The Art of Communication

I was in Penjikent last week, a town of the ancient Silk Road, one stop east from Samarkand.  A few things have probably changed in the last 3,000 years but I think the hospitality is probably much as it always has been. Guests are honoured and their wishes have to be met, no matter how bizarre and foreign.

Penjikent market from the minaret

 On arriving at my guest house I enquired about breakfast. A standard check-in sort of question usually related to “is it included in the price” and “when does serving finish”. Unfortunately my hosts and I had little language in common but I felt from the nods all round that things would be fine.

I was rather surprised, though, to find the proprietor standing in my room at 7 a.m. the next morning making eating motions with hands and mouth and urging me to come along. I mimed that it might be better for all present, especially his bubbly Russian wife, if I put some clothes on first. He seemed to think this might be a good idea and disappeared. I went for a shower in the large bathroom cum wash-house.

Two minutes later a head and two hands appeared round the corner of the bathroom entrance making the same eating gestures as before. My host urged me on while I got dried and dressed before escorting me to the tapchan where a beautiful breakfast was laid out. He then sat with me to make sure I had more than an ample sufficiency. Every time I moved to get down, he filled my tea cup and thrust another plate of food before me.

Breakfast on the tapchan

Why such concern? Breakfast was not going to spoil if I was a bit later. It wasn’t a rush to get me out; he seemed to have all the time in the world. I think he had just detected that this foreigner had some strange anxiety about breakfast that he had to allay with his very personal attention to the whole process.

We sometimes communicate more than we intend, with or without language!

I have discovered anyway that the international language of Tajikistan is in fact premierleaguespeak.

I was in a small town a couple of weeks before, early in the morning with few people about, and I met a couple of gents going off fishing. We were walking in the same direction and after the standard repetition of “assalomu aleikum” to and from all present the conversation flagged a bit. One of my new friends indicated I should say where I was from. “Skotlandiya”, I regret to say, met with a look of puzzlement. “Alex Ferguson – Manchester United” however, evinced a grin and the retort “Chelsea”. I naturally replied in the time honoured fashion, “Arsenal”. To which I got the wily response, “Newcastle”. I easily trumped with a double hit of “Manchester City” and “Tottenham”. My colleagues were just testing. I was hit with a barrage of names that left me struggling; are Norwich really still in the Premier League? Luckily we reached the parting of our ways before I had to resort to “Dunfermline Athletic”, something that may have caused a breakdown in what constitutes polite conversation in these parts. But we had communicated and we were all smiling. I don’t know what we had communicated, beyond the joy of being alive early on a sunny morning, but I am putting aside my Tajiki phrase book for the time being to swot up for the coming season. What happened to Pavlyuchenko in London? Who is Abramovich going to buy next?  How many members of the royal family are in the team from the Crystal Palace? This is the sort of thing I need to know to get on in the world here. Being able to say “can I borrow your donkey” in Tajiki may be practical but it’s not likely to impress.

I must watch the dangers of over-communicating though, and the corresponding over compensation on hospitality. I don’t want to find the entire Penjikent United squad sharing my shower and breakfast the next time I am in town.