A Carpet Ride to Khiva: Seven Years on the Silk Road (24 page)

Uzbeks are notoriously bad at saving money. Putting money in an Uzbek bank is tantamount to burning it. Stashing savings under a mattress isn’t much better, as it
soon gets raided for a vodka binge or frittered away on everyday household expenses. For the frugal few, relatives seem equipped with some kind of radar and always know when money is available, arriving with requests for loans.

Instead, a tashkil brings together a group of people who all know each other and have some degree of trust. They might be former classmates or nieghbours or, in our
case, an eclectic selection of people working in tourism. This included Zafar, Matiyopka the puppet-maker, Oybek, a young wrestler who made shag-pile hats, Dilmurad, our resident historian and antique-dealer, his friend who also sold antiques, Umid, whose shop was next to Zafar’s, Madrim from the workshop, a ceramic master and a knife-seller and, of course, Zulhamar and the old woman. We would
meet monthly, taking it in turns to host a banquet. Our banker Umid would collect $20 from each guest and the host would receive this lump sum. There were more than twelve of us, and this represented over a year’s savings. The host would swiftly spend this the following day, buying a television, paying off debts or even purchasing one of the new satellite dishes now available, before relatives could
come clamouring for it. This continued until each person had taken a turn as host.

Our tashkil followed a strict, unvarying three-course menu starting with salads and cold meats, followed by chicken (and something vegetarian for me), and then fruit and cake. There were always bottles of lurid soft drinks, vodka and wine ready for a rowdy exchange of toasts. Thankfully the watchful presence
of our two older women ensured that things never got out of hand.

My turn to host came in August. It was baking hot and I decided to tackle the bazaar early with two of Koranbeg’s nephews in tow to help carry bags. We jostled through the crowds and started at the fruit and veg section. I loved haggling in the bazaar, although I was well aware of my lack of anonymity, being a lot taller and
blonder than anyone around me.

‘Look at the tourist!’ cried one young girl, pointing at me.

‘Who are you calling a tourist, eh?’ Her eyes widened at a tourist who knew how to talk. The old lady I bought tomatoes from wanted to know what I was doing in Khiva.

‘Oh, I’m a spy,’ I explained casually, which set her cackling.

‘A spy! Bless me, I’ve just had a spy buying my tomatoes,’
she crowed to a neighbouring stallholder. This woman, in turn, explained that I was from England, working with Operation Mercy, and that I was still unmarried. I’d never met this woman before, but this was a small town with no secrets.

Heaving plastic bags straining with groceries, we made our way to the caravanserai, savouring its cool, dim interior after the heat and glare outside. I’d
managed to buy everything on my list except melons and chicken. Perversely, the only dead chicken available in Khiva was frozen and came from America. Still, I preferred frozen meat to the bazaar’s hanging carcasses swarming with flies; and I had no intention of buying live chickens, which tended to be scrawny and bought solely for their egg-laying abilities. I approached my friend who sold imported
goods but there was no chicken of any description to be had from him or anyone else in the bazaar.

Unsuccessful, we left the caravanserai and made for the melon bazaar next to the city walls. Huge mounds of melons of all descriptions and sizes were available. Each mountain had a bed next to it where the sellers slept at night, guarding their produce. I’d received much training in the complex
art of choosing a good melon, but had proved largely unteachable. As I tapped and patted the melons with a look of feigned expertise, an old bearded man came to my rescue. Satisfied with the dull ‘tok’ from his taps, he sniffed a particularly huge melon and felt the smooth depression at the opposite end to the stalk. This he pronounced to be the best and I thanked him, explaining that he had
saved me from shame as I was hosting a tashkil that evening and only the best would do. Overjoyed that a foreigner even knew what a tashkil was, he helped me buy an enormous water-melon. I heaved the melons home as the two nephews staggered behind me in the sun with groaning bags of produce, dripping a trail of sweat.

