Tashkent Station, 8.30 a.m.
It’s such a strange day, this. I’m in Uzbekistan for business, it seems I’ll be boarding a train shortly to reach one of our clients. Destination? Samarkand. Sounds like a joke. ‘Samarcan is a noble city, where Christians and Saracens live‘, wrote Marco Polo, a few centuries ago. Today, I too, as a Christian (almost Venetian) merchant, will be in that much-dreamed-of city, perhaps surprised that it really exists.
I arrive at the station in a daze, the dry July heat of the steppe overcomes the massive doses of caffeine ingested at breakfast, I thought they were enough along with my usual energetic kasha, combined with a long, billowing dress to cope with a hot day of travel. Summer hypotension boggles my mind at the thought of the Samarkand of myth; who knows, if I will find the languid, colourful, perfumed atmospheres imagined in Orientalist autosuggestions. Well, the passengers circulating the lobby seem to have their feet more anchored to the ground than me. Some are munching, as is usual in these parts, on sunflower seeds, others take their seats piling up luggage, saddlebags, provisions of all sorts. Although it feels like we are inside a large shopping mall, fast food outlets do not exist. Rather, there are sort of little stations, market stalls, where multiple stuffs are sold: baskets of Uzbek bread with an exaggerated diameter, cigarettes, pomegranate juices, toys, handkerchiefs, the iconic milk chocolate bars with Alenka’s famous little face, straight from Moscow. Then I see a two-metre tall giant standing out, he will take my own Afrosiyob train (the ancient name for Samarkand), the one which will carry us to our destination in two hours of high speed. The train is comfortable, so comfortable that instead of immersing myself in the uniform landscape of the steppe I am sucked into the funnel of sleep, only the tea lady wakes me up to water me and hand me a packed snack offered by the railway company. After all, we are on the Silk Road, tea is ritual, rhythm, contemplation.
In Samarkand, I am met by a driver with an unpronounceable name, nice elongated eyes, the usual raven fringes that are fashionable in these parts, he speaks good English, he worked in the UK for years in a pub. The station tries to resemble the Registan Palace in tone, or at least the Soviets tried to. I see the tall man again, who smiles at me, and then I change street, I don’t plan to spend time making new acquaintances today. Soon after I am at the Cafeteria Chocolat for my appointment, where a bizarre Sachertorte (without any chocolate shadow) stands out, who knows, maybe it is the Uzbek recipe. Lunching on rice pilaf, I set off again, heading for the Registan palace. The streets of Samarkand are a dejavu, they remind me of the neighbourhood where I lived in Baku. Orthogonal street plan, potholes here and there where I could easily amputate a leg, kitty cats everywhere. Cemented parks, alas, caykhane here and there, hawkers selling bread, stocking it and dragging it in wheelbarrows. Smouldering samovars sit next to doners, with that inviting aroma that makes you want to bite into them under Coca Cola umbrellas. And here, in a corner of the city, are the souls of the country: Caravanese, post-Russian, Turanian, Arab, shyly winking at the West. Just like the characters that appear here and there, Cyrillic, Latin, Arabic. The language is another sign of this mixture: the majority language, Tajik (a dialect of Farsi), sits alongside the Turkic Uzbek spoken in the rest of the country, Russian, the lingua franca of intergenerational and international communication, and English. After all, we are in the largest land trade junction between China and Europe, a carrefour par excellence; it is no coincidence that Alexander the Great conquered the city just a few centuries ago, and was enchanted by it, it became the ‘third Alexandria’.
However, Samarkand is not Tashkent, and it is not just because at the sound of its name the Orient pervades you. It is because, preceded by its fame, although it is now opening up to international tourism, the city still remains very traditional, almost devoid of foreign-inspired establishments, with the inhabitants dressed in characteristic clothes, broken-down Chevrolets and statues celebrating, in a very Asian way, the cult of personality. In a rotunda is a statue of Tamerlane, further on a giant statue dedicated to Islom Karimov, who was born and raised in Samarkand, a former satrap-regent of the USSR Republic, co-opted as the first president of the Uzbek Republic after the dissolution of the Soviet giant, who passed away in 2016. He left behind a controversial legacy of resentment and nostalgia.
