سلام آقای رحمان، من هنوز دارم می گویم...

Let’s suppose you are someone who’s been inspired by my mediocre writing skills and have decided “Hmm, this Tajikistan place sounds like an interesting locale, maybe I should learn something about it.” (NOTE: Yes, you should be doing this, especially if you haven’t already started.) If that was the case, you might’ve noticed this. Or, maybe if you’re even MORE astute, you've seen articles like this relating to things that aren't Facebook, but just as despotic.

(So if you’re reading this NOT because of the obviously absent Facebook update, feel free to spread it around, I don’t have many ways otherwise.)

I’ll admit, I wrote something along the lines of a three-page entry ‘praising’ H.E. Rahmon for “saving the population of Tajikistan from the dangers of free speech and Facebook.” It was blatantly farcical, and ended with something very undiplomatic, and a lot of words that I probably shouldn't publish, because A) If the Tajik authorities can actually see the negative things are posting about the government, I don’t want to give them an excuse to come after my host family, or the already embattled American Councils where I’ll likely be uploading this; and B)…

Reasoning B) is a lot longer than A, but makes a lot more sense. I’m not Tajik (shocking, I know). I can read and speak Tajiki about as well as the 6 year old in my host family, and I’m know she knows what’s going more often than I do. I’m going to be here until May, and then there’s a fair chance I’ll never come back to Tajikistan (NOTE: That is not due to a lack of a desire to come back, love this place. Just being realistic.) Yes, I have to deal with power outages, water outages, government censorship; the blatant attempt by the current president to create a cult of personality…the list honestly goes on. But after May, it’s not (directly at least) my problem anymore. I’ll be missing, among other things, the much reported October 2013 presidential elections, and the aftershocks when the US and friends "pulls out" of Afghanistan in 2014, but that’s neither here nor there.

There are over seven million people for whom this is everyday existence. Yes, there are people who think that Rahmon and his regime have kept Tajikistan permanently tethered to their dysfunctional pasts. But there are people who, to put it as it was paraphrased to me, are mad that “some stupid people said some dumb things about the president.” Tajikistan is a country like any other, there are those who are inherently political and involve themselves in any sort of civic injustice, and there are those who just want safety and affordable bread. And, as in most countries, that latter group is the majority.

After several attempts of writing this, I’m still at a loss for an end. Maybe (to use a ridiculously cheesy cliché I’m almost literally pulling out of my ass) it’s like Tajikistan, where there are many plausible futures, some of them good, some of them bad. At the end of the day, it’s not my job to choose an ending, because I'm just a guest, and I'm not the kind of person that can pick a future for a place that quite clearly isn't mine.

What is worth noting, and this is my first attempt being in a country where the government is blocking Facebook (my main outlet for contacting people back home), several news sites (which let me know what's going on in the region, and is also why I'm stuck with Yahoo! news), and of course, the power outages. And yeah, this might be life for people, but if you ever want to know what it feels like when the government is trying to isolate you from the outside world...this is a slightly terrifying start to a situation that could always get worse.

As always: Ташаккуру Худо ҳафез.

شایعات و پاسخ

People in Tajikistan are concerned. You hear this concern from students, from families, from professors and shop owners. And I’m concerned too.

American Councils’ programs for Americans could be leaving Tajikistan.

Now, at first, I thought it was likely a joke, and, after all, why would the only Persian language immersion program available for students from America (a country known for needing people who speak Persian because, let’s face it, we’re over there all the time) be closed down? Isn't there a demand for Persian, students who want to take the language, and who don’t have qualms about going outside their comfort zone?

Oh no, there is. They’re just all in Armenia or Turkey.

As some of you may be aware, the US government has a scholarship/fellowship program known as the Boren, which offers students enough money to make something, like a yearlong study program in Tajikistan significantly more financially feasible. However, this year, following “security concerns”, the program relocated all of its participants to Yerevan, Armenia. If you’re wondering why I’m in Tajikistan, and not Armenia studying Persian, it’s because (SURPRISE!) Armenia is not a Persian-speaking country.

