A Carpet Ride to Khiva: Seven Years on the Silk Road

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A Carpet Ride to Khiva: Seven Years on the Silk Road Page 5

by Christopher Aslan Alexander


  Koranbeg and Zulhamar weren’t old enough to be my parents or young enough to be my equals. I wasn’t sure what term to use for them, but settled on agha and abke, meaning ‘older brother’ and ‘older sister’. They tried to simplify their language for me, and as I grew in my comprehension of Uzbek, I learnt more about them both. Zulhamar was originally from the village of Yangi Arik, or New Canal, where people were, she assured me, more honest and hard-working than the inhabitants of Khiva. Her father had died when she was still young, so Zulhamar had looked after her numerous younger siblings as her mother went off to work. Zulhamar cooked and cared for the family and learnt how to weave carpets and kilims (woven floor coverings). They had moved to Khiva so her mother could work in a factory, and there Koranbeg’s mother, their neighbour, had noted how industrious the young Zulhamar was. It came as no surprise when a match-maker was dispatched to their house and a marriage arranged with Koranbeg.

  ‘He was very disappointed to be marrying a village girl, especially as he’d just come back from studying in Tashkent,’ she recalled. ‘He didn’t like me at all, I was too thin and too dark, and we hardly spoke for the first few years. Anyway, I was too busy, the only daughter-in-law in the house, cooking and cleaning and then weaving carpets late into the night. My mother-in-law was a hard woman, and I was more submissive than the other daughters-in-law who joined us later. I think he was going to divorce me as I kept having miscarriages, but finally after three years of marriage I gave him Malika.’

  Having shown my photos of home to Koranbeg, he rummaged in a wardrobe for a large plastic bag containing an ageing army photo album. During his two years of army service he had, like most Uzbeks, been sent to other parts of the Soviet Union. His tank unit in Kazakhstan all got frostbite in the sub-zero temperatures, and it was here that he learnt to drink vodka, eat pork and speak Russian. After army service he attended college in Tashkent – much skinnier in those days – sporting bushy sideburns and flares.

  There were unsmiling portraits of Koranbeg and other students in Red Square, Moscow on an educational trip, and pictures of him on scaffolding learning to restore ceilings, applying gold-leaf to a section of moulded plaster. His wide education and experience had left him with a broader understanding of the world than his wife, and a keen respect for foreigners. Zulhamar, though mocked by her husband for her lack of worldly knowledge, was an astute judge of character and had a dry sense of humour and a good head for business.

  I soon met the rest of Koranbeg’s family. He had two younger brothers and a sister. Madrim, his youngest brother, worked incredibly hard to finish the painted wooden ceiling in the guestroom. A man of few words, he was strong, shy and industrious. The middle brother Abdullah, however, was a constant source of concern for both Koranbeg and Madrim. Despite the fact that Koranbeg’s formidable mother was installed at Abdullah’s house to keep an eye on him, he still managed to come home drunk most evenings.

  Both Koranbeg and Zulhamar had lost their fathers. Zulhamar’s mother was small, round and jolly, always well dressed in the tent-like style that suited larger women. She treated me with the affection of an exotic pet, patting my knee reassuringly whenever I looked blank – unless her favourite Mexican soap opera was on, which then consumed all her concentration. Koranbeg’s mother was a fine-looking but fierce woman. She was the only person around whom the youngest boy Zealaddin behaved himself and, though barely into her sixties, catalogued a long and mournful list of ailments whenever she visited; this interspersed with barked orders to Zulhamar and the children for tea or an extra cushion.

  Koranbeg told me about his restoration work, which largely centred around ceilings and wall tiles. It was an honour, he explained, to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather who’d built some of the original ceilings now being restored. He and his team had recently completed their largest project, a rushed affair to prepare a number of buildings for the 2,500-year anniversary of Khiva’s founding. This date, along with Bukhara’s 2,500-year jubilee which would take place a week later, had been dreamt up by some local historians at the government’s insistence.

