Tuesday, February 27, 2007

A FEW MORE PICTURES (BORED YET?)

My apartment: TV room, or whatever. Note the piano. Sadly, it's badly out of tune.








Bathroom (Duh!). Note the blue plastic trash can. It's filled with fresh (?!) water in case, that is, whenever, the city water stops flowing.





Bedroom closets








Bedroom. Note the zebra-skin spread. And the radiator, which is rarely hot.









No Comment. OK, Comment: It means "snow" in Tajik.







My office.








View from my office window, when it's not raining.

Monday, February 26, 2007

CENTRAL PARK

His statue still stands in the park that once bore his name, this Lenin, the setting sun at his back, keeping watch with arm outretched - is he calling the people to follow him, or is he reaching out for the least bit of attention paid?

At his feet (does he see huddled masses seeking his teaching, or Lilliputians with ropes and pins?) the people run walk sit chat play laugh consider the future, children play at soccer hopscotch tag-you're-it and games long forgotten by ours, solemn men drink tea solemnly and in the deepest solemnity design the lives of women children lesser men, quiet women stand behind their folding tables offering soda cellphones kebab toys candy shashlik things from China, young mothers on park benches cradle infants, and everywhere people walk, stroll, amid the smells of tea tobacco grilling meats and too much perfume, the sounds of laughing children on the merry-go-round the tilt-a-whirl the ferris wheel a costly treat at a few cents a ride, headscarves and blue jeans, rainbow dresses and nike tee shirts, smiles and not-smiles, a secret shy glance at the passing foreigner, a weed in a rose garden, a guest but who sent the invitation?

Backlit by the sunset facing the coming dark watching the crowds collect their children coats picnics books he wonders: is it yet my time to leave?

Friday, February 23, 2007

MY DUSHANBE DIGS

A few photos of my apartment. It's in a crummy-looking building that is on the outside a monument to Soviet drabness and on the inside a fine example of Tajik artistry. I'll have some outside photos later, along with some pix of my office and the area in general, so I can bore all you good readers later.

Enclosed parlor, off living room, with south-facing view.










Living room, from entry hall









Kitchen, from entry hall










Another view of living room, from entry hall








Kitchen, from breakfast "nook"










Entry hall from doorway, looking toward bath and den. Kitchen is to the right, living room to the left.






Living room from parlor. Bedroom is toward back left.









Somewhere in the bowels of my camera are photos of the bedroom and bathroom, which randomly decided not to transfer to my laptop. I'll try again tomorrow. I didn't take closeups, being an idiot, but there is original artwork on all the living room walls, done by Tajik artists of international repute; the carpets are Uzbek, Tajik and Afghan; and slip covers are Greek silk. Now, if it only had reasonable heat!

Thursday, February 22, 2007

SOME PICTURES FROM ISTANBUL AND DUSHANBE

The Blue Mosque, top, and Hagia Sofia, bottom.


While the Hagia Sofia was first a church, then a mosque, now a national museum, the Blue Mosque is still a working house of worship. Its recorded calls to prayer are quite loud and if you stay nearby they will definitely awaken you at daybreak!


A typical nighttime street scene in Sultanahmet, the old city (sorry about its being on its side, I forgot to edit it before posting, dummie that I am):











The Cisterns, a really neat place. There's an underground cafe there as well:











OK, this was a lousy job of posting pictures! The uploading process takes forever, and I'm trying to do this amidst work stuff (annoying how that gets in the way!), and even though the image above is portrait-style in my photo program, it still comes out landscape here! I'll try more tomorrow.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

DUSHANBE DELIGHTS

Having been in Tajikistan now for ten days, I'm finally getting around to posting something about the country I'll be in for a good while. Sorry, but between work, socializing (as often as I can!) and moving into an apartment, I haven't had much time for blogging.

I arrived in the dark of early morning (6am) on a Tajikistan Airlines flight from Istanbul, and, contrary to general opinion of the airline, I had an enjoyable flight with very little confusion. Well, OK, they did change the boarding gate in Istanbul at the last minute, without any warning (at least not in a language I know!), and I almost wound up going to Egypt, but otherwise an uneventful 4-hour flight to Dushanbe. When we landed, however, we wound up standing on the runway in the rain (this is the rainy season, of course) without any idea where to go, as all the buildings were dark. Eventually someone signaled us to follow her to a building where the lights were just being turned on, and where we had to show passports, go through metal detectors (why? we're LEAVING the airport!) and fill out immigration forms. After that I was lucky enough to be met by a driver from the guest house I'd be staying at, who was able to direct me to the baggage claim area, which, of course, was in a different building, requiring another march through the rain. But the bags came quickly, nothing missing, nothing damaged.

