tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1538802762251636802024-03-05T01:25:28.858-08:00THE STANS OF CENTRAL ASIARAINBOW ROBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08141114044077051409noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-153880276225163680.post-89007523499511244992016-08-01T20:50:00.000-07:002021-04-08T12:31:10.448-07:00WHY UZBEKISTAN???<h2 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">WHY INDEED!</span></h2>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Some years ago I had this urge to explore Central Asia... Russia was opening its borders and the romance of Samarkand and Bukhara beckoned...trouble is no one had told these cities that solo tourists were now welcome.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">But that didn't stop me...</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Follow my story through 14 Episodes as I meet the people of </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">UZBEKISTAN and KYRGIZSTAN</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuPMby6F6WkaIw8j5gu4j46eCbe9Wh77wA1XMmtTHNFEm12aLUT8jAK-Yze1UaLxCgoSrNIAsY_4RTrQih7EnvS1W9pf9Nl7BqvbvesEW9EAl1kEYHP7ey1dvodVNCgo_6hVoVIVgdK5M/s1600/bukhara+005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuPMby6F6WkaIw8j5gu4j46eCbe9Wh77wA1XMmtTHNFEm12aLUT8jAK-Yze1UaLxCgoSrNIAsY_4RTrQih7EnvS1W9pf9Nl7BqvbvesEW9EAl1kEYHP7ey1dvodVNCgo_6hVoVIVgdK5M/s320/bukhara+005.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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Click the links...</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Episode 1. <a href="http://rainbowrobs.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/uzbekistan-you-ask.html">Why Uzbekistan.</a> </span></div>
RAINBOW ROBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08141114044077051409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-153880276225163680.post-57456368035249158752010-10-11T19:22:00.000-07:002021-04-08T12:31:10.741-07:0014. DA SVDANYA - GOODBYE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg31_AP3YqAHf3I3BjIWubkS7oXlc70rafsAVffNayma7a0eXZGIX4G8_h7hTWpAHl1UN2EX1CM9pyf5iYxlUgxrS28XsfMb70yF-8GVI1kdePUq69lJ97A7hk3CWiufm3rccJEhZYvDXQ/s1600/traveller.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg31_AP3YqAHf3I3BjIWubkS7oXlc70rafsAVffNayma7a0eXZGIX4G8_h7hTWpAHl1UN2EX1CM9pyf5iYxlUgxrS28XsfMb70yF-8GVI1kdePUq69lJ97A7hk3CWiufm3rccJEhZYvDXQ/s400/traveller.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>A CURIOUS LEAVE TAKING</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Farewells. I’ve always found it hard to say goodbye; actually I become quite emotional even when watching complete strangers take their leave. Airports can do that to you. Take that classic goodbye scene on the airport tarmac in Casablanca between Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman; the whole theatre was awash with tears and screwed up hankies. No disposable tissues back then.</span></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">It happened to me once in Amman Airports departure lounge. A huge Palestinian family had gathered to farewell a son and his wife returning to their new adopted homeland in Australia.</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> </span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">This short visit home to Jordan had been a cure for his wife’s home sickness, but now the cure was taking its toll on the entire extended family, his mother and aunts in particular.</span></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Arab women voice their emotion, they wail, they cry, they invoke the Gods; their misery is infectious. It didn’t take long before I was caught up in the tears with them. </span></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Just how much of my grief was actually due to the Palestinian family’s leave taking was perhaps doubtful; I had fallen in love with Jordan and in that moment probably wished I could live there forever. Well, at least until my next adventure beckoned.</span></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Over the years I’ve said goodbye to a whole host of new friends, and I’ve shed enough private tears to fill the Aswan Dam, but on this one occasion my tears were spontaneous, heartfelt and on view to just a small audience of six.</span></span></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">FAREWELL TO TASHKENT </span></span></h2>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The streets of Tashkent were dark and deserted, the short taxi ride from hotel to airport took no time at all. At the airport the waiting room was locked and Cari went off to find the duty officer. A number of Afghans were squatting on the pathway outside surrounded by mounds of luggage. Cari re-appeared with a man in uniform who unlocked for door for us to enter. The Afghans remained outside.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Inside was dark and cold, we sat huddled together on a bench in the corner. Cari told me about his parents and sisters and a favourite uncle who looked after his property in India. I wondered how Cari had learned to speak such fluent Russian and he explained a woman friend had taught him.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘She was very patient; I could phone her at any time to check on a word or phrase. In fact she is the lady who has been faxing to Moscow.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Then an airport policeman knocked on the glass door for Cari to open up. He had with him two young Indian students, one, a young girl was crying softly. The policeman wanted Cari to interpret. The pair had been waiting for a plane to Frunze when their belongings had been stolen. There wasn't much could be done, but Cari sorted it out and sent the young couple on their way.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I found this particular interlude interesting. How had the airport policeman known there was a Russian speaking Indian in the overseas terminal? After all the students would have been waiting in the Intourist terminal, a separate building to this one. Was the airport grapevine so short of gossip everyone’s comings and goings became common knowledge, or was security so vigilant they knew exactly who was where and when? </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Or was Cari not the businessman he professed to be? All very curious, I thought. Had for instance his presence on that first flight to Frunze been a coincidence or otherwise.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Cari then asked if I had my currency forms in order, I had put it roughly together back in the hotel. ‘You had better let me check,’ he said. ‘These customs cowboys can be very arrogant sometimes.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">He counted the money, checking the various denominations. I still had roubles from my original and only $50 exchange and balanced this out against receipts. Hotel payments had been made in American dollars.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Now, is that the total currency of any kind you have on you?’ he asked.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I looked him in the eye, obviously Cari had gotten to know me rather well.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘There is the $300 I didn't declare when I arrived.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">His expression indicated how stupid I was. ‘Do you realise the trouble that would cause? I've seen these characters search people, you could lose all your cash as a result; or even worse. He left that consequence to my imagination. ‘Where is this extra money?’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘In my shoe.’ He took a deep breath an<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">d shook his head. </span>I was of course suitably chastened.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Give it to me, and your receipts again, I'll see if I can work around it and adjust the balance.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">After a little while he gave it all back to me. ‘Now when they ask is this all the money you have, you can answer truthfully.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Despite his many flashes of humour Cari really was a most serious person.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Outside in the pitch black the Afghans still waited, their flight had been delayed. Then the lights in an adjoining office came on and a man beckoned.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">DA S'VDANYA - THE TEARS BEGIN </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘They are ready for you,’ Cari said, gathering up my gear.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">He stood by while two stern faced young men went through my currency form; they counted the dollars and then tossed them back at me in a scrambled untidy mess. I almost said something in anger but felt Cari's hand tighten on my arm in warning. Then they motioned for my bags, made a half hearted search and indicated I was to pass through into the next room. I turned to Cari expecting him to follow and realised this was as far as he could come.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">It was so sudden, the hours we had spent together I hadn't given a thought to saying goodbye, and now, under stark lights with two loutish young men looking on, this wasn't the right place. I felt tears welling and tried to blink them away.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Cari, you've been so kind to me,’ I was searching desperately for the right words ‘...just saying goodbye isn't enough.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">He stood there, so tall, that devastating smile, and in his eyes the same anguish I was feeling. I reached out for his hand and held it tightly, willing him to feel how I felt, to hear all the words we had left unsaid and now couldn't say at all.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Two others had entered the room, a man and a woman in uniform. I was to go with them. Cari remained in the doorway, we still clutched hands.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Thank you, so very much,’ I stepped away trying hard to hold back a flood of tears, Cari stood there in the open doorway.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I was halfway across the room and called out ‘Cari, goodbye, da svidanya,’ the Russian for goodbye a mournful bridge between us....’da svidanya.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The Soviets let out a concerted sigh, they could relate to this one act melodrama. I followed the woman into the next room and Cari was gone forever.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I stood sniffling under the harsh lights while the passport control police examined my visa and papers all the while watching me in the overhead mirrors. I felt wretched and totally isolated in the long drab waiting hall...alone in a deathly silence.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The time was about 3am when another young woman motioned I was to proceed upstairs into another dimly lit waiting room where chairs were set out in rows. A grandmother in a floral babushka scarf padded in on soft slippers wheeling a trolley load of bottled mineral water. She left the trolley at the back of the chairs and softly padded out again.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">LIKE AN ABSURD DREAM </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I sat to the side of the arranged rows and wallowed in my misery. Then in a strange silence, like spirits rising from the underworld, people began to drift up the stairs. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> They came in twos and threes, some alone; Indians in flowing saris under heavy winter coats, turbaned Sikhs, Russians in fur hats, young girls in miniskirts, hundreds of people in a hushed procession. Two women even had spaniels on leads.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">No one spoke, no one smiled, they just moved silently past, filling up the rows of chairs, a few taking bottles of mineral water as they passed the trolley.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Some lights came on at the end of the room revealing five young men with musical instruments. They began to play, popular music similar to that at the hotel earlier in the night, they could even have been from the same band.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Two couples began to dance, no one else reacted to the music, everyone just sat listening in a bored silence. It was like a surreal scene from a Fellini movie, and strangest of all, it fitted my mood exactly.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The entertainment continued for nearly an hour, then the band stopped and the people rose and just as quietly as they had entered, began to leave down the staircase they had first emerged from.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I waited and then joined in at the tail end, nobody directed me; I guessed this must be my flight. The plane was parked close to the terminal and we walked the short distance to stairs leading into the lower section. I could see my travel bag on a shelf with other luggage so I knew I was on the right aircraft.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">A hostess approached and asked was I the Singapore? I presented my ticket and stood there at the back of the plane while the crew scurried about trying to find me a seat. There were numerous headcounts, every so often a crew member came up and apologized with a ‘very sorry, won't be long now.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Maybe I would be taking breakfast with Cari after all. The panic ensued for nearly half an hour when finally a hostess led me through the aircraft to a seat in the middle row beside a very cross lady whose spaniel now rested on the floor between us.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">With that problem resolved the crew returned to their stations, the engines roared into life and the plane lifted into the night sky. I was leaving Tashkent the way I had arrived, in the midst of an absurd dream.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">And that effectively summed up my entire trip through the Central Asian Stan’s. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I left with memories of kind and thoughtful people, the multi racial men and women of these three countries, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, Russians and indigenous both. For years under the yolk of Soviet rule and now the possible return to the strict laws of Islam. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">And I remembered the women I met, Mina and Mustoora, Lara and Miriam, their taste of independence and freedom now threatened by a return to the veil and chador.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">But they are a sturdy race, these people of Central Asia; I'm sure they will yet again endure and triumph, after all their countries have already survived the rough excesses of Alexander, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan and Stalin, and lived to tell the tale. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">And besides, what else can fate throw against them.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">©Robyn Mortimer 2010</span></b></span></div>
RAINBOW ROBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08141114044077051409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-153880276225163680.post-31208332861606949002010-10-11T18:26:00.000-07:002021-04-08T12:31:10.831-07:0013. TASHKENT - WHERE PIZZAS ARE FLOWN IN FROM SEATTLE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"><b>REUNION IN TASHKENT</b></span></span></h2>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">My</span> journey through the Stans was coming to an end. I said my goodbyes to Lara and the desk girls at the hotel in Samarkand. They assured me I had plenty of time to make the flight to Tashkent, and I had the correct time on the ticket.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Of course they had it wrong, again. Instead of a short hour or so wait, I spent the next four hours waiting for a connecting flight. That Moscow clock was wreaking its havoc yet again.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">It was dark when my cab finally drew up to <span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Tashkent's</span> imposing Hotel Uzbekistan and I tumbled out with my solitary travel bag. A man approached asking if I was Mrs Robyn and why was I so late.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">He didn’t even wait for a reply just herded me quickly to the desk where I was booked in, given room number and key and ushered up to the ninth floor.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">A key woman took over assuring me she would be on duty all night should I need anything. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Next morning I made a mild complaint about the noisy party in the next room to which she clucked her tongue and said ‘They are <i>Egips </i>and know no better.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The foyer of the modern and impressive 14 story Uzbekistan Hotel was a hive of activity with guests mingling with locals in a constant surge of meet and greet. Money making entrepreneurs hovered about offering every scam known to man, including an artist in a corner complete with easel and sign advertising quick portraits for US$25 a pop.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">A sign in the elevator even advertised Pizza flown in from Seattle at $US40. Though some one had scribbled "Who <span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">can afford</span>" across it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I approached the front desk and asked Intourist to confirm my Aeroflot flight to Singapore. She was on the phone for ages and then told me the flight didn’t leave until Saturday, two days away.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Impossible I replied, please check again. She wasn’t pleased and for a few seconds we glared at each other before she picked up the phone again and began a shouting match with someone at the other end.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘You must go yourself with this ticket to the airport.’ I was being given the flick. ‘We cannot help you here.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I figured I would need my passport and asked the receptionist. She pointed to an office down a corridor. Inside sat a man and again I asked for my passport. He frowned, not understanding, and I repeated the question.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Speak Russian’ the request sounded like a command.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Nyet.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Is foolish come here and not speak Russian,’ he lectured.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Up to now it hasn't been a problem,’ I couldn't manage even a smile, ‘my passport please.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I snatched it and slammed the door as I left. In the frame of mind I was in now, pity help the airport people. The taxi driver started to haggle and I curtly told him 25 roubles and cut the crap. My anger cut through all language difficulties. It was a fast silent drive.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">At the Aeroflot office I soon discovered how fortunate I had been on domestic flights around the country. Now I was one person in a pathetic milling crowd, standing in long queues that never seemed to reach the windows. I was the only westerner; the majority were young Africans, with a few Afghans and others who seemed to accept the intolerable wait as normal.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">After what seemed like an age I finally reached the counter and a bored young woman glanced at my ticket and told me I was in the wrong queue. Back to the tail end, and then after slow shuffling progress another woman looked at the ticket and said ‘You already have ticket, what you want here?’