But Greg, you might be saying, Tajikistan is in Central Asia, and Central Asia is SCARY! Yes, yes it is, if, by “SCARY”, you mean “The safest place I think I have ever lived.” Oh no, Tajikistan borders Afghanistan. And yes, this summer did see some pretty nasty violence in the eastern half of the country. But both of those places are, in relation to where I live about 6 and 11 hours away respectively. At the same time, ask any students studying in Israel how safe things have been lately, because let’s be serious, the number of missiles that have fallen in Tajikistan in the last three months is a resounding…Zero.

So yeah, not going to dance around the issue: US government, get your act together.  I hope, of course, that this is all only hearsay, but with only two students here for the spring semester…things are indeed looking grim.

As always: Ташаккуру худо ҳафез.

امیدوارم که شما برای چیز خوشحال جستجو نمیکنید...

(First off, if you’re reading this on November 22, and you’re in the US, get the hell off my blog, and spend time with your family. It’s Thanksgiving, celebrate it.)

Let’s talk about friends for a minute. Everybody has friends, right? Those people you can talk to about anything, have a good time with, and all that other stuff that makes you feel good and blah, blah, blah.

Now let’s talk about how that concept is a…difficult one in Tajikistan.

First off, I want to make one thing clear: This is not solely my thinking. I've heard from (short-list) Americans, the British, Russians, and Iranians, so I’m gonna guess that there’s some truth to this realization. Second, this isn't universal. I've met people here who I consider friends, both Tajik and otherwise, so I’m not trying to stereotype.

But actually, there is the constant feeling that, when you meet someone and talk to them, that if you agree to talk to them again, it’s not going to be in the context of friendship. Now, I’m lucky in that I’m both a guy and my country of origin is fairly hard to determine (say the Tajiks). So most of the time, I only get asked for visas. Visas and green cards. Which at first was amusing, but now which has honestly turned into a ridiculous pain in the ass (to be covered later).

(Also, I’m luckily not a woman, because men don’t try to have sex with me. Can’t stress how awesome that is.)

Part of it is cultural, which I understand. You have your family, your massive, incredibly close-knit families, friends are kind of secondary. And I’m not going to bash that because, living in one of those large, close-knit families, it’s kind of nice. But that has its limits, especially as someone not from Tajikistan who doesn't have family here. Likewise, early complaints I might’ve had about people only wanting to speak English are significantly less important (I mean I only want to speak Farsi/Tajiki, so I’m not much better).

But there’s a difference. If I meet someone in the park, or a restaurant, and start talking to them, yes I might want to speak in Persian, but I don’t really care what we talk about. It’s more just having someone different to talk to. Meanwhile, as I've learned from a lot of the people I've met in my first three months here, people want something more concrete from me. Either a visa or a job opportunity or whatever. And it’s annoying because now I find myself not wanting to give new people a chance because I've mentally programmed myself to talk to people once, and then never give out contact information or anything like that because it’ll lead to one of these situations.

(deep breath)

Not all Tajiks are like this. I will quite openly say that the Tajiks I have met through AIESEC have all, and I do mean all, been totally awesome. And there are a few people I've met multiple times on the street or around that are far friendlier than is the norm. But ultimately, it’s those moments when you realize how hard friends are to come by, here and in general, that makes eight months here seem that much more daunting.

---

On the other hand, I get to learn how to make osh today, and I can always drown my sorrows in goat and oily fried rice.

As always: Ташаккуру худо ҳафез.

چه هرگز نبود...

Museums are usually, for the most part, not the first thing you want to see when you’re living in another country. I think many people will admit this. So when our final excursion for the semester was to a museum (or more aptly, to two museums), I was less than thrilled. After all, we’re in another country, and we’re…oh, looking at old rocks and bones. Fun?

Well yeah, actually, surprisingly interesting.

For you see, Tajikistan is old. This is a fact that has been stressed by literally EVERYONE here for as long as I can remember. And yeah, when you go to places to Hisor, with the fort that’s older than an Iran, or Istaravshan, the city of Alexander’s Roxana, you realize this place is old. But the National History Museum here in Dushanbe was actually able to drive home what this place was like. It wasn't some back corner of nowhere like it (unfortunately) has become, it was a cosmopolitan center of East Asian, Indian, Persian, and Greek cultures, which made something truly interesting and unique.

