Peace and Bread

You could let your life revolve round Rudaki. That makes Rudaki sound like a euphemism for a hard drug, but regular readers will know that Rudaki is our favourite son, the founder of modern Persian literature, whose name has been appropriated for every major road in every town and city in Tajikistan. So Rudaki in this context is the six lane, three mile long avenue that runs from north to south through Dushanbe.

There are tower blocks and supermarkets and restaurants and bars and government offices and choikhonas and parks along its course. Many people, I suppose particularly expatriates, feel no need to stray much from it. But this is a city of 700,000 people and most do not live, work and shop on Rudaki. Step 20 yards off on either side and you can enter a different world, perhaps one that is a bit more representative of Tajikistan. It’s a bit more run down - actually it’s quite a lot more run-down behind the stylish facades - but full of life.

I’ve been roaming the back streets for a while. I love walking around cities and Dushanbe is one of the best. Firstly it’s one of the safest cities I’ve ever been in – so long as you avoid crossing any roads. Traffic lights here are seen more as decorative than functional and, if heeded at all, seem to bring out the taurean in us all – red means accelerate and charge. There are stories of people making it to the central reservation of Rudaki and then having to be airlifted out because they couldn’t continue. Actually that’s not true; there is no central reservation on Rudaki. Oh, and two other essential rules of the road here : never drive without talking to someone on your mobile phone and always test your car horn every 15 seconds...

Anyway, all that digression aside, walking around Dushanbe is great. There is virtually no street crime and people don’t stare or panhandle. Some of the kids sometimes seem struck dumb by the oddity of a lone, grey foreigner but we always agree to live and let live…

Shouldn't he be in a museum?

There are lots of narrow streets lined with rough and ready walls punctuated by grandiose gates. There is an obsession with tall, ornate gates; obviously a message to the world about what lies behind. And what does lie behind is usually a house built around a small courtyard which is home to an extended family of maybe ten or twelve people.

Nice gates...

In contrast there are also Russian apartment blocks, built around large communal squares, where the children roam and people cook huge dishes of plov and bake in large, wood-fired kilns; where the women gossip and men pretend to be repairing things. Reminds me of the Glasgow tenements.

Sometimes I think I'll just hit her with it

It would be easy to get sentimental about this communal living but I’m sure there are stresses, feuds and rivalries fit for a Shakespeare play. Nevertheless, people seem generally happy.

That Othello... He's a right one!

Why are the streets safe? Why are most people apparently content with the re-election of their Presdient for a fourth term of office (yes, my wild prediction of the result was correct)? Why is there poverty with very little begging and very little – apparent – resentment? The answer seems to lie across three things. 

1. 1.  A high police presence. There are certainly a lot of policemen down Rudaki, but they are unarmed and mostly concerned with entrepreneurial endeavours. There are few in the back streets.
2. 2. Religion. This is an Islamic country where the emphasis is on peace, hospitality, sharing, duty and family.
3. 3.      Trauma. The civil war between 1992 and 1997 took at least 50,000 lives and made a great many more homeless. To this day nobody can quite explain what it was about but there is unanimity that it mustn’t be allowed to happen again.

As I was told, “we are happy because we have peace and bread.” This could be a philosophy worth reflecting on.