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

by Christopher Aslan Alexander

  ‘First I must power up ze machine!’ explained a mad-scientist Russian matron in a lab-coat. I caught a glimpse of a large lamp on a stand in the room behind her that emitted ultraviolet light. Once the radiation lamp was powered up, I had to blindfold each boy and march them all into a circle around the lamp. We all dropped our pants, blindfolded, and stood spread-eagled as the lamp was switched on. Thoughts of cancer and infertility flitted through my mind, but I focused on the cool pool I would soon be plunging into – a bellow from the nurse outside signalling that it was time for us to turn and radiate our backs.

  I brought my embarrassing louse situation to Madrim’s attention, miming the word for louse which I’d never needed before. He agreed with my conclusion that Davlatnaza had been the source, and with anti-bit written on a scrap of paper, I headed for the chemist section of the bazaar. Dousing myself with half a large bottle, I gathered my clothes and laid them in the sun for a few days, as nits were often laid in the seams. Davlatnaza received the remaining half-bottle and a lengthy homily on hygiene. Regina, an occupational therapist working with Andrea, had recently suffered from an outbreak of fleas after spending the night in one of the village houses, and found them breeding in her own house. I knew of other foreigners who could only visit village houses wearing anti-flea cat-collars on their wrists and ankles, having proved particularly popular with the local parasites.

  * * *

  Although I spent time with the apprentice dyers, they were younger and there was always the barrier of my being their boss. It was with Madrim that I became really close. He would often invite me to his home after work and we’d lounge on corpuches, drinking bowls of green tea and discussing the latest challenges at work. I told him of my original misgivings about employing him, as Koranbeg’s brother, but how grateful I was that we had. Never had I come across someone so untiringly scrupulous in their work.

  Madrim told me more about his background. He had been painfully shy at school, weight-training to defend himself in the playground. His fine physique stood him in good stead during his service in the Red Army. Like so many Khivans on army service, he was sent to Leningrad speaking almost no Russian, having never travelled further than Tashkent. Suddenly he found himself eating pork, drinking vodka and joining in with the inter-ethnic fighting that made for recreation in the barracks. Uzbek and Azeri recruits were the bitterest opponents unless a squabble broke out with Russians or Ukrainians, at which point they leapt to their fellow Muslims’ aid.

  I asked him if there had been any romances with Russian girls during his service and he just laughed. On arrival at the barracks they were given a medical which included injections repeated twice a year. They soon realised that these caused impotence for around six months, ensuring that soldiers kept their minds on the job. He had been promoted as an exemplary soldier and had even served briefly in Afghanistan, although had never experienced any fighting.

  Madrim returned from the army and his parents began looking for a suitable wife. He mentioned a girl in his class who he’d always liked, and the marriage was arranged. He wanted to train as a doctor but instead applied to the Institute of Restoration, learning the different styles of naqsh, or design – both arabesque and geometrical.

  Loving his job, Madrim had always worked hard, restoring the Naqshbandi mausoleum in Bukhara and a couple of mosques in Shakrisabz, as well as the Khan’s palace in Kokand. Slowly, he had saved enough money to buy land and then build a house. Along with his wife and three children, he had lived a simple but happy existence until the realities of independent Uzbekistan began to sink in.

  ‘When they told me that there was no more work for me, I didn’t know what to do. In the Soviet times everyone had work, or the government would help you to find work. Now they just said bulder, it’s finished, you’re on your own. We were still setting up our own home and there was so much work to be done, and three children to feed. I talked with my brother and he told me that I must do what everyone else was doing and go to Russia or Kazakhstan as a builder. I asked around and found a man who knew someone who knew someone and, together with four or five others, we travelled to a place near Chimkent.

