Ismoili Center

The Ismoili Center of Dushanbe is one of several like it around the world. The spiritual leader of the Ismoilis is the Agha Khan, who lives in Switzerland and went to Harvard. He has a development network that does lots of good work around the globe in health, microfinance and other sectors.

The new Center is far and away the most beautiful and architecturally interesting building in Dushanbe, and I was wishing as we walked through and around it that others would attempt to imitate it instead of the much more popular Soviet architecture. To some degree, many are limited by materials available--rebar and concrete only go so far. The bricks for this building were made specifically for it in Samarkand, 3 million of them, and then shipped here. Not everyone has that kind of money, but some of the new big construction projects are just boxy.

The Ismoili Center isn't fully open yet, but they are giving tours. There is an amazing prayer hall inside, which you can see at http://www.theismaili.org/cms/891/Gallery-Architecture-of-the-Ismaili-Centre-Dushanbe

Designs on the Ismoili Center. The blue bricks are actually script, but it's far too difficult for me to read it in this form.

Diana and one of her English students, Uktam, in the inner courtyard of the Center. Uktam is a really nice guy.
The Death Star--I mean, Hyatt Regency Dushanbe. It is nice inside. It sits just opposite to the Ismoili Center (unfortunately).

Read more about the Ismaili community here:

http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=104448

Hissar town and fort

Hissar is just 25 minutes west of Dushanbe, towards the Uzbek border. Hissar town is the capital of Hissar district, which lies just below the Hissar mountain range. We took a day trip to the fort and did some bargaining in the bazaar there, and found that the Dushanbe bazaar is cheaper.

Pepsi seems to have forgotten about this installation. Their branding in Tajikistan may suffer.

2 guys sitting on top of wood sheeting. They invited us to their house after we talked for a while. People outside of Dushanbe are very hospitable.

This is the Hissar Fort. It was built a long time ago, I think in the 15th century. It's been reconstructed since, but I'm not sure to what degree, that is, how much of the original remains. There are forts like this all around Tajikistan. Until the 1920s, when this area was incorporated into the Soviet Union, it was part of the Khanate of Bukhara. Political boundaries shifted often, and forts were necessary defense posts.

Diana and the view behind the fort to the Hissar range
An older gentleman walks towards the Fort. He would circle around the fort and come in from the opposite side, where Diana snapped a shot of him, below.

no they're not amber waves of grain. They're amber waves of uncultivated hills with the Hissar range in the background. This scene reminds me of Colorado, but it's just outside of Dushanbe.

This is Diana's photo. This guy was just cool. He told me I was a mensch for learning Tajik.
Some kids at the top of the hill behind the Hissar Fort
Looking back towards Dushanbe and the mountains from Hissar, from the top of a hill.
The Hissar Fort, with villages towards the southwest.
The trip to Hissar was nice, because we were able to navigate our way around easily, the first time we've been able to do that, so far. My Tajiki finally started to come together, too, so that I could chat with people, explain where we were going and why, what I do in Tajikistan, etc.

Vahdat and Cold Winters

These are pictures from Vahdat, a town about 20km east of Dushanbe. Vahdat has good connections with Dushanbe, many people commute into Dushanbe for work, there is always transport and the road connecting the two cities is very good. Vahdat, however, lacks electricity in the winter. Homes are supplied with electricity for only a few hours each day. I came to Vahdat once before with the World Food Program, who distributes food-aid to patients on TB treatment. Talking with a nurse at the health facility there, I said I liked Vahdat more than Dushanbe because it was a little calmer and quieter. She immediately offered me her house in trade for our apartment in Dushanbe, laughing, and said, "You have electricity there! You need to come back to Vahdat in the winter and see how you like it then!" She's right, I'm sure I would find it more difficult to live there in the cold.

Electricity is rationed for most places outside of Dushanbe, so that people have 3-4 hours per day when they can cook. Apparently this has to do with the water level in the main resevoir that supplies hydroelectic power to Dushanbe and most of the country. There is natural gas in the country, but the main supply is Uzbekistan, which doesn't like Tajikistan for various reasons ranging from ethnic feuds to water rights. Uzbekistan quotes Tajikistan a high price for natural gas, Tajikistan threatens to cut off Uzbekistan's water supply, etc. The political systems of each country are such that the population does not greatly influence the outcome of negotiations, and nobody really knows how deals do or don't get made. All people know is they have no way to cook or stay warm in the winter. Diesel and gas generators are popular, small ones produce enough electricity for lights. Only wealthy families have large generators that produce enough watts for heating.