The next hour or so was spent on a fruitless quest for chicken in all
the import shops of Khiva. Just as I was giving up, I remembered a shop by the stadium which stocked chicken, exorbitantly priced, aware of its monopoly. When I returned home, Zulhamar and Malika were already making a large cake and preparing food for that evening. Being the weekend, I enjoyed an afternoon siesta before arranging corpuches and a plastic picnic cloth up on the roof, where the evening
might yield a few cool breezes. Our roof was overlooked by the Khan’s watchtower, which provided one of the best views in Khiva. A group of tourists up there were taking photos and obviously interested in this ritual laying of bread rounds in the centre of the
dasturkhan
or picnic cloth, flanked by clusters of bottles and bowls of fruit, with plates of salad, nuts, pastries, and drinking bowls
radiating from these.

At around eight, my guests arrived and I enjoyed the role of host, pouring water over their hands and ushering them upstairs. We were soon seated around the dasturkhan and tucking in. A few curious tourists continued to take photos from the watchtower. The skyline of minarets, domes and madrassahs made a wonderful backdrop to our feast as dusk softened their colours
and bats and swallows darted through the air.

Our main topic of conversation was unburied treasure. In a village outside Yangi Arik, Zulhamar’s home town, a young boy had been planting rice when he noticed something glinting under the water. It turned out to be a gold coin from a pot that contained many more. Soon the whole village was scouring the rice field, with further finds. The gold
was good quality and the coins were at least 500 years old. Zulhamar had bought a few from her relatives, who had obtained them extremely cheaply from those keen for a quick sale before someone told them it was illegal. I bought three from Zulhamar, rescuing them from certain destruction, as ancient coins were usually melted down and turned into Khorezm earrings. Few women have wedding rings in
Khiva, but a decent groom will always ensure his new bride has a pair of gold hoops filled with filigree gold ball decorations and threaded river-pearls or turquoise.

I offered to take gold coins instead of dollars for my turn as host. Toasts followed, with long speeches expressing hope that God would provide me, very soon, with a wife, and that she would be hard-working so that Zulhamar
could relax, and that I would have many sons and that I would live a long and peaceful life and so on. The sky grew dark, moths buzzed around the lamp, and behind me the minarets, domes and madrassahs were black silhouettes as the moon began to rise. Oybek asked me what I would do with the money. I told him I had plans to buy a digital camera. A few tourists clambered up onto the city walls and passed
by at eye level with our roof. They waved and we held up our drinking bowls in a toast to them. I received a few curious stares and wished I could tell them that not all foreigners in Khiva were tourists. Some were guests, and some were even hosts.

* * *

The carpet workshop flourished. Aksana gained confidence as a guide – a few tourists assuming we were a couple, which was flattering.
After gradual expansion we had now reached capacity, with five dyers and just under 50 weavers. Madrim had grown in confidence and ability and managed the day-to-day running of things. It felt as if the warp and weft of the workshop had really meshed together.

The weavers, spurred on by higher wages, had speeded up considerably. A carpet that would have taken three weavers five months now
took just three. Some of the weavers were now earning more than $50 a month, almost double a government wage. It still wasn’t much to live on, but for many of the women whose men were in Russia for six months of the year, this money was what the whole family relied on.

Word got out that women with cash could be found at the Jacob Bai Hoja madrassah, and entrepreneurial matrons from the bazaar
regularly arrived carting anything from cakes and cookies to large bundles of clothing. I would often enter a cell with a group of tourists as a large pile of assorted knickers was hastily stuffed into bags.

Perennial personnel issues still surfaced and had to be dealt with by a committee of elected weavers and dyers we had set up the previous winter. We sacked Hoshnaut the dyer. Some of
the weavers became mothers, working until their bulge impeded weaving. Toychi the dyer – charming, able and extremely untrustworthy – almost got the sack. Married at eighteen, his wife had scandalously given birth five months later. Twins followed, as did an infatuation with one of our weavers. I caught them together, arm in arm in Urgench, and brought the matter up with the committee, knowing that
this could easily tarnish our reputation, and more importantly, that of the weaver. The committee were of one voice: Toychi had obviously been led astray and was entirely innocent, and the weaver-who-knew-no-shame must be fired immediately. I thought this was unfair and I was adamant that we sack them both or give them both a second chance. They agreed not to see each other again and realised why
we took the situation seriously. There were few workplaces in Khiva where unmarried women and men commingled, so our workshop had already raised a few eyebrows. Still, gossip persisted about the weaver-who-knew-no-shame and she was judiciously married off to a boy from a distant village.

