By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We take the Golden Road to Samarkand
Though James Elroy Flecker must be granted some poetic license, he never traveled to Central Asia, and did not have the chance to travel on his “Golden Road.” And golden it is most definitely not; far from it. Even before leaving Tashkent, the road surface is pocked and broken, and within a half-hour of leaving the outskirts of the city, it becomes almost impassable in places.
My driver, Volodya, and interpreter, Yelena, showed up right on time at my home-stay, and with little ceremony packed me off into Volodya’s red Lada. Volodya, a short, balding geologist, whose former government job disappeared after perestroika, now makes his living driving the few foreign tourists who come here around Uzbekistan. Yelena is a college student, working on a degree in English, and banking on the hope that it will be her ticket out of Uzbekistan. Both of them, in fact everyone I’ve met here so far, are of Russian nationality, and were either born here, or have lived most of their lives in Uzbekistan.
I must confess to being somewhat disappointed by this, as I had hoped to meet some “authentic” Uzbeks while here. Though these people who have lavished me with care are, and definitely consider themselves, true citizens of Uzbekistan, I feel somewhat like a visitor to South Africa who makes contact only with whites. While I am getting a clear picture of the country, it is being refracted through a peculiar lens.
When I ask them questions, they talk about their homeland with a wounded pride. It is their home, but their defensiveness about their legitimate claim to citizenship comes out in any conversation about their lives here. Mother Russia hovers over them, but many of them have never traveled beyond Uzbekistan’s borders, and they seem to exist in a twilight zone, between countries and allegiances. Thinking themselves Uzbek, they nevertheless talk awkwardly about their status here, and like former masters suddenly outnumbered, struggle to find a home in their own homeland.
Soon after leaving Tashkent, we followed a four-lane highway south through irrigated farm country. Though cotton made up the bulk of the crops I saw, some alfalfa, corn, melons, and orchards of fruit trees also lined the roads. But cotton was definitely king. I’ve been told that recently, the government has adopted a policy of reducing cotton production to 40 percent of their agricultural output, in hopes of reducing the drain on the Syr and Amu Darya rivers, and thereby restoring the Aral Sea.
The road crossed briefly into Kazakstan, and I inquired of Yelena if during the Soviet era there had been border controls between the republics, as there are today. She told me that these were new, and that all sorts of strange economies had evolved since perestroika. Kazakstan, being rich in oil, has become the discount gas station for the Tashkent region, with people driving south from the city to this small outcropping of Kazak territory. For about five miles, the road is lined with free-lance gas stations, and Volodya pulled over at one of these to top off his tank, and fill a jerry can, which rode with me in the back seat.
Crossing back into Uzbekistan, the gas stations are replaced by melon stands, but I didn’t think to ask whether Kazaks drive the extra miles for Uzbek melons. Volodya stopped at one of these stands and bought a melon for our lunch. At one o’clock we stopped at a tree-shaded roadside inn, and Volodya, wielding his knife, carved up the melon. It was very sweet, and so juicy we had to spend some time washing up afterwards at a water spigot in the courtyard of the inn.
Then the rutted road began climbing up into the rocky hills, and Volodya was forced to swerve into the opposite lanes on several occasions to avoid huge potholes, or overtake smoke-belching buses and trucks. It was a roller coaster ride all the way into Samarkand. The golden road must have evidently been paid for with fool’s gold.
It was then about two o’clock, and the temperature gauge dangling from my shoulder bag read 112. I was being baked. Volodya drove through the center of town, along tree shaded boulevards, and I caught glimpses of the domes and minarets of the city’s huge mosques towering over the tops of the trees as we drove past. Soon we pulled into the dusty driveway of our B&B, and I stepped out into the sweltering heat.
Volodya rang a bell next to a large gate, and a stout Russian woman with hennaed hair and a full row of gold teeth opened the gate. She greeted Volodya and Yelena warmly and then turned to me and, with a smile and a handshake, introduced herself as Zoya.
She ushered me into the courtyard and showed me inside the house and to my room. It was a large high-ceilinged room with a couple of twin beds, and the temperature inside seemed a good twenty-five degrees cooler.
Volodya had pulled the car into the courtyard and brought me my bag, whereupon I immediately asked if I could take a shower. Zoya showed my the bathroom, and I spent a good twenty minutes in there standing under the cool water, washing the sweat and dust off of me. I had polished off a liter and a half of water since we left Tashkent that morning, but my throat still was parched.