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Absolutely seething I went through the morning’s ritual and asked for confirmation of the flight. She looked at the ticket again and said ‘You are booked on plane, okay.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">What time should I check in?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Midnight.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Why did I have the feeling she had pulled that time out of thin air?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">It was getting close to the lunchtime rendezvous with Cari set up back in Frunze when he kindly offered to look after those bulky art books. I bargained another taxi ride back to the hotel, watching the streets of Tashkent flash by, an entire morning wasted at the airport.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><img border="0" height="385" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxKGHIDh4CI-Qxa4Cdbrjh2NTbewdStgWqIpIJBSlGP9U2XbiaVtFRJCkFSmIlE6rWabJqH3aDQAHggnYe_ZhRCQM9wImbPWhwIl4lw3XopBdKtkI7nv_iYBSSbUyt8ySMEb-g8UG_AhE/s400/uzbek+003.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Cari was waiting just inside the vestibule, how lovely to see a friendly familiar face. His eyes lit up as he saw me, ‘You are here; I was worried.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> ‘Yesterday I phoned the hotel in Samarkand and they said they had never heard of you.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I shrugged, shaking my head, so much for being one of the girls back in Samarkand...</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Cari’s apartment wasn’t far from the hotel and he lunched there every day so the waiter knew him well and quickly settled us both at a table. I told him of my encounter at the airport.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘And you have confirmation,’‘ he asked.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Verbally’ I nodded, ‘there’s nothing in writing’.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘My company has the same problem every time we send a man back to India. It is always a big gamble.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘What should I do?’ I asked him between the cabbage with meatball soup, and lamb ragout.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘You will do nothing, I will take your ticket to the airport and see some people I know while you go and see what you can of Tashkent’.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Tashkent was destroyed in an earthquake in 1966 and even though one of the former Unions oldest cities, originally founded over 2000 years before, the buildings I now passed in the central city were all contemporary or chocolate box classical. Russian influence and money could be seen in every detail. It had been the same with Frunze’s architecture. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I followed the crowd down steps to one of the underground stations near the hotel. A narrow pedestrian tunnel led into an elaborate marble cavern with giant size statues and murals of Soviet hero’s decorating the walls.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5q7EPiJtBBla31nLAPFj2_3VF5PejMuJlMAqxyy4xaOEHQ1ykYHiFmJ1FyTQlwdyK40ohCapVnKBPFzoAtzhT83inbB5EQBfU27spR9PganPN8XHci_S-pa0qxN2nwH2QZo87GgQyJ_4/s400/tashkent+001.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Railway station more suited to a museum</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe3uWFyvUYT2rbkTNebLtYUdA7POPSOzq78GnnUwuo3cEjw_dqS2hf7sPiD3Q0Gle3JkrdYDZbbXzCYzjBjxJPKOZwYxOFKIAS2FwSvIpi5kYwekU8OFHLPxQRw4K_ODO8ebloVY9Ep_g/s1600/tashkent-nir-nussbaum-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe3uWFyvUYT2rbkTNebLtYUdA7POPSOzq78GnnUwuo3cEjw_dqS2hf7sPiD3Q0Gle3JkrdYDZbbXzCYzjBjxJPKOZwYxOFKIAS2FwSvIpi5kYwekU8OFHLPxQRw4K_ODO8ebloVY9Ep_g/s400/tashkent-nir-nussbaum-2.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">In the underground thoroughfare, linking the road above to the station below, young men sat at clumsy stalls selling music tapes and mildly pornographic magazines. Later, in the park bordered by Leningrad Avenue, I saw a couple selling sex manuals and health diet books while across from them on a grass verge a young woman was unpacking a carton of shampoo.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">On the corner of Leningrad and Proletarskaja I found the only private art and curio shop of my travels through Central Asia. Every inch of wall space was covered with oil and water paintings, carpets, pottery and ceramics...a lovely shop to browse through. While I was there a woman came off the street and took three old glass vases from a shopping bag, the owner appraised them and money changed hands.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><img border="0" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhurL3h3lih450PmVtV96sGnbXTDhhBXBBbFEmdc_MNxAdVusI93nlE0IGpQstAr_hxywaF0AKsuUqKl5uq6cMRk_WTuroL2NMZnXOi_FVSpIcfzA6h7XXalx_UORJorlHp2JI6AHFpPiA/s400/central+asia+010.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">TASHKENT PARK - SELLING SHAMPOO</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">MICKEY MOUSE IN TASHKENT </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">In the same rambling building, it actually opened onto the park, I happened across two rooms where videos were being shown of incredibly old black and white American cartoons, Mickey Mouse before he became the cutesy hero of Walt Disney. Three young men were handling ticket sales, their customers seated about 20 to a room on odd kitchen and dining chairs.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The atmosphere was pathetic; the viewers were in a 12 to 18 age bracket, dressed in clumsy ill matched clothing, hair closely shaved. No one appeared to be enjoying the cartoons; they just sat glum and serious. If I hadn't known better I would have guessed they were drugged patients in an outdated psychiatric ward.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">FOUR CUBES OF SUGAR </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I was due to meet Cari back at the hotel at 6 o'clock. He was there on the dot with my daughters heavy and bulky art books bought in Frunze, under his arm.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘I've spoken to a friend at the airport and she has faxed Moscow to confirm you are on the flight list.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I started to thank him and he interrupted...’That doesn't mean a thing, she will send another fax to Moscow when your flight takes off.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘But why?’ I was puzzled, just how many confirmations did I need?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘You have seen how corrupt life is here?’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I nodded, and he continued ‘Flights leaving Moscow are always full, people queue for days to get tickets. Your flight will leave for Tashkent with one seat empty. What Aeroflot employee will care that Robyn from Australia misses out on a seat when someone else will give him many roubles or even dollars as a bribe?’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Not for the first time I </span>realised how naive I must seem.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘For now we will enjoy the evening, nothing more can be done until your aircraft leaves Moscow.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Cari had booked a table and ensured we would not share it with others. He had also brought with him a bottle of Cognac and a liqueur to have with our coffee.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The waiter suggested we start with caviar, only pink was available, but an extremely generous serve. There were various salads and cold meats on the table and the main course was beef stroganoff. Cari suggested I try a lime tea and the waiter who knew this was a special occasion presented the <i>piece de resistance</i>...four cubes of sugar, the first I had seen since leaving Singapore.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Meanwhile the band had started playing and the huge dining room swung into party mood. A table next to ours was celebrating a birthday and sent over glasses of vodka which of course custom dictated we down in one gulp. I was swept onto the dance floor for some spirited dancing and was glad to return to Cari when the music stopped, my Russian partner suffered from an excess of body odour and a lack of deodorant.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">A bunch of red roses and a bottle of champagne appeared, a gift from another table on hearing I was returning home that night. The music alternated between modern upbeat tunes like ‘<i>Woman in Red</i>’, to the soulful twang of the balalaika and the music of Russia.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> Upstairs in my room I still had some Australian souvenirs, kangaroo stick pins, a tiny furry koala and some key rings and this was the perfect time to give them away.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">WAITING FOR A PLANE THAT MIGHT NOT ARRIVE </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Meanwhile Cari had slipped out to telephone his airport contact who by now would have faxed Moscow to check that the plane had left with my name still on the passenger list. It had.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I thanked Cari for all he had done, it was now approaching midnight; from here I would be able to manage alone.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘But I'm coming with you to the airport,’ he said.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Cari,’ I protested, ‘the plane doesn't leave until 4 o'clock in the morning.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘And the next few hours are the most crucial,’ he told me. ‘There is absolutely no guarantee you'll actually board that plane. In fact there's a good chance you'll be back here for breakfast.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I couldn't believe what Cari what taking such pains to tell me. Perhaps it would have been easier to just fly into and out of Moscow in the first place. So we spent the next hour down in the foreign currency bar sipping coffee and cognac and getting on famously like the old friends we had become.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The time passed quickly, we talked about his family in Bangalow and his friends in Tashkent. To his parents dismay he hadn’t yet married, but ‘there is a lady here that I am interested in. Perhaps...’ he raised his shoulders and I gathered he was in no hurry to settle down.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf1RpqNrNFbfs23q_ye8u_C4W-TkBIcTyBd5oS73KG99d24oeRDbBgwNMMeQ7unM30-Q0-Bfzv_Kp0WRTYqM9CGKrd_MQs7mrlTG6hMCmt6detdakxNAqfV8Zp3ygzoPcObU0tsG2Nt_A/s1600/tashkent+hotel+001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf1RpqNrNFbfs23q_ye8u_C4W-TkBIcTyBd5oS73KG99d24oeRDbBgwNMMeQ7unM30-Q0-Bfzv_Kp0WRTYqM9CGKrd_MQs7mrlTG6hMCmt6detdakxNAqfV8Zp3ygzoPcObU0tsG2Nt_A/s320/tashkent+hotel+001.jpg" width="282" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Then it was time to leave for the airport, Cari had called for a taxi and we made the short trip to the airport through darkened streets.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> I was surprised to see the fare was only four roubles. No wonder my various taxi drivers had been so solicitous, I had been lashing out with a small fortune.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I felt sad, the marvelous adventure was coming to an end... or was it? </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">FINAL EPISODE 14 <a href="http://rainbowrobs.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/da-svdanya-goodbye.html">SAYING GOODBYE IN RUSSIAN</a></span></b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">©Robyn Mortimer 2010</span></b></span></div>
RAINBOW ROBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08141114044077051409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-153880276225163680.post-89686462530272855522010-10-11T17:34:00.000-07:002021-04-08T12:31:10.925-07:0012. THE ICE MAIDEN OF SAMARKAND<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>ULEG BEQ - ASTRONOMER, MATHEMATICIAN</b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>ON THE TRAIL OF TAMERLANE</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">By now I was hungry for more information on Tamerlane, I really needed historical background, but bookshops had nothing in English, and Intourist had no brochures.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> I asked the girls on the counter, where was he born, what happened to Tamerlane: What of his grandson Uluq Beq, the renowned astronomer mathematician who once governed Samarkand. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Timur was born in Shakhrisabz, they told me, 160 km away on the old Silk Road, a few hours by car. I couldn't hire a car by myself, they said, I would have to take a driver as well. To get the car and the driver I would have to take an English speaking guide. In a moment of weakness, I agreed.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The car was a small but comfortable Opel, the driver a thirtyish Uzbek in a loose fitting grey suit and brown suede shoes, and my guide was the icy, blue eyed blonde Lara.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Lara was suffering from a cold and it was obvious she thought the trip to Shakhrisabz a bore. We were barely into the traffic on Registanskaya, than she started a monotonous spiel....’the city of Samarkand and its' suburb’s has been inhabited since prehistoric times...’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Her nasally voice droned on, reminding me why I usually avoid</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> organised tours, somehow I would have to break into her inner core and tap whatever made her tick; otherwise I would be in for a rugged few hours. I let her waffle on for a few more miles, then her voice became quite husky and I suggested she sit back and relax. I would ask her when I needed information.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">We passed through dry grazing land and started to climb gentle hills that changed into steep inclines with tiny villages perched on rocky outcrops. Small children watched over black faced sheep. Lara suddenly came to life and said she nearly had to spend two years of her life in one of these rough little hamlets. This wasn't part of her script and I waited to hear more.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘I trained to be a teacher, when the authorities decided all student teachers must spend two years working in a country village. We had to go where they sent us, there was no choice.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">From the tone of her voice I could tell this was a fate worse even than guiding me to Shakhrisabz.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Life is terrible in these villages...and women are worthless,’ she sniffed, I dug out a box of tissues. ‘My father was very worried for my safety, what you call it...my welfare... so he went to a friend in the party and this friend said, why not get your daughter into language school?’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Of course the party referred to was the then all powerful, all dominating Communist party.</span></span></div>
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</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘So instead of becoming a teacher I learned English, and now I work for Intourist.’</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">This road we were on was part of the Great Silk Road, the ancient trade route that crossed China and India and linked the East with Europe. Alexander of Macedonia had travelled this way in the 4th century BC, Marco Polo in the 13th century, Omar Khayyam, Genghis Khan, so many had passed into history on this same road....and ahead was the town of Shakhrisabz, the birthplace of the local boy who had made his name by being particularly evil...Tamerlane.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">The Silk Road from Samarkand to Shakhrisabz</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> The driver pulled over at the top of the pass to allow me to take photographs and give him a chance to puff on a cigarette. The road down twisted and turned through giant rounded boulders, stretching like a long white ribbon into the distance. There were no other vehicles in sight, ours was the only car, and yet in ancient times this road would have been thronged by merchants, caravans of swaying camels, travelers from every part of the old world.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Have you traveled out of the country?’ I asked Lara as we resumed our journey.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Yes, to India, many times.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I asked what nationality she was...Russian mother, Uzbek father, she replied. Naturally I asked what was, by now, the million dollar question...was she single?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘I am engaged to be married,’ she said in a flat, cheerless tone that promised another ‘tragedy of the heart’ story... and I wasn't <span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">disappointed.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> In the course of her many business trips to India, Lara had fallen in love with an Indian, a member she said, of the extended Gandhi family. In a novel twist, his parents had objected to the match and forbidden him to see her again. Now at age 27, Lara's father had arranged her marriage to a Tajik engineer. She doesn't particularly like him, but was going ahead with the wedding to escape from her parent’s control.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘But surely that is just escaping one prison for another?’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Perhaps,’ she shrugged, ‘but at my age I have still to ask my father’s permission to leave the house at night. It is very difficult.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘What makes you think your husband will be different?’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘I know he will not be, already he says I must give up my work.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Then why get married at all?’ The girl must be crazy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘For me, is a very simple choice, stay at home and obey my father, or marry and set up my own home.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">We drove into Shakhrisabz, a small, dusty disappointment, and Lara slipped back to her spiel. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">We are now in Tajikistan, she tells me; many Tajiks believe Samarkand belongs to them. In the past this area has been invaded by three great warriors...Alexander, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. Of the three, she says Alexander was the most brutal. When he conquered a city, he left behind some of his men to ensure control, but to make sure they remained he cut off a leg or an arm.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">We passed a funeral party of men outside a house, Lara pointed to a Mullah wearing a blue turban to indicate he had made the pilgrimage to Mecca. I asked if she thought the Moslem religion would again become dominant.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Of course, it is only a matter of time now.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Would that mean women would have to wear the veil?’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">She nodded. I asked would her husband want her to wear the veil.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">She nodded again. I could only imagine what that would mean to a woman like Lara; only part Uzbek, highly educated, with attitudes to life more in keeping with the west.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Tamerlane’s birthplace was in ruins, only outer walls and portal supports still stood. I was surprised it had been allowed to sink into such decay.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Lara - the ruins of Tamerlane's birth place</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘The party has decreed that before reconstruction can take place, historic buildings must have at least 20 percent of the original in place.’ We were standing beneath the towering ruins, on my part blithely ignorant this was a major earthquake region. ‘We know from history that this part of the palace was three storys high, and on the top floor was a swimming pool for the harem.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Lara asked if I was hungry because, she said, the hotel food in Shakhrisabz was not good. Could I wait a few hours until we got back to Samarkand? I could and produced packets of Smarties for each of us. She and the driver took them eagerly and had an animated discussion about their colour and content.</span></span></div>