* * *

I made another dye-buying trip to Afghanistan in late spring, this time taking Madrim with
me. He’d been in Afghanistan as a Red Army soldier and, although he’d never been in combat, we both felt that this fact was best left unmentioned. We stayed with an American family who worked for Operation Mercy, and Madrim got friendly with their Uzbek-speaking chowkidor or caretaker. Although they were both ethnically Uzbek, and roughly the same age, their lives were totally different. The chowkidor
talked of the Taliban occupation when beards longer than a fist were mandatory and men found outside the mosque during Friday prayers were dragged inside and beaten. Madrim was shocked at the burkas in the bazaar and the squalor, but impressed by the entrepreneurial attitude – something markedly absent or penalised in Uzbekistan. Here in Afghanistan, he too was a foreigner.

We found the
dyes we needed and passed through the Afghan side of the border without incident. The Uzbek border guards refused to let me through, angling for a bribe. We asked them to call Anvar from the UN but they smugly refused. I fumed back over to the Afghan side, paying $5 for an international call to Anvar a few miles away, and he called through to the guards. Suddenly they lost their swagger, adopting
wounded expressions at the ‘misunderstanding’ that had taken place. We crossed over the Bridge of Friendship but no further. Another official took one look at our sacks, shook his head and ordered us back.

I had learnt that the only way to deal with officious Uzbek bullies was to create a scene. I barked at the official for his impudence. Didn’t he know who I was? Was this the usual discourteous
way he treated important people, and was he really so keen to lose his job? Allegations of inhospitality coupled with threats of recrimination from above often did the trick, and the flustered official waved us on to the customs point.

Here, as before, general paranoia ensued at the sight of so many sacks of powdered substances. Sniffer-dogs clambered over the sacks, and we dragged each
one through the X-ray machine. I tried to take a photo of a sniffer-dog, which caused an outcry. Only further bluster ensured that my camera wasn’t confiscated and the offending photo on my new digital camera deleted.

We finally arrived back in Khiva exhausted. There was no respite. Madrim was immediately summoned by the secret police and interrogated as a suspected terrorist, for why else
would he go to Afghanistan?

* * *

Zulhamar, my Uzbek mum, ran one of the more successful souvenir stalls. At first she had stocked the same souvenirs that everyone was selling, but seeing the Turkmen cushion covers in my room, and with a little persuading that tourists ‘like me’ would buy them, she arranged for her sister-in-law in Turkmenistan to stock her up with Turkmen textiles.
There was an amazing Sunday bazaar just outside the capital, Ashkhabad, where all manner of cushion covers and other Turkmen handicrafts were sold cheaply. Koranbeg’s formidable cousin was duly dispatched to Ashkhabad and returned with a huge bulging bag; Zulhamar’s little shop became the envy of all as tourists flocked to it.

Other than the souvenir shop and my rent, there wasn’t much other
income in our household. Koranbeg was still unsure who to bribe in Tashkent in order to obtain a new restoration contract. I suggested renting out two of our rooms – hardly used, as the family slept together in the main room – as a hostel. Koranbeg did some research and I lent him the $300 bribe money needed before Uzbek Tourism would issue a licence. It took around half a year to finally secure
the necessary documents, and most of our initial guests were my contacts.

More tourists came to us thanks to Zainab, who lived near the workshop. Koranbeg had helped her with registration of her bed and breakfast business, and now that she’d been proactive and put up a sign, she had more tourists than she could accommodate. Apart from one or two culturally insensitive backpackers, the guests
were generally inoffensive and the money good. Extremely good, in fact, compared with what I was paying for my room. One evening I took Koranbeg aside and explained that I would be moving out, as he could earn more money in two days from my room than I was paying in a whole month. Incensed, Koranbeg reminded me that the guesthouse would never have happened without my help, and asked me what sort
of man I thought he was to kick out his son for a few extra dollars. I apologised gratefully. I loved my room and my Uzbek family and had no desire to leave.