After showering, I joined the other three in the grape-arbored courtyard, where it was a little cooler. A few fruit trees and a small pool in the center helped to make the little plot a serene refuge. Yelena asked me if there was anything that I wanted to see that afternoon, but hinted that it would be nice to just sit in the courtyard for the rest of the day. The tour of the city was scheduled for the next day, so I told her there was nothing I’d rather do at the moment than stay there in the cool shade and relax.
So we lounged around until dusk, Volodya splashing in the pool and Yelena reading, while I updated my journal. Some doves cooed in the fruit trees, and Zoya kept bringing bottle after bottle of ice-cold mineral water. I was quite content.
For dinner, I asked Yelena and Volodya if I could take them out to the restaurant of their choice, but Yelena suggested we stay right there and have Zoya prepare a traditional Uzbek meal for us, saying that it would be better than any restaurant in town. That sounded just fine to me, and so Zoya got busy in her outdoor kitchen to one side of the courtyard, complete with a stove, grill, sink and small refrigerator. It seemed a logical way to escape the heat of a kitchen in this town—just build it outside.
At seven, we dined on several different kinds of salads, some made with carrots, others with egg plant, or cucumbers or potatoes, and to top it off, a huge, steaming bowl of plov, the national staple. It’s really sort of a rice pilaf, with big chunks of mutton and shredded carrots, and it’s quite filling. For dessert, we devoured several different kinds of melons, and Zoya brought out a cold bottle of sickly sweet shampansky. Yelena informed me that Volodya had become a grandfather for the first time the day before, so we all toasted him many times and poured the syrupy stuff down our throats.
When I finally retired to my room at ten, the heat of the day had been forgotten, and I collapsed on my bed, which sagged in the middle like a hammock, and started to drift off. Then I heard the mosquito…
Samarkand
Zoya pulled out all the stops at breakfast, and we were swamped with plates of fruit, cakes, some sort of small pancake-like fried cake smothered in sour cream, sausages, cheeses and tea. Unless things change, or I get sick (knock wood), there’s little chance of me losing any weight on this trip.
I waddled out to the car after breakfast, and we drove over to the Guri Amir mausoleum, where Timur (Tamerlane) and some of his sons and grandsons are buried, to pick up our guide, Victoria. She was there, waiting for us, and together we rode a short distance north of town to an archaeological dig called Afrasiob, the site of the original town of Samarkand, called Marakanda by Alexander the Great when he overran it in 329 BC, and obliterated by Jingis Khan in 1220.
There’s little more than sandy-colored mounds of dirt there now, though we also took a quick spin through the nearby museum, which has some ancient artifacts from the dig on display. Victoria talked a mile a minute, filling me with factoids which I forgot before we even made it back to the car. No wait, I remember that the people living there were Zoroastrians until the Arabs invaded around the 8th century, and worshipped fire. So there.
Next we drove to the nearby Ulug Beg observatory. Ulug Beg, Timur’s grandson, and Central Asia’s most renowned scholar, poet, and astronomer, built a three-story observatory in the 1420s on a hilltop outside of town, which housed a 120-foot high astrolabe made of granite, which Ulug Beg used to calculate the solar year to within 58 seconds of it’s actual length, according to Victoria. The observatory fell into ruin and its location was lost after his eldest son sliced Ulug Beg’s head off because he thought the old man wasn’t a good enough Muslim, and it (the observatory, not his head) was only unearthed again in 1908. All that remains is the lower half of the astrolabe, but even that is an impressive sight.
Shahi-Zinda
With the temperature already over 100 degrees, we next visited the Shahi-Zinda; a narrow street lined with tombs of Timur’s female relatives. The small mausoleums are decorated in some of Samarkand’s finest examples of carved and glazed terra-cotta tiles, ceramic mosaics, and beautiful examples of majolica, or large panels of tile that are repeatedly glazed and fired with different colors, making the final effect astonishingly complex and ornate.
The site is something of a pilgrimage site for female Muslims, and many women and their daughters were visiting there while we wandered in and out of the tombs.
The Registan
Our last stop before lunch was at the Registan, which means “sandy place” in Uzbek. This vast square, flanked by huge medressas, or Islamic academies, on three sides, is the place most often pictured in images of Samarkand. The three majestic medressas are an awesome sight, with blue, yellow and white majolica, tile mosaics, and carved wooden panels that are a feast for the eyes. And the domed chambers inside are gilded treasure palaces. Unfortunately, the city was about to host an international music festival on the square, and temporary scaffolding and bleachers diminished the effect of the place. Still, it took little imagination to visualize the square in Samarkand’s heyday.