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</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Back in Samarkand I invited Lara to join me at lunch; I thought this would be a good opportunity to investigate the menu. No such luck, only chicken stew was available and it didn't look too appetising. Lara shrugged at the mess on the plate, but there was nothing we could do but eat it.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Just as we finished the meal a beautiful, vibrant woman swept up to our table and began speaking in rapid fire Uzbek or maybe it was Russian. She was obviously Uzbek with black sparkling eyes; dark hair cut in a fashionable bob and dressed in a shell pink linen suit that must have cost a mint. With eyes flashing and hands moving expressively, she was including me in the conversation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Lara broke in when the woman took a breather and quickly interpreted what had been said up to that point. Our companion turned to me in astonishment and in English asked was I not one of them?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Please forgive me,’ the woman extended a well manicured hand, ‘I saw you and Lara chatting away like old friends and thought you must be a new interpreter on the staff.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">During all this the head waiter had conferred and departed to the kitchen. He returned with a plate, placing it in front of the woman with a deference reserved for royalty. Lara and I looked down at the gourmet meal in astonishment, exchanged glances and burst out laughing. It put our messy stew to shame.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Miriam, that isn't her real name, held a high position in the Uzbek Government and, because of her affiliation to the former</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> </span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Communist Party, was walking a political tightrope. She was a charming diplomat and spoke hopefully about her country’s future. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">We discussed fashion, the suit she was wearing was run up by a local dressmaker, but the material had been purchased on an overseas trip. From fashion the topic led to Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa. Surprisingly, both women were derisive, with Lara describing her as a cold snake.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘You know,’ Miriam changed the subject, ‘my favourite author is a countrywoman of yours'....her book ‘The Thorn Birds’ was brilliant. You know her, perhaps?’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I explained I didn't know the lady though I had once met her, but she seemed very jolly.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘I have seen ‘Thorn Birds’ on television, it was very good, very sad, but I did not think he was right for the part, the man who played Meggie’s husband.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘You didn't?’ I was surprised. ‘The actress who played Meggie liked him so much she married him.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Miriam raised her eyebrows, then leaned across the table, her mood suddenly sombre.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘If only I had read this book when I was younger,’ she hinted, ‘my life would have been changed forever.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">However much I flash forwarded the book in my mind, I couldn't imagine which part would so affect a woman in Uzbekistan. ‘You know what I mean,’ Miriam said to Lara who nodded in return.</span></span></div>
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</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Oh well,’ she sighed, ‘obviously it was not meant to be.’ Miriam shook herself out of her apathy, looked at her watch, exclaimed she had to go, and with waves and smiles to me and Lara and the hovering waiters she left. Everyone’s eyes followed her; she had that kind of effect.</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Dear Miriam,’ sniffed Lara ‘for her too, life has not been easy. She lives at home still with her parents.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Her cold was no better and I hoped she wouldn't pass it on to me. I dug into my bag for another mini packet of tissues, I had plenty.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Would you believe Miriam is 50 years old and still a virgin?’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Frankly, nothing in this country surprised me anymore. But these women certainly must have indulged in deep heart to hearts.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘But what was the significance of the ‘The Thorn Birds’....surely she didn't have an affair with a priest?’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Lara nodded. ‘It happened a long time ago, her parents wanted her to marry someone else but she vowed never to marry.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Couldn't she, or for that matter couldn't you convince ...' Lara stopped me in mid sentence.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Defy my parents?’ she looked astonished, ‘No...never.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Mina, Mustoora, Lara and now Miriam; all intelligent, highly educated women, all torn between the influence of the Communist Party, freedom of a European lifestyle and the persuasive pull of strong ethnic backgrounds.</span></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">EPISODE 13 <a href="http://rainbowrobs.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/tashkent-where-pizzas-are-flown-in-from.html">TASHKENT - WHERE PIZZAS ARE FLOWN FROM SEATTLE</a></span></span></b><br />
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RAINBOW ROBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08141114044077051409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-153880276225163680.post-10314694253113007552010-10-11T16:11:00.000-07:002021-04-08T12:31:11.014-07:0011. A FILM CREW IN SAMARKAND<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>CROWDS PASSING RUINS OF BIBI KHANUM MOSQUE</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4TjShtfyxLp3fXnGMO8o_exAWCSuPWYWpsDtzvMBZiLJ4QHd-7BNBTPRXg8fqcRR1itWnznDaCkedlJcu5B0DlFcjSEbEk0FlBYPEeqiBhengqPjeLqkNLAEa3KJuC8yQyvjCCizWG-o/s1600/central+asia+004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">With the People to People tour group and their support team gone, the hotel seemed very quiet. I wandered down to the foreign currency bar, this one as well, in the basement and pulled up a chair to watch a game show on the telly. It was easy to follow, a celebrity game show similar to one I'd worked on in Australian television some years before. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I sat, eyes glued to the screen, looking, I imagine like a local fan, which is possibly why the men at the table behind me embarked on a heated discussion that I found difficult not to overhear. To be truthful, as it gained intensity, I found it more entertaining than the quiz show.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">A very pukka British voice was insisting ‘It's not bloody good enough, Nigel. I've had one shit of a day, with a shit of a crew and I don't intend putting up with the blighters again tomorrow.’</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The discussion continued with Nigel the diplomat trying to smooth troubled waters only to be shot down again by the very British voice dropping four letter words with the abandon of a swearoholic.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I sympathized with both, only wishing my work experience had been in such exotic locales. Overcome by guilt, I stopped by their table on my way to the bar for a refill.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Terribly sorry for eavesdropping,’ I grinned, ‘I'm from Australia, and I'd give my right arm to work with your <i>shitty</i> crew.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Jack of the dulcet tones was directing a special documentary featuring author Colin Thubron retracing a Central Asian journey from one of his books, the long suffering Nigel was the unit manager, and they and the crew, British and Uzbek were working out of a specially equipped bus. They had been shooting that day at the Shakhi-Zinda Mausoleum.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Dressed in designer jeans and an elegant long sleeved shirt, Jack not only sounded like a Richard Harris clone but his features had the ‘hard living with good booze’ lines of an Oliver Reed. No doubt he and his crew were beginning to get on <span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">the </span>other’s nerves and he took my hand now with the enthusiasm of a saved soul.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> ’My dear,’ he took my hand, and all I could see was an Oliver Reed look alike on his best behaviour, ‘what are you drinking?’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Nigel saw his chance to escape and did so leaving me with the charismatic Jack who told me he does film work only to keep his farm in France going, and to pay the telephone bills for number two family in New York.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Number three family,’ he replied to my raised eyes,’ is my beautiful wild Irish Rose and two little tiddlers.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I asked about family number one...’Oh, I have a grown up daughter in Shanghai, she's an opera singer.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">We had another drink, and then another. Time seemed to be galloping by as Jack recounted countless anecdotes. They had been shooting in the mausoleum for most of the day and nothing had gone right, hence the outburst earlier.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘We had all this gear in there, lights and cables spread all over the place, bloody sacrilege really, anyway this Moslem family came in to pay respects at the tomb. They were marvelous, Mum and Dad, kids and old Granny; they just ignored all the technical stuff and went about their business.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘By this stage' he confided, 'I was ready to kill certain members of the crew and had dropped down on my haunches in a quiet corner, with my head in my hands, wondering what the hell I was doing in this country in the first place, when the old lady tottered over, leaned down and dropped a few kopeck at my feet.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Jack took another swig of his beer, ‘She thought I was a beggar. It bloody made my day, it did!’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Next day I walked across town to the Shakhi-Zinda Necropolis, which translates into ‘Town of the Dead’, a group of twenty buildings on the south eastern slope of Afrasiab, the ancient city upon which Samarkand was built. I had to admit that until Jack had told me about it, and in the absence of English language guide books, I had no idea such a place existed.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> As it turned out it was within cooee of the grand bazaar and within sight of the Bibi-Khanum Mosque, and all three, like every other historical edifice in Samarkand, was obviously part of everyday life, proving the ancient pattern had continued into the present despite the intermittent hiccup of 70 or so years of Soviet influence.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">On the road to the Bibi Khanum Mosque</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I talked to an old man who made his living as a tourist guide. He told the story of an ancient who supposedly lived at the site, one Kusam ibn-Abbas, a cousin to Muhammad the Prophet. Kusam, it was said, took his head from his shoulders after a sermon and descended into a cave where it is said he still lives.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The guide looked me in the eye and said, ‘You don’t believe me do you?’ Of course I rewarded him with a wink and a smile.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The Mausoleum was the resting place of Tamerlane’s wife, Tumanaka and his sister Shirin-bika-aka, and I will forever be grateful to Jack that my visit to this city included these treasures from the fourteenth century.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> Exploring the crypts and galleries took me hours and when I re-emerged into the 20th century, a tour coach was pulling up closely followed by two enterprising local lads with a car boot full of tacky souvenirs. As I passed, glad I wasn't one of so many, I noticed a tourist haggling over a silver fob watch. The young men gave me a jaunty wave.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I was hungry for more history.</span></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">_____________</span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">EPISODE 12 - <a href="http://rainbowrobs.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/ice-maiden-of-samarkand.html">ICE MAIDEN IN SAMARKAND</a></span></span></b><br />
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">©Robyn Mortimer 2010</span></b></div>
RAINBOW ROBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08141114044077051409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-153880276225163680.post-2000868753147137112010-10-11T15:59:00.000-07:002021-04-08T12:31:11.099-07:0010. IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF TAMERLANE<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Registan Square - its sheer size amazing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>BREATH TAKING SAMARKAND</b></span> </span></td></tr>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"> had been dreaming of Samarkand for so long and now I could barely believe I was here, treading the same path taken so long ago by Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. </span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Streets that had seen so much history were now broadened and concreted, traffic a curious blend of modern trolley buses and old cars, horse drawn carts and donkeys, and people dressed in the loose flowing garb of Islam. I was so engrossed in the buildings and shops; even the Arab way of stacking fruit on the pavement that the square itself appeared before me like a sudden apparition.</span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Its sheer beauty took my breath away. Registan Square, for me one of the seven wonders of the world. I stood across the road, across Registanskaya Street, utterly overwhelmed and wishing I had someone with me to share the moment. </span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Then I crossed the six lanes of traffic and stood on the opposite footpath, my back to the noise and fumes of the 20th century. In front of me was a square that hadn't changed in hundreds of years, a scene that could have been taken from the Bible, or from the Koran.</span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Three ancient buildings comprised and dominated the square, the fifteenth century Ulugbek Medrese, the almost identical Shir-Dor Medrese and in the middle the Tillya-Kary Medrese all with detailed mosaic work in brilliant shades of blue. Minarets and soaring arched facades, perfectly formed, yet with the tiny imperfections demanded by the law of Islam.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">The incredible blue of the domes and intricate tiles merged with the clear blue of the sky, the vast paved square with stands of trees and pockets of lawn completed a perfect setting. I sat on stone steps, centre front, absorbing the magic, until the light went from the sky and I became worried that the night would overtake me.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">The ‘People to People’ buses had arrived from Bukhara and Jerry called out that he'd located some locals with black-market antiques for sale; did I want to tag along? But I had already arranged a night at the theatre.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Next morning, I started out very early on foot. Intourist had no maps in English but I did have a roneoed copy of the streets of Samarkand thoughtfully provided by Mitzi when she handed me that questionable visa. Throughout the day I would cross the paths of various Sputnik buses, waving to familiar faces as we e<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">a<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">ch </span></span>touched on the various points of splendour.</span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">I was drawn again to the square, and sat there completely absorbed in the atmosphere of Registan. No other place on any of my travels has held such a powerful sway over my imagination. The hordes of Asia passed by my eyes, conquering nomads, heroes</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"> and villains. War and peace and revolution, cruelty and kindness and survival. I was close to tears, quietly emotional. I sat there for ages more before starting down Tashkentskaya Street where life seemed to have frozen to a time some centuries before.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">The twentieth century ended at the start of the street, at the bus depot, where not only trolley buses turned around to return the way they had come, but all the buses from outlying districts deposited people in town for the day to either buy or sell at the grand bazaar.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Around the depot entrepreneurs set up long charcoal braziers, and smoke and the smells of cooking meat and garlic wafted in the air. There were outdoor teahouses with tapchans and groups of men in deep discussion and through all this mass of people surged excited family groups. </span></b><br />
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Young girls with long black braids, like butterflies in their gaudy striped silk dresses and embroidered caps, plump matrons clutching small children eyes bright and darting. Their menfolk walked apart, some proudly carrying a small child, all wearing the black and white embroidered skull caps of the Uzbek.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Tashkentskaya was a long narrow street that led from Registan to the ruins of the beautiful Bibi Khanum Mosque and beyond to the grand bazaar itself. Along both sides of the paved street small shops sold materials and ribbons, foodstuffs and books and utensils; and in front of the shops, on the footpaths, stallholders duplicated everything inside the shops. </span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">It was busy and noisy and carefree and everyone seemed to be enjoying what the day had to</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"> offer. In the middle of the street, ignoring the spill over of pedestrians, pony and donkey drawn traps journeyed back and forth, saving weary feet the long trek from bazaar to bus for just a few kopecks.</span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">I hadn't realised it was Sunday, and I was very lucky because the Sunday market was the biggest and best. I entered the vast enclosed complex near the melon sellers where towering mounds of watermelons were displayed on worn and faded carpets of such beauty I nearly wept at such neglect. Trucks reversed through milling crowds with even more melons. In separate sections were fruit and vegetables of every variety ...carrots, tomatoes, egg plant, onions, horseradish...a riot of colour spread out on row after row of tables.</span></b><br />
