10 October 2010
I can read the future. Not in a useful way, like knowing the winning lottery numbers, but more in an old hag reading your cards to prophesy doom kind-of-way. I have the uncanny ability to know exactly how Murphy’s law can, and inevitably will, apply to my life.
I have been meaning to buy a robe. Some sort of bathrobe for the one-minute trek from the bathroom/shower out in the courtyard to my room. In this dash, I must pass by the driveway and yard, in through the door next to the kitchen, through the hall (which also passes for a guest receiving-type of room with television), past the door to the dining room, and into my room—a total of probably 20 steps. I don’t have a problem wearing my towel for the trip, as I would back in the States; once I am nicely showered, I don’t want to put back on my old dirty clothes. Bringing my clean clothes into the bathroom is not good either because it’s one of those open showers where the whole floor gets wet when you shower, and there’s nowhere to put the clean clothes.
It occurred to me that I should get a robe, and the topic even arose with Bibi, who is convinced that my frequent bouts with digestional distress are due to my not wearing a robe during said trip from bath to room. I now realize that this advice of hers had more to do with modesty than with my health.
I never know when I come home what—and who—I will discover happening there. One day, it was five second-hand fridges standing in the drive; another day, it was visitor, a Mehman from Uzbekistan; another day, it was my host brother and his neighborhood buds filling a trench with cement in the driveway. Another time, it was three of my host brother’s best buddies visiting (all my age, all married with children). One buddy is a neighbor who is a dentist; another was obviously the ‘bad’ friend (complete with gold teeth and a twinkle in his eye); the other, I’ll call him Jamal, was the dope of the group and from Kulob. Everyone makes fun of the Kulobis—the region wherefrom hails Tajikistan’s President. It’s a small city/large town south of Dushanbe where, when we were passing through on our way to the Pamirs, we saw numerous large billboards touting the accomplishments of Tajikistan’s President with corresponding images. The president digging a ditch, the president harvesting grain, the president inaugurating this or that factory. The jokes about Kulobis are numerous and are in the vein of the usual mocking of whatever particular underdog ethnicity or minority group that a country feels like mocking for being less-than.
On that occasion, my host brother insisted I come and sit with him and his friend. I think he’s eager to be hospitable and make me feel at home, with a little dose of ‘look at how great my mehman is’ thrown in. We sat and discussed the usual topics of what I was doing in the country, how different Farsi is from Tajiki, and the fact that I was divorced. This always comes up, without fail. Jamal was particularly interested in my sad tale and added that he ‘knew my pain’ because he had a similar story. The only thing similar to his story was that there was pain and suffering involved because his story was that his parents wouldn’t allow him to marry his chosen girlfriend from school and set him up with someone else. So his arranged marriage resulted in two children who live with their mom in Kulob with his family, and he only sees them once a month when he goes home from working in Dushanbe. And his heart still yearns for his true love.
After we shared stories, Jamal said several times throughout the conversation that I was indeed very beautiful—in a way that showed he meant this fact was related to my future prospects on the marriage market. (Another opinion that people from various cultures seem to want to share with me when it comes to my personal life: you are beautiful, don’t worry, you won’t have trouble finding someone to marry you soon. As if there was a connection between my marital status and looks). I thanked him. It’s something I hate doing when people say things like that outright, as if I was sitting there just waiting around for some man to tell me I’m beautiful, so I can finally be sure. But what else can you say?
When I returned from our week of semi-camping in the Pamirs and needed to shower in the evening, outside the normal ‘hygiene hours,’ I didn’t think anything of only bringing my towel to the bathroom. While preparing to make the bath-to-room dash, I heard male voices outside and paused. I peeked out, and when I didn’t see anyone, I figured the coast was clear. But lo and behold, the male voices belonged to my host brother and his friend Jamal, who were, in fact, inside the hallway, right next to my bedroom door. I said, ‘Excuse me’ as I quickly opened my door, but they turned around and got a glimpse of my ‘naked’ shoulders. I thought it was a close call, but I had no idea how close until my host brother later joked to the whole family that I had given Jamal a heart attack and left him speechless when he saw me in my towel. Everyone laughed when I said, “What? I was wearing a towel covered up to here—!” gesturing.
“But he’s from Kulob! He’s never seen a woman in a towel!”
All I could say at that point was, “I live here; this is my house!” But… off I will go to get a robe. The part that’s especially unfair is that the Russians that still live in Dushanbe dress in the equivalent amount of a towel’s material, and the Russian TV that they all watch has people actually naked on it (far, far more risqué than American TV).
Mind you, this story is nothing compared to one of the male students who walked in on his Bibi getting dressed in the morning or the other male student who was too shy to bring up the issue of the bathroom door lock being broken—until his family’s Bibi walked in on him completely naked right after taking a shower.
Later, I learned that things are even worse than I realized. Talking to an anthropology grad student doing her field research on family culture in Tajikistan (I forget the exact topic), she explained that Tajikistan had some of the lowest levels of knowledge about basic human sexuality and anatomy. Couples often never even saw each other fully naked, as the communal living situation and gender separation meant they only had very limited contact in a dark corner at night when procreation happened. I read more about it, and the confluence of Soviet cultural history and Central Asian tribal and Islamic traditions make for a very depressing read. This paper covers the topic well—and I can only hope that things have improved somewhat in the last 20 years, especially with the advent of readily available information over the Internet.
Weddings are a big deal in this country. Sometimes, it seems that’s all life revolves around…. This video is of a wedding celebration we passed by in Dushanbe. The trumpets are a thing.