Beyond the Oxus

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“Some city families spoke only Russian, first to push the children to get ahead, and gradually because their declining Tajik seemed inadequate for what they wanted to say. Many people came to believe that Tajik was intrinsically unsuited to the modern world, useful only for such old-fashioned things as poetry and the language of love. From knowing only the Russian word for, say, matches, it was an easy step to the assumption that had the Russians not come there would have been no matches.”

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“Qader Baba-born in around 1900 - was a grown man at this time and well able to compare the new order with the old. His earliest memory is of the khan processing through his village to check the level of the Amu before the planting season. 'The jesters would come beforehand,' he says. ,'They had bells on their wrists so as to warn the people of the khan's approach. They had their kneecaps removed as children to make their special wobbly walk, then the khan would look after them until they were grown up; I suppose it was the fashion then. Then rich, clever people would bring pans of pilau and stand at roadside holding them aloft as the khan came through. He had a glittering coat; I remember it sparkling. A riderless horse came behind him. He would lean from his horse and take a little from each pilau.' The khan's authority, Qader remembers, was total. 'He would hang you or shoot you if your crime was big or beat you with a stick and imprison you and shackle your legs. I remember them putting three planks together to make a gallows, putting the criminal on a cart and taking him around the city for all to see before they hanged him. The bazaar was full of his officers, I remember. And after he went, it did not change much. We were still afraid of the lord of the land, the obkom, they called him. Before, they forced us to the mosque. Then they forced us not to go. If they say "hang!" we will be hanged, if he says "beat!" we will be beaten. He is the shepherd, we are the sheep. What should we do? Use guns?'”