Seeing the old statues (like the Leaning Buddha) and the artwork makes you think of a place where the lingua franca is Persian with Greek letters, where Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, and Christians all mix and mingle in a shockingly tolerant environment. Where the artwork is bizarre and colorful and you feel like this is the center, the true center of Eurasia. Basically, something amazing.

You will note, of course, that this is no longer the case. This ancient past was destroyed by a force so destructive; no army has ever managed to replicate it: The Arab invasions. The Russians left the language, the Mongols left the religion, but the Arabs trounced everything. 

And that's the end of that.

As always: Ташаккуру худо ҳафез.

بعد از یک هفته ای مهمترین :با ایرانیان

Let’s get one thing out of the way with this: I want to go to Iran. I’m in Tajikistan now because my requests to study in Tehran (and there were several) were denied by groups stretching from the Office of Study Abroad to the Dean of the Elliott School. Not saying I blame them for that decision, but it happened.

Now, onto the meat of this update, I've talked about language in terms of Tajiks/Russians. But there are always multiple sides to an argument, and after some lovely conversations yesterday, I figure it’s time to talk about Iranians. First, there are lots of Iranians (and Afghans, they’ll be making an appearance too) in Dushanbe. They may or may not own a bank in this city, so way-to-go sanctions, and I can usually find them in the Dushanbe equivalent of DC’s Moby Dick (non-DCers, look it up). They’re fairly easy to spot; women with shoddily placed headscarves that make you wonder why they’re bothering to wear the thing in the first place, and men looking surprisingly dapper aside from the bushy mustaches and permanent five-o’clock shadow. Normally, it’s fun to just find them on the street and start laughing because you can’t believe that the stereotypes actually exist (granted, the Western expats all look stereotypical as well, but come on, where’s the fun in talking about them).

Yesterday though, I figured I’d try to find some Iranians and strike up a conversation, using the masterful logic of Why the hell not? And, as luck would have it, I managed to walk into the Iranian café as lunch hour was wrapping up, so I ordered a pot of tea and a hookah, and watched (I shit you not), a Farsi-dubbed Home Alone. Simply put: Having fun where you can make it.

I ended up having conversations with three people yesterday, two of whom were Iranian and the other being an Afghan. The Iranians were a fun bunch, and aside from general ta’aroffing (‘No, we can’t smoke your hookah…) and making fun of the story I had to read for my class, we got into the seemingly inevitable halves of any conversation with people in this part of the world:

1. Why are you learning Farsi in Tajikistan?
2. Something about sanctions/US government not liking Iran/etc.

On the first one, it never seems to sink in that maybe, just maybe, the fact that the US and Iran don’t have formal relations might be an issue for me trying to study over there. And that the Iranian visa process for Americans might just be a bit rougher on students than vice-versa. (NOTE: I am basing that comment off of the number of Iranians who say they have relatives in America when I say “It’s impossible for me to get a student visa.”) Likewise, trying to explain away the US-Iran international enmity thing is difficult, especially when their list of grievances is a bit lengthier than ours.

But here’s the point I wanted to get to. Whenever you talk to Iranians, the feeling you get is that, by trying to learn Persian (not Farsi at this point, Persian), you've committed some grave injustice by coming to Dushanbe and studying ‘Tajiki’. And yeah, listening to conversational Tajiki, which can range from archaic, Ferdowsi-era Persian to a Russian creole, makes it blatantly clear that just speaking Farsi (at the level that most Americans do) isn't going to help alone. But ultimately, what is Farsi? The language is almost as Arabic as it is Persian, something Tajiks love pointing out. And I’ll be honest, the less ‘ع’ I have to pronounce, the better, I like not choking on my tongue when I talk.

And what about the Afghan, what happened with him? He shared his lunch (meat/fat off of a lamb femur with rice) with me, and we had a lovely conversation about our respective families. No politics. No culture clash. Just lamb and family.

