Samarkand Day 1

A few thousand miles and the hotel breakfast changes, a little. No simit but now we have sumusa (I hope I’m spelling that right) and more fresh vegetables. Starting in Greece there’s been a salad comprised of chopped tomato, onion, and cucumber with lemon juice. That’s reporting for duty here too. The tea is not as good as Turkey. If there’s one thing the Turks have right it’s the tea culture. Everyone drinks the same thing which means what everywhere you go it’s available all the time hot. Probably like drinking coffee in the US in the 60s, no subtle flavors or art but the ease is enticing.

For my first stop of the day I hit the Afrosiyob. This is an archeological site and the oldest part of the settlement. Samarkand is old and even before the Silk Road, people lived here. Excavations started in the late 1800s and have continued since. First with Russian archeologists, now with French and local teams. The collection is mildly interesting to me. Antiquities for antiquities’s sake just aren’t my style, there are only so many reassembled jars I can look at. That being said, there were some interesting bits. A ancient and locally made amphora, suggesting these people were talking to the Greeks long before Jesus was born. Also, a mural in a place with exquisite polychrome artwork showing their contact with the Turks and Chinese. 

Palace mural

From there I hit the Siyob Bozori, the local open air market. Hundreds of stalls selling everything from spices and meat to cookware and bicycles. This is a massive affair and although there were tourists, most of the folks wandering around were just doing their daily grocery shopping. On the tourists, the majority of the visitors here are Russian. I suspect they have been coming to Samarkand for some time and probably have a similar tourism relation to the country as US has to Mexico. The older generation in Uzbekistan learned to speak Russian in school and wrote their own language with the Cyrillic alphabet. Younger people learn English and the Uzbek language (a Turkic language) has been switched to the Roman character set. Russians can comfortably speak Russian here. I can get away with English. In the Bozori I found something I had come to this country to see, the Samarkand non. This bread is baked in tandoors and has a unique and artful shape. I bough myself a loaf and wandered the city with it for the day.

Bozori Borzoi?

Right by the Bozori there is a famous mosque. I investigated and found a thing of immense scale and beauty. It was built in the 1400s to enable all the men of the city to come and pray in one place. The thing is massive. Although time has reduced the original structure to mostly rubble, the restoration is reverent and uses period construction. It feels old. The scale is absolutely breathtaking. I find this brand of architecture to be enthralling. Islamic geometry mixed with central Asian motifs. Just lovely.

Everything you see is the mosque

Balance being the essence of all things, I looked for a synagogue next. The Bukharian Jews are a bunch that trace their roots from the Sephardim of Spain and went to Buhara in Samarkand. Luckily for me, there’s a synagogue in the city. I walked through the streets to get there. Open sewers and fast cars in tight streets. In Istanbul you get the right of way, here you’re liable to get flattened by an old Kamaz, Lada, or Chaika. Shockingly a lot of these Soviet horses are still roaming the streets. I approach the synagogue and notice a locked door and a small group outside. I quietly take a photo of the Magen David on the wall and assess the situation. Two groups who met fortuitously are waiting for someone to unlock the door, friends, I introduce myself. All Jews, one group from Argentina and another from Russia. After a brief wait an old man on a bicycle, Yusuf, arrives with the key. This is a fascinating synagogue because it is two synagogues. The Bukharians built the first in the early 1900s. After the Second World War a group of Polish refugees came and built an Ashlenaz Synagogue under the same roof. I’ve never seen anything like it. It reminds me of the joke about the Jew stranded on a desert island alone who builds himself two synagogues. When asked why he made a second he says, “that’s the one I don’t go to.” Yusuf explains all this in Russian with one of the bilingual Russians translating to English. The middle-aged Argentine translates to Spanish for her parents. She gets to skip a step when she discovers the old man speaks Hebrew.

Sephardic

Ashkenaz

After we thanked Yusuf and left the Synagogue(s?) I chatted in Spanish with the Argentine Abuelo. He told me the story of how his family came to Argentina from Warsaw after surviving the Warsaw Uprising and the NAZI occupation. Fascinating stuff.

The groups all split and I walked near the main square to see the real touristy nonsense. Another rug store, this one focusing mainly on the Sozani. An Uzbek handicraft where silk thread patters are embroidered into a large silk fabric. These are intricate, colorful, and time consuming to make. These are not suitable for the floor as they are simply too fragile. Not what I’m looking for thankfully, they are hideously expensive. An antique shop down the road piqued my interest. An eccentric old man tried to chat with me in broken English but I found it impossible to follow him. He presided over a mountain of Soviet era home goods and USSR medallions. An interesting find but. Not for me.

My afternoon nap having been completed I went out in search of dinner. I’ve been getting around my cab being that it’s cheaper than a bus fare back home and every time the cabbie asks me where I’m from. They get very excited to have a Californian in the car. I take it Americans are not found often in these parts. We get to the restaurant and blissfully they have an English menu and someone to take my order. What a dream. There is one main dish, plov. I order it with a side salad, a pot of lemon apple tea, and more non. The salad is the same one I’ve seen since Greece and the tea is fantastic. Uzbek cups are large and have no handle, I guess you call that a bowl. Plov is a dish with rice, bits of meat, beans, and other small treats. Basically a pilaf. It is oily, rich, and delicious. I cannot finish it, it if simple too heavy although I take in as much as I can. 

For a nightcap I went Blues Cafe, I’m always intrigued to see how American culture is interpreted abroad and this was an odd one. A jazz/blues bar in Samarkand. They only have live music in the summer but play jazz all year round. The wall is covered in jazz and blues memorabilia. Right next to the bar there was a shadow box of minstrel banjo advertisements proudly displayed with a real banjo. I’m not going to say anything about that, we’re far from the US and the fact that there are people trying to honor the blues at all is commendable. I order a glass of wine and sit at the bar with my book. I’m talking with one bartender in English and after a bit, a pair of Uzbeks insist on having me at their table. Everyone’s excited to see an American here. They’re shitfaced and keep changing their story on me which I don’t like. They keep pushing me to drink which I like less. Don’t get me wrong, when in Rome but there are only so many straight Stoli shots I can do in a row. One of them stands up and that’s when I see the puke. The bar continues to serve. I quietly ask the waiter if it’s normal here to just mop up and carry on and he replies it is. The staff keeps coming up to me asking me if I’m okay (not the others) and I take the hint. Close out and go home. A good night’s sleep awaits.