So back to the pictures. First you should know that Mahmoud has 5 children and 11 grandchild of whom he is very proud. He's a nice man, a friend to all we encounter, polite. This makes the next 2 images on his phone especially astonishing. First: a naked 1100 pound woman lying on her stomach, looking saucily at the camera. He says she is from Los Angeles; perhaps it's her American roots that makes him think we might be interested. The next is a 50 pound anorexic woman. Also Western. Mystifying, horrifying.
Kumtepa was amazing and I found some wonderful (really!) ikat yardage. Central Asian bazaars are bustling, crowded affairs -- shoppers jamming the narrow aisles, porters and snack vendors vying for space and threatening the wellbeing of your shins. One minute you're eyeing wedding wares then you turn a corner to be blasted by smoke from grilling shashlik. Everything can be found in a regional bazaar: livestock, furniture, car parts, underwear, hair dye, cow stomach. All you have to do is ask. Two hours feels like six to me. Before departing we stopped for tea and a tasty fried dough and potato snack.
Sardor, our guide, proposes we take an hour to drive to Namangan because there is a wholesale supplier of suzani embroidery. While most of the Uzbek suzani is produced in the Fergana valley, it is sold to dealers and retailers from the major tourist cities of Uzbekistan and Turkey. So we drive to an old madrasah, Sardor makes some calls, Susan and I take pictures with some old men and wait for a young man to arrive. He joins our car and directs us to a home in a distant neighborhood where we are greeted by the young man's father. Upstairs in a room we are shown amazing handiwork, a good slice of which is coming home.
Then we go to Mahmoud's home for lunch. (His next to youngest son is driving.) This includes meeting his wife, daughter in law, 4 of grandchildren; seeing the family compound with orchard, garden, cows, chickens (and an elliptical machine!); enjoying a delicious meal with cream and yogurt from the cows, salads and fruits, delicious soup. As he sits with his 2 year old grandson, graciously pouring tea and serving food, I think of those strange pictures he showed us yesterday and, while I don't understand, I think it's more an innocent curiosity about something exotic, foreign and incomprehensible.
Tomorrow we drive back to Tashkent and catch a flight to Nukus in the west of Uzbekistan near the (disappearing) Aral Sea. That will give me more time to write and select pictures to post. Jet lag hits hard at the end of a long day.
read your email re. not being able to post pics. Enjoy the written descriptions, so no problem. Can't believe you have any energy left to write your blog---but all sounds terrific. Hugs
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Dana, estrogen-deprived and textile-hungry, ventured from the Pacific Northwest to Central Asia in 2013. Now the lure of bandhani & woodblock take her India.