  On the day itself, President Karimov arrived with an assortment of ambassadors and the UNESCO director in tow. The people of Khiva were all told to stay in their homes for security reasons, forbidden to take part in the celebrations. Snipers perched on the roof of Koranbeg’s house scanning the horizon, while Koranbeg and his family had to watch the events taking place less than 100 metres away on television. He had still not been paid the thousands of dollars owed him for all the work he and his men had done.

  ‘I have offered bribes to the right officials. I told them they could even take 30 per cent of the money owed us, but still I haven’t seen one som. It is a bad thing to tell my workers who worked so hard, “I know that you must feed your families, but I have no money for you.” ’

  I was amazed at such treatment, although I later became, if not inured, at least unsurprised by such tales. Corruption was an accepted part of everyday life and most people expected to pay a bribe to get a job, a bribe to obtain their salary, and a bribe to get it paid in cash to avoid an even larger bribe needed to extricate their money from the bank. Abdullah – the wayward middle son – had a similar story to tell. He had landed a lucrative contract working on the President of Karakalpakstan’s mansion. It was a huge job and he took a band of men from Khiva up to Nukus, capital of the semi-autonomous region, to help him. He paid for the labour and materials himself, fully expecting to be reimbursed by the President. The work finished, he waited for his wages, but was fobbed off each time with promises that the money would be available soon. By the time I left Khiva seven years later, Abdullah had still not been paid, despite three or four trips a year to demand what was owed. Each time, he would return to Khiva dejected and get himself drunk.

  Life with my Uzbek family revolved around meals which, in turn, revolved around television. Although actual entertainment was relatively scarce, the family seemed inured to the tedium of songs and sonnets about glorious motherlands, schoolchildren reciting epic poems dedicated to the President, the montages of historic mosques and madrassahs, new factories, happy workers hand-picking cotton, collective farm bosses marvelling at the size of the melon harvest, etc.

  World news consisted of disasters culled from the BBC or Euronews, juxtaposed with happy domestic news of another factory opened or a record wheat crop. Russians joked that if you wanted to see heaven on earth you should watch Uzbek TV – and to see hell on earth, you should actually visit.

  What made television watchable for most Uzbeks were the dubbed soap operas from Mexico or Brazil. The most successful telenovela, entitled Esmeralda, was an implausibly melodramatic tale of a rich blind girl, swapped at birth with a young village boy who grew up as heir apparent. Blind Esmeralda met and fell in love with him but then a dashing young doctor restored her eyesight, leaving a protracted dilemma as to which lover she should choose. It was shown every night at nine, and life ground to a halt as the nation gathered around their television sets. Guests left wedding banquets early, and buses to Tashkent timed their evening stop at a tea-house so as not to miss an episode. In summer I walked home with the dubbed voices of José Armando and Esmeralda drifting through the open doors of each house I passed.

  The first series of Dallas also proved a popular hit and sparked increased bazaar sales in shoulder pads and bright, polka-dotted fabrics. All of Khiva was rapt, ignoring the bad dubbing, laughing and weeping with the characters. I became something of a prophet, foretelling Bobby’s imminent demise.

  ‘Aslan, don’t say such a thing!’ Zulhamar gasped, spitting to ward off any bad luck I might have incurred. Yet a few months later Bobby died as predicted. Zulhamar and some of our neighbours tearfully discussed the funeral around the local well, noting that no one wore white for mourning, there was no weeping over the coffin, and they even allowed women to attend the burial. My successful prediction was al
so considered, and I became something of a television seer, predicting Bobby’s return to life. This was flatly denounced as impossible, for hadn’t he just died? There were also gasps of horror at the prospect of JR being shot. On our street, drama – whether dubbed and on screen or played out in a domestic squabble next door – was all real.

  * * *

  I felt it was time to develop a more active social life and make some friends, so I took up Zafar the wood-carver’s invitation to visit his house. He lived in Kosmabot, just outside Khiva, and his house was easy to identify, as there was a pile of huge tree trunks against his front wall. These were black elm – a hardwood getting scarcer due to disease. I asked him if they planted new saplings to replace the trees felled. They didn’t. But he assured me they would never chop down one of these ancient trees if there was so much as a leaf still growing, for that would be a terrible sin.