The driver, who of course spoke no English (almost no one here does), took me to my temporary lodging, a beautiful and modern guest house (5 rooms?) set way back from the street in its own locked compound. Having been without sleep for eons I tried to get a nap but between Doris, the cat, who decided to camp out on my bed, and the excitement of being in a strange land, there was no chance of my sleeping. Fortunately our Country Director, bless her heart (no, Barbara, I'm NOT sucking up!), had left me a cell phone and a note to call her when I woke up. We met for tea and I got a quick tour of downtown Dushanbe, still, of course, in the rain.

Dushanbe is a true study in contrasts. The old Soviet infrastructure - both physical and cultural - seems to have deteriorated badly but is being replaced, gradually I think, by a new Tajik culture. For example, while most people speak Russian and business is conducted in that language, people on the street speak in Tajik (a Persian language, which I've heard referred to as "hillbilly Farsi"), and most signs, while in the Cyrillic alphabet, are in the Tajik language. I have to sound out the word, slowly, first, and then try to figure which language it's in!

There are no street signs here, and it seems that most people really don't know the names of the streets, with the exception of the major ones (Rudaki, Aini, Tursun-Zade and Ismoil Somoni). One asks and gets directions with reference to important buildings, monuments, etc.

This is the rainy season. It rains more than half the time now, generally lightly, and occasionally there's some wet snow. I understand this will be the case until April, when, reportedly, the weather will turn warm and dry. One hopes!

Food is really cheap here, and there are several very good restaurants. Generally an entree costs in the range of 10 somonis - aboutUS$3. Even at the fanciest restaurant in town - La Grande Dame, owned by the owner of the guest house (Marion, an Australian woman) - an entree with salad, bread and wine will run only about$10 at most. So far, I've had lunch or dinner at Tajik, continental, middle-eastern, Armenian, Indian, and Chinese restaurants, and haven't had a bad meal yet.

There is no bourbon whiskey (or any kind of American whiskey) to be found in Dushanbe. I'm on withdrawal from Old Fashioneds. I plan to bathe in them when I get back!

Bad things: the streets are full of potholes big enough to be tourist attractions. My apartment could double as a wine cellar; it's a constant 55 degrees there (but I have a space heater in the bedroom to keep me alive at night); the availability of utilities is random; a couple of days ago I had to electricity in the morning; yesterday I had hot water but no cold water (!) and, to make up for it, this morning I had cold water but no hot. I have a combo electric & gas stove, which is good, as one of those is guaranteed to be out at any given time. There are evidently no traffic rules at all, and crossing the street is an adventure worthy of the skills of Lewis and Clark. And the mud! Everywhere there is mud. One quickly learns not to wear good shoes or light-colored pants. There are, sadly, crowds of unemployed young and middle-aged men hanging around the streets all day - while Tajikistan is making progress, it's still a very poor country.

Good things: it is beautiful. Dushanbe is in a small bowl-shaped valley surrounded by high snow-covered mountains, which, on the odd day when it's not raining, I can see from my office window. There are trees everywhere, lining the streets, and an abundance of parks which, when the mud subsides, evidently will have grass. The city is safe, I've walked just about everywhere downtown at night without the slightest feeling of any threat. The people seem gracious and welcoming to foreigners. Speaking of contrasts: the pre-teen boy, dressed in Wal-Mart rejects, leaning up against a rusted-out, useless, Soviet-era dial pay phone, chatting on a cell phone; the old lady, dressed in traditional Tajik garb - long, flowery, multicolored dress and headscarf - listening to her iPod; apartment buildings looking from the outside like emigrees from the South Bronx, but beautiful and modern on the inside.

I went on my first shopping expedition Saturday morning, when I made the inconvenient discovery that the apartment came without a supply of toilet paper. Fortunately, there are supermarkets here, where most things are available on any given day, although any particular item but not be available the next day! But things are cheap; bottled water (a necessity!) costs about 17 cents a liter, for example, and a liter of orange juice is less than $1. Here one quickly realizes that numerous trips to the store are necessary as, without a car and having to walk about a mile to the store, you don't buy more than you can carry home.

Naturally, we have satellite TV at my apartment, about 500 channels, about 2 of them worth watching (the rest are bad Italian and Arabic stations showing bad movies and bad game shows). We do get BBC World and CNN International and, at odd times, C-SPAN, and on radio we get NPR for some reason.

Travelling north one day to the city of Khujand, I got to see the remains of a fortress built by Alexander the Great. Evidently that was one of the limits of his empire. I wonder if he got tired of power outages??