  ‘The Kazakhs, they were so hard. You know, we used to make jokes about the Kazakhs. We thought they were simple, and now here we were begging them for work. Everything was more expensive there and people were earning much better wages. We had to build a school, and it was winter and really cold. They showed us an old railway wagon with no heating and told us that we would live there. They gave us such thin blankets and old corpuches to sleep on. We had to work really hard and we kept asking them when they would pay us and they always promised it would be soon. In the end they cheated us out of everything. They didn’t even pay for our transport home. Coming back, the border guards stole my jacket – my one decent piece of clothing. I came back to Khiva with no hope. My wife cried when she saw how thin I was, and I had such a fever from the cold.

  ‘Aslan, I prayed to God and asked him why this was happening. Why was he punishing me? What had I done wrong? My wife, she was so worried about me, even more worried than about the children and how we would get money. I did some odd jobs for my brother, but that wasn’t enough. Then the workshop started and now I have a job and I’m learning the skills of my forefathers that we have forgotten. Now I can lift up my head again. I will always work as hard as I can for you and for our workshop.’

  * * *

  Madrim’s story was a common one, and tales of unemployment and desperation repeated themselves around the country. Factory after factory had closed, unable to run on market principles and unsure what to do without orders issued from Tashkent or Moscow. Petty trading with Russia and neighbouring countries took off. Large women, capable of hefting their bodyweight in bazaar bags, were prominent on every train or bus – usually shouting at a guard or policeman angling for a bribe. The ‘kiosk economy’, as it was known, had kept former Soviet countries afloat during the first rocky years of independence. As the fortunes of Russia and Kazakhstan improved, manual labouring jobs became more popular and now, every spring, convoys of clapped-out buses left for Orenburg, Kazan and Perm.

  This changed the whole demographic of Khiva. In winter I would sit for up to two hours waiting my turn at the barbers while being interrogated about the price of meat in England, the price of a loaf of bread, a car, a trip to the brothel, the wage of a teacher or football player. How much did I earn, was I circumcised, had I ever been to Liverpool, Newcastle, Arsenal or Manchester? In summer, the barber greeted me like a long-lost friend, desperate for business. It wasn’t long before he too packed up his shop and followed everyone else in search of work.

  The annual migration split families, giving little time for newlyweds to get to know each other after an arranged marriage. They were often virtual strangers, and living with extended family, a new bride spent more time with her mother- and sisters-in-law than with her own husband. A friend once called me with the good news that he was getting married in three weeks and that I must come and give a speech at his wedding. I congratulated him and asked him who the bride was, but he still wasn’t sure – his parents hadn’t told him yet.

  Children grew up without their father’s discipline, and boredom drinking was becoming a serious problem in the latter winter months. Women had mixed feelings about the forced separation. Many missed their husbands, brothers, sons and fathers but also enjoyed greater freedom and responsibility while their husbands were away. There were stories of teenage boys seduced by desperate housewives, though generally speaking it was the men who kept the brothels of Russia and Kazakhstan in business.

  In fact, there was a marked double standard when it came to sexual practices. Young men boasted of their exploits with donkeys or ‘bad girls’ but expected blood on the sheets after the wedding night as proof of virginity. After marriage many men continued to frequent brothels, using the tenuous argument that the Prophet had more
than one wife. When I asked how they would feel if their wives behaved in the same way, they got upset, suggesting that I questioned their wives’ honour. Over a bowl of tea, one friend asked me if I would permit my future wife to place my tool in her mouth. I mumbled something non-committal as he expounded on the wickedness of this practice, assuring me that this was something he did only with ‘bad girls’. Asked what his wife would say if she knew this, he simply shrugged. She didn’t.

  Morality, as far as men were concerned, seemed to be a case of not getting caught; but this was certainly not so for women. If there wasn’t blood on the wedding sheets, the new bride would be thrown out on the street and returned to her parents, where a thrashing awaited her. Women were expected to endure rather than enjoy sex with their husbands, merely lying back and thinking of the sons they would produce – their character questioned if they exhibited too much pleasure. Bored with their wives, men would seek out prostitutes or, if they could afford it, take a mistress or share one with a few other men. A friend from a village told me how hard it had been for his father, sleeping in the same room as all his children. My friend would lie there, listening to bedclothes rustling and then his mother’s whispered hiss: ‘You came to me last night. Just give me some peace. How many donkeys do we own? Can’t you bother them?’ His father would slink out to the stables, my friend ensuring that his own nightly forays never coincided.

