All Hail Islam Karimov!

6/14/07
That's what it felt like this morning when we were waiting for our driver to show up to take us from Bukhara to Shakhrisabz and then onto Samarkand. But our driver was a good half hour late. Unusual for him. (He tends to show up when we have told him not to). So, he comes in at around 930 and says that he had to walk 15 minutes to get there, because all the roads in and out of Bukhara and all the roads in the center of Bukhara are closed. Why? Karimov is coming to town! Near me? Maybe. Now? No. But for the entire day his unannounced visit will shut down most commerce and tourism. Buses of tourists are stuck outside of the city and we are stuck inside. I brainstormed a bit and thought, ok, we can walk to the car and leave the baggage and the driver can come back and get it tomorrow. But that wouldn't work, because he can't move his car. Finally we decided to tell my driver to go and see if some greenbacks could solve the problem over at the police station.

In the meantime my mother and I set out to walk around the old Jewish Quarter. There is a second synagogue that we wanted to pop in to. This one has old Bukharan traditions and the building itself is very old. We had a bit of trouble finding it when a boy asked us if we were looking for the Sinagoga. Da. He showed us the way. There is no way we could ever have found this ourselves with our guide books. He then asked for my Oakleys. Nyet. Baseball cap? Nyet. He really really wanted my oakleys. He even waited outside until we were done to ask again.

The door to the Synagogue was locked so the boy knocked on the door across the street. As I soon learned, this was the Rabbi's house. He gave us a quick tour of the place and explained a bit of the history and how old it was (300 years). All this I must add was in Persian. Then we got to meet his 9 year old daughter (granddaughter?-I didn't want to ask). The rabbi had these amazing eyebrows – they were crazy!

We then wandered back through the city to the Lyabi-Hauz (that main piazza pool thing) near our B&B Sasha & Sons. I went by to the hotel where they told me that our driver was busy with the Chief of Police and things were looking good. About 45 minutes later her showed up at the door with the car. We loaded are stuff and set off. But not so easily. We had to take these back alleyways to get to a main road and then take some country roads to avoid all the checkpoints and roadblocks set up in Karimov's honor. I mean if Karimov is coming to town, can't I at least get to meet him?

Now I'm in the car, probably about an hour outside of Shakhrisabz. The driver takes great delight in pointing to every field we pass and saying "cotton." It's part of his 100 word English vocabulary. There's also very little growing here that is not cotton. It's getting a bit repetitive. Although I must say that this seems to be the first time in Uzbekistan (or Turkmenistan for that matter) that I'm not in a desert. It seems to be more plains here. Did you know that Uzbek university students have to come and pick cotton during their summers? It's like a form of national service. Perhaps it's a social equalizer too.

We had a pit stop a short while ago and I bought an ice cream. Now why you might ask am I telling you this. Because it was the worst ice cream ever. I couldn't finish it and I had to throw it out. First time in my life.

Ok, just leaving Shakhrisabz now. It's 6:20pm. I just had the most annoying and idiotic tour guide of my life. I'll give you a few examples. "This mosque built in 1435, that's why it's known as Friday Mosque." We were in one mausoleum and she kept on repeating the same two sentences in different sentence order all the while translating the Arabic names into English. For example: This is grave of abu Jamiya. Abu Jamiya was buried here. Here is Abu Jamiya. His name in English is Abu Jamiya. It is called the grave of Abu Jamiya because Abu Jamiya is buried here. And that my friends, is how I just wasted the last 90 minutes of my life. For those Schorrs out there reading this…this was a Ranger Pam moment and it is clear that the two of them graduated from Tour Guide School together. One of the funnier things is that she kept on forgetting our names, and yet, insisted on calling us by name. So every 2-3 minutes she would ask, what are your names? We would tell her and then she would say: "So yes my dears, Julia and Dinuchka." Figure I had to have heard that 30+ times on that tour. So grating. If you can't tell. And then there was the echoing. Every mosque or mausoleum we entered of course had a natural echo. So at the very last one, after we've been noticing this for the rest of the time she says: "Listen to the echo. ALLAHU AKBAR" so loud and yes, lo and behold, there was an echo. Shocking.

En route to Samarkand now. We get to go through a mountain pass. I'm excited because I think I'm moving on from the desert portion of my trip to the mountain part.