As my journey continues, I come across the mosque of Bibi- Khanym, one of the architectural jewels commissioned by Tamerlane and probably financed with the proceeds of the invasion of India. Following Genghis Khan’s Mongol raids, Tamerlane wanted to add sparkle to his growing empire by imposing works, symbolising the vast borders and solidity of his power. It seems that it was thanks to his military pressure that the Ottomans delayed the capture of Constantinople by almost a hundred years. There is a curious anecdote about this mosque, for it seems that it was Tamerlane’s beautiful Chinese wife who ordered its construction in his absence, so as to surprise her husband. Accidentally, the architect in charge fell in love with her, and Tamerlane soon had him executed on his return, requiring all women to wear the veil so that men could not fall into temptation. Even great leaders come to terms with the most trivial human feelings…
Shah – i – Zinda
Actually, the most impressive and singular monument is the Shah-i-Zinda. I get there after visiting Samarkand’s central market, which is rich of nuts, peanuts, halva, loukoum, melons, huge melons! Melon is the national fruit, and as sweet as anywhere else.
I cross the roadway and take this uphill road lined with mausoleums, a necropolis of incredible craftsmanship. The workmanship of the turquoise tiles and earthenware of inestimable richness, to say the least, throughout the Muslim world. The complex of the ‘tombs of the living kings’ consists of a group of quiet, hieratic tombs, one of which is said to house a cousin of Muhammad, Qusam ibn-Abbas, the man who is said to have spread Islam in the area in the 7th century. The remaining tombs in the sanctuary hold the bodies of some of Tamerlane and Ulugbek’s relatives. It is an unforgettable, silent, spiritual place where one can reconnect with a more ascetic dimension. Then, at the end of this experience, I arrive at the cemetery of Samarkand, a fascinating park in which to walk and see photograms from the last century on the tombstones, giving me an idea of what the Uzbeks looked like in the past.
I start to take the road back. To change my route I climb into the old city. The streets are deserted, everyone seems to lock themselves in their houses, not a fly flies, I feel a bit of fear. It resembles the old city of Tashkent and Podgorica, in that the houses are all developed inside, with a series of rooms jutting out onto a courtyard, where the numerous families gather, sitting on the same large beds and carpets seen earlier in Registan. It looks like the house of Fa Mulan in the Disney cartoon. I finally see a few inhabitants in the street, smiling melon and watermelon vendors. An elderly gentleman invites me to visit his courtyard, where an array of lovely trinkets (glasses, plates, busts of Lenin and other Soviet leaders, carpets) are piled up. Finally I meet a sweet lady who is hanging out her laundry, in Russian she asks me where I am from, hinting at her complicated teeth, poor her. She asks me if Italy is really as beautiful as they say. After some conversation I ask her where the famous synagogue of Samarkand is, I think I have read in the past that it is still functioning. A few metres ahead the Synagogue is actually otkryta (open), I even catch a glimpse of a rabbi inside.
It was founded by Rabbi Nosi in 1891, says the plaque depicting his bearded face with his eye at half-mast. The walls are plastered with photos of rabbis from the past, it seems that there is still a Jewish community of about twenty families in Samarkand. During the Soviet Union, most of the Soviet Jews allowed by OVIR to emigrate to Israel, or elsewhere, came from Samarkand and Buchara, as well as from the Caucasus and the rest of Central Asia. Unlike the Jews from Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, who were refused the right to leave (therefore called refuseniks), as they were considered too skilled and strategic workers, the Kremlin agreed to let these other Jews leave, to appease the anti-Soviet propaganda of the West over the denied freedom of movement. Fun fact, I remember that when I landed in Tel Aviv in 2017, I spoke in Russian to the first taxi driver who took me to my hotel, he was an Uzbek from Samarkand.