O, and the Chinese food here is delicious, and is nothing like that at home. General Tsao has yet to make an appearance in Dushanbe!

I'm beginning to feel the stirrings of an impresssion that had this country avoided Soviet rule for most of the 20th century, it would now be an exotic paradise. Just thinking of the opportunities for ski resorts here...!

Monday, February 19, 2007

ISTANBUL: MOSQUITO MEN

Reportedly mosquitos are attracted to carbon dioxide and find their victims through our respiration. In the same vein (pun intended) the plethora of touts, salesman, con artists and generally scary people are attracted to tourists by - what? our evident foreign appearance perhaps? Anyway, you can't walk fifteen feet in old Istanbul (Sultanahmet)without someone trying to pull you into his restaurant or store, or trying to sell you a carpet, or offering to be your guide, or scamming you in some fashion or other. This must succeed, I suppose, or they wouldn't be doing it; apparently most people are too polite to tell them to buzz off, or ignore them completely despite their most adamant pleas for attention. One idiot simply decided to follow us, for over a mile; when we'd stop, he'd stop; when he passed us, he'd turn around for time to time to see where we were and just loiter until we started to catch up. Finally, being sick of him, we went up to him and confronted him. While he claimed to speak no English, Eileen's threatening to call the police (same word in Turkish) and my threatening to break his neck, seemed to work.

Istanbul was, otherwise, wonderful. We stayed at the Hotel Ibrahim Pasha in Sultanahmet, a really lovely small hotel (about fifteen rooms) done in traditional Turkish style, and with a terrific location for seeing the sights of Sultanahmet (Blue Mosque, Hagia Sofia, Topkapi Palace, Grand Bazaar and Spice Bazaar) ancient cisterns, etc.). A typical day starts with waking up to the amplified calls of the muzzeizins at dawn (I suppose this could become tedious, but for the few days we were there, it was, well, romantic)and then enjoying a really delicious Turkish breakfast, free, at the hotel. They also have a very comfortable lounge with leather sofas and a warm and comforting fireplace. The staff fall all over themselves to be of as much help in anything as they can be.

Having used two days to tour Sultanahmet, and tiring of the touts and hawkers, we spent the next couple of days on the opposite shore of the Golden Horn. Because the main, or modern, part of the city is on the top of a steep hill (overlooking the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus) we forewent (is that a word?) walking and took a cab (the driver didn't even cheat us!) to Taksim Square (yes, of course: a taxi to Taksim)and walked down the main shopping street - it's about a mile long, very wide, and closed to vehicle traffic except deliveries and the old streetcar that runs along its middle) It's bounded by modern stores and restaurants and seems to be the place where Istanbulus themselves hang out, quite croweded both day and night. The southern terminus of the street is Tunel Square, where one can catch an underground funicular to the Golden Horn shore for only about$.30 US. We did this and then took the ferry across the Bosphorus so Eileen and I could be in Asia for the first time! The public transit in Istanbul is great, clean, modern and cheap, and easy to figure out (e.g., buy a token at a booth, put it in the turnstile, and board! No complicated fare cards or "driver has no change" problems here!

I have lots of pictures to post but they're on my private laptop which I'll need to bring to the office (I'm in Dushanbe as I type this) so I can upload some to this blog!

I LOVE LUFTHANSA!

Eileen and I flew from Newark to Istanbul for a few days of being together before being apart for four months. My reservations were made for me by ABA on United Airlines, so we reserved the same flight for Eileen. US airlines, of course, provide the most miserable service they can possibly design, and nickle-and-dime passengers like the innkeeper in Les Mis, so we were thrilled to find that the flight was actually operated by Lufthansa. Against all common sense, I brought my (well, actually, my daughter Patricia's) banjo along, adding yet one more to what was already the limit of free baggage for the airlines; but Lufthansa took it without charging me a single cent! (Most airlines would have charged $85!) - although when we got to Istanbul, I noticed that they had put a small break in the banjo case; not enough to complain about, though. Aboard the flight, whereas US airlines generally charge $4 or more for a tiny bottle of wine, Lufthansa flight attendants kept walking up and down the aisles with a bottle of red in one hand and a bottle of white in the other and kept filling our cups! To understate, it was a very happy flight!

However: and it's not Lufthansa's fault, but Frankfurt airport was the pits. We had to "deplane" (I hate that word) on the runway and job aboard a very overcrowed bus to take us to the terminal, where (for no reason I can figure out, since we never left a "secure" area) we had to go through security inspection again in order to go to the gate for our flight to Istanbul. Then, again, we had to jump aboard a crowded (and this time smelly) bus to take us to our plane. We felt most unwelcome there. Then again, we felt unwelcome in Newark, too...