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Every conceivable item was on sale, singing birds in cages, coarse grains, exquisite shawls in the finest of wool, cheese and carpets....even a woman wearing the paisley design scarf of the Uzbek women standing rather forlornly by herself selling her hair, a long black twist, so long it must once have reached past her waist. I couldn't bring myself to photograph her.</span></b><br />
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"> I drew comments, blondes stand out in Asian crowds, and often asked where I came from. Those who looked blank when I replied ‘Australia’, more often responded to ‘kangaroo’. A Soviet made documentary about the outback was a recent hit on local television.</span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">At the hotel preparations were under way for the ‘People to People’ caravan flight back to Moscow, the supply of twine and wrapping paper nearly exhausted. Jerry had by far the most excess luggage with carpets, shawls and local hats by the score. In my room I found a note from Dawn in case she missed me downstairs in the foyer...when I made it to Alaska, her home was my home.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b></div>
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</span></b><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">I would miss these friendly people; the sole Japanese in the group who stuck close to me in Bukhara because, I suspect, I took the time to listen to his halting English; dear Dr. Katie, recovered now from being stuck in the hotel lift; Jerry and the Ecuadoran industrialist who managed to put away copious amounts of vodka; the Gautelamalan who had twelve foster children back home and bought souvenirs by the dozen.</span></b><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Jeff, the lanky farmer from Missouri showed me a fob watch he had bargained off a street seller for ‘only $20, how about that?’ Amid calls to ‘you write now, you hear’ and a cheery wave from Lena from Moscow, the big sputnik buses pulled out into the traffic for the short drive to the airport. I might prefer traveling alone, but it is fun meeting people, and sad sometimes to say goodbye.</span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">EPISODE 11 - <a href="http://rainbowrobs.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/film-crew-in-samarkand.html">FILM CREW IN SAMARKAND</a></span></span></b><br />
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RAINBOW ROBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08141114044077051409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-153880276225163680.post-69172851919751337562010-10-10T23:49:00.001-07:002021-04-08T12:31:11.184-07:009. FLIGHT TO SAMARKAND<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">A BRIBE OF MANY COLOURED SMARTIES </span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"> The flight to Samarkand was a short hop over barren desert. At times we seemed to be following the long straight line of a road then the line would fork away in a different direction and all the eye could see for mile upon mile was parched, empty sand.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">I had a window seat and next to me sat an Uzbek man nursing his daughter, a little girl of about five or six. Across the aisle sat his wife with their baby son, a grubby little boy with a snotty nose. This was their first flight and they were nervous and excited.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">The father kept trying to peer out my window and I felt an absolute heel. The good part of me wanted to exchange seats, let these simple people watch their world whizzing by underneath, but the selfish side reasoned that this would probably be the only time I would pass this way, while they would doubtless make the journey again.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">I hoped Allah would understand and forgive me, softening my stand with small packets of brightly coloured Smarties from home.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Samarkand was vastly different to both Bukhara and Frunze. One of the oldest cities in the world dating from the 4th century BC and a contemporary of Babylon and ancient Rome, this ancient city is also known as the 'Muslim Pearl'.</span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">The taxi drive to the hotel, through busy congested streets where the traffic seemed to obey no set rules whatever, kept me on the edge of the seat. I had bargained with drivers at the airport who started their price in dollars, moving along to 60 roubles before finally completing their haggling at 25 roubles. This had been </span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">accomplished with a sense of humour on both sides and in front of a vast audience who seemed hugely amused.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">The driver I settled on was a jovial bear of a man whose baggy trousers were held up with old fashioned braces. He installed me in the passenger’s seat up front, and proceeded to drive with one hand on the wheel while he pointed out the sights with the other. I didn't understand a word of his commentary but I swivelled about as we passed archaeological diggings side by side with residential buildings. I tried to imprint on my mind our progress</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"> through busy streets and tree lined roads. </span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"> Samarkand, at last I was in Samarkand and I felt my heart swell to bursting. Then suddenly through the huddle of suburbia, above the roofline of shops and double story apartments emerged a huge blue dome. </span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">I gasped, loudly, I couldn’t help myself. I may even have clutched the drivers arm, I can’t remember because the beauty of that dome, its splendour amid the mundane knocked the breath out of me. The driver slammed on the brakes, oblivious to tooting horns and vehicles behind us, coming to a stop in the middle of traffic to give me a better look. As my eyes met his I could see he was beaming, our pleasure instantaneous and mutual.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">I couldn't wait to dump my bag at the hotel, get out and explore. Frunze, for all its charm and Kirghiz people was really a comparatively modern Russian town, Bukhara a friendly sleepy sprawling village, but Samarkand was vibrant and alive; a living page of history I couldn't wait to explore.</span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">But first I had to face the routine inquisition of booking into the Intourist Hotel; the women behind the front desk here was more sophisticated than Bukhara but still unsure about foreigners wandering in off the street; the staff were mainly Russians speaking laboured English.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">It wasn’t that I had to plead; rather they had to convince themselves that they were permitted to take me in as a guest, a lengthy procedure. This time the charge was US$70 with breakfast only. I insisted they include lunch for no other reason</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"> than pure devilment, and they did...though later the Uzbek head waiter made me accompany him to the front desk to have that confirmed.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">The hotel was on the busy intersection of M.Gorky Boulevard and Registanskaya Street, broad thoroughfares that buzzed with traffic. I turned right and headed towards Registan Square which means ‘place of sand’.....and had been the site of some nasty executions down through the centuries.</span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Would I tap into the ancient history of the Square, or would I be disappointed, its mystery and intrigue swamped by the modern world.</span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"> _____________</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>EPISODE 10 - <a href="http://rainbowrobs.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/in-footsteps-of-tamerlane.html">IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF TAMERLANE</a></b></span><br />
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RAINBOW ROBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08141114044077051409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-153880276225163680.post-78726867750567889552010-10-10T23:31:00.001-07:002021-04-08T12:31:11.268-07:008. DEJA VU IN BUKHARA<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>A LANEWAY IN BUKHARA</b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>A STRANGE WALK THROUGH STRANGELY FAMILIAR PLACES</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Next morning after the usual breakfast of flat bread, glass of thick yoghurt, black tea and fried eggs, I set out to walk through the old city of Bukhara, the Moslem quarter where homes were hidden behind high walls and narrow alleys led to domed market places. </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> I had only walked a few hundred yards down the street when a car pulled alongside. It was Sasha with a Missouri farmer called Jeff and a Guatemalan plantation owner. They were on their way to a local tea house; would I care to join them?</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> ‘We are going to my most favourite place in all of Bukhara,’ Sasha told us as the car negotiated winding alleys and narrow lanes.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">He parked the car in a quiet almost deserted square where all the buildings had high walls and no windows. There was not another soul around. I stepped out of the car and looked about, feeling a sudden and inexplicable surge of recognition. How on earth could I explain this strange sense of belonging, these familiar surroundings?</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> I felt completely at home. Was this odd feeling of awareness what some people called déjà vu?</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Sasha opened a wooden gate in a high brick wall and we entered an oasis of beauty and shade...an open courtyard dominated by spreading mulberry trees. Under the leafy branches were six tapchans or wooden beds for locals to sit upon and play backgammon, sip tea or just count their beads.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">The tapchans were varnished and highly polished and covered with a bright kelim or carpet in the middle of which was a small table. The teahouse was part of an old madrassah or school and the buildings surrounding the open courtyard housed an artisan’s commune where coppersmiths and weavers worked their craft. A huge copper samovar polished to a golden sheen dominated the servery where our tea was being prepared.</span></b></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>With Sasha and Jeff the Missouri farmer, and the Gautemalan sitting at a tapchan in the open air tea house</b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">The atmosphere was tranquil, like being in a private world. If I lived in Bukhara this would be my favourite place too...perhaps it once had been.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">We passed the time discussing everything and nothing, from Missouri winters to the price of coffee. I was very aware how privileged I was to be included, Uzbek women by and large don’t join in their men’s social lives.</span></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">We next visited an artist friend of Sasha, Dumond Park, his family were of Korean origin. His studio was in a run down part of Bukhara in a partially demolished and very old building.</span></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">His paintings were large and many and my companions from the tour group bought a number to ship home. I had to be content with a few of his smaller postcard size etchings, one of them the introduction to all posts in this series, another seen below.</span></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Ahead, gossiping and enjoying the sunshine, three older women sat on a section of the wall. They were dressed in their traditional costume, paisley shawls and head scarves in red, green and blue patterns over matching floral dresses. Each outfit was colour co-ordinated with plain wool socks and cardigans and soft felt slippers.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">They smiled a greeting and I was startled by the resemblance of the lady in the middle to my long dead grandmother....the same features, olive complexion, even her expression as she gestured to my camera. As I took photographs I almost expected her to call me by name. </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">We conversed by pantomime and finger counting, the lady in the middle was in her mid seventies and between them they had 12 grandchildren. The old ladies wore tasteful jewellery of old gold, bracelets and rings, and in their pierced ears delicate emeralds</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> and rubies. The walled house across from where they sat belonged to the youngest of the three.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">When I left the three ladies of Bukhara I continued on my way, past little shops that sold sticky sweets and sacks of grain, a tiny barber shop with room for only one customer. I caught up with a man on a donkey who averted his face when I lifted the camera. </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> But strangely, in this maze of nameless streets I didn't have to ask directions, without hesitation I turned corners, traversed streets, found the way out of that old quarter through a park into Lenin Square and back to the Intourist hotel.</span></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">I try to keep an open mind on the mysteries of life and death and possible reincarnation, to me all is impossibly possible, but of this I am sure, in Bukhara on that day, I experienced a sense of history, of a belonging that I cannot possibly nor rationally explain.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">The ‘People to People’ caravan left early next day in their air-conditioned sputnik buses for Samarkand, 230 kilometres across the desert. I asked Mustoora where I could find the local bus for Samarkand. She was horrified.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">‘The journey would take all day,’ she warned me.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">I didn't mind, I wasn't on a strict timetable. She went on to insist that women didn't travel alone in this part of the country, a woman alone would command no respect, she said.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Such a short distance, surely I wouldn't offend anyone...I really wanted to travel by bus.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">‘If you had a companion it would be possible, but for you alone...the driver would not sell you a ticket.’</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">‘If you spoke to the driver....’ </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">‘No. It is out of the question.’</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">She spoke with such finality I could do nothing but put myself in her hands.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">‘There is a flight leaving later this afternoon, I will see if they have space for you. Come back after lunch.’</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">As it happened Mustoora had confirmation almost immediately and joined me in the dining room. I invited her to share chai with me, and of course I questioned her about her life.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">She was Uzbek born of an ethnic Uzbek father and Iranian mother. She had studied languages and travelled abroad for Intourist as an interpreter.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">‘For many years I enjoyed my life travelling and seeing the world, but my father was not pleased. He insisted I return home and marry.’ At this point Mustoora extended her hand in a futile gesture the palm upturned, ‘I held off as long as I could, but when I turned 32, my father arranged for me to marry an Uzbek engineer.’</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Through the story Mustoora maintained an offhand, resigned attitude. She held the most senior position here at the hotel and was a tough lady as her interrogation of me the night I arrived had demonstrated.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">‘That was twelve years ago, and with marriage my travels ended...’she shrugged, ‘...but at least my husband understood my need to have a career. So he allows me to work here, for Intourist.’</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">‘Are you happy,’ I asked her?</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">‘Happy?’ She paused to mull over my question before she finally replied, ‘I have a son, he is my life. No I'm not happy, but I tell you this...I am lucky.’</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">She had already told me that her name, Mustoora, means obedience.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Episode 9 Flight to Samarkand <a href="http://rainbowrobs.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/flight-to-samarkand.html">Flight to Samarkand</a></span></span></b></span><br />
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">© Robyn Mortimer 2010</span></b><br />
