Women & Children First

One who wants to get to know Tajikistan is well served to take a Tajik Air flight between Dushanbe and Khujand. It's a short flight, about 45 minutes in reasonable weather, a scenic hop over high mountains of stunning beauty, almost close enough below (!) to touch, and bubbling with air pockets providing the passenger with the opportunity to gain some unexpected thrills and lose the remains of lunch. The small jet - a YAK-40 - holds somewhere around 50 people, although it was designed for far fewer and seats have been added where convenient things like emergency aisles used to be. The seats themselves were clearly designed to be sat upon by 84-year-old Japanese grandmothers or other people the approximate width of vaulting poles, and not by the Tajiks, who are not to be confused with small people. Carryon regulations, of course, are very strict, given the tight space: I have yet to see anyone bring aboard a backhoe or a head of cattle, for example. Short of that, though, one gets the impression that one has wandered into the midst of some massive smuggling ring, as passengers stuff themselves in along with numerous shopping bags full of indiscernable goods; suitcases of wildly varying age and condition and size; boxes; crates; gigantic handbags and briefcases large enough to house the entire home office of, say, Microsoft. Finding an aisle seat (and depriving oneself of the ability to meditate on the beauty of the mountains and thereby to ignore the searing pain of one's seatmate's elbow grinding into one's ribs) permits the passenger a closer inspection of the passing baggage as it is slammed, bumped, grazed, shoved and ground into one's face and other upper regions. Taking the window seat, of course, allows one truly to enjoy the design of this marvellous aeronautical achievement, whose creators obviously realized that window-seat passengers would be overjoyed to have the curvature of the floor require that passenger to insert said passenger's knee into his or her nostril for the entire flight.

Appropriately, one enters the YAK-40 through what would be, were it a living creature, its anus, up a rough ramp wide enough only for one person at a time, which is to the good, as upon entering the plane one finds oneself squeezed between an attendant (who has nothing else to do but stand in the way) and the overflowing stowed luggage racks in an aisle no wider than a human foot. One looks in desperation for the opportunity to sit down and perhaps take another breath and there, up ahead, it is, an empty seat to sqeeze into, just past the potted plant and just below the birdcage shoved into the overhead compartment and just behind the screaming baby, there it is, a seat, in the aisle. And, of course, directly next to the evilly-grinning winner of the Largest Man In Tajikistan contest.

However, civility is preserved. As one attempts to climb up into the nether regions of the plane, one is politely informed by the flight attendant that women and children must board first. Pity them: they spend more time in the plane.

SUNSHINE

For nine days in a row - one entire workweek and the better part of two weekends - the rains have fallen on Dushanbe, not the soft and cleansing rain of Ireland, or the angry but thrilling downpours of the tropics, but a persistent, nagging, everpresent hard drizzle, driving heads under umbrellas, turning the streets to slippery mud, and dripping, dripping, dripping in a debilitating water torture. For nine days in a row, dirty wet clothes stayed dirty and wet for lack of clean hot water in which to wash them, and for lack of electricity to heat the water. Four days ago, the demigods of thermal comfort determined that the interests of someone would be best served by turning off what little heat my apartment building had, and, of course, the weather immediately turned cold. With no electricity, of course, space heaters won't work, so one does what one must: shiver.

But today, with the suddenness of the houselights after a sad drama, sunshine replaced the rain. Umbrellas went back to their hiding places and people appeared on the streets like some dark precipitate in a warmed jar of liquid. Nearby, four little girls, two in jeans, two in rainbow Tajik dresses, played by the curb, taking weeds recently pulled by some city worker or other from the planting strip and carefully replanting them, one by one, along the edge of the curb, drowning their roots with cupsful of water drawn from the storm drain, laughing and giggling at the sight of their accomplishments. The boys in the back yard resumed their endless soccer game, the booms of foot against ball and ball against concrete echoing through the neighborhood. Women bundling against the cold wind unrelieved by the strange new warm sun went about their errands. Young men took their places once more in their designated spots on corners and in doorways, cradled in the camaraderie that only unemployed young men can share. It is day again after a seemingly endless night, and one dares to call life good.

It will rain again tomorrow, they say, that this sunshine is only a cameo. No matter. Sunshine taken for granted, like a stranger growing accustomed to a far land, is bittersweet.