Victoria left us to have lunch in the cool courtyard of one of the city’s Korean restaurants. Uzbekistan has a large population of Koreans, most of who are descendants of Koreans who originally fled the pre-World War II Japanese invasion of their country and settled in the Russian Far East. Stalin got nervous about their presence in 1937, and decreed that they should be deported en masse to Uzbekistan. I’m told that they were given 24 hours to get their affairs in order before they were loaded onto cattle cars and sent the long distance across Siberia. Now, their children, like the Russian nationals here, consider themselves Uzbeks.
After lunch, Victoria rejoined us for a quick turn through the bazaar, where the smell of spices wafted, and fruits and vegetables of every description were on display. Right next to the bazaar is the Bibi Khanym mosque, a huge, crumbling structure named for Timur’s favorite wife.
The legend of the place has it that Bibi Khanym ordered the construction of what was the biggest mosque in Timur’s empire while he was on one of his frequent business trips slaughtering people across Central Asia. The architect, a Persian, became so infatuated with Bibi Khanym that he ordered a slowdown in the construction in order to remain in her presence as long as possible. When she found out, she became incensed, but the architect would only agree to get back in gear if she would grant him a kiss. She finally relented, and the work was completed. I’ve heard two versions of this story’s finale; one in which Timur comes home and chops the architect’s head off, and the other in which he escapes in the nick of time and hightails it back to Persia. The truth is probably neither, and the legend apocryphal, but hey, it’s a good story to tell the tourists.
Guri Amir Mausoleum
Our last stop was back at the Guri Amir mausoleum, the final resting place of Timur, Ulug Beg, and a few other notable relatives. More tile, majolica, gold, onyx, etc., and my eyes were getting as glazed-over as the tiles. Timur’s tombstone is a huge slab of jade, which was stolen and cracked in half by a Persian warlord who carted it home in 1740. But he had a run of very bad luck afterwards that soon returned the stone. In June of 1941, a Russian archaeologist unearthed the tomb and read the inscription underneath: “Whoever opens this will be defeated by an enemy greater than I.” Wouldn’t you know it, the very next day Hitler invaded Russia. Or so the story goes…
We returned to the B&B, stopping to pick up a bottle of vodka. I had made the mistake of mentioning the night before that I had not yet consumed anywhere near the quantity of vodka I had been expecting to, and Volodya was determined to rectify that situation. After I showered, he pulled the bottle from the pool in the courtyard where it had been left to cool, and proceeded to fill a couple of water glasses. We toasted, and he chugged his glass dry. I had no intention of following where he was leading, but every time I took a swallow, he refilled my glass to the top. We polished off the whole bottle before dinner.
Fortunately for Volodya, whom I must admit drank the bulk of the first bottle, Zoya had another waiting for us in the fridge, and he tore off the seal with gusto. I was ready to slide under the table just as Zoya started bringing us the first courses of dinner, and I shoveled heaps of the various salads and deviled eggs down, hoping to fill up my stomach before Volodya could pour any more vodka down there.
We were joined at the table by an American man and woman, who were taking a break from their jobs in Kyrgyzstan and had decided to see the sights in Uzbekistan. They were a retired couple working for the Central Asian-American Enterprise Fund; an AID sponsored organization, which sends consultants to the Central Asian republics to troubleshoot struggling new enterprises. Herb was a retired Proctor and Gamble executive who had just finished a stint helping a Kyrgyz water-bottling factory work the bugs out of their business plan, and Barb, his wife, was the one who goaded Herb into coming here after she got tired of having him bouncing off the walls back home in Cincinnati. Or so she said.
I wasn’t eager for their company, my first impression of them was negative—they seemed so out of place here. But after talking with Herb after dinner (Barb had gone to bed early) I warmed to the old guy. He was very self-effacing, making light of his lasting influence here, and had first-hand knowledge of the massive obstacles these newly capitalistic societies were facing. “Most of what I do is just Marketing 101, you know?” he told me over watermelon. “I mean, I have to come up with suggestions that you’d think would be self-evident, but in a place where everything happened because some guy got an order from other guy up the chain, the idea of independent thinking is really new to most of these guys. I mean, many of them are real sharp, they just don’t know where to begin, you know?” He had a habit of adding, “you know” to almost every sentence, you know? Herb lamented the red tape and lack of clear laws and regulations, which he said change at the drop of a hat, but he thought the next generation had a real shot at making a go at things. As for this one, he said: “I don’t know, you feel like you’re just not having any impact, you know?” I didn’t, but nodded anyway.
So then I went to bed and tried to sleep off the vodka, you know?