One day left in Dushanbe, and it was devoted to dotting the i's, rounding off the corners, and putting the finishing touches on a great Tajik week. I didn't make it to everything in the Lonely Planet guide (which was last updated in 2007, and still largely accurate for Bishkek, but almost useless for Dushanbe) - the remaining targets were: Museum of Musical Instruments, Tajik Painters Union Exhibition Hall, Writers Union Building facade, Hajji Yakoub Mosque, souvenir shopping, and dinner at Salsa - the Ecuadorian restaurant.The day didn't exactly go according to plan (souvenir shopping was a near bust, the Painters Union was closed, and the Museum was too hard to find to be worth the effort), but the day did go well enough. Here's a recap:
After a quick breakfast snack and some time spent on correspondence (yes, in addition to this blog I do still have more to say!), I was heading to the museum at 10 am, only to discover that it didn't open until 11. Unfortunate since I had this nice chain of sights proceeding North. So plan B - flip it. I grabbed a bus to the NW end of my route, and started back south. First stop was the Writers Union Building - which supposedly had a really great facade.
But I never found it. Or at least, I was never sure if I found it. Either I walked right past it without noticing, it has since been demolished, or it was the bizarre huge circular building I found perched upon a hilltop a little further west. Surrounded by rows of columns and capitals, one large (non-functional) fountain, and two matching apartment complexes (with an ornate archway between them), it was certainly a remarkable building, but not really what was described. I walked around the grounds, got some great views of the "outer" Dushanbe, and was the only person in my line of sight in any direction.
Just north of this bizarre construction, were a few empty lots, a lot of dirt piles, and one enormous crater - either the beginning of a new major building project, or the remains of a previous one. The ambivalent meaning of such sites was reinforced immediate to the west, where a series of concrete foundations (in all manner of interesting circular shapes) suggested again the start of a new mega-luxury hotel complex - but the burned grass around it, and a few remaining rubar-enforced concrete pillars suggested perhaps the opposite was true. All in all, a very weird location. (see my Dushanbe Google Map)
This left me standing at the edge of a clean construction site, looking across dirt fields and rusting car chassis at the back end of cinderblock walls and residential alleyways. Like the Kyrgyz village I visited (but unlike most of Bishkek), the residential areas that were not concrete hi-rise apartments were mazes of high cinderblock walls enclosing various clusters of family homes. All very inviting and comfortable inside the walls, but totally undistinguished and forbidding via stoic neutralism from the outside.
And rising above these concrete canyons, I could see the dome and minaret of the only mosque in Dushanbe, Hajji Yakoub - my next destination.
The distance between me and the Mosque was about 1 km - an easy walk if I strolled back to the main road. But after a hike in the mountains, and my solo excursion to Hissar, I was craving another not-too-risky test of my savvy, and in the end, the temptation of the unknown was just more than I could resist.
Walking down winding streets - most of them paved, and just wide enough for 2 cars at a squeeze - I was under constant surveilance. Small kids, old women, middle-aged men. Some were walking about their business, others spending their day in the scant shade the high walls afforded. I was less than 1 km from Rudaki - the glittering backbone of Dushanbe, and the center, as well as the furthest extension, of all things tourism - but this was a totally different Dushanbe. Not surprising that "tourist" Dushanbe wasn't the same as "real" Dushanbe, and in fairness, had I walked a few more km in the other direction, I probably would have found even more discrepancies (paved roads, for example, I'm sure don't extend that far into the periphery).
Luckily I had the mosque's dome to guid me, otherwise any hope of maintaining directionality would have been lost. I was hoping for a direct route - that of course was ridiculously naive.
After a good bit of wandering, many confused Tajik onlookers, a few too many roads turning only in the direction I didn't want to go, and more than one lucky guess, I was staring down one last straight road back to Rudaki. I was just north of the mosque (slight overshot), and walking past the Hotel Avesto, supposedly one of the nicest of the remaining Soviet-era hotels. Certainly, the taxis were especially shiny (the drivers spend all morning washing their cars so as to attract the more upper-scale Western fares).