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RAINBOW ROBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08141114044077051409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-153880276225163680.post-57253652786045418612010-10-10T20:07:00.000-07:002021-04-08T12:31:11.357-07:007. IN BUKHARA THE AGONY OF TIPPING<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT5LxJpsMtDQzX2jDwr2GHFhGO2kKbGRysni-jOa2NkzqdHeZN3LF3QIUDY5wcLDp5aROax5SR7p1Q3NiZzF9yIHKRkl7pU7NjieeYoEWNYqKRjsT5kafAIIEr_ggwHH3SjJSkbybs0U0/s1600/uzbek+trip+bukhara+003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT5LxJpsMtDQzX2jDwr2GHFhGO2kKbGRysni-jOa2NkzqdHeZN3LF3QIUDY5wcLDp5aROax5SR7p1Q3NiZzF9yIHKRkl7pU7NjieeYoEWNYqKRjsT5kafAIIEr_ggwHH3SjJSkbybs0U0/s400/uzbek+trip+bukhara+003.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the once grand gardens of the harem</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>WHERE <span style="font-size: x-large;">LONE </span>TRAVELER<span style="font-size: x-large;">'S ARE</span> SUSPECT</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">The flight west to Bukhara was over increasingly arid country. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Mile after mile of dry sandy plain with only occasional dams and narrow waterways. The plane landed on dusk and I stepped from the tarmac into a rose scented garden of tangled vines and fairy lights. This airport terminal was smaller and more informal than those at either Tashkent or Frunze. Waiting friends and relations had the friendly manner of country people; everyone down to the smallest child was greeted with warmth and handshakes.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">The Intourist office had closed. I searched through the small building for someone who perhaps spoke English, no one did. A young man took my bag and found a ‘tax-ee’ to take me to an ‘o-tel’. The cab was really a private car, but the young man stressed the driver was alright with the universal thumbs up sign and then counted to twenty five roubles, the fare I should pay. He refused a tip and I gave him a kangaroo pin instead.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Bukhara on the banks of the Zeravshan River was deep in desert country, the Kyzyl Kum or Red Sands Desert and the Russian ‘<i>dobraye utra</i>’ would now become the Moslem salutation ‘S<i>alaam Aleikum.’</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">We drove through empty streets into a huge open square and pulled up in a side street by the modern multi storey Intourist Bukhoro Hotel. I guessed that because his wasn't an official taxi he couldn't drive up to the front door, so I dragged my belongings up twenty steps to the swinging door of the entrance and asked reception for a room.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">For a moment you could have heard a pin drop. Had I been a Martian from outer space I doubt my arrival could have caused such suspicion. Where had I come from...did I have a voucher...where was my visa?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">The receptionist called a superior who promptly got on the phone to someone else. A lot of Russian was flying back and forth. A woman looked through my visa and told me I had no permission to even be in Bukhara.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">I was no expert in the Russian alphabet but I could recognize the letters that stood for Bukhara amidst all the other towns Mitzi back in Singapore had randomly included in my application and humbly pointed them out to her. Now wasn't the time to be stroppy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">I could see the hotel reception was thronged with tourists. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Maybe they didn't have room for me. The inquisition was running out of steam, the lady in charge asked what I was doing in Bukhara, was I a journalist? I assured her I was just traveling through, a housewife if she needed an official designation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">The lady in charge identified herself as Mustoora and said they would give me a room but I would have to pay in hard currency, US$ dollars. She quoted seventy five dollars and I presumed this covered the same meals as Frunze. She asked if I had eaten and then took me across to the dining room.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">‘The head waiter will find you a table,’ she said, ‘it is best you reward him now before you eat. He has, what you say...absolute power about what food you get.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">I couldn't believe what she was saying and thought she must be pulling my leg. But no, Mustoora was very serious though I did sense a touch of sarcasm, obviously there was no love lost between the two<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> hotel employees. </span> I wondered if it was simply that the head waiter was Russian and she was Uzbek. In any case I thanked her for taking the trouble to warn me.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">It was a very large dining room with a stage at one end and to the side, through sliding glass doors, a long ornamental pool. The waiters were dressed in black trousers and white shirts and wore the black and white skullcap of the Uzbeks. The head waiter sat at a table just inside the door.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">I pondered how much I should slip him and in which currency. Not roubles, I decided. They really weren't worth very much, yet to give him five or ten dollars as I might in Australia was really out of all proportion to the cost of the meal. I was thinking fast, remembering clumsy past failures at bribery, oh well I decided...as I was going to be in Bukhara for a while I may as well gain the reputation of a big spender. I discreetly palmed him a US$10 note, or if you looked at it another way, a month’s wages.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">The maitre'd bowed slightly, showed me to a table and food was brought. The dining room was a hub of activity. At this late hour there were no tourist groups eating but every table was taken by locals. A band played western music and couples danced. I could see the head waiters desk, and not only did he have power over the food he also decided who got a table and who didn't. He spent the entire evening pocketing bribes and tips. I found mine well spent if only for the way dining staff sprang to attention when next I entered.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">The Bukhoro Hotel had a hard currency bar in the basement for foreign guests. One drawback in being female and traveling alone is that in most places you're restricted to staying indoors after dark. Bukhara would probably have been safe enough, though Cari's warning in Frunze still rang in my ears.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Playing it safe, I wandered down the spiral stairway to the tiny bar, a long narrow room with a strobe light for atmosphere and shelves against a mirrored wall well stocked with foreign spirits and wines. There was an espresso machine that I never saw used, and high up on the end wall, a colour television showing a news bulletin from Moscow.</span></span></div>
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</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">American tourists were grouped at tables. I bought a coffee, instant from a jar, and angled my seat at the bar towards the television. A tall man in a blue cotton sweat suit invited me to join his table, he spoke in a Texan drawl and his name was Jerry.</span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;"><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">We exchanged introductions; Jerry was part of a tour, the highly organised ‘People to People’ caravan comprising specialists from such diverse fields as medicine, farming and industry. At first they thought I was part of their hundred strong tour group and achieved minor notoriety when they learned I was alone.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Jerry, who appeared to be the shaker and mover of the tour, had discovered some black market Bukhara rugs for sale in a nearby home. Together with Dawn, who described herself as the groups official trouble shooter, and two others, we slipped away to find the house where Sasha lived.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRhaOAIVUDHGP7GJPHFs00L6hdQeibeMIoja8fVrC6Id0hoz5dsSH3BEgfnvKyz-mjmCHf75yncfv1OoB859NDsJzvk7XVYNUwaW-G6v7OgCFX1cz9rcxAWR-AagK7fy5i3vWgIjh9SWc/s1600/central+asia+014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRhaOAIVUDHGP7GJPHFs00L6hdQeibeMIoja8fVrC6Id0hoz5dsSH3BEgfnvKyz-mjmCHf75yncfv1OoB859NDsJzvk7XVYNUwaW-G6v7OgCFX1cz9rcxAWR-AagK7fy5i3vWgIjh9SWc/s400/central+asia+014.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">With Dawn the trouble shooter - later in Samarkhand</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> Finding our way along the unlit streets armed with a solitary torch, or as Jerry called it, a flashlight, we located Sasha’s apartment on the ground floor of a double story block within walking distance of the hotel. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">We slipped our shoes off at the door and were shown into a lounge room lined with books in many languages. Sasha’s wife and daughter made no appearance though a little later his six year old son was introduced. The carpets were displayed on the floor.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">They were beautiful and very reasonable but I left the bargaining to the Americans. Unlike the others I had to carry my own baggage and instead I bought a colourful embroidered ‘Suzanna’...a large cotton throw over, once a part of every young Uzbek girl’s trousseau.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> Sasha slipped out of the room, and returned with a tray of refreshments. I thought it odd that his wife had made no appearance, particularly after he mentioned she was from Germany. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Next morning I asked Mustoora for a map in English so I could find my way around the town. There was nothing in print, she explained, and all the English speaking guides were with the four huge air conditioned ‘Sputnik’ buses from Moscow carrying the ‘People to People’ caravan. At that moment Sasha walked up to the counter and recognized me from the night before. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> Mustoora explained my problem and Sasha said there was plenty of room on his bus, why not simply join the group for the days touring. I didn't think it would be that easy and suggested to Sasha that surely those in charge would object.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">‘Come,’ he took my arm, ‘we will ask Lena from Moscow, she is in charge of everything.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Lena from Moscow, a thin waif-like girl in her early twenties, looked me over and nodded and I boarded the bus to find I was sitting behind Dawn the trouble shooter who was surprised the Russians had allowed me to tag along, but nevertheless was pleased to see me.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">With the suave Sasha as our English speaking guide we set off for the Emirs Palace, a series of single story wooden buildings with blue paint work weathered by countless dust storms and the passage of centuries. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">14th CENTURY EMIRS PALACE BUKHARA</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Inside was a treasure trove of ancient ceramics and paintings but I preferred to wander outside in the gardens of the harem and imagine the women who had lived there in the past. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Very little of the garden had changed, perhaps the landscaping would have been more formal back then, and of course people like me would never have been allowed inside. It took little imagination to hear tinkling music and the chatter of women against softly trickling water. Sitting under shady vines within those same walls, I wondered how the women of the Emirs harem had felt, privileged or prisoners held against their will.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Lagging behind on our way back to the bus, I turned a corner and came upon a group of Turkmen from Turkmenistan, bearded old men with long brown duster coats edged with colourful braid over western style suits. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">What made me excited though were the brown, lamb’s wool headgear they wore. Probably made from the karakul sheep the hats were like an immense shaggy version of the bearskins worn by the Guard at Buckingham Palace. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">It gave the men a wonderfully fierce appearance and I desperately wanted their photograph but I hesitated to just barge up and start clicking. Turkmen are orthodox Sunni Muslims who still regard their women as second class. I approached a Russian man with them and held up my camera. I needn't have worried; the old men posed self consciously but wouldn't let me go until I had captured each one of them on film. One of the many times I regretted not having a Polaroid camera.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">GENTLEMEN FROM TURKMENISTAN</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">The bus stopped next at the infamous 6th century Ark Citadel or fort where the British explorers Connolly and Stoddart were brutally executed in 1842 after a lengthy imprisonment in a snake pit. Watching Sasha entertain the tour group with dark stories of Bukhara’s history it was hard to realise only 150 years separated this charming and articulate man from his torturous and bloodthirsty forebears.</span></span></div>
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</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Across from the Ark Fort, we walked through the beautiful Balo-hauz Mosque, an exceptional 18th century example of Islamic architecture. It's most breathtaking features were the twenty elegant carved wood columns fronting the marble and mosaic facade. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">The columns soared almost 80 feet high and reflected in the waters of a large round pond gave the mosque its other name - The Forty Columns. A teapot and cup by the side of the murky green waters, said to be health giving, indicated people still drank from the stagnant pool. I tried not to think about it.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">On the bus I met an Australian with the program, Dr. Katie from Canberra who said she found the American support team amazing with interpreters, trouble-shooters even an entire medical support team able to cope with any emergency. Organisers had thought of everything, she said, right down to the slightest detail like supplying twine, sticky tape and carry bags for souvenirs that wouldn't squash into suitcases. She told me the 13 day tour had cost around US$5,000 per person.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Dawn later told me the medical team comprised doctors and nurses with supplies of oxygen, plasma, and western equipment. If necessary the doctors with the group were even equipped to perform surgery. I gathered local hospitals were best avoided. Later in Samarkand, an elderly woman became ill with a heart complaint and was flown out to Moscow and then on to an American base hospital in Germany. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">The People to People tour, Dawn explained, was part of the Citizen Ambassador Program, a private non-profit non-political</span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> organisation head-quartered in Kansas City, Missouri, which encouraged communication among the peoples of the world. It had been founded by President Eisenhower in 1956.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">That night I joined a small party in the basement bar. Sasha was telling the story of a young Jewish girl from the Ukraine fleeing the Germans during world war two and meeting a young Moslem man in Bukhara...his mother and father.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">You see,’ he extended his hands,’ I am very fortunate, through my mother...in the Synagogue, I am a Jew....and through my father...in the Mosque, I am a Moslem...I have access to both worlds.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Sasha hinted at the underlying ethnic problems facing Uzbekistan and the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. He said there were no true Uzbeks in Bukhara. Mostly, the people here originated from Kazakhstan or Turkmenia, Iran, Afghanistan, Arabia ...even from Turkey. But when the Russians realigned boundaries they said only Uzbeks could live in that particular region to be known thereafter as Uzbekistan. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">People could no longer call themselves Turks or Iranians...if they insisted then they must return to those countries. So families that had lived centuries in Bukhara remained and fell under the general mantle of Uzbeks. The majority spoke Farsi, the language of Iran and similar to that of Turkey. He suggested that should Uzbekistan be invaded in the future, the threat would come from those two countries. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">We quizzed him on conditions since perestroika and he shrugged, ‘We have suffered in the past, fools have run the country and food has been scarce. But now we keep for ourselves the food we grow. We have greater worries though... little countries with large bombs.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Not so very long before Sasha wouldn’t have dared venture his opinions in public; especially with foreigners. He went on to say it was the old people who found it hard to accept that the world had changed and Russia was no longer their master. As an example he told us about his mother.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">‘She is getting on now, I try to see her each day or at least speak on the telephone to her. To amuse, I tell little jokes about my work and perhaps the joke might be about the Kremlin or the K.G.B.’ ‘You must remember,’ he went on’ my mother lived through terrible times...first the Nazis and then the purges of Stalin. Old people are still very frightened; they don't believe their status has changed. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> My mother says to me ‘...Sasha, Sasha...be careful what you are saying...walls have ears. They hear everything. You must leave the house quickly, now, go to friends...don't stay the night.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">‘My son,’ Sasha added ‘may Allah be praised, will never experience such terror.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Episode 8 <a href="http://rainbowrobs.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/deja-vu-in-bukhara.html">Deja Vu in Bukhara</a></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">©Robyn Mortimer 2010</span></b></span></div>
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RAINBOW ROBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08141114044077051409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-153880276225163680.post-4081245437893003042010-10-10T18:50:00.000-07:002021-04-08T12:31:11.448-07:006. WOMEN OF CENTRAL ASIA<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I didn’t plan to base my story on the women of Central Asia. Instead as I moved around the country a pattern emerged and<span style="font-size: large;"> <span style="font-size: medium;">gradually,</span></span> without realising it, their story became my story. </span></span></span></h2>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The women I met and conversed with in the two central Asian countries of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan were in themselves a contradiction of their birth place. They were wonderfully erudite, elegant in a European manner, excellent in their work but completely dominated by men of their family and by the state’s Communist Party.</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> </span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Russia may have begun to remove itself from their satellite countries, but its dominion and influence still remained; and to add to the woes of these women they had still to contend with the looming threat of total control by either Muslim and tribal fathers or husbands.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">In many ways they lived in a catch 22 situation. Under Russian rule the women could work at jobs their husbands and fathers would never have allowed, enjoying a freedom their work ensured. But now with the obvious breaking up of these small USSR countries, while happy to see the Russians go, many were also dreading a return to male domination and even worse to the veil and chador.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">I found these women fitted a certain pattern, but I’ll let you decide that for yourselves. We will start with Mina of Frunze. To protect their identity, because in some cases they opened their hearts perhaps unwisely, I have changed their names.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Back at the Ala Too Hotel Mina had my Russian money and counted it out, 1600 roubles. I tucked it away in the wallet I wear round my neck and we set off to see the sights. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">At this stage I didn't doubt the rate of exchange. Later as Mina recounted the impossible cost of living, constantly refusing my offer of payment for her company, deriding the growing mafia and the black market it spawned and yet was able to locate rare and beautiful art books for me to purchase, in foreign currency of course, I realised the guilt she was struggling to live with. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> I didn't begrudge her a share of the transaction, to claim knowledge would have embarrassed her deeply. I only hoped she made a handsome profit from my small purchases.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Frunze, I'll stick to that name because even Mina, an ethnic Kyrgyz still used it rather than its new name Bishkek, reminded me of an old German city. It had a stately, European feel. We walked down wide avenues where tree branches met overhead ... oaks, chestnuts, birch, fir...all now dropping their leaves, ankle deep in some parts, but Mira told me, providing a wonderfully cool canopy in the summer.