Only the governments of our two countries know, but if all the gossip is true then Tajikistan is selling electricity to the US in Afghanistan. The US government likely pays more per KW than the rate charged to Tajiks, so this benefits the Tajik government. Frankly, I don't see how, when our electric bill for the month is under $10 even while running heaters, the electricity company makes any money. At the same time, for many rural Tajiks a rate hike would be similar to no electricity at all. However, a rate hike would allow people to make rationing decisions themselves.

A grandmother chatting with another grandmother

a guy with a sack of something. The robe he's wearing is called a Joma, which translates to clothes, basically. Clothing for the legs (poi) are called "poi-joma", which is likely where the word "pajama" comes from.

a house
I chatted with these guys for a while. The guys on the right lived in New York last year, working as a waiter and something else. Now he owns his own shop selling construction supplies. We talked about America, Tajikistan and why my passport doesn't have a 'nationality' listed. In the Soviet Union and post-Soviet states, passports have one's nationality (as decided by the Soviet Union) listed. This was partly for nation-building in the early 20th century, but I don't know why it stayed around, except as a means of control. So, since my passport didn't have my nationality listed, they asked me, "what nationality are you?" I said, "American." "no, that's not a nationality. America is made up of people from other places. You're not American." Having heard this quite often in Armenia, I gave my stock answer: "Half of my ancestors are from the Ukraine, and half are from Poland. They went to America about 150 years ago." "Ahhh" they replied, satisfied to know that I was Ukrainian or Polish. I don't even bother to get into the fact that I'm Jewish, but more atheist or pantheist or Spinozist than anything. Perhaps I should make a copy of my passport and photoshop in all of those things, just to mess with people.

Selling carrots and potatoes out of the back of trucks

Carpets at the Bazaar

A man working in the small plot of land between his house and the street.

A cement truck.

Apartment buildings in Vahdat.

The president of Tajikistan on a billboard overlooking the main square in Vahdat. The sign says, "Our politics are advantageous to people"

A village outside of Vahdat. I love mountains.

The bus stop in Vahdat.

These guys were attempting to load this cow, whose legs were bound together, into a wheelbarrow. It took them several tries, but eventually, with three men hanging off of the handle of the wheelbarrow, they got the cow up into it. I asked several people why they were moving the cow, but nobody knew--everyone else was just there to watch, too. If it were my cow, I would walk it on its own legs to where ever it needed to go, and then tie it up.

Varzob Picnic

Last weekend, instead of going hiking with the usual big group of expats and Goulya, the organizer, Diana and I decided to leave the hustle and bustle of Dushanbe by ourselves and head to a nearby village to find a picnic spot in the mountains around it. Tangems to Varzob, 15km north of Dushanbe in the valley of the same name, cost just 50 cents and we jumped on one of these. We got off just before reaching Varzob, at a bridge across the river to a small village. We began to explore up the hill behind the village, not knowing where the path would take us.

It turned out to turn back around and skirt the upper edge of the village we'd just left, and instead of finding a perfect grassy spot we found several cows and lots of poop. After trying another little valley and being turned back by steep rock waterfalls, we gave up and headed back down into the village, but on a different path than the one we'd come up. As we walked the path down between houses we found ourselves descending through people's yards!

An elderly woman looked at us a little less shocked than I expected (since a guy with a Red Sox cap and a girl in an UnderArmor sweatshirt just popped into her yard) and invited us in to her house for tea. We were still in the mood for some more walking, however, and told her that we were headed back to Dushanbe for a wedding, so we couldn't stay. Thankfully, hospitality here is not as warm as in rural Armenia, where she would have taken my arm with a vise-like grip and told me that one cup of tea would not slow us down.

We made our way down through the village and all the way back to the river, where there was a gated-off children's summer camp. We asked a guy with a soldering iron standing near the gate if we could come in, and he said sure, not seeming to mind too much. This is one of the nice differences between America and the former Soviet Union: the camp used to belong to everybody, so anybody could use it. In the States we would have had to sneak in or consider ourselves lucky to be let in and use 'private' property (or worse, pay a 'user-fee' for something we'd already paid for with taxes).

Down by the river there was nobody around, and we sat on a small wooden platform and finally had our picnic. A cow and some sheep wandered around the premises, munching on grass. The grounds were so quiet and peaceful, with the faint sound of the river coming up over the wall that separated us from it--in other words, a nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon :)

A summer house, and a cow grazing on the slope above the town. We thought about trying to go up there for our picnic, but took a path to the opposite hill instead.

On the way back out of the village, we passed this pomegranate tree, which Diana stood under, waiting for one to fall. Unfortunately we ended up buying some from the market when we got back to Dushanbe. This tree gets an 'F' for effort!

