A Carpet Ride to Khiva: Seven Years on the Silk Road by Christopher Aslan Alexander

he and his men had done.
    ‘I have offered bribes to the right officials.I told them they could even take 30 per cent of the money owed us, but still I haven’t seen one som . It is a bad thing to tell my workers who worked so hard, “I know that you must feed your families, but I have no money for you.” ’
    I was amazed at such treatment, although I later became, if not inured, at least unsurprised by such tales. Corruption was an accepted part of everyday life andmost people expected to pay a bribe to get a job, a bribe to obtain their salary, and a bribe to get it paid in cash to avoid an even larger bribe needed to extricate their money from the bank. Abdullah – the wayward middle son – had a similar story to tell. He had landed a lucrative contract working on the President of Karakalpakstan’s mansion. It was a huge job and he took a band of men fromKhiva up to Nukus, capital of the semi-autonomous region, to help him. He paid for the labour and materials himself, fully expecting to be reimbursed by the President. The work finished, he waited for his wages, but was fobbed off each time with promises that the money would be available soon. By the time I left Khiva seven years later, Abdullah had still not been paid, despite three or four tripsa year to demand what was owed. Each time, he would return to Khiva dejected and get himself drunk.
    Life with my Uzbek family revolved around meals which, in turn, revolved around television. Although actual entertainment was relatively scarce, the family seemed inured to the tedium of songs and sonnets about glorious motherlands, schoolchildren reciting epic poems dedicated to the President,the montages of historic mosques and madrassahs, new factories, happy workers hand-picking cotton, collective farm bosses marvelling at the size of the melon harvest, etc.
    World news consisted of disasters culled from the BBC or Euronews, juxtaposed with happy domestic news of another factory opened or a record wheat crop. Russians joked that if you wanted to see heaven on earth you shouldwatch Uzbek TV – and to see hell on earth, you should actually visit.
    What made television watchable for most Uzbeks were the dubbed soap operas from Mexico or Brazil. The most successful telenovela , entitled Esmeralda , was an implausibly melodramatic tale of a rich blind girl, swapped at birth with a young village boy who grew up as heir apparent. Blind Esmeralda met and fell in love withhim but then a dashing young doctor restored her eyesight, leaving a protracted dilemma as to which lover she should choose. It was shown every night at nine, and life ground to a halt as the nation gathered around their television sets. Guests left wedding banquets early, and buses to Tashkent timed their evening stop at a tea-house so as not to miss an episode. In summer I walked home with thedubbed voices of José Armando and Esmeralda drifting through the open doors of each house I passed.
    The first series of Dallas also proved a popular hit and sparked increased bazaar sales in shoulder pads and bright, polka-dotted fabrics. All of Khiva was rapt, ignoring the bad dubbing, laughing and weeping with the characters. I became something of a prophet, foretelling Bobby’s imminentdemise.
    ‘Aslan, don’t say such a thing!’ Zulhamar gasped, spitting to ward off any bad luck I might have incurred. Yet a few months later Bobby died as predicted. Zulhamar and some of our neighbours tearfully discussed the funeral around the local well, noting that no one wore white for mourning, there was no weeping over the coffin, and they even allowed women to attend the burial. My successfulprediction was also considered, and I became something of a television seer, predicting Bobby’s return to life. This was flatly denounced as impossible, for hadn’t he just died? There were also gasps of horror at the prospect of JR being shot. On our street, drama – whether dubbed and on screen or played out in a domestic