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> </span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Shady nature strips in the middle of wide roads merged into parks with sculptured fountains and patriotic statues. We walked through the park into the big and impressive Soviet Square that had been designed as a forum for parades and political rallies. Facing the square were stately columned theatres and art galleries looking like props for an elaborate spaghetti western. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">We had been walking for the best part of an hour enjoying the crisp air and the sunshine before I realised we had passed no billboards or advertising signs, no visual pollution. I wondered how long it would take for emerging advertising moguls to rectify that unnecessary need.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Before the revolution, Mina told me, Frunze or Bishkek as it was known those seventy odd years before, had been a small tribal town cent<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">ere</span>d round an old wooden fort. Ignoring the political changes be they for good or bad, Frunze now was a centre of great beauty and serenity with cultural amenities far superior to most Australian cities. In size it equated roughly with mid size provincial towns like Toowoomba or Armidale yet Frunze supported four theatres of drama, opera and ballet, a puppet theatre, permanent circus, six museums and art galleries. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Mina made no mention and I remained, for a while, in ignorance of the shanty towns on the other side of Frunze where people faced the coming winter without power or water.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">We passed small picture theatres showing Russian and Indian Bollywood movies.<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> On the footpath outside Frunze’s largest department store private entrepreneurs had set up stalls selling oddments of clothing and shoes and whatever else they had managed to scrounge. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">One stall might have no more than half a dozen pair of second hand shoes,</span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> another a few dresses or some underwear. Gypsy women mingled in the crowd hawking packets of cigarettes. Officially cigarettes are rationed to two packets a month.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Inside the four story department store I was stunned by the empty shelves. In some sections staff had attempted to disguise the bareness by draping plastic shopping bags between items. There wasn't much variety in the goods that were on offer, rows of identical garments, ugly styles, and poor quality fabric all highly priced.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Apart from rubber galoshes there were no shoes at all for sale in the footwear section, just rows of empty shelves and staff standing idly about not even trying to conceal their boredom.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I asked how on earth people managed, what did they do when their shoes inevitably fell to pieces. We had been walking down the stairs to the second floor, and ignoring people around us; Mina stopped and took off one of her navy court shoes indicating the leather sole. The shoe had obviously been repaired to within an inch of its life.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘There is a man I know who sometimes brings in shoes from Europe. If he finds a pair to fit me they will cost one thousand roubles.’ Other shoppers pushed past us as Mina balancing on the step below me, replaced her shoe. ‘It takes me a long time to accumulate such money, my pay when I get it, is only five hundred roubles a month.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">As we strolled back to the hotel I let Mina ramble on, she was after all an Intourist guide, she told me that Kyrgyz translated means forty tribes or clans; that over 70 nationalities were now represented in the peoples of Kyrgyzstan; and that before the revolution her country had not even had an alphabet for their spoken language. Once all this token propaganda had been offered, and digested on my part, we sat down on a park bench and got stuck into some 'girl talk'.</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Mina was an extremely attractive woman in her early forties, her father had been a senior judge in Kyrgyzstan’s judiciary. She had originally studied the Italian language and traveled abroad with trade delegations. In Rome she had met the love of her life, an Italian architect. Mina’s big brown eyes glistened with tears as she told me how precious her life had been then, fifteen years before. She was spending more and more of her time in Italy, she and the architect fell deeply in love and before long sought permission to marry from Russian party officials.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Permission was denied, the Italian was refused entry into the U.S.S.R. and Mina was abruptly transferred to Intourist duties within Kyrgyzstan and prevented from returning to him in Italy. Her lovely face clouded with emotion, she sighed, and described it as a tragedy of the heart.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I asked had she thought about contacting him now that so many barriers were down and she shook her head. A few years earlier, her Italian architect passed through Frunze with a tour group and made contact with Mina. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘He had with him,’ she told me her eyes welling with tears, ‘his new wife and baby daughter.’</span></span></div>
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</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Mina had resisted efforts by her father to marry her off to local men. ‘I have known too much freedom, how could I live as a prisoner?’ She now resigned herself to being a spinster and lived with her widowed mother in a tiny apartment.</span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">We sat for a moment in silence; then she sighed again and indicated we should move on. I found it difficult to find appropriate words of comfort. Mina was left with only fond memories of her Italian and I could hardly make comment on the insensitivity of the male of the species. I should think Soviet versions of ‘Mills and Boon’ would sell a million.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">A street vendor in Frunze, fish from the nearby sea, in reality Lake Issyk Kul , one of the world's largest mountain lakes. Note the abacus used to calculate prices. The woman surveying his wares most probably</span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> wishes she could afford to buy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">A short while after I took this photo a policeman tried to confiscate my camera. When I explained I spoke no Russian he realised I was a ‘tourista’. He and the stallholders then relaxed and joked about the mistake.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">They had assumed I was a Russian and possibly a KGB spy.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I never did get to the Frunze Circus that initially influenced my itinerary. Mira had booked a ticket for me and arranged a taxi pick up for that night. But then I bumped into Cari in the foyer of the hotel, he was off to a business meeting.</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">When I told him my plans for the night, he became visibly upset.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">'No, you must not go out at night unescorted', he said. 'It is far too dangerous.'</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Of course I argued that a taxi there and a taxi back should ensure my safety. But he soon convinced me that there were taxi drivers and there were petty criminals, and a foreigner alone, male or female, was an easy target.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Instead I stayed home alone, gazing out over the flimsy little balcony and wondering what the next day would bring.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Episode 7 <a href="http://rainbowrobs.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/in-bukhara-agony-of-tipping.html">The Agony of Tipping</a></b></span><br />
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RAINBOW ROBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08141114044077051409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-153880276225163680.post-20657647855763006472010-10-09T19:16:00.000-07:002021-04-08T12:31:11.537-07:005. ROUBLES AND DOLLARS<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1WQBdX2-7TlA1kvb11L3fo8SAKVy0g4b138E_YXhih3RBm6mEEghb7zwXPYhec44ljaXXeZGFHcgKmISK18J6KYSfqaVeSP463MgydNYmOLklsGgbuHgpkvexdtr5Un35_UsqyYnI0lY/s1600/FRUNZE+001-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>FLIGHT EAST TO FRUNZE</b></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Railway station at Frunze</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">This visit to the land of the <i>Stans</i>, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan took place in 1991 not long after Gorbachev’s dismantling of the Berlin wall. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I had already spent the better part of a sleepless night on Uzbek soil but Frunze, Kyrgyzstan’s capital would be my first official stop over. The domestic flight had been an education and my new Indian friend Cari an able tutor. We two as foreigners had been delivered to the aircraft in solitary splendour by a reticulated bus, and shown to our seats in the empty plane by a young hostess.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">When the remainder of the passengers arrived, by shanks pony and not by bus, it appeared I was sitting in a seat <span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">assigned</span> to a woman who was not at all pleased. Ever the polite Aussie I jumped to my feet with apologies only to be pulled down by Cari who muttered ‘Stay seated’.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Completely ignored by the cabin crew and everyone else, she ranted and raved for a few minutes and then subsided into another seat. The aircraft began to taxi down the runway at increasing speed, reached a certain point and careered round in a circle before hurtling back the way we had come, lifting abruptly and steeply into the sky.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">To say it was unnerving is an under-statement.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Cari was enjoying my reaction and leaned across to assure me Russian planes enjoyed a good safety record.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I think he was lying. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The hostess did the rounds with orange cordial and small games boy type consoles. It seemed I could, if I wanted, amuse myself for a small hire fee with Mario and Donkey Kong games.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Cari was visiting Frunze on business and was met at the airport by a local Government official. They offered me a lift into town. The official was driving a small, very small cluttered sedan. I couldn’t put my travel bag in the boot because that was already packed tight with fire wood. I cleared a space on the back seat and fitted in as best I could.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Try as I might I could not see an Australian bureaucrat in similar circumstances.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">They dropped me at the Intourist Hotel where Mitzi had not so long ago booked my compulsory first nights accommodation. By now it was late afternoon and I was a bit nervous to see the vestibule thronged by a shouting, seething mass of men.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Behind the counter a young woman was struggling to be heard. I stayed to the back wondering what on earth I had let myself in for. Suddenly she saw me and waved me through to the front of the mob. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">It was a bit like the parting of the sea. As I took a deep breath and edged forward you could hear a pin drop. I handed over my passport and in hesitant English the desk clerk booked me in. I asked could I possibly stay an extra few nights.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">She nodded and quoted an amount in American dollars that was less than a third of the money I had handed over to Mitzi back in Singapore for the one night in the same room. This new figure also included breakfast and dinner. I was going to enjoy this part of the world.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I would later find out the shouting match at the check in counter was a regular evening affair. The men were all from outlying districts hoping for work in the town, and without a place to stay any vacant rooms were let on a ‘four or five to a room’ at bargain prices.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The railway station was close by and most of them camped rough in the adjacent park. Cari would later warn me not to move around the town alone after dark and not even to trust the local cab drivers. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">My room on the second floor of Frunze’s Ala Too Hotel was narrow and cramped and included a small bathroom with shower and toilet of a vintage I remember from the forties. The furniture in the bedroom was old and mismatched, the dressing table had a stained veneer surface and on it was a television set that didn't work. The single bed wasn't made up but bed linen was folded on the mattress.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">A glass door with old fashioned lace curtains opened onto a tiny curved balcony that I wasn't game to put my weight on, but when I leaned out gave me a spectacular view over the station to the distant snow peaks of the Tien Shan.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I was looking forward to an evening meal, breakfast in Tashkent and that solitary boiled egg seemed an eternity ago and by the time I settled into the room it was six o'clock and the dining room on the first floor was open.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I walked in hesitantly, most of the tables were already occupied...by men. The place had the atmosphere Australian public bars used to have when the presence of women were taboo. The noise level dropped and I felt suddenly conspicuous.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Just as I wished I could disappear, a small round sparrow of a waitress with short cropped blonde hair bustled out of the kitchen and made eye contact. She was European, probably early forties and wore a simple white blouse over a dowdy black skirt.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">CHEF AND WAITRESS - ALA TOO HOTEL FRUNZE</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> She didn't speak a word of English but immediately sized up the situation and showed me to a round table large enough to seat eight bringing with her a menu entirely in Russian. It looked interesting but for all I knew could have been a dishwasher manual. I listened as she went through the menu, but it was no use, chicken Kiev was about my limit when it came to Russian food. I thrust the menu back and in sign language left the choice to her.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">First she brought a sa-lard, as she pronounced it, tomato wedges with cucumber; then a small round loaf of flat bread and butter and a bottle of mineral water. The main course was delicious, stuffed chicken legs with potato and gravy. My waitress beamed as I mimed the cat’s whiskers in appreciation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Now came the hard part. I had arrived too late to change dollars into roubles. The bill for the meal came to 13 something or other which I took to be roubles. I brought out some dollars explaining that was the only currency I had. At sight of the dollars she looked concerned and motioned to me to quickly put them away, out of sight.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Nyet, nyet,’..... she pointed to the bill made out in roubles.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I showed her my airline ticket and the date, and then indicated the time and finally the dollars. She understood, wrote my hotel room on the bill and waved me away.</span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Next morning my first chore was to change dollars into roubles. In the hotel vestibule I knocked on a door with a sign that read Intourist in several languages. It was opened by a tall, elegantly dressed woman with soft brown almond shaped eyes. She welcomed me with a smile and spoke in slightly accented English.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘You must be the Australian. I was about to leave a message with your floor lady.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Mina wouldn't have been out of place in the society pages of Rome or Madrid, she could have passed as a native of either of those countries. Her makeup was flawless; her long thick dark hair was swept up in a fashionable knot. I warmed to her immediately.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">To queries about roubles and brochures on Frunze she replied, ‘I will try to find some roubles for you in town. Usually the hotel desk would change some for you but they are short of money...’ she raised her shoulders expressively ...’staff have yet to be paid wages, even for last month.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I gathered this wasn't a rare state of affairs.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">We discussed how many roubles I would need. I had no idea and said so. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> She suggested twenty dollars worth which didn't seem enough to me and I replied $50 would do for a start. I gave her the money and she wrote out a receipt.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> ’I will try to have the money here for you around ten o'clock...as for the little papers about Frunze...what did you call them?’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Brochures.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘I am sorry,’ she reproached herself, ‘my English is so poor. The brochures...we have none in English...but if you would permit me I could accompany you around the city.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I thought that a marvellous idea but insisted I pay the cost of the tour, she was adamant she wanted no money.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘You would be helping with my English; we meet so few tourists here. I want to learn more modern words, what you call the slang?’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">A train had pulled into the railway station across the square and I hurried over to a solid double storey stone building dominated by a bare flag pole that I guess had once flown the red hammer and sickle. The station was open to the platform and the square, with no ticket barriers or staff checking on passenger’s movements.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Inside I saw people crowding around the two ticket counters that were manned. A young mother and two children huddled on long wooden benches, asleep, their belongings wrapped in cloth bundles around them. Down a hallway a familiar stench and a queue indicated the toilets here were no better than the ones at Tashkent airport.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Giant size pictures of Lenin hung on the high walls beside stirring murals of peasants struggling to overcome whatever it was they were facing with such grim determination.</span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I wandered out onto the platform. It wasn't built up but flat to the ground so that the train and carriages appeared gigantic. It was a long train with some twenty or more carriages painted a dark green with yellow and red motifs now smeared and grubby. Some of the double glazed windows were either cracked or broken and had been patched with cardboard or draped with blankets to keep out the weather.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Policemen mingling with passengers cast long shadows in the morning sun as they strolled along the platform or stood about in pairs. There seemed to be a great deal of coming and going from the train. Kyrgyz women, small and dark, not unlike Mongolians, wearing colourful scarves over their hair and short winter coats over full, braided skirts and high leather boots carried shopping bags bulging with potatoes and other produce. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I took photographs of two old men with short grey beards. They had thermos flasks in their carry alls, wore brown suits over check shirts and on their heads the typical Kyrgyz hats...a sort of soft white and black velour homburg with a peak. They wandered the length of the train looking like a pair of bewildered country bumpkins, until the policemen pointed them in the right direction.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiydNdaR_EPMn7wQu45ejfAH5c3KXOzvrgDGpgx0kZqGOy7CoqU1otu38RmOlkkY45RI5jUy1_T5lHSi2_uVjbux9n1IkXofqs4ismz1TI-dwSZkYZQ_X3QZOH7DY0xQIEzwkSGYZoRO58/s1600/world+trip+002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiydNdaR_EPMn7wQu45ejfAH5c3KXOzvrgDGpgx0kZqGOy7CoqU1otu38RmOlkkY45RI5jUy1_T5lHSi2_uVjbux9n1IkXofqs4ismz1TI-dwSZkYZQ_X3QZOH7DY0xQIEzwkSGYZoRO58/s640/world+trip+002.jpg" width="436" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> </span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The train stopped at the station for some time and I climbed up into a carriage where an attendant was filling a huge samovar beside a pile of at least twenty or thirty folded blankets. Inside a compartment the sleeping berths that doubled as seats were strewn with belongings. Hanging over all this was a musty unwashed smell and the lingering odour of stale tobacco.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> Up until now I had been looking forward to doing part of the coming journey by train....maybe I still would...or maybe not.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">It was then as I wandered along the platform, the sun so early in the morning still sending out long shadowy silhouettes, the air crisp and fresh, that I noticed in the park adjacent, amidst the shrubs and trees, various men attending to their morning ablutions.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">These were the unlucky ones who didn’t find shelter at the inn. How many I wonder would my tiny little room have accommodated had I not shown up?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">______________</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">EPISODE 6 <a href="http://rainbowrobs.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/women-of-central-asia.html">Women of Centra Asia</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> </span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">©2010 Robyn Mortimer</span></b></span></div>