It wasn't a very adventurous detour, but I had to cross a comfort threashold (literally the line from grass to dirt that demarkated the end of manicured Dushanbe) and had come out unscathed. I could liken it to taking a first airplane ride. It seems like such a risk, but by the time you land, you and the other hundred passengers go about your day as if nothing remarkable happened - because it didn't.
Now, the Mosque. (background information is in grey - skip if desired)
Islam in Central Asia is a hot topic, and one which I am very interested in investigating. The short version is that Islam didn't arrive in Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan) until the 9th/10th century. Thereafter, it became the dominant force in the region, and in fact it was Islamic empires based in Central Asia that achieved some of the highest accomplishments of Islamic art, science, medicine, theology, etc. by the 11th-12th centuries. Turkish and later Mongol invasions curtailed these political movements, but also adopted and for the most part further spread Islam as a source of social solidarity. Still, Islam wasn't especially entrenched in the sparsely populated mountains or steppe that would become Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and some suggest it was nothing more than a companion to the existing folk religions until the 18th century arrival of the Russians.
Russians had a lot of familiarity with Islam by that time. Though much forgotten today, Russia was the original "European" power to confront Islam - which it had to do in order to expand from the small principalities of Muscovy into the modern "European Russia" which was controlled by the (Turko-Mongol Muslim) Khanates of Crimea, Astrakhan, and Bashkiria until the 17th century. Today, we call these areas Tatar, and despite intense Russification, they remain ethnically turkish, and religiously very Muslim.
The idea (so strong in the west) that Russia is one demographic whole couldn't be further from the truth. Russia, as a modern country, is more culturally/ethnically/linguistically diverse than the United States, even than the US in the 1800s.
So - Russia had experience "dealing" with Islam. Its original practice was mass conversion to Christianity, encouraged by economic motivations and/or brute force. This didn't always work so well (everyone converted, then 50 years later, when restrictions loosened, whole villages converted back to Islam), so later Russians (especially Czarina Katherine) took a different approach: encourage Islam, and incorporate it into the state body (like the pope in medieval europe - hiearchichal, nominally independent, but usually a vassal of a strong dynasty).
It was also thought that Islam, being "more civilized than savagery, but less civilized than Christendom," could serve as a stepping stone: convert one generation to Islam, the next to Russian Orthodoxy. You can imagine the eventual success rate.
All of this is to say that Islam in the territories of the Russian Empire (of which all of Central Asia was included by the 1870s), was a complicated affair - sometimes persecuted through hostile action, sometimes engaged in intellectual or benevolent ways (like many modern christian missionaries), and other times officially ignored, or even encouraged and supported. The mosques built from the Czarina's treasury is a fascinating example of the more complex side of history.
And then there was Communism.
Officially, all religion was anathema to socialist progress, but realistically even the most ardent Soviet recognized the deep-seated religious fervor of the common citizen, Russian Orthodox as well as Muslim, and while many policies existed to eventually discourage such supernatural attachments, the real history was a constant series of give-and-take. During WWII, for example, when the gov needed people to volunteer, virtually all religious restrictions were eliminated, and the various religious leaders were given prominent Soviet support to call on the citizens to protect the Revolution in the name of God.
Actually, even at the height of religious repression, the Soviet government maintained several regional offices of Islamic clerics. They were compromised, to be sure, by their Soviet employers and athiest censors, but a Soviet-sponsored Central Board of Islamic Affairs is not the same as Marx's abolition of the Opiate of the People.
Where the hell is this going? Sorry - I digress.
The point is that mosques did exist during the Soviet era, though they were tightly-controlled, and generally restricted to as few mosques as the local government could expect would not cause rampant public disorder.
In the ancient cities of Samarkand, Bukhara, and elswewhere, this meant reappropriating as many of the ancient mosques as possible - grain storage, animal shelters, even a few "Museums of Science/Athiesm" to really turn the knife. Some were destroyed outright, but many still remained.
