Tajik Sweet Sixteen #15
I remember being sixteen on the feelings level. The pimples, the insecurity, the unknownness of life. It’s not as if it were yesterday, but hanging out with teenagers, it all comes back. Here’s a story about a girl’s life in Dushanbe.
8 November 2010
My host sister Matluba turned sixteen last week. No one sang for her, there was no cake, but there was a restaurant dinner, and now she is eligible for her national ID card. This is a big step in the maturing of Tajiks—the national ID card is called a ‘passport’ and is that and so much more. She can vote in it, go to university, etc. Everyone got dressed up in their party finest—and we piled into the car, Tajik-style, with the children sitting on laps, and headed out to the restaurant across the city.
At the restaurant, there was a massive TV behind our table blasting Central Asia’s equivalent of MTV—with scantily clad women oozing across the screen and Uzbek crooners in mullets. A song came on with a handsome young man rocking the violin in a distinctly Armenian way. I asked one of the men (a friend of the family who speaks English after having spent a year in the US—somehow, I thought this would have made him more progressive) whether this was indeed Armenian. Yes, he said. And there was a big scandal because he is gaay.
At first, I didn’t understand his pronunciation, but then I realized what he was saying, and I said, hmmm, yet you’re still watching his music video, aren’t you? He replied, “Well, this is not good. In Islam, mumkin nist.” which literally means it is not possible, but a general way of saying something is simply not done because it is haram, bad for you, or against accepted cultural practices. I replied, that I didn’t think being gay was that important—after all, so many artists and musicians are gay, so what are you gonna do? My host sister added later to me that there are, of course, gays in Tajikistan, but they are very much in the closet.
The contrast was striking between the blasting loud music and risqué images behind the very head of the birthday girl, surrounded by her friends and the women of her family (only some wearing the traditional dress), and the scene was being overseen by the men looking on from a separate table. I like my host brother (though I rarely see him anymore, and he looks exhausted all the time) because he knows I like beer, and even though he doesn’t drink—no one in the family drinks—he insisted on getting me a beer. The restaurant was freezing because everyone smoked indoors, so they had to open a window, and the ensuing breeze had everyone tightly wrapped in their coats . After the beer, I warmed up a bit, and perhaps the haze of smoke had warmed the air as well.
My six-year-old host sister ran around the restaurant, doing laps around the table and screaming like a banshee. She resists all attempts by members of the family to control her. They consider her very intelligent, and she has a reputation throughout the neighborhood as wild and brilliant. I think she’s just spoiled and needs to do more controlled activities like gymnastics to channel her energy as this is what a normal female child is like before being crushed by misogynistic societal expectations, but no one asked me.
The role of women here is still baffling. My Bibi likes to speak in generalities, like: “It’s better to stay home and not go to the disco.” By which she means, I disapprove of you going out to the disco, and we are afraid of being out at night on the streets. She also said that Tajik women stay home and work in the home—which is generally true, but she has been a school teacher for 30 years! She also had to be a breadwinner because her husband died relatively young, as many do here. The only reason my host sister is still at home is that she has to take care of her disabled four-year-old son. She just got her teaching certificate in mathematics and would be out and about in the blink of an eye if she could.
The same day that I got chased up the street by the Turkish dude, in the evening, my freshly sixteen-year-old host sister was alone in the kitchen and asked if she could ask me a question when I came in. For a second, I was worried—this was the same girl who covets my electronic devices, wants to use my internet, straighten my hair every day for me, and be my best friend. Her mother is in Uzbekistan, and she badly needs an older sister. I said sure, what’s on your mind? When you were younger, did boys like you and chase after you? She asked. My heart almost broke. No, I said, I didn’t get much attention until I was past my teenage years. But you are so pretty, she tells me.
I couldn’t help myself. “Well, when I am out in the city here, sometimes men literally chase me—but don’t tell Bibi, or she’ll really worry about me.” What Matluba wanted to talk about was how some boy in the neighborhood liked her, and then also told me about a boy from two years ago who had liked her and told her he would marry her. This sounds funny to the American ear—can you imagine some 16-year-old in your average American high school telling a 14-year-old that he loved her and would marry her? A very different cultural context.
My host siblings (who are cousins) frequently joke around with each other, using me as the audience to test out gestures and concepts that are mumkin nist. Matluba snitches on Baharon, claiming he has a girlfriend, and he, in turn, teases Matluba, saying that she is crazy in the head or an alcoholic (there’s a gesture to show this in Tajiki culture: flicking your middle finger against the side of your neck). Baharon also likes to throw down gang signs, claims he knows which discos are the best in Dushanbe (I have yet to go), and that he’s just an all-around pimp.
So I use this late-night chat to ask my host sister what it actually means that Baharon has a girlfriend. What do they do? They hold hands and walk down the street together, she replies. I said, anything else? Do they kiss? No! She exclaimed. The girls who do that are “ugly” and that is mumkin nist. And, of course, Bibi doesn’t know any of this!
So I said, this boy who wanted to marry you, what did you think of that? She said, “I liked him, but I didn’t say so.” I asked about her current suitor. What did she envision her future being like? You’ll get married, and then what? What about university? I was expecting her to confide in me that she dreaded getting married or some such feminist yearning, but no, she said, “I will get married one day and stay home and cook and clean because that’s what women do here.”
I honestly don’t know why I was expecting a different answer. My cultural assumptions are strong. She has been in training for this particular future her whole life—and will indeed make an excellent Tajik housewife. She asks me whether her hair looks good—Baharon teases her about the bangs (a trend I fear is over-applied) and can make her cry at the drop of a hat, but I tell her she looks beautiful.
Matluba has long brown hair down her back (also de rigueur for Tajik girls), and she tells me that her hair is falling out or growing in the wrong places, and she is chubby because she has a hormone imbalance. I ask her if she’s taking medicine for it. No, she says, it would cost 600 dollars. My heart breaks again—but then I wonder, when I was sixteen, how good was my grasp on reality and the family’s priorities? I recall being moody, dramatic, and selective in my grasp and presentation of reality.
Come to think of it, part of me still is all those things, and I’m in my forties now.
