#15: A dinner in Tashkent
An Afghan, a Russian, a Pakistani, and an Indian walk into a restaurant
I spent almost two weeks in Tashkent, Uzbekistan on my trip. This wasn’t because of any attachment to this boring city, but because I had to apply for a visa to Turkemenistan. Spoiler alert: the visa was rejected1.
Working at the hostel I was staying at, was Fahad, an immigrant from Pakistan. He talked non-stop. Briar, a young Australian girl who was on her round-the-world trip (she was 18!!), told me she had started to skip breakfast to avoid the endless conversation.
He had been a very good cricketer and had almost made it to the big leagues. “Inzamam Ul-Haq beat me to the national team, otherwise I would be rich right now”. The only reason I tolerated his constant chatter was that he told me that he considered Indians and Pakistanis brothers (“Indian Pakistani bhai bhai” of course).
He once used me an excuse to go out for a business deal. He told the hostel owner that he was going to show me the city, and instead we went to a “business meeting” with a local politician. He was trying to lease a space for his business and the politician guy was “helping” him with the paperwork. It was barely legal, but he was desperate to make enough money to pay for his wife and daughter to join him. “It’s very difficult”, he told me. “These guys take advantage of Pakistanis and Afghanistani people like me. I hope this works out.”
It was almost December when I was there. Tourist+traveller season was over, and most of the people in the hostel were not backpackers, but people looking for work. Meeting them was an experience in itself.
There was an Afghani man, Mohammed. He was also very talkative, and a car mechanic from a village close to the Tajik-Afghan border. He was very conservative in his religious views. I tried a few times to argue when he said something regressive, especially about the role of his wife in his life. Once, he was giggling, listening to Fahad’s stories about strip clubs and prostitutes in Azerbaijan. I asked them if their wives enjoyed these same freedoms, but Fahad waved to me to keep quiet. “I was just making up silly stories. There’s no point talking to Mohammed about this stuff”, he told me.
Mohammed was also extremely angry at the United States. “They have destroyed our country”, he said multiple times over the course of the few days he was there. According to him, the rise of terrorism in Afghanistan was America’s fault. It was because of their involvement that life had now become unbearably difficult in Afghanistan. There were no jobs, no money, and no hope for the future. He and everyone he knew were trying every trick to immigrate away from Afghanistan to make a better life for their families. However, he was still unfailingly polite and friendly to the American couple that was staying at the hostel. I wonder what he thinks now. Is he happy that the Americans are gone and the Taliban is in power? Or maybe he’s happy that the Americans are gone, but angry that they left the country to the Taliban?
There was also a Russian in the hostel, whose name I don’t remember. He was either a policeman or an ex-policeman, or the brother of a policeman. “The USSR created these countries”, he said proudly. “We gave them schools and electricity and education and gender equality”.
In my time in Uzbekistan, I met locals who disagreed strongly with what he said. They told me the USSR had screwed the country. From a vibrant and diverse civilization, they had turned it into a cotton-producing cog in the communist machine. However, I also met some who looked back nostalgically to the communist days. They told me that in those days, everyone had jobs, education was free for everyone, and there was at least the idea of equality. Now, the country and its wealth were in the hands of a few, who didn’t care what happened to the rest.
One night, the four of us went out to dinner, i.e. an Afghan, a Pakistani, a Russian, and an Indian walked into a restaurant. “We are like the United Nations”, I joked. I remember thinking to myself that maybe this hasn’t happened too many times in the history of the world. It was a chill meal. We didn’t share enough of a common language to have deep conversations, so everyone was smiling and friendly..
I’ve told this story many times to friends, and now it’s here for you to read.
My Turkmenistan visa was rejected without reason. The hostel owner told me that the rejections are completely random and based on nothing. Once an old German couple was staying in the hostel. The wife got the visa, but the husband was rejected!
Cyclists told me they had heard that if you had a beard in your photo, you would be rejected. Other people told me to apply again. I didn’t, even though this dashed my hopes of completing the Tajikistan-Europe cycling trip purely by land.
If I had a nicer passport, it would still have been possible to go through Kazakhstan. But what to do? Such is life. I flew back to India, performed some impressive gymnastics to get visas for UAE, Turkey, Iran, and Europe, and flew to Dubai from where I took a boat to Iran. Maybe a future post ;-)
Good one, Pritam. Enjoyed it.
Lovely post, Pritam! Reading this made me nostalgic about the people I have met on the road, especially our Pakistani friends who we sadly only get to meet abroad. Thank you for sharing your stories and allowing me to live/relive such moments through your writing!