|
|
The distinctive green glow of the irregularly-lettered sign above the
airport terminal says it all: <<Душанбе>>
(“Dushanbe”). Certainly, there are more
picturesque monuments to symbolize this town: the massive gilded
statue of Ismoil Somoni (across the park from an undisturbed and
equally massive Lenin); the tree-linked and cosmopolitan avenue
named for the poet Rudaki (against a backdrop of majestic
snowcapped mountains); colorful universities and libraries and
museums and intricate teahouses… But these
postcard-perfect images are not what delight me; they are not what
I await with childlike anticipation nestled sleepless in my
window-seat on the plane. The Dushanbe that I have come to
adore is a bit too complex to fit into any one poster image; like
the neon lettering against rocky mountain peaks, it is distinctly
its own: neither quite Cyrillic nor quite Persian, a little bit
modern and a little bit ancient, Islamic green against Soviet
construction, contemporary and international and provincial all at
once. I regard the green lettering as one studies the face
of an old friend after a long absence: remembering, rejoicing, and
still searching for some insight into what has changed, and what
remains the same.
Dushanbe. Literally, “Monday” in the Tajik
language (so named because, a century ago, virtually all that
stood here was a market which was held each Monday). But I
also see <<Душа>>
(“Dusha”), in Russian, which means “soul.”
Certainly, this little city “on the roof of the world”
has quite a soul. From a remote mountain village to the
capitol city of a republic within one of the major world powers of
its time, to a suddenly-disenfranchised land devastated by civil
war, to a postmodern metropolis still struggling to make its place
in this world, Dushanbe holds her head up with a quiet but
determined dignity. It’s been an eventful ninety or so
years, but Dushanbe retains her youthful optimism, and her grace.
I find that soul not only abstractly, in tiled walkways
colorful gardens and the carved facades of stately buildings, but
in the eyes and hands of my dear friends here. I am glad to
find most of my old friends well, and am always delighted to meet
new ones.
There is Mavjuda Rakhmanova, who runs “Refugee Children
and Vulnerable Citizens” (RCVC), a home for street children
and an educational/resource center for many of Dushanbe’s
neediest residents, many themselves refugees from even more
relentless wars and devastation in neighboring Afghanistan and
Uzbekistan. I know just enough of Mavjuda’s history to
be sure that the kidnapping and murder of her friend and RCVC
co-founder Kareen Mane barely scratches the surface of the
personal tragedy she has endured. Still recuperating from
recent health troubles herself, she pours me tea and eagerly tells
me about her latest projects, what she would like to collaborate
on, and how she would like to join Mothers for Peace. All
the while, children and colleagues are coming and going, she is
juggling phone calls from the French Ambassador and the office of
the UN High Commissioner on Refugees, and negotiating a plumbing
problem with the Ministry of Labor with which her organization
shares a building. Nothing slows her down.
Then there is Isroil, who embraces me at the airport at 3:00 in
the morning and picks up our camaraderie as if the years since we
have seen each other last were just some fleeting inconvenience.
Nevermind that he speaks no English and to call my Russian “rusty”
would be a very polite understatement. We catch up on each
other’s lives as he loads our bags into a van and ferries us
to the hotel. Every day and night for three weeks he forgoes
sleep and sanity to dote on our delegation and ensure every detail
of all of our work is perfect. His gorgeous wife and adoring
children don’t complain that the forty-odd of us have
commandeered him around the clock, instead they invite us into
their home and delight in playing hosts to The Americans.
There could never be enough candies and gifts to repay their
hospitality, but we try.
Isroil’s wife is no lone case; Tajik women have been
famed for their beauty ever since the days of Alexander the Great,
and their reputation is well deserved. Lola, Oksana, Shamsi,
Indira, Mavjuda, Farida, Manzura, Muyasssara, Ominadjon, Malika,
Aziza… Their huge, dark eyes peer out from under perfectly
arched brows with intelligence, pride and perseverance that is at
once indomitable and demure. Just being in their presence is
a joy.
There are new friends, too, whom I now hope to meet again.
There is Shamsi, the tennis-player who settled for an MBA when she
couldn’t afford medical school, who translates several
languages in her sleep, and who has an insatiable appetite for
gummi-bears. There is Omina, an accomplished artist in her
own right and Fine Arts Chair at Tajik Institute of Art, who gives
her time and her heart to organizing an art therapy program for
orphans and children maimed in the civil war. There is
Viktor, the master ceramicist (who by the way was one of the
leading artists to help create our own Boulder-Dushanbe Teahouse),
who still sits in the same office he has maintained for over 40
years, and reminisces about old friends and colleagues, some now
dead and others moved away, who came from the far reaches of the
world, from Georgia and Lithuania and Siberia and even America, to
work together and create something beautiful. After all
these years, his heart is still as gleeful as a child’s, and
his elfish face lights up as he talks about plans to get away from
the paperwork and back to rebuilding his studio. There are
surgeons who operate by gas lanterns when the electricity is
diverted from the hospital to power the industrial plant which
keeps the tenuous local economy afloat, and then drive taxis at
night in order to feed their families, since there is no money to
pay the doctors more than about the equivalent of $10 US per
month. There is a pigtailed little girl in a brilliant
yellow dress, not more than seven years old herself, who dotes on
her two wheelchair-bound older brothers, crippled by nutritional
diseases unheard of a generation ago. There is Indira, once
a renowned sports medicine specialist and team physician to the
national teams, who gave up her practice of medicine to wash
floors and serve breakfast at a hotel in order to make ends meet.
None of them complain; they are not bitter; they are gracious and
beautiful and full of life.
It is the evening before our delegation is due to leave in the
early predawn hours, and a small group of us, both American and
Tajik, stay up all night together, just talking and unwinding and
drinking red wine and green tea and eating multi-colored jelly
beans. When I think about what it is I will remember most,
what I want to tell about this trip, this is what comes to mind.
Not the beautiful gardens, although some have been quite
spectacular. Not hospitals or conferences or embassies or
long bumpy roads to rural orphanages. Not majestic mountains
or museum treasures, tree-lined avenues or poignant images of
poverty, although all these have also left their indelible mark on
my mind and heart. No, it is the people who make this story
worth telling, the people who weave the fabric of our lives.
Just people, ordinary and imperfect and beautiful all the
same, sitting and talking and laughing together and sharing a cup of tea. That is the
simple wisdom of the Sister Cities ideal, people-to-people
“citizen diplomacy”: everyday people, separated by
oceans and joined by mountains, speaking English and Spanish and
Russian and Tajik and Uzbek and Dari and all laughing in the same
language together. More than intricate architecture and
artwork, that is the beauty of the chaikhona, the teahouse, the
generous gift of the people of Dushanbe to the people of Boulder:
a place for all of us to come together and become friends.
|