However, the current President Mirziyoyev recently celebrated the erection of this huge (and disturbing?) monument, albeit in clear political discontinuity with his predecessor. Since Karimov’s death, the country has become the most populous of the ‘stans’ in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), one of the fastest-growing in the world, extremely rich in mineral, energy, and agri-food resources, finally open to foreign investment, and because of its strategic position, although it falls into the category of landlocked countries, it is the object of contention among the great powers competing in the renewed climate of the Great Game: Russia, Turkey, the EU, the United States, and China. However, in Samarkand, next to the ancient necropolis of Shah-i-Zinda, lies Karimov’s mausoleum, where an elderly gentleman even came on a pilgrimage with his son, asking me to take a picture of him, to commemorate his leader. Then he also wanted a selfie of the three of us together, in front of the tomb, but whatever.
The Registan
I arrive in the presence of the Registan Palace, an astonishing setting on a large esplanade. It was here that my driver had met Charles of England, when on an institutional visit some twenty years ago, he had stopped to chat with the carpet sellers who worked in the very bazaar of the palace of the same name. ‘That’s why I then went to the UK, that meeting marked me, I took it as a sign of destiny. Aaargh leave that never-grown-up child of his, Harry!”. Registan is a symbolic square for the Uzbeks, here and there are photo shoots of happy couples, the brides wear very dramatic dresses, they look like Madame Thussauds!
It is a complex of majestic madrasas, the Madrasa of Ulugbek (the oldest). Located on the western side of Registan, this madrasa was completed in 1420 during the reign of the eponymous ruler, a famous astronomy scholar, also known to the coeval West. The monument’s walls and portal reflect his love of astronomy through numerous inlaid stars. The other two madrasas that make up Registan are the Gold Clad Madrasa and the Lion Madrasa, the latter of which contravenes the Islamic ban on representation, as two precious golden lions stand out on the portal. The whole site is extraordinary, the polychrome, floral, dreamlike decorations, which particularly insist on the colour blue, help to exceed the expectations that my hunger for exoticism had fomented. Samarkand is real, here in front of me, and its inhabitants sit comfortably on the inner courtyard of the palace, the men wearing those colourful crocheted Uzbek hats, the women wrapping their hair in soft fabrics. Some sell carpets and cloths in the former study rooms of the madrasas, others squat barefoot on a kind of double bed to rest; some women sit on the floor with their daughters to display scarves, others drink tea on small terraces, or carve cute, distinctive gnomes out of wood. Everyone is minding their own business, placidly, when I cross their faces they look so ataraxic, at peace, they seem to be smiling, although they don’t really, it is as if there is an insurmountable barrier between me and them although it is so easy to receive their serenity.
Suddenly, however, the station’s giant appears. All right, at this point we introduce ourselves, he has a name: Vladimir. Vladimir the Muscovite, a physics teacher, who used to live in Odessa, and after the war in Ukraine decided to embark on some covid journeys, and after nine years he came to visit a brotherly friend who lives in Tashkent. Just like me, he reached Samarkand in the day, of which he had long dreamed, and asks if I can take a souvenir photo of him. How nice, he only speaks Russian, I am forced to struggle to interact in that idiom dear to me. He is a Milan fanatic, like many Russians he rejoices when he realises I am Italian. Vladimir is not at all ataraxic, he has that good-natured, chaotic and overwhelming air that most belongs to the Slavic souls I have met. Walking around the square, we talk about Berlusconi (“Forza Italia!” he says), Lomonosov University, then jolt when I tell him that I have studied Russian language and culture: we arrive at Pushkin, “he is our everything”, he comments, “simply colossal”, “even though I am a faithful reader of Brodsky and Anna Achmatova”. I love how Russians talk so easily and passionately about poetry. Suddenly a comment on Totò Cutugno, of whom he is a great admirer, pops out. I decide the time has come for us to part. He asks me if he can meet me at the station to take the train home, I am vague, I think I want to take some time for myself, I tell him that I don’t know which train I will return on.
(continues..)
