Dushanbe First Day

Dushanbe first day
Its quiet, still quiet, lucky and strange for a city center. Washington has quiet streets, but here, perhaps because there is only one other person staying at the guesthouse, there is a quiet of stillness, like nothing but my fingers are moving in the whole house, whole compound, whole city of Dushanbe.
The quiet can be shocking; can make one wonder if anyone else existed in the world, especially any one in the western world, because this is so far away from that. And that’s it feels. There are different rules, here, different influence, there is no American television, no European neighborhood policy, this is east, this is asia, and isolated asia too.
Last night after arriving at 4AM and waiting in a small office with 30 other internationals for my visa, I asked the driver if the time on his car clock was right, he said yes. It said 5:40. I walked into the quiet guesthouse following the groundskeeper as he lugged my bags up the stairs. I opened my freezing cold bedroom, brushed my teeth and got under the covers with all of my clothes on. As I went to sleep, I felt completed isolated. I felt that not a soul in the world knew where I was except for the driver and the groundskeeper. I laid in the silence under the covers like I was sleeping on the top of a mountain or on stranded beach in complete solitude. It could have been frightening. But I felt calm. I knew somehow, I had all I needed.
And I closed my eyes.
At exactly 12:30, I awoke, as I thought I would. Six hours is all I am allowed, or I won’t be able to sleep that night. Though my body had grown accustomed to being 9 hours different, now I add two more hours, now I am really on the other end of the earth. I can’t help but feel it, but now I am really away, whereas the south Caucasus feels very Europe like, now I am away from all of that. Unlike Tbilisi and even Yerevan, no one has bothered to learn English here although maybe in ten years the new generation will have it. In Yerevan I had internet DSL in my fancy hotel room, here, I have very slow internet and only from the main computer in the guesthouse. I am far away.
I sat today in a staff meeting of our partner office. It’s a completely Tajik managed and run office. It’s the best example of development I have seen. Young tajiks and their director, a Turkmen, are creating ideas, are developing projects, questioning management decisions, offering solutions, coming up with great ideas. As the world changes, as development money shrinks and priorities change, I am disheartened that the future development of these 10 smart people is threatened, that perhaps they can go to other organizations but at this organization they have a bit more space to create and try.
After a full day of work we go to dinner at an Indian restaurant. I walk in and the smell of oil heaters takes over my nose and I am nostalgic. Nostalgic for a whole time and place that doesn’t exist, at least for me, anymore. I smell and feel Afghanistan the most in Dushanbe.
After dinner my colleagues and I share a cab and we accidentally drop them off first at their hotels. They leave me with the cab driver. Its not the smartest decision on any of our parts, but somehow I am unworried. Some magic, the magic that always happens here, will happen again. So in Persian and Tajik my cab driver and I try to find our way to my guesthouse. I have a landmark that is unhelpful, the Telephone company building. We get close and I am trying to go on memory from when I was here in March. Nothing looks familiar, and I am worried, maybe this was as stupid as it seemed, especially since I don’t have any phone number for anyone in Dushanbe, not my colleagues, not my friends, not even the guesthouse. I have nothing.
He tells me not to worry because he hears me sighing. The streets are all dark and all the same. Then I see a park and it seems like it is on the wrong side of the road. We drive a bit and I finally understand. I know where I am. We turn around and I see the gate. I have no idea how, but we found it. I am safe. It feels like a miracle.


Being Iranian is much more helpful than being western here.