  I was ushered inside and took off my shoes as Zafar poured water over my hands from a copper jug that had been warming on a stove at the entrance. The warm water from my hands drained into an ornate copper basin and I remembered the golden rule not to flick but to wring the water off my hands, as each drop flicked would become a jinn (devil).

  We went through to the guestroom, where the walls were spray-painted in bright lime green with wallpaper-effect red roses. Every Khiva guestroom wall displayed either a giant plastic gold wristwatch clock or a Mecca clock garlanded with plastic flowers. Like most guestrooms, there was little furniture other than a long, low banqueting table surrounded by corpuches and a TV and stand.

  The table – barely visible beneath its contents – groaned with the weight of food. In the centre congregated bottles of wine, vodka and vivid soft drinks. Next to these was a large bowl of fruit and a stack of round, flat Khorezm loaves, and radiating from these were small plates of cookies, cakes, salads, nuts and dried fruit. There were two large empty bowls, at odds with the general excess. They were for slinging tea dregs, apple cores and sweet wrappers – an elegantly simple solution to waste disposal.

  I made the mistake of eating too much of what were, after all, mere starters, and felt quite full by the time large platters of plov were brought through. Zafar’s brothers joined us and I was introduced to them in turn: Javlon, Jasoul, Jahongir, Jamshid.

  ‘How many brothers have you got?’ I asked, as yet another appeared.

  ‘Can you guess how many people live in our house?’ was Zafar’s playful reply. ‘There are 24 of us!’

  He numbered off each married son and corresponding wife and children. Each married brother had a separate room where he and his wife and children would sleep. The younger brothers and sisters all bundled into one large room at night, sleeping on corpuches which were then stacked up on top of a chest during the day.

  ‘So what do you do if you and your wife want to, you know …’ I asked, not sure if this was too personal a subject. Zafar grinned, explaining that they just learned to stay up well after the children were asleep and be quiet about it.

  As we ate, Zafar’s rotund father joined us and was soon back-slapping me as he poured out shots of vodka. One presumption of mine had been that people in Muslim Uzbekistan wouldn’t drink. These, however, were post-Soviet Muslims; three men could happily dispatch two bottles of vodka and still go to work the next day. I hate vodka but felt obliged to at least down the 50 grams that Zafar’s father had cajoled me into drinking. But before that, Zafar asked me to make a toast, his father roaring approval and adding more vodka to my drinking bowl.

  After more plov and toasts (I toasted with tea, after Zafar told his father that I had an allergy to vodka) Zafar offered to show me their workshop. I was presented with plastic slippers and a torch as we went out into the garden, detouring for a toilet-stop where I banged my head hard on the lintel to the pit latrine.

  The workshop was simple and some of the apprentices were still there, working late into the evening. Zafar’s eldest brother was the usta or master who oversaw the workshop and was responsible for the main carpentry. The second brother drew out the arabesque designs needed for each item, and the apprentices and younger brothers did the actual carving. They started on cutting-boards, which were easiest, and worked up to ornate boxes, Koran-stands and larger items of furniture. The patterns were transferred from paper to wood by making hundreds of pin-pricks along the contours and then pouring black powder through the holes onto the wood.

  The brothers demonstrated how different tools created different effects and offered to let me try. I declined, anxious not to destroy anything, but wanting to learn more, keen to explore other products that they could also sell to tourists. Had they considered collapsible coffee-tables that tourists could take home with them? Or carved plate mats, napkin rings, bookends, framed mirrors?

  Zafar watched politely as I scrawled down a design for interlocking coffee-table legs while enthusing about the possibility of carved wooden chess-sets. Helping artisans develop their products for a tourist market, and acting as a bridge between the two cultures, seemed a perfect blend of creativity and business – and a lot more appealing than spending my days writing up a guidebook. I left my table design with Zafar, suggesting that he might like to experiment with it.

