A Carpet Ride to Khiva: Seven Years on the Silk Road (6 page)

I knew nothing of the family dynamics at that point, or who was a relative, who was a neighbour and who was both; the evening was a blur of faces for the most part.
While some guests sat and chatted, others took a turn with the paddle, stirring the large cauldron constantly to ensure its contents didn’t stick to the bottom and burn. Somehow, the women seemed to end up doing most of the stirring while the men considered it their role to throw an occasional log on the fire. I asked what sumalek was made from and received a long and incomprehensible answer to which
I nodded, pretending to understand.

Tea and spring clover-filled ravioli were served to those of us seated on the platform. The sun set, leaving a chill in the air. Smoke from the fire mingled with the steam from the sumalek and one of the old grannies began to rock cross-legged and sing, others joining her. Bats ricocheted around the crenellated silhouette of the city walls and a group
of children charged past with Zealaddin in the middle of them. For the first time I began to feel less like a tourist and more like a guest. It was a magical evening, celebrating not only the new year but a new chapter in my life.

The following morning was my first Navruz and I wandered around town with Catriona and Andrea – a team-mate who had returned from six months in Germany. The weather
was pleasantly warm and a plethora of stalls had sprung up selling watery ice-cream, clover ravioli and other delicacies. The souvenir shops were open once more and I met Zafar, who recognised me. He invited me to his home again and I eagerly accepted, agreeing on a date and writing down his address. The rusting ferris wheel – which we’d previously assumed was derelict – cranked into life and
gaggles of girls screamed and flirted with schoolboys, ignoring the stunning views of Khiva’s walled city that unfolded behind them. I had survived my first winter in Khiva, had a place to live and an invitation to Zafar’s house. Life was improving.

* * *

The light green fuzz that appeared over the fields grew rapidly as the weather warmed, replacing the desert-brown monotony of Khiva’s
winter landscape. Trees budded and blossomed, and fresh herbs appeared in the bazaar. I settled into my new home, overjoyed at the presence of an indoor toilet and accustoming myself to Soviet textbooks in lieu of toilet paper. At first I was treated with deference by Koranbeg and Zulhamar, all of us trying a little too hard. Gradually, the atmosphere became more relaxed; the family would quarrel
or joke in my presence, and I play-fought with the boys.

The three children slept together in the living room, with a niece from the village who was studying in Khiva. Each morning they rolled up their mattresses and stored them in a neat corner pile, draped with a synthetic Chinese tapestry. Zulhamar and Malika were excellent cooks and kindly indulged my vegetarianism, introducing me to
dishes such as
shwitosh
, a green noodle made with dill and served with yoghurt and stew, or semi-circular fried pastry parcels of vegetables.

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 also 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.