  The differing expectations of men and women were engendered young in life. Little boys were spoilt and coddled, spending their days swimming naked in the canal or playing football with friends. Their bodies were fawned over – tiny penises tugged affectionately by older relatives. Little girls were taught to feel shame over their bodies, even toddlers expected to cover up. They learnt to sweep and to help their mother and older sisters prepare food for their brothers, ready for when they charged into the house, exhausted by play.

  The spectre of AIDS hung over Uzbekistan, with its large population of promiscuous and itinerant men who knew little about sexually transmitted diseases. I asked friends if they used condoms and they usually just shrugged, saying, ‘May God save us’; or they explained that they always washed carefully afterwards.

  ‘I only use the good girls’ was another common response. My neighbour’s son told me about a doctor who, for a bribe, administered injections that gave protection from all sexual illnesses for three months.

  To fend off the bombardment of questions on my sex life each time I visited the gym, I asked my companions instead about their own habits. If I raised the issue of marital fidelity, the reply was always the same. ‘Aslan, do you like plov?’ they would ask, to which there could be only one answer. ‘Yes,’ they would continue, ‘but you wouldn’t want to eat it every day, would you?’

  I parried with a culinary question of my own. I asked my friends if they enjoyed steamed meat dumplings, fried meat pastries or boiled meat ravioli, pointing out that they were the same dish, just cooked in different ways. Often the root cause of married men visiting brothels was that their wives had been taught that sex was a sinful necessity in order to produce children, and that they should simply accept it as a duty. I found myself dispensing simple bedroom tips – the type found in any women’s glossy at home – to spice up married relationships a little.

  * * *

  I felt that the development of the workshop was going well, but my feelings weren’t shared by Barry, whose passion for carpets had made him a little too involved in the project, leading him to micro-manage from Tashkent. I baulked at being ordered around and reminded him that we were partners and that he wasn’t my boss.

  ‘Yes, but who’s paying for this project?’ Barry threatened after a fraught discussion over the phone.

  ‘If it’s a question of money, Barry, I’m sure Operation Mercy would be happy to provide funding as well. We could go halves,’ I countered, and the matter was promptly dropped.

  However, phone discussions remained terse and visits were worse. Barry monitored a number of locally-run regional projects and was used to Uzbeks anticipating his arrival, ensuring that everything looked perfect and ran smoothly, at least for the duration of his visit. Whenever the President visited Khorezm, the electricity, gas and water all magically functioned, the roads were swept, buildings – even private houses along important streets – were painted and flowers planted in a grand charade of progress. I saw this as papering over the cracks and wasn’t about to do the same with Barry. He was keen to visit the workshop every few months and would usually begin by complaining and nit-picking.

  ‘Why have you drawn this design in two different shades of red?’ he demanded once, sitting in the office cell.

  ‘Because they’re two different shades in the miniature. Here, look,’ I replied, handing him the original picture.

  ‘No they’re not!’

  ‘Yes they are.’

  ‘No they’re bloody well not!’

  ‘Barry, you can swear at me if you like, but it doesn’t change the colour. There are definitely two different shades of red in that miniature. Take the book out into the courtyard and look at it in natural light.’

  Barry returned a few minutes later, complaining about our lack of decent office lighting in lieu of an apology.

  Our strained relationship was saved a few weeks later by Barry’s fall down a flight of stairs. He was rushed to Paris for an operation and six months’ recuperation. I felt guiltily overjoyed, hoping for some peace and quiet and space to get on with things.

