A Carpet Ride to Khiva: Seven Years on the Silk Road by Christopher Aslan Alexander Page A
Authors: Christopher Aslan Alexander
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squabble next door – was all real.
* * *
I felt it was timeto develop a more active social life and make some friends, so I took up Zafar the wood-carver’s invitation to visit his house. He lived in Kosmabot, just outside Khiva, and his house was easy to identify, as there was a pile of huge tree trunks against his front wall. These were black elm – a hardwood getting scarcer due to disease. I asked him if they planted new saplings to replace the trees felled.They didn’t. But he assured me they would never chop down one of these ancient trees if there was so much as a leaf still growing, for that would be a terrible sin.
I was ushered inside and took off my shoes as Zafar poured water over my hands from a copper jug that had been warming on a stove at the entrance. The warm water from my hands drained into an ornate copper basin and I rememberedthe golden rule not to flick but to wring the water off my hands, as each drop flicked would become a jinn (devil).
We went through to the guestroom, where the walls were spray-painted in bright lime green with wallpaper-effect red roses. Every Khiva guestroom wall displayed either a giant plastic gold wristwatch clock or a Mecca clock garlanded with plastic flowers. Like most guestrooms,there was little furniture other than a long, low banqueting table surrounded by corpuches and a TV and stand.
The table – barely visible beneath its contents – groaned with the weight of food. In the centre congregated bottles of wine, vodka and vivid soft drinks. Next to these was a large bowl of fruit and a stack of round, flat Khorezm loaves, and radiating from these were small platesof cookies, cakes, salads, nuts and dried fruit. There were two large empty bowls, at odds with the general excess. They were for slinging tea dregs, apple cores and sweet wrappers – an elegantly simple solution to waste disposal.
I made the mistake of eating too much of what were, after all, mere starters, and felt quite full by the time large platters of plov were brought through. Zafar’sbrothers joined us and I was introduced to them in turn: Javlon, Jasoul, Jahongir, Jamshid.
‘How many brothers have you got?’ I asked, as yet another appeared.
‘Can you guess how many people live in our house?’ was Zafar’s playful reply. ‘There are 24 of us!’
He numbered off each married son and corresponding wife and children. Each married brother had a separate room where heand his wife and children would sleep. The younger brothers and sisters all bundled into one large room at night, sleeping on corpuches which were then stacked up on top of a chest during the day.
‘So what do you do if you and your wife want to, you know …’ I asked, not sure if this was too personal a subject. Zafar grinned, explaining that they just learned to stay up well after the childrenwere asleep and be quiet about it.
As we ate, Zafar’s rotund father joined us and was soon back-slapping me as he poured out shots of vodka. One presumption of mine had been that people in Muslim Uzbekistan wouldn’t drink. These, however, were post-Soviet Muslims; three men could happily dispatch two bottles of vodka and still go to work the next day. I hate vodka but felt obliged to atleast down the 50 grams that Zafar’s father had cajoled me into drinking. But before that, Zafar asked me to make a toast, his father roaring approval and adding more vodka to my drinking bowl.
After more plov and toasts (I toasted with tea, after Zafar told his father that I had an allergy to vodka) Zafar offered to show me their workshop. I was presented with plastic slippers and a torchas we went out into the garden, detouring for a toilet-stop where I banged my head hard on the lintel to the pit latrine.
The workshop was simple and some of the apprentices were still there, working late into the evening. Zafar’s eldest brother was the usta or master who oversaw the workshop and was responsible for the main carpentry. The second
* * *
I felt it was timeto develop a more active social life and make some friends, so I took up Zafar the wood-carver’s invitation to visit his house. He lived in Kosmabot, just outside Khiva, and his house was easy to identify, as there was a pile of huge tree trunks against his front wall. These were black elm – a hardwood getting scarcer due to disease. I asked him if they planted new saplings to replace the trees felled.They didn’t. But he assured me they would never chop down one of these ancient trees if there was so much as a leaf still growing, for that would be a terrible sin.
I was ushered inside and took off my shoes as Zafar poured water over my hands from a copper jug that had been warming on a stove at the entrance. The warm water from my hands drained into an ornate copper basin and I rememberedthe golden rule not to flick but to wring the water off my hands, as each drop flicked would become a jinn (devil).
We went through to the guestroom, where the walls were spray-painted in bright lime green with wallpaper-effect red roses. Every Khiva guestroom wall displayed either a giant plastic gold wristwatch clock or a Mecca clock garlanded with plastic flowers. Like most guestrooms,there was little furniture other than a long, low banqueting table surrounded by corpuches and a TV and stand.
The table – barely visible beneath its contents – groaned with the weight of food. In the centre congregated bottles of wine, vodka and vivid soft drinks. Next to these was a large bowl of fruit and a stack of round, flat Khorezm loaves, and radiating from these were small platesof cookies, cakes, salads, nuts and dried fruit. There were two large empty bowls, at odds with the general excess. They were for slinging tea dregs, apple cores and sweet wrappers – an elegantly simple solution to waste disposal.
I made the mistake of eating too much of what were, after all, mere starters, and felt quite full by the time large platters of plov were brought through. Zafar’sbrothers joined us and I was introduced to them in turn: Javlon, Jasoul, Jahongir, Jamshid.
‘How many brothers have you got?’ I asked, as yet another appeared.
‘Can you guess how many people live in our house?’ was Zafar’s playful reply. ‘There are 24 of us!’
He numbered off each married son and corresponding wife and children. Each married brother had a separate room where heand his wife and children would sleep. The younger brothers and sisters all bundled into one large room at night, sleeping on corpuches which were then stacked up on top of a chest during the day.
‘So what do you do if you and your wife want to, you know …’ I asked, not sure if this was too personal a subject. Zafar grinned, explaining that they just learned to stay up well after the childrenwere asleep and be quiet about it.
As we ate, Zafar’s rotund father joined us and was soon back-slapping me as he poured out shots of vodka. One presumption of mine had been that people in Muslim Uzbekistan wouldn’t drink. These, however, were post-Soviet Muslims; three men could happily dispatch two bottles of vodka and still go to work the next day. I hate vodka but felt obliged to atleast down the 50 grams that Zafar’s father had cajoled me into drinking. But before that, Zafar asked me to make a toast, his father roaring approval and adding more vodka to my drinking bowl.
After more plov and toasts (I toasted with tea, after Zafar told his father that I had an allergy to vodka) Zafar offered to show me their workshop. I was presented with plastic slippers and a torchas we went out into the garden, detouring for a toilet-stop where I banged my head hard on the lintel to the pit latrine.
The workshop was simple and some of the apprentices were still there, working late into the evening. Zafar’s eldest brother was the usta or master who oversaw the workshop and was responsible for the main carpentry. The second
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