On the Silk Road, rough rides and smooth operators

The South China Morning Post

Tajikistan is not the easiest place to get to. Finally, after a couple of false starts including a not very sensible plan to go overland through Afghanistan, I found a flight from Kabul on an ancient Russian turboprop. The cabin reeked and my seat sagged as I sat down, but I'd soon forgotten all of this, staring out the window as the snow cones of the Hindu Kush gave way to an eerie desert that reminded me of photos from Mars. In a couple of hours, I was in Dushanbe.

In the capital, leafy boulevards and trundling trolleybuses wended their way past down at heel apartment blocks and the colonnaded headquarters of the departed communists. Women in tight jeans and high heeled boots strode the streets confidently, but in my hotel, the tap water was brown. The dusty bleakness of Kabul still fresh in my mind, I felt as if I were in some forgotten and none too prosperous corner of Europe.

Once straddling the Silk Road, Tajikistan was left high and dry by the breakup of the Soviet Union, stranded between Afghanistan, China, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Over ninety per cent of its area is mountainous, ruggedly beautiful but plagued by avalanches and landslides. Add to that a national airline that its inhabitants will tell you - not without a hint of perverse pride - is the worst in the world, and it takes a fair bit of determination to get there.

I was determined. Under contract to the State Department, I was documenting cultural preservation projects sponsored by the US government in Central and South Asia. I had already visited Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, flying in long, frustrating loops to cover what was once the world's superhighway. In each country, expert custodians had guided me round dazzling cultural treasures set in surreal landscapes, then charmed me over boozy, carnivorous feasts. Tajikistan would be my last stab at the Silk Road, and I didn't want to miss it.

A few hours into my visit I was at the State Antiquities Museum photographing a seventh century, 14-metre clay Buddha. Since the Taliban detonated the Bamiyan Buddhas, it is the largest such statue in Central Asia. As the reclining guru slipped serenely into Nirvana, he seemed to mock my need to fit Tajikistan into any neat category.  

The rest of the museum's exquisite collection only proved the point. There were delicate Hellenistic ivory carvings from the Bactrian period, and a Hindu statue from the Sogdian city of Panjikent. The Persians, the Greeks, the Macedonians, the Chinese, the Indians and finally the Russians had all put their two cents worth into Tajik culture at some time or another.

Over dinner my embassy contact, Abdul Malik, told me about his country. We were sitting in what was loosely known as a tea house, scoffing borscht, salad, chicken shashlik and beer. Downstairs, a wedding party was getting raucous.

"After independence from Moscow, there was a civil war. Basically it was one clan fighting another. But one side was backed by Russia, and the other by Islamists. The Russian side won. So radical Islam is not tolerated. But about fifty per cent of people practice Islam. Ask me what I am and I will say I am a Muslim. I don't pray, I don't fast, I drink vodka, and I see women other than my wife. But I am a Muslim!"

By the end of the civil war much of the educated elite had fled to Russia, Israel or America. The Tajiks, no fans of the Taliban, supported the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, but still suffer from isolation and the kind of rampant corruption that scares off investors. For want of anything better, much of the economy is fuelled by the drug trade between Afghanistan and Europe, which transits Tajikistan.  

The Tajiks, in other words, have every reason to be irritable. I found them warm, welcoming and hilarious.

Bone tired, I declined Abdul Malik's invitation to move on to one of Dushanbe's nightclubs, which expat friends in Afghanistan had spoken of with longing. Back in my hotel room, the cable TV offered, at a guess, 300 channels. At least twenty of them featured women who were either naked, or about to become naked.

I was getting the picture. Two thousand years of conquest and trade had leavened the Tajik soul with Russian booze, Jewish humour, Islamic hospitality and a liberal dose of Roman debauchery.

Two days later, a ten hour drive over a snowbound pass and spectacular mountains took us to Panjikent, where a Sogdian city had flourished from the fifth to the eighth centuries AD. This famously tolerant culture, which had once told Alexander the Great to take a walk but had never bothered to build its own empire, had prospered on the Silk Road trade. Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroastrians and Christians had lived side by side in Old Panjikent, creating brilliant sculpture and murals, until the Arab invasion in 722.

As we walked around the ruins, archaeologist Abdurauf Razokov pointed out the remains of sumptuous houses, a winery and a fire temple amid the amber coloured earth, every once in a while taking the chance to put his arm around Nigina, my translator.

Abdurauf was in charge of excavations at Sarazm, a few kilometers away. Dating to the fourth millennium BC, it is the oldest city yet discovered in Central Asia. The settlement had grown rich working the lead, gold, copper and lapis lazuli that abound in the surrounding mountains, trading as far afield as Baluchistan, Persia, and the Aral Sea. Seashells found in the grave of a local noblewoman are thought to have come from the Indian Ocean.

At the site we were introduced to 86-year-old Ashor Ali Tylonov, who had discovered it when he stumbled across an axehead while crossing a field in 1972. With his pointed beard, high boots and turban, he looked every inch the Central Asian patriarch as he recounted the story to Nigina.

"Thousands wanted that axehead, but I kept it until 1976. I thought the archaeologists should have it. I also found three kilos of gold!" he said. "I will tell Abdurauf where it is just before I die."

Turning to me, he spoke through Nigina.

"You are from Australia? I have read about it. There are wild dogs there. The population is 18 million. There are sheep, and many ports, and people live by the ocean."

That afternoon, our work finished, Abdurauf took us to a loose-sided riverbank to see the openings of ancient tunnels.

"Perhaps they were used for irrigation, like those found in Kazakhstan and at Turfan, in China. Those ones are kilometres long! No one has investigated these yet - they may run all the way to Samarkand, 45 kilometres from here," said Abdurauf. "But I think it is a good place to bring your lover."