  With Barry gone, I felt more at liberty to pursue an idea which Barry had vetoed. I loved our Timurid carpet designs but also wanted us to weave something unique to Khiva. The beautiful majolica tiled walls of the old city, complete with field and frame, already looked like hanging carpets and the designs were original. There even seemed to be a link between the Timurid designs and the oldest tiles in Khiva, found on the tomb of Sayid Allaudin. The tiles were contemporary with the Timurid miniatures and featured the same stylised Kufic knots found in Timurid carpets. I visited the tomb and asked for permission to climb over the barrier and explore it more thoroughly. The old lady in charge, keen to offend an ageing mullah who had recently installed himself on her turf, happily guided me through.

  The tiles were raised in a subtle relief and of a higher quality than the more commonplace 19th-century ones. The design and colour palette of deep blue, turquoise and white worked well, and a repeating octagonal pattern found on top of the tomb would make an excellent field.

  Madrim was keen on the design but nervous of Barry’s response. Still, Barry was in Paris and would stay there for some time, so I put plans for our ‘rebel rug’ into action as we prepared for our first wage day.

  8

  The dawn sweepers

  ‘You would never believe it,’ he said, ‘how our women are spoilt among us Sarts (Uzbeks). You can often see Kirghiz women working in the fields, or Russian women too, but you’ll never see a Sart woman doing so. Even in the house they do not do much; they can’t even cook a decent plov, they only spoil the rice.’

  —Paul Nazaroff, Hunted Through Central Asia, 1932

  Money-changing was part of my initial orientation in Tashkent. On my arrival in 1998, a dollar was worth around 240 som in the bank and around 280 som in the bazaar. Changing in the bazaar was easier (the service was much better) but illegal. Over subsequent years, the gap between the bank and bazaar rates widened considerably until there was 700 som difference. Key government ministers amassed a personal fortune from this two-tier system despite the financial ruin it was causing the country. International businesses despaired and left. The private sector dwindled and the police enjoyed the bribes they collected each day from the money-changers in return for turning a blind eye to their practices.

  I was introduced to a shop selling underwear and perfume in Mirobod bazaar next to the Operation Mercy flat in Tashkent. Th
e majority of other customers also came for illicit monetary exchanges. We would hand over our dollar notes and linger until a stout woman returned with a carrier bag bearing the equivalent in som. The system worked well until a policeman drew close, at which point we immediately feigned interest in displays of thongs or a mannequin leg festooned with garters.

  The Khiva bazaar – keen to exploit unwary tourists – was not a good place to change money. My policy was to count the bundles of greasy som notes before handing over my dollars, ignoring the impatient assurances that the money was ‘with guarantee’. As the dollar devalued, changing money surreptitiously became less simple. The handing over of a dollar bill was no problem, but the bundles of som given in return were a little more conspicuous. The largest denomination was 500 som – around half a dollar – and suitcases full of money were needed to make transactions for cars or to buy plane tickets.

  Early on the morning of our first wage day in the spring of 2002, I went down to the bazaar with Madrim. We passed the fish-sellers, stalls of stationery and toiletries, reams of bright polyester material for dresses, and crates of vodka, arriving at a group of men loitering next to a clothing stall. We were immediately solicited with calls of ‘Dollar, Rusiski!’ announcing the two currencies used alongside the som. I wanted nothing smaller than 100-som bills and we found someone willing to change, assuring us that we could bring back any bundles missing a note or two. Filling a sturdy bazaar bag, we heaved the contents back to the workshop, where there was a general air of festivity. Weavers sat in gaggles outside, discussing an especially glittery pair of shoes they had in mind, or the material they’d seen in the caravanserai which was expensive but particularly shiny. Work had ground to a halt.

  Ulugbibi and Safargul, the weaving ustas, joined us in the office cell as we tipped out the bundles of som onto the table and began counting. The smaller notes were held together with nothing but grease, sweat and dirt. Women tended to keep their money in their bras; and in summer, returned change was moist to the touch, especially after a plump matriarch selling cherries had rooted around in her cavernous bra for the correct notes.