RAINBOW ROBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08141114044077051409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-153880276225163680.post-70936892278651804602010-10-09T00:11:00.000-07:002021-04-08T12:31:11.629-07:004. HOW MANY WAYS CAN YOU SAY NYET<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>In Tashkent they wanted to buy my camera</b></td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">THAT FIRST DAY IN THE '<i>STANS'</i></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">That first night on Uzbekistan soil was one to remember. A long narrow lounge, a deafening loudspeaker system, constant tip toeing through the night.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I’m very much a breakfast person, nothing elaborate, a bowl of cereal, piece of toast, a cup of tea. Actually I could probably get by on just the tea, and right now a cuppa was uppermost in my mind. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The supposedly ill woman on the lounge was now awake and wandering about. An Afghani, I decided, she wore tribal costume under a brown winter coat with a long veil draped like a scarf across her shoulders and an immense amount of jangling jewellery. I rolled my eyes and rubbed my stomach, asking without words had she recovered from the illness of the night. For a moment she looked puzzled, then laughed and with finger to lips indicated the charade should be a secret. I'd guessed right, she and her companions were rorting the system.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I went back to watching the restaurant. A few more from downstairs had attempted to gain access and now an iron bar had been placed through the door handles for those who hadn't gotten the message.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">By now I'm beginning to wish I had booked my obligatory first night at a Tashkent hotel, when a small group, about ten with a guide, knocked on the door. Words were exchanged and the bolt removed.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">A French tour group, chattering loudly as the French always seem to, were seated at tables obviously prepared especially for them. I quickly moved in behind and sat at an adjacent table.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">They were served flat round bread and cheese. The guide produced a large jar of instant coffee from his satchel. The waitress passed my table and I asked for breakfast. Nyet again, with a further torrent of words that all seemed to have the same meaning...no.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I didn’t think a cup of tea was too much to ask. Looking across to the French party’s guide I asked if he spoke English. Yes, and French, German and of course Russian. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> How come, I asked, your group gets fed and I'm left to starve. The Russian gift for drama was beginning to rub off. He shrugged with Gallic indifference.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Would you mind asking the waitress,’ I asked.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">He did and there was a great deal of huff and puff, with, as I again sensed, the waitress about to burst into tears.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘The cafe has food only for those with vouchers,’ he explained, over smugly I thought...’and we, of course have Intourist vouchers.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I didn't have an answer to that and casting an eye over his mob digging into their bread and cheese I thanked him for at least trying. To his credit he turned to the poor girl and exchanged a few more words.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘She will find you something... but you must pay her one American dollar.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Is that all’ I nearly replied, but nodded yes and waited to see what US$1 would bring. In due course it arrived, a pot of black tea, no sugar, butter but no bread, some thin slices of white cheese and a boiled egg. I had scored a veritable feast.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Ignoring Irina’s advice not to leave gear unattended I stashed my travel bag behind a chair and ventured outside the Intourist building for my first daylight view of the USSR. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I could now see this building was isolated in its own guarded and fenced compound and sandwiched between the international and domestic terminals. Car parks were interspersed with trees and benches, and across the way open air vendors were selling food cooked over charcoal grills. The sun was shining but the morning air was chill enough to make me glad I wore a bulky denim coat.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The guard, a young man in casual clothes with a rifle slung over his shoulder, waved me through the gate. Nice to know he wasn't there to keep me in.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">A number of dark, stocky men were leaning on small cars looking like taxi drivers the world over, anxious for a fare. They called out as I passed.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Nyet,’ I said to all of them in general, ‘I'm going to Frunze, nyet Tashkent.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">A lot more men were just standing idly about, hands in pockets, chatting and waiting. For what I wondered. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Only a few women were evident and these were helping with the char grills. Smoke from the many fires hung in the still air. The kebabs on the grills smelled good but I hadn't been able to change dollars into roubles and this didn't seem the ideal place to rectify that problem.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I took out my camera only to be swamped by a dozen or so onlookers. Remembering stories about mugging and bag snatching I felt a little apprehensive.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">They were friendly</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: small;"> I needn’t have worried everyone was jovial, smiling and laughing, exchanging banter. I relaxed. A man offered me a price for my camera, I refused with a grin. Another took the camera and gestured to pose with another man. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: small;">The whole encounter was a jolly light hearted introduction to a new country. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: small;">It was getting close to take off time and back in the terminal I approached the duty dispatcher again, a new one this time, the Sour faced woman had finished her shift. This dispatcher called in a translator who explained the aircraft for Frunze, which had now reverted to its pre-revolution name of Bishkek, didn't depart until 2.30 in the afternoon. To my query she explained the time on the ticket was Moscow time.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: small;">That explained it all...or did it? Confusion over arrival and departure times surfaced throughout my visit. Every time I made or confirmed a booking I asked was that local time or Moscow time and very few got it right. Later I wondered if this was the local’s way of rejecting the long arm of Russian bureaucracy, the Moscow rules that still applied despite so called independence.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: small;">Once again I enjoyed the passing parade; A group of handicapped American athletes and their helpers were going home to the States by way of Moscow after competing against locals in Tashkent.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: small;">Despite wheelchairs and crutches their mood was ebullient, their visit had been a great success and friendships had been cemented.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: small;">A coffee coloured young man from Sierra Leone sat engrossed in a Paul Theroux novel in English. A final year medical student he said he had learned to speak Russian in one month. I found that hard to believe.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: small;">An Iranian born American photo journalist staggered by with bulky equipment and special storage trunks for his film. In Uzbekistan to do a piece on Soviet Muslims he was in a state of panic waiting for his official interpreter to show up.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: small;">The ladies behind the souvenir counter were doing a brisk trade with fellow airport employees. By pretending to examine their dusty stock I could see on the floor behind the counter a cardboard carton of toothpaste steadily depleting.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: small;">It was getting closer to take off time and anxiously I listened to announcements. Up to now, they had all been in Russian and impossible to decipher, then another clearing of the loudspeaker followed by instructions in stilted English that the flight for Frun-zee was ready for boarding.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: small;">A tall Indian gentleman carrying a briefcase was the only other person to line up at the counter. I was asked a question in Russian, the Indian interpreted.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: small;">‘They ask are you taking your bag on board with you.’</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: small;">I shook my head, the bag was taken away and we waited for a bus to take us across the tarmac to the aircraft.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: small;">‘I wondered why the call was made in English,’ the Indian asked, ‘are you American?’</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: small;">‘Australian.’ </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: small;">Much, much later, when I was ready to leave the country, this man would help me side step a maze of Russian red tape and duplicity and see me safely board my flight back to Singapore. But at that moment as we joined the flight to Frunze I had no idea what lay ahead and the Indian appeared only as a tall, rather handsome man in a well cut business suit carrying a leather brief case and speaking in that precise lilting way his countrymen sometimes do. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: small;">His name was long, and for me, he suggested, unpronounceable; he asked me to call him Cari for short.</span></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">________</span></b><br />
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">Episode 5 </span>- <span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://rainbowrobs.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/roubles-and-dollars.html">Roubles and Dollars</a></span> </span></b></div>
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<b>Next - FRUNZE AND ANOTHER <i>STAN</i></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt; letter-spacing: 0.25pt;">© Robyn Mortimer 2010</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b></div>
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RAINBOW ROBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08141114044077051409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-153880276225163680.post-25503349699453572112010-10-08T23:53:00.000-07:002021-04-08T12:31:11.773-07:003. RORTING THE SOVIET SYSTEM<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgME5f5P3_dDl1lTJQBjrzBTFbBUV6leVgPQJIPDzaiNgV_zClVsTCjDeYoood8hzFr0735T8X55EH5fwkvuwu3u5n-DcjAaHHYo85j9J_RzuMW-pxUyUFxYOFXvU2DytGWKcOLOBoy5Qw/s1600/aeroflot+001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="123" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgME5f5P3_dDl1lTJQBjrzBTFbBUV6leVgPQJIPDzaiNgV_zClVsTCjDeYoood8hzFr0735T8X55EH5fwkvuwu3u5n-DcjAaHHYo85j9J_RzuMW-pxUyUFxYOFXvU2DytGWKcOLOBoy5Qw/s320/aeroflot+001.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">RORTING THE SYSTEM</span></div><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">When the Dragon Lady delivered me to Tashkent’s foreigners departure terminal I really thought I had only a few hours wait for my flight to Frunze. At that stage I had no idea at all that the vast dominions of the U.S.S.R. from Leningrad to Vladivostok and south to Tashkent were ruled literally by Moscow time.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Back in Singapore Mitzi had secured that dodgy visa by booking a compulsory first nights accommodation. I can remember her words still as she filled in the application .</span></b></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">‘Where would you like to spend your first night?’</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">She showed me a map and of course everywhere looked relatively close. I didn’t want to stay in a big city, Frunze, the capital of Kirghistan seemed small enough, and I read in her brochure that it had a resident circus. That clinched it.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";"><br />
</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Mitzi booked an on going domestic flight to Frunze departing at 1125 hours after working out arrival time in Tashkent at around 4 am; so six or so hours hadn't seemed too long to wait. But Irina, the blonde Dragon Lady checking my ongoing ticket expressed concern. I couldn't spend the rest of the night here, she said, I would have to go to the Intourist building at the domestic terminal.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">The Intourist building was behind a high wire fence where we were checked in by an armed guard on duty. Irina showed my flight ticket to the officer in charge and then led me upstairs to a darkened waiting lounge the size of a once grand ballroom. The ornate bevelled glass doors were padlocked; she produced a key, unlocked the doors and settled me on a soft leather lounge. In the gloom I could make out the form of one other sleeping person on another lounge.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Irina whispered where I could find toilets and warned I should trust no one and must not leave my belongings behind when I went downstairs. She gave me her address and phone number in case I needed help, explained she would not relock the doors and left. Deighton and Le Carre hadn't exaggerated; the Soviets were heavily into drama. I was dead tired though, and settled down for what I imagined would be a short nap before the dawn.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">The first disturbance was a deafening announcement on an old pre-war tannoy system that seemed to be wedged just above my head. I couldn't understand a word the voice was shouting. I looked along to the other person but there was no movement. The tannoy went silent again and I gave sleep another try and probably did nod off before I heard the doors being unlatched and saw a woman being helped to a lounge across from me on the other side of the room.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">There was much whispering and I gathered the woman was ill. I turned my back and tried to sleep but a few minutes later the door opened again and a woman in a white uniform carrying a medical bag entered, examined the patient, gave instructions to the man with her and left.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">That made four of us stretched out on lounges in the huge dark hall. By now I was wide awake and while I couldn't see my watch imagined it must be close to daybreak. After all, I reasoned, if the plane landed at 0430 hours and with all the fuss that followed it must be at least two hours later...and then a penny dropped. The clock on the wall when I arrived had read 0150. There was a three hour difference and if that was the case I still had a long wait until dawn.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">The woman across the way was now sound asleep and snoring, the man with her got up from his chair and tiptoed out. He returned a little while later with another woman who settled herself on another chair. We four became five.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">I must have slept because next time I opened my eyes to the deafening roar of the loudspeaker a grey light was creeping in through the windows and I could read the time, ten past six. It had been a long noisy night.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">I glanced across to the ill woman and she didn't appear distressed, but was fast asleep, mouth open and snoring like a trouper. It crossed my mind she and her companions had pulled what we Australians call ‘a swifty’ to gain access to this comfortable dormitory.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">By now I was hungry and decided to explore. Across from the waiting room, where my four companions slept, was a dining hall deserted at that hour. I wandered downstairs to another waiting room where a dozen or so foreigners, Afghanis and Iranians were draped across chairs and on the hard tiled floor in various attitudes of sleep. Apparently, Intourist had a system of class distinction that the four upstairs had managed to rort. I stepped carefully around mounds of luggage and over prone bodies.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Down a hallway I found the toilets where Irina had said they would be. I would have found them anyway by simply following my nose. Through desperation I managed to perform in the ‘hole in the floor type' loo lined by once white tiles that now begged a starring role in an Aussie toilet cleanser commercial.