  I asked him about the collapsible coffee-table the next time we met up, and he smiled awkwardly. I realised that there was no incentive to experiment with something new that might not sell when he already conducted a brisk trade in chopping boards and boxes. Instead I offered to sell some of his stuff in Tashkent next time I was there, as I knew lots of foreigners who would appreciate his work.

  An English lady in Tashkent bought several boxes and a cutting board and enquired whether Zafar produced anything else. Well, I explained, he was considering a range of collapsible carved coffee-tables, and was she interested in being his first customer? Back in Khiva, I handed Zafar his money and the few items I hadn’t sold, and told him that there was an order for a coffee-table and drew out what it should look like. I’d discussed a price with Liz, the English lady, and it was a lot more than Zafar made on boxes and book-stands. Soon the coffee-table was completed and orders came in for more, as Liz’s friends all wanted one. Next came ornate shelves with pegs, mirrors and telephone-stands. Zafar’s brothers were kept busy and now had a lucrative sideline for the winter months when few tourists visited Khiva.

  Lukas noted my new ‘hobby’, which he approved of as long as it didn’t interfere with writing the guidebook. We had originally hoped to finish the book within six months, but it seemed to expand continually as we discovered more information that could be included.

  * * *

  My language improved, with plenty of practice answering the same stock questions, whether in a shared taxi, at the barbers or in the bazaar. Where was I from? How old was I? How much did I earn? What was I doing in Khiva? Where was my wife? Why wasn’t I married? At this point, if the questioner was young and male, there was more probing. Was I circumcised? Did I prefer Manchester United or Newcastle? Did I like Uzbek ‘bad girls’, and which was my favourite brothel? Inevitably all questions returned to the subject of money. How much was a teacher paid in England? What was the price of a loaf of bread, a kilo of meat, a car? Was life better there or here?

  At first I answered this last question as diplomatically as possible, explaining that some things were better in England, such as higher wages and less corruption, while other things were better in Uzbekistan, such as the importance of family and hospitality. Later, tired of an oppressive government and unremitting propaganda, I simply explained that life was much better in England as no one had to pay a bribe for a job, or worry about arrest for what they believed. This naturally led to questions regarding the best way to get into the UK and what work opportunities there were for Uzbeks.

  * * *

  I became friends with Rustam and Mukkadas, the pastor of the Urgench church and his wife. At this stage they we
re still happy to let foreign Christians worship with them, although later on, as the government became more anti-religious, they requested that we stop attending their meetings for fear of reprisals. I visited them in their tiny little house with Catriona and we would enjoy language practice, hospitality and friendship.

  We learnt about the challenges they faced from all sides, as Uzbek Christians. Their friends and relatives ostracised them for abandoning Islam, while Russian Christians couldn’t understand why they wanted to read the Bible and conduct liturgy in Uzbek. On top of this the government continually harassed them, accusing them not only of abandoning Islam but also, paradoxically, of being Islamic militants.

  I visited the Korean church in Urgench one Sunday, which met in a run-down shack with marker-penned stained-glass windows and a rickety old piano. Koreans with names like Boris or Svetlana arrived in jeans and mini-skirts and the whole service was in Russian. I enjoyed it, despite understanding nothing, but could see why Uzbeks wanted something that fitted more with their own culture.

  The Koreans of Central Asia had been deported en masse from eastern Siberia and North Korea in the 1940s by Stalin. They arrived with nothing but gradually worked themselves out of poverty, adopting Russian language and culture to the extent that the current generation spoke no more than a few words of Korean. They had retained their cuisine, though, and every bazaar had a section where Koreans sold spicy kimchi salads and dog fat – a popular medicine for flu.

  Life became difficult for all religious communities, including the Koreans, when bomb blasts in February 1999 were blamed on wahabis or Islamists, resulting in a government purge and a crackdown on mosques around the country. No one was sure if these attacks were genuinely the work of fundamentalists or whether they were staged by the secret police to justify a wave of crackdowns.

 

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