I've promised that this post would include all the memorable "goat quotes" of the past week, which we spent mostly in Vanj. We had an interesting week. The low point, perhaps: stumbling around by our campsite, I stub my toe and yell "Ow! Rocks! Ah! Goat poop! I hate this f--ing country!" I don't mean it, of course. I would never insult my adopted vatan in such a way. And jokes aside, the mountains were beautiful. At night, there were more stars even than I've seen in northern Maine. There was a wonderful, pastoral smell of crushed mint, wild rosemary, and.... yes, goat poop.
"Tajikistan makul shod?" everyone we meet asks us. The correct answer is yes, Tajikistan is fantastic. I mean it, or I wouldn't have come back. Therefore, please excuse the slightly whiny nature of this post. Anna points out that most travel writing in Central Asia falls into two categories: the romanticized, Orientalist type, or the "I will now proceed to complain about everything" genre. We may be guilty of a bit of both. A few nights ago, I sat on a boulder more than 4,000m up and drew a map of the Hazards of Tajikistan, featuring Bears, Small Kids Who Pee Everywhere, Crazy Mashrutka Drives, Sinking Lotkas, and Evil Mosquitoes Probably In the Employ of the KGB. But you know what, the mountains are beautiful, people have been very kind, and the rest we can deal with.
We see a lot of cowpaths. They say the streets in Boston were laid out by cows - well, cows, it turns out, are physically incapable of going straight up hills and take about a thirty degree angle at every hillock of grass. In the end, it looks like the lines of a topographic map have been traced onto the mountain for you.
Our interviews also go a bit like this - roundabout. It's rude to cut too directly to the chase. I heard about one survey in which a researcher with a clipboard went around asking folks "On a scale of 1 to 5, how important is identity to you?" Ay vay. I'm not saying we're doing much better - but we're taking more tea, and more sweet melon, and more time, to ask our questions. Most of the time we haven't been in the mountains, but sitting around a dastarkhan, talking with old ladies about when their family moved to town and whether they'd marry their daughter off to a guy from the next region. (This often gets misinterpreted as our own interest in marriage - see Anna's previous post). We've gotten our share of awkward questions on this trip, usually while stuck in a shared taxi from town to town. "Is it true that the President of America is a black-skinned guy?" "In America, can a black man marry a white woman?" "Why are your families so small?" Maybe our research questions are equally awkward. Wearing Tajik clothes (the last we had clean) and tsumkas, or backpacking packs, we got roundly laughed at by a pair of goatherds near the Gishkun pass.
We were tired by then. We'd gone up to the height of the snow, filtered water running off the glacier, realized we were too tired to push any further, and turned back - and at that moment, the nakhjir appeared. There were two of them, Marco Polo sheep, I think, running across the pass above us as though it were easy. They made my week. Anna, I think, was slightly more excited to get back to camp. She perched on a rock above the pasture, while I found a flat bit of grass to lay out the groundsheet and sleeping bags. As it started to grow dark, I circled back to her: "Marco!" I yelled. "Polo!" she responded. There's Central Asia for you.
Anna after the day's climb, reading Salman Rushdie under the plastic sheeting/tent
An epilogue: We're in Khorog now, home of such luxuries as showers and internet, and the most fantastic sour cherries - spent yesterday making a fruit crisp out of them. Repacking this morning, something fell out of Anna's bag. A cherry pit? I asked hopefully. A stone? Nope, she responded. Goat poop.
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