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Across from the toilets was the Duty Dispatcher’s office, which must have accounted for her sour expression. I produced my ticket to Frunze for verification.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">‘Bring back one o'clock,’ she grunted with a heavy accent.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">I wondered how I would do that when my plane was due to leave at 11.30. The disinterested look on her face discouraged further quizzing and I decided I really couldn't fight another problem on an empty stomach.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">By now it was well after seven and I climbed back up the marble staircase to the dining hall. The doors were closed but unlocked so I went in. Nobody about but I could hear noises from the kitchen and I politely waited for someone to emerge.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Finally a woman with a white coverall over day clothes came out and I asked could I have something to eat.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">‘Nyet.’</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">I pondered on this for a moment, did that mean ‘nyet speak English’ or ‘nyet you can't have breakfast.’?</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Mustering a smile, I tried again and received another nyet. But this time I sensed the woman was embarrassed, unduly perturbed. Was there a problem, I wondered? Maybe the famine stories I had heard back home were true and here I was, a foreigner, taking the food from her mouth.</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">I hated to admit defeat but retreated as gracefully as I could to plan another attack. From the waiting room where the slumbering four dozed on, I kept an eye on the restaurant door. A number of the unfortunate ones from downstairs entered and were despatched with probably the same flea she had given me. </span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Oh, what I would give for a cup of hot tea.</span></b></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">____________</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div>RAINBOW ROBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08141114044077051409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-153880276225163680.post-60591431917811526942010-10-08T23:24:00.002-07:002021-04-08T12:31:11.831-07:002. IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE DRAGON LADY<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">TASHKENT WITH A DODGY VISA</span></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">PRECIS: So here I am, alone in the middle of the night on the other side of what used to be the Iron Curtain I wished for the umpteenth time Mitzi hadn't bribed the clerk back in Singapore for <span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">that</span> solo visa. With just six words of Russian and a lot of American paper money hidden in my shoes I thought it would be easy, especially now, to do my own thing in Uzbekistan. Uzwhere? you ask. </span></b></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Uzbekistan. In central Asia north of Afghanistan and sort of south of Russia. None the wiser? Look on a map for the ancient cities of Tashkent and Samarkand.<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">.. north of India.</span> </span></b></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">With the help of a dodgy visa courtesy of Mitzi the Singapore travel wiz, the getting to Tashkent was fine; the major problem now lay in actual disembarkation at Tashkent airport. For a while I thought I would be forced back on board the aircraft to continue on to Moscow where I definitely didn’t want to go and most certainly wasn’t ticketed to go.</span></b></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">It soon became apparent that any thoughts I might have had that the independent states of the old U.S.S.R were now fully independent were very, very wrong; obviously they were, all of them, still very much under the weighty influence of Moscow’s thumb.</span></b></span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> AN UNWELCOME ARRIVAL</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Tashkent was the last refueling stop for Aeroflot passengers to Moscow and everyone including me filed across the dark tarmac into a grim, grey hall. I was the only passenger actually disembarking and with no directions or helpful arrows in any language, I followed the murmur of voices down a dimly lit corridor to a stark office. </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Two bored, young Ivan’s in khaki uniform slouched at a table. They looked up at me in surprise. ‘Nyet, transits nyet.’ Presuming I was a wandering intransit passenger they waved me away.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Using two words of my limited Russian I attempted to correct them with, ‘<i>Da Tashkent, nyet transit</i>.’ </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Another angry nyet. Could pronunciation be the problem?</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘No Moscow,’ I resorted to baby talk with all the appropriate gestures and head shaking; ‘Tashkent me stay.’</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Nyet...’ A gruff no, sod off, you can't stay here. </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">One of the Ivan’s stood up looking jolly menacing. With my eyes glued to his holstered gun, I took a step back, mouth suddenly dry and held up my airline ticket. He studied it then abruptly left the room. Ivan 2 remained on guard.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The soldier returned leading a stern faced dragon lady with Madonna bleached hair who without a smile or introduction abruptly demanded passport and visa. My passport photo became a mug shot as her eyes lifted up and down, suspiciously comparing the two of me.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘How you <i>Ostrylia</i>, visa Singapore?’ she finally barked.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Gosh,’ I thought, ‘sprung so soon.’ Artfully avoiding the bribery bits, I started to explain. She interrupted ...’More slow, <i>pliss’</i>. I waffled on, hopefully giving a plausible explanation.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">While Blondie and the Ivan’s huddled over the documents, I swallowed nervously feeling Delhi's airport snack regurgitating. I wondered; did a dodgy visa still warrant a trip to the salt mine?</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘We haf no notice you stop Tashkent.’</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I shrugged, not my fault.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">A wall clock ticked away the seconds while the inquisition scrutinised me and the visa, and I desperately searched the walls for a way out.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Remembering old news clips of Mrs. Petrov in Australia and the Russian spies, I fervently hoped they wouldn’t drag me across the airport to the Moscow bound plane; under the circumstances, I could not afford to lose my shoes. Not a sound from outside penetrated the cell like room and for once I even wished for the dreaded <i>muzak</i>.</span></b></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Petrov Affair - 1954</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The huddle continued, heads the stupid <i>Ostrylian </i>stays, tails the big freeze in Moscow. I envied the ongoing passengers in the transit lounge with their kosher travel papers. How I suddenly wished to be in the young Kiwi’s shoes, even in Sergei’s clodhoppers. Oh foolish me. </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The minutes ticked away. I had never felt so utterly alone.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘You haf currency?’ the dragon lady suddenly asked. </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Besides the cunning money in my shoes, I was carrying a ridiculous number of one and five U.S. dollar notes. Warned about locals being unable to change large currency I had completely divested the money changers supply back at Changi Airport. </span></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Yes, a small <i>bag-arje</i> that doesn't want to go to Moscow either.’ Ha-ha, a smile, she liked that, maybe I was in.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">The soldiers finished counting, returning my dollars in neat bundles, Blondie shouted to unseen <i>bag-arje</i> handlers and switching to nice asked, ‘You mother? You haf child?’</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘Boy and a girl.’ I wondered what on earth that had to do with the price of Russian eggs.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">My <i>bag-arje</i> arrived. ‘Come’, said the Russian woman, ‘We go to terminal for foreigners; there you book ticket for Frunze. Be very careful. Keep <i>bag-arje</i> with you always; trust no one.’ Feeling both grateful and apprehensive at the same time I scurried along, following in her footsteps, my only friend in all Tashkent.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">‘I haf child too,’ she confided as we trekked across the concrete darkness of the deserted airport, ‘a girl. Is fifteen.’</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Wondering if the nights grilling had been merely a figment of my imagination I silently bid a relieved <i>da svidanya</i> to Mata Hari, my dubious alter ego, and hopefully goodbye to the salt mines as well. </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Clutching my <i>bag-arje</i> in one hand, I grabbed Blondie with the other as we disappeared into the night; two mature age women from opposite sides of the world enjoying a mutual exchange of domestic trivia.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">__________</span></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"><a href="http://rainbowrobs.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/rorting-soviet-system.html">Episode 3 -- Rorting the System</a> </span></b><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">©Robyn Mortimer 2010</span></b></span><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span></b></div>
RAINBOW ROBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08141114044077051409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-153880276225163680.post-45462281830250654502010-10-08T22:43:00.001-07:002021-04-08T12:31:11.918-07:001. WHY UZBEKISTAN?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Sb-I_9pK4go5Vridh2kSSp4K0jT5ZHkviyIc4CD9EKDPCdsfad939afjCXs48lSELXDOpXAvzWUgf7sqanNcFyTKX7XDBFugIJlsnTDnbKd9om-PAd5uKBfht2mYcBZYGyFAG-HOmkM/s1600/map_india_uzbekistan1-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Sb-I_9pK4go5Vridh2kSSp4K0jT5ZHkviyIc4CD9EKDPCdsfad939afjCXs48lSELXDOpXAvzWUgf7sqanNcFyTKX7XDBFugIJlsnTDnbKd9om-PAd5uKBfht2mYcBZYGyFAG-HOmkM/s320/map_india_uzbekistan1-1.jpg" width="276" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">UZBEKISTAN?</span> </span></i></h2>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Travel to out of the way places 2016 is fraught with untold danger - if it's not the fear of a Zika bight then it's the thought of a terrorist attack.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">But back when I packed my bag and set off to a destination I could barely spell much less locate on a map international travel of the type I was contemplating was in comparison a whole lot safer. </span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Sure, Russia had only a short while before eased their border restrictions, though as I very soon discovered they hadn't thought to tell all their minions that the rules had been changed.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Considering I was traveling with a dodgy visa and loaded with some undeclared American dollars I guess I was very lucky to survive the trip. </span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Happily it turned out to be the trip of a lifetime. </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"><b> </b><span style="font-size: x-large;">SOLO THROUGH CENTRAL ASIA</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">A confirmed wanderer</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> I had <span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">since childhood</span></span> been fascinated by stories of the fabled cities of Samarkand and Tashkent and of the ruthless men who rampaged through those pages of Central Asia’s history. I had already explored the far north borders of India, always wishing I could go that little bit further, infiltrate the iron clad borders of the U.S.S.R.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">An application for solo travel to various Central Asian ‘Stans’, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, <span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Turkmenistan </span>was met <span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">with</span> stony faced refusal <span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">by</span> Canberra’s Soviet consulate. Apparently they hadn’t been told the new communist catch words were perestroika and glasnost. Undeterred I decided to try my luck in Singapore where good fortune put me in touch with a charming young travel consultant I have chosen to call Mitzi.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Where I had received polite shrugs but no help Mitzi with a few little white lies worked the impossible, return Aeroflot tickets to Uzbekistan, a tourist visa of dubious authenticity allowing landing and departure in Tashkent and entry to a string of other towns and cities, an<span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">d more important, to other Stans</span>, and a flight that left Singapore the very next morning. Mind you it cost me a pretty penny but I certainly wasn’t going to quibble.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">A</span> hurried phone call to my husband back in Australia who I sometimes fondly call the <i>Reluctant Traveler</i> , <i>he does like to know where I might be at any given time</i>, and I made the rush trip to the airport with his strangled voice echoing in my ears... ‘Uz where?’ </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">After scouring the airport money changers for small note USA currency, I then took one extra</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> sneaky precaution against the unexpected. I padded my sale price but still very expensive Reeboks with the added insurance of $20 and $50 bank notes. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">We were an interesting bunch boarding the Aeroflot flight that day, the queue at the ticket counter included a number of Asian businessmen. In front of me stood a young man who looked for all the world like a young Aussie surfer, shorts, tank top, thongs and a sun tan that reeked of Bondi Beach. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">He was however none of the above, young Sergei was returning home to Kiev after a holiday with his ‘auntie and uncle’ in Melbourne and his luggage he informed me, was packed with chocolates and toothpaste and other goodies he said his Mum hadn’t seen for a long, long time.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Behind me in the queue was a slip of a girl weighed down with an oversize backpack who from the moment she uttered her first words I immediately knew was a Kiwi, a New Zealander. She was flying through to Moscow on a cheapie connection that would land her in Manchester some time in the next week. We offspring of the Southern Cross are an adventurous lot; she would see Moscow, and for a moment I wondered why I had no inner urge to go there. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Perhaps, as I found during much of my <span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">travels </span>preferred wandering is all a matter of predestination. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Pre-warned on the vagaries and shortcomings of Russian airlines and booked on the long Aeroflot haul from Singapore to Tashkent I wondered just what I might encounter. Should I for instance take along some survival gear, packet of bickies, dried fruit, a good stiff drink? </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I needn’t have worried. The Aeroflot flight itself to Tashkent proved a delight, the food was good and wine was plentiful though warm; my fellow passengers were both interesting and erudite; the only downside for some were the absence of movies and overhead lights. The entire cabin remained brightly lit during the entire, long night and I had to lean against the window, cupping my hands around my eyes to prevent the bright interior drowning out my view of the dark world below.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I snuggled into my window seat for the flight west to Delhi where the plane would refuel and take on more passengers before flying due north into the night sky, next stop Tashkent. Seldom had I felt so excited.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"> The topography of China and India’s far north regions were no strangers to me and as the plane lifted into darkness on the last leg of my journey I could visualise to the far east the brooding Tien Shan guarding China’s northernmost ramparts, and closer still the Himalayas standing sentinel over the extremities of India and Kashmir.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">But now as the aircraft banked to the northwest I could clearly see racing toward me an ever changing horizon of myriad valleys and mountain peaks. Unfolding below I had a grandstand view of the mighty Pamirs, that seemingly impenetrable mountain border that separates the Indian and Persian sub continent from the exotic lands of Central Asia.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Around me, sleeping passengers snuffled and coughed, Muscovite Russians returning from cheap holidays in Delhi, diamond merchants from Bangkok, turbaned and pyjama clad Indian workers on their way to menial jobs in the newly awakening lands to the north. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Sheltered and cocooned in the Aeroflot aircraft slowly droning its way ever closer to Tashkent I sat hunched towards the window. Below moonlight glistened on snow, a vast silvery void broken by small clusters of light spilling from remote hamlets. Occasionally a brief tracking of headlights from unseen vehicles signaled human presence, the moon reflecting on lakes and twisting rivers. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I couldn’t sleep, how could I when every mile drew me closer to the land of Tamerlane, to Tashkent and to Samarkand, to storybook tales and overly tinted photographs in old National Geographic magazines, to a history and a dream that had fascinated and drawn me ever closer until now, with the break down of the U.S.S.R. I<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=153880276225163680&postID=4546228183025065450" name="dragon"></a> had at last found a way to make it all a reality.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">I was fairly drunk on the euphoria of exotic travel, the expectation of new places and faces. Again I blessed the good fortune that brought me and Mitzi together.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">Little did I know at that precise moment, just what was waiting for me when the Aeroflot plane landed at Tashkent’s international airport... <span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">it was certainly no welcome committee!</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">___________</span></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"><a href="http://rainbowrobs.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/in-footsteps-of-dragon-lady.html">Episode 2 - Footsteps of the Dragon Lady</a> </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";">© Robyn Mortimer 2010</span></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"></span></b><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: "cambria" , "serif";"></span></b></span>RAINBOW ROBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08141114044077051409noreply@blogger.com0