Dushanbe is foreign to me, and I’ve struggled to find a context in which to place it. The people are neither here nor there. Their indistinct features suggest a fusion of Asia, least of all the east. Busty women stride in tacky, full-length dresses, half-veiled in scarves, with the overall formality of sleepwear. Many of them are stunning, nonetheless. The swarthy men are handsome bastards, too, with chiseled features, green eyes, thick beards, and racks of gold and silver teeth. Dushanbe itself, spotless and quiet, is unexpectedly charming. Its broad streets are draped in a canopy of maples and command impressive views of the snow-capped Hissar mountains. The Soviet-era buildings are carefully maintained and intentionally obsolete. The city is frozen in time, stale like an elderly person’s home, caught between quaint and modern, but certainly pleasant.
Land-locked Tajikistan is the poorest of the 15 former Soviet republics. Its anemic economy, despite having weaned itself from foreign aid following five years of civil war in the 1990’s, still relies on remittances from abroad as its largest industry – that being cheap labor. Nearly 50% of Tajikistan’s labor pool works in Russia or Kazakhstan, posting money home to support their families. A staggering 60% of the population lives below the poverty line, with a national GDP per capita in 2009 of just $1,800. Despite its modest earnings, Tajikistan’s unemployment rate is a mere 2% and its literacy rate exceeds 99%. And speaking of literacy, written Tajik employs the Cyrillic alphabet, which appears Russian to the ignorant observer (yours truly), and is far more forgiving than Chinese characters…