In the new Russian cities - places that didn't exist before Russian colonization, like Almaty, Bishkek, or Dushanbe - this meant that any mosque would be built under Russian supervision, and the number to be built would be approved by Moscow. This number tended to be 1.
The Bishkek mosque - ostensibly serving a population of more than 1/2 a million muslims, is about the size of a big McDonalds. Its dome is made of pressed tin, and it's lone minaret (with a nicely ornate cap), barely reaches 40 feet in the air. It's courtyard is enclosed only by an iron fence, and the entire structure is basically one open room. It was a slightly larger version of the mosque I visited in Manas village, population 1,200 families.
Not so Dushanbe!
Hajji Yakoub (at right), also a relatively modern construction, is the size of a moderate midwestern High School, with offices and classrooms built into the three 4-story walls surrounding the inner courtyard. The entire structure is covered in blue and white decorative tiles, and the outer gate is equally impressive as one is coming or going. The inner courtyard is huge - and I'm told it is used itself as a sanctuary by laying out rugs to fill the entire space with worshippers when the sanctuary itself overflows. It also has only one dome and one minaret, but both tower above the surrounding houses, gleaming in blue tile (ok - not from the back. Oddly, from the rear, the dome has no decor, just its basic brick construction shows through).
I haven't traveled widely enough to give this much context, but let me say that while the Dushanbe mosque would not be among the top 5 most impressive if it were in Istanbul - a city of a thousand mosques - it would certainly occupy a respected position in the middle of the pack. To keep the allusion, the Bishkek mosque would not be allowed within Istanbul city limits.
Having picked my jaw up off the paving stones and finished reverently wandering around its voluminous interior, I left the Hajji Yakoub mosque and proceeded south in search or Tajik Painters Halls, souvenir shops, and the elusive Museum of Musical Instruments.
To make a long post short(er), I'll tell you that the Painters' hall was closed, the souvenir shop was unimpressive, and the Museum of Musical Instruments was not so hard to find, but by the time I got there, I just decided I would rather not bother.
The afternoon was spent at an internet cafe, with another quick side trip to the bazaar.
For my last night in Dushanbe, I had my heart set on trying out this Ecuadorian restaurant, Salsa. I invited a few other new friends along, but the drawback of having a Kyrgyz cell phone is that it doesn't work in Tajikistan, so we never ended up connecting. Ah well.
Salsa is located at the far North of the center of town, but just how far I didn't fully appreciate - until I walked it. I will point out that my 3 mile walk took place literally within a few meters of a trolleybus line the entire time, but with each passing intersection I became more determined to do it all by foot - regardless of how far the seemingly endless tree-strewn sidewalks stretched. I finally made it to dinner a little after 8 pm.
And it was great. A Very nice place, with reasonable prices. I immediately indulged myself in an enormous plate of chips (eh) and salsa (yum!). Not sure how I felt about the main course (traditional mexican fare like Burritos and Tacos were available, as was Italian or Tajik, but the raison d'etre was the Ecuadorian specials themselves), I elected to follow up my corn/pico salsa with some gazpacho. I have had better - this was fully minced, and was essentially pureed garlic and tomato with silantro. Still, it tasted nothing like Lamb or Fat - progress.
Despite the slight bulge in my midsection, I decided to push ahead. When will be my next chance to try some Ecuadorian?
I went with the Llapingachos - fried potatoe paties with onions and cheese mixed in and served with a crazy peanut and cilantro sauce. Bizarre, but pretty dang good. They also served it with a very familiar boneless chicken breast - ah sweet, white, protein.
I left quite satisfied, and a little guilty. That was more food than I needed, and the total tab of $11 was also a touch extravagant. But it was the crowing achievement of my week in Dushanbe, so long as it didn't make me sick (cross fingers), now was hardly the time to start making regrets.
Weber (on the lamb)
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