Having finished a mouthful of sweet melon, the nice driver picks me up. We have little time and I still have to see a café that interests me, before catching the train back. We are bottled up in traffic, and he tells me about his life since returning to Uzbekistan. He got married, he seems happy about it. I learn a thing or two about how marriages work here: basically men have to go into debt up to their necks to be able to afford a wife, some buy diamonds, others indulge in who knows what other luxury goods to prove they can provide for the bride-to-be, who also has to possess a dowry. The fact is that now society is also changing in Uzbekistan. People are still getting married very early, but more and more women are starting to work, family mechanisms are starting to creak, old-fashioned dynamics are becoming outdated. So people get into debt only to divorce shortly afterwards, triggering a strange vicious circle between Islamic traditionalism and post-Soviet atheism. While facing globalisation, the Uzbeks are trying to recover their identity after years of communism. Many of them are keen to point out that those seventy years of regime engulfed the local culture and say they are tired of Russian interference. Even if it seems like an umbilical cord that is difficult to sever. Today Uzbekistan, drained of its Aral Sea, would like to supply itself with the waters of the Volga, with Russian enthusiasm, a win-win situation. Enlargement of the political sphere of influence in exchange for water. And while yearning for independence, most of them still believe in the myth of the strong man, with many siding with Putin, to the detriment of that ‘Zelensky actor manoeuvred by the strong powers’. Yet, all in all, it almost seems as if there is no passion for politics, and that a certain introverted attitude on the subject survives, perhaps a legacy, a habit borrowed from previous oppressive regimes.
Tamerlane’s Mausoleum
Before saying goodbye to me at the station, my driver wants to show me the place that the people of Samarkand are most proud of, the tomb of Tamerlane. It is worth it. The great Mongol conqueror was from Shakrisabz, but was buried in this mausoleum together with his sons, his grandson UlugBeg and Muhammad Sultan. It also honours Mir Sayyid Baraka, Tamerlane’s master. Externally the building does not look so imposing, it seems in fact that Tamerlane was not supposed to be buried here, and ended up here instead due to his sudden death from pneumonia in Kazakhstan. Back than this was the only building already prepared. But… it is only when I pass through the monumental portal that I am immersed in the absolute and obsequious silence of the mausoleum, whose interior is embellished with deep niches decorated with muqarnas, plasterwork and high-reliefs painted or covered in gold. The gold is prevalent, never exaggerated, enveloping the visitor with a strong sense of royalty and solemn grandeur. Anyone who attempts to violate it may be punished; on Tamerlane’s tomb we read an inscription: Anyone who violates my peace in this life or the next, will be subject to inevitable punishment and misery. When Soviet anthropologist Mikhail Gerasimov read these words, the following day, 22 June 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union… everything else is history. In any case, the scholar opened the crypts, and managed to measure an impressive 170 cm tall Tamerlane, a sort of giant for the time, albeit a limping one. Ulug Beg, on the other hand, according to his studies, was decapitated. Who knows if and what other secrets these tombs hold?
Samarkand train station
“Well..it’s been a pleasure, man. I salute you Europe. Удачи! (good luck)” I said to the driver.
“удачи! Always.. keep your light.”, he tenderly replied to me. We greeted each other like this.
Later, at the platform, Vladimir (see “Samarkand ch. I”) is waiting for me. “Toh! The Tsar of Uzbekistan!” I tell him. “I came to the station to try to meet you again” He states. “Oh God” I think to myself.
“What train do you have?”
“The 5.53pm one, I have to be for dinner in Tashkent with some clients.”
“Oh no, I just managed to buy a ticket for the next train, yours was full, how do we stay in touch?”
Eventually that sunny face made me sympathise, I left him my whatsapp, what could have ever happened in the end?
“Well..it’s been a pleasure, I hope one day Italians and Russians will come back to chat carefree and smiling, as it happened to you and me, in a city lost in the steppe. Tell Moscow I will visit it sooner or later”.
“Of course, you will always be welcome. W Milan, w Milan, w Berlusconi!”.
On the train, I get one of those seats that squash you close to the window, the kinda situations arising when there’s a mother with a newborn baby next to her. But he was so good…he had this little face with soft skin, elongated eyes, fluffy black hair. Opposite me is a French couple, father and son, they are commenting on the extraordinary day they had in Samarkand. In the rest of the wagon only Uzbeks, who even have a brik of tea to take away, as if the complimentary bar service was not enough. The daylight is leaving and there is no better time than to abandon myself to the steppe, yellow, ochre, soft, uniform…so flat that it provokes the most tangled thoughts, almost as if that boundless space was waiting to be filled with my contents, my thoughts.
Suddenly, I receive a message from Vladimir. His whatsapp picture depicts his big bearded face, tiny blue eyes, holding slices of salami with the label ‘aromatniy’ (aromatic) written on them. “That crazy physicist” I think. With further research I would later discover he was a champion of the Russian Physics Olympics, a brain from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He sends me a song, the version of ‘La Maritza’ sung in the Russian miniseries of Isaev by Sergey Ursulyak, and in the caption he writes
“Скоро улетаю в Москву,
Рад был!
Где-нибудь, Когда-нибудь’.
“Soon I will leave for Moscow,
It has been joyful!
Somewhere, in a random day’.
