of actual questions, I figured that I’d be able to write a (somewhat) substantial post answering some of the questions put forward thus far. So here we go…

How Muslim is Tajikistan?

This one covers questions ranging from “How’s the dating scene?” to “Are you allowed to drink?” to “Does the call to prayer wake you up in the morning?” Tajikistan is, officially, 95% Muslim, mostly Sunni and Shi’a. And that’s the simplest part about it. On one hand, this is a country where you have to look to find pork products (and no one will cook them) and the social norm is several degrees to the right of the United States, or the Western world as a whole. On the other hand, getting a drink here is about as difficult as walking into a grocery store and giving them 2 somoni (a whopping $.40) for a beer.

Now obviously it gets more complex than that. My host family is a bit more religious than (seemingly) the vast majority of people here, to the extent they pray regularly, cook halal food, and don’t partake in drinking themselves. However, I’ve never personally encountered a problem with my own drinking in this country (which I don’t blatantly do when the family is around). For the average person on the street, religion and its importance seems to vary. There are about as many hijabs and traditional garbs on the streets of Dushanbe as there are form-fitting clothes and ungodly amounts of makeup.

There are still a lot of remnants of Tajikistan’s conservative (but not necessarily Muslim) past. And while I can by no means comment on all of these, the majority to seem to focus around, I’m sure you guessed it, women. The main one, that’s the most noticeable, is the idea of marriage here. If you’re a woman, and you’re 25 (or, astaghfirullah, 30!) and still single, well tough luck for you, have fun being a spinster. And if you’re lucky enough to get married at 18, prepare to be chained to the house (often of your husband’s parents) for the rest of your life. Now, in case it seems like I’m being overly negative about this, it should be noted that this seems to be what a fair number of young women in Tajikistan want.

So globalization, eat your heart out.

How’s the food?

In a word: delicious. Here again, my stay has been different than most, in that until last week, my family was keeping to an oddly vegetarian diet of various soups and stews. However, there are very few things I’ve had in this country that I haven’t enjoyed, and the collection of grilled and fried foods is simply marvelous. The national dishes of Tajikistan are osh, which is fried rice pilaf, usually topped with carrots, mutton, and onions, and qurutob, which is bread soaked in chakka, a sour yogurt base, and topped in onions. The first is amazing (and a welcome sight on the dinner table), while the second is an…acquired taste.

Oh, and there’s tea. Everywhere. All the time. It’s amazing.

How’s the poverty/quality of life?

In another word: bad. I may be living in the rich part of town, but when we lost water for a few days, it made a point abundantly clear, even inside the compound, this is the developing world. The perpetual smell of rotting filth and shit near our class office is another reminder, as are the perpetually unpaved roads. And that’s in the capital. In Khujand, the second largest city, there were routine blackouts, in addition to the above. As for the villages, good luck if you even get power or water. People can hate the Soviets for some of what they did, but the infrastructure that they built here was pretty nice…until about 1992.

What are you doing for fun?

Playing with the host kids, going out with my program mates, hiking in the mountains, relaxing in the park, drinking at the Operakhona. You know, the usual.

That’s really all I can think of for now. I will admit, I’ve been writing this while having a bit of a pre-midterm ‘party’ in the office, so I think that this is as far as I’ll get. With any luck, I’ll have something notable to write about after midterms end. As always: Tashakkur and khudo hafez.