It was a damn fine Wednesday.

As always: Ташаккуру худо ҳафез.

قبل از یک هفته ای مهمترین

So the end of my first semester in Tajikistan is rapidly approaching its competition (a mere 6 weeks away), and as such, now there’s a lot less to talk about regarding places I've been going, and now I’m stretching to find topics to write about wherever I can. And given that Election Day is three days away…

I’ll be talking about language in Tajikistan.

I assume by this point that a fair portion of my readers will stop after that above ‘switcheroo’ of sorts. So let’s begin. Tajikistan is, as you may imagine due to the fact I’m studying Persian here, one of only three countries which has a variety of Persian as the national language. And if you were to go by the various, Rahmon-centric propaganda posters that dominate the sides of buildings and the corners of major intersections (including a particularly amusing poster in Khujand that quite literally blocks out the sunlight for all the apartment dwellers that live behind it, leading to a scenario where Emomali Rahmon is, for a lack of a better comparison, a supervillain), Tajiki Persian is the beating heart and driving force for the past, present, and future of this lovely and interesting country.

And then you meet the Russians.

Like all of the post-Soviet republics, Tajikistan has a large population of ethnic Russians, left over from the century-plus domination of the country by powers centered in Russia. Now, just looking at Tajiki, with its block-like, ugly Cyrillic alphabet instead of its flowing Arab-Persian ancestor shows a clear legacy of its Russian past, as to the various Russian loanwords that have snuck their way into the language over the last two centuries. But simply walking down Rudaki or Ismail Somoni, you’re going to see an ethnic kaleidoscope of Tajiks, Uzbeks, Russians, Koreans, Pamiris, Chinese, Indians, and expats. And the only language that binds this disparate group is not Tajik, but Russian.

Now, as Tajikistan is the only post-Soviet republic I've ever been to, I can only speak to the effect of what I've read in that this is nothing new, and is fairly common throughout most of Central Asia. Tajikistan’s major difference seems to be that, as opposed to what I would've imagined, the degree of assimilation between the various ethnic groups in Tajikistan with the Tajik majority is more than just existent, it’s pretty active. While Russian is the unofficial language of anything more than personal conversation (and depending on the time of day, the news), I've met a good number of Russians who can, and usually with a good deal of encouragement will, speak Tajik.

But wait, doesn't this mean that Russian isn't that important you may be asking. Wait, I’m getting to the kicker. Now while there are Russians that exist that can speak Tajik, the number of Tajiks that can’t speak Tajik Persian to any relative proficiency is far…greater. Now there are plenty of reasons for this, and it’s the same kind of thing you find in many African countries in the post-colonial world (yet another reason to call Tajikistan a ‘cold Africa’). That doesn't make it any more sensible, or really understandable. A good example of this phenomenon can be found in my host family. My host mother and grandfather speak Tajiki at a level that can border on the limits of my comprehensions. The two youngest girls speak as much Tajiki as you would expect them to. The two oldest boys…five and nine years (respectively) of Russian-language school have quite literally gutted their Tajik vocabulary, to the point where ‘conversational Tajiki’ is ‘bastard Russian’ at my family. Similarly, I've had Tajiks ask me to help them with their Tajik because "They never bothered to learn it." I actually can't even think of a parallel for that last one.

As I said before, this isn't a unique phenomenon. The whole of the former Soviet Union has the same problem (although Central Asia without a doubt has it worse than their former Caucasian or Eastern European comrades), as do the former colonial states of Africa. But I would argue for Tajikistan it’s different. For the other states that have had the misfortunate of their native languages destroyed by a larger, global equivalent, the language in question is spoken only in the country of its origin, and often in only a small local. With Tajiki, you have to include the over 70 million speakers of Persian in the region alone, let alone worldwide. As long as Tajikistan is closely tied to Russia, or as it seems to tie itself closer and closer to China, one wonders what the fate of Tajiki will be.

Questions and comments welcome as usual, best of luck to the various American readers following Sandy (you’d be amazed how concerned Tajikistan has been about that) and to all of the candidates that the election goes well. As always: Tashakkur and khudo hafez.