This is the shot I just barely missed--a split second earlier and the little girl's face would have been in the sunlight, and this could have been a decent photo. Oh, well, maybe next time.

These kids were just horsing around in the streets.

Looking upriver, away from Dushanbe, with summer dachas of wealthy Dushanbe-ites on the left bank.

We don't know what the tower/monument is for. Varzob town is just behind me.

A little boy looks out of the house gate in Varzob town.

Dushanbe Life

Back in Dushanbe, this is the northern bus station. The vehicles in the front are tangems ('tang-gem' with the second 'g' pronounced hard). We take these things all over town. They fit six people, and don't overcrowd like marshrutneys. The fare in town is about 20 cents. Many drivers are young men, and within that group probably the ones that insurance companies in the States refuse to cover. In other words, they drive 'aggressively'.

I was stuck in a traffic jam in a tangem one day, and the driver decided to pull up onto the sidewalk, honking for people to get out of his way. We drove on the sidewalk for several hundred meters, but that didn't get us past the traffic, so we turned into a mess of buildings and drove between them for some time on something that can only be called a path, passing underneath hanging clothes and hitting dangling trousers, crossing a footbridge over a small drainage canal, eventually coming back out onto pavement, but not before surprising two guys who obviously didn't expect to see a vehicle coming up behind them on the sidewalk. I thoroughly enjoyed this diversion, and was happy to reach the city center much faster. Those who have had the good fortune to be my passengers might be nodding their heads in understanding.

Inside a tangem.

In the past couple of days there have been some earthquakes here. They appear to be aftershocks of a 6.4 earthquake in northern Afghanistan. As I write, there is trembling in the building, and last night there was a sudden jolt which prompted us to leave the aparment momentarily. Our building is a 'Stalin' building, however, which has walls nearly 1-meter thick and was built more sturdily than 'Brezhnev' buildings, which are quite thin and prone to things which buildings should not be prone to. Ummm, thanks Stalin?

ps I might have the Brezhnev buildings mixed up with Khrushev buildings, check the Wikipedia article if you feel like it.

Our yard.

This is a picture of our building.

The exit to the street and our beautiful trash pile on the left.

Buildings near our apartment lit up at night.

This is a picture inside a cafeteria. This kind of eatery exists all over the city and offers cheap

standardized dishes at cheap prices. This one in particular has posters, portraits and banners of Lenin all over the walls, though.

A new office building sits empty with a 'for rent' sign at the entrance. The financial crisis didn't

destroy savings here like it did in the states, but it froze up capital so construction and business

came to a halt.

Look at the woodwork above the entrance to this Havli (house). The detail may not be visible in the picture, but it was very impressive, and stood out all the more set against the drab wall and simple gate. This kind of woodwork seems to be done for a lot of houses when they remodel.

A street sign, Mirzo-Rizo.

The car of the owner of the new house across the street. There is money in Tajikistan, it's just not spread around very evenly, largely a result of the U.S.-backed policy of charging towards capitalism without paying attention to the need for regulatory bodies. Try 'Globalization and its Discontents' for more.

An exchange point. The dollar is dropping, unfortunately :(

This shop in the bazaar sells smokestacks and rain gutters. It just looked like an interesting collection of metal to me.

In the bazaar. The seat in the foreground appears to have a hole cut in it and a bucket placed beneath. I have no idea what it's supposed to be, there are normal porcelain sit-down and squat toilets in this country. Perhaps this is for the winter when one wants to avoid using an out-house???

In Shoh Mansur bazaar. Shoh means 'king', probably recognizable in its Farsi form, Shah. In Tajiki the a's often turn into o's. The cart on the right is useful for doing a lot of shopping at one time so you don't have to carry 20kgs of potatoes around on your shoulders or back. It costs 50 cents to rent while you shop. At least, this is what we pay, I'm sure the regular price is less. Sometimes men, but mostly boys, push the cart and watch your groceries while you shop. This bazaar is huge, maybe almost a football field in area. In different sections there are fruits, vegetables, electronics, household goods, clothes, construction and hardware materials--everything you could ever want (except for Gouda cheese and Red Bull, which you have to get at the supermarket).

We shop here at least once per week, to get fruits and veggies at 1/3 the price of the supermarkets, and about 1/5 the prices in the states.

Per kilo we pay:

apples $1,

pears $1.25,

carrots $.20,

grapes $.50,

sweet peppers $.75,

eggplant $.20,

cauliflower $.50,

pomegranate $1,

loaf of bread $.30-.50

just to give you an idea of how far money goes here.

In front of the bazaar.

The entrance to Shoh Mansur bazaar.

The building next to ours lit up at sunset. Not the most spectacular piece of architecture, but it was nice in the light.

Unfinished construction.