TALLEST FLAGPOLE, BIGGEST FLAG AND It's not in Texas

Central Dushanbe is home to Rudaki Park, or Park of the Flag as it is affectionately called by the locals.
 

The flag represents several things. The crown stands for the people,   the number "seven" is a symbol of perfection, the embodiment of happiness and the provider of virtue. According to legend, Islamic heaven is composed of seven beautiful orchids, separated by seven mountains each with a glowing star on top. The 165-meter flagpole entered the "Guinness Book of World Records" as the world's  tallest in August 2011.  See the youtube video here. (amazing shots from atop the pole).  Three meters higher than the one in Azerbaijan, it weighs in at 220 ton.  The price tag of 3.5 million dollars (in a country where average income is $2,200 )  is cheap in comparison to the $24 million Azerbaijan spent.  

The country’s 20th anniversary of independence saw the hoisting of the flag a month after the flagpole was installed.
As you can imagine, Tajiks (informative video  about history of the people) are very proud of their 60 by 30 meter flag. A policeman, sitting within the roped-off area underneath, guards it by day. I was told that this is not out of   fear of theft, but because the flag had fallen down earlier and killed one admirer.   While this may be the stuff of urban legend, high winds did bring down the flag in April.

 

The building in the background is President Rakhmon's impressive Palace of Nations. It is used primarily to

receive and entertain visiting dignitaries, sort of like an elaborate living room. Visitors are housed in another complex at the other end of town.   

Here you can appreciate the grand scale

 

On long hot summer nights

Everyone out for the Evening Promenade

Komsomol Lake creates a refreshing breeze all evening long. After a couple strolls around the flagpole you cross to the other side of the lake.  There you find a playground for kids and adults of all sizes, ice cream wagons and a rotundo affair for refreshments.
But just remember, there is but one public rest room serving the entire park.  No overindulging allowed here.    

      

 

OUR STREET - SHERALI STREET

This is the street we lived on - the street to and from school.

 Notice the small evergreen shrubs newly planted on the strip between sidewalk and street.
If you can imagine walking ten blocks with 20 pounds of backpack under a late afternoon sun in an average temperature of 105 degrees, well, it's hard to imagine for a Seattlite ( a resident, not a lite version).   I certainly couldn't have imagined it before I arrived.  Toward the middle of July the very thought of making this trek kept me in our air-conditioned school till late in the day.

So imagine my surprise when I learned that all the lovely plane trees that lined this street had been cut down.  The same plane trees that create such a deliciously cool bower over the main drag, Rudaki Avenue. Plane trees are related to the North American sycamore and can grow to prodigious heights.  Here are the plane trees over another street in Dushanbe.

So why would the city want to remove
a natural cooling system in a city that
normally gets roasted in the summer?  This is a city that features many fountains to cool its residents, some fronting office buildings and some in the city parks.  It gets so uncomfortable that most residents cool their concrete courtyards and not so verdant yards with copious amounts of water. Some hose down their outdoor living areas morning and evening, some even more often. 

One explanation I heard for clearing the trees was that plane trees caused hay fever.   Another explanation was that Sherali Street was made wider to accomadate more traffic.
I would go for that one.  Every night after we settled in to sleep the
inevitable roar of trucks thundering down the broadened street would punctuate the cool stillness.  By three or four in the morning the crescendo would come.  A perfect time to move goods through the city without having to deal with pedestrians. 

MY SECOND HOST FAMILY

Moving to my second host family was like going to another country. They were, in fact, another ethnic mixture, Tajik and Uzbek, from the country directly east of Tajikistan.  Russian only figured as a second language for my host mother, Mukharram, and as a third language for her grand daughter, Shahzodeh.
Here they are, together with her older daughter, Shahsanam, and adopted son, Umarjon.

Umarjon, Shasanam, Mukharram, Shahzodeh

As it turned out I had been christened Shahzadeh (princess in farsi ) by my language teacher that summer, so both Shahzodeh (princess in tajik) and I felt like princesses for the summer. She felt privileged when she could spend time in her grandmother's villa and I was treated at first like a
royal guest in their home.  As the summer wore on I began to feel as if I were a part of the family.



Here was the typical city villa , rooms centered
around the hiyatt or courtyard; one large living-
sleeping room for the parents; a separate one for all the children; my private room  and  separate bath and toilet.   In summer they made use of a small kitchen open to the courtyard and we all ate on a raised table (takht) spread out sideways Roman style or cross-legged Eastern style..

No, I don't want to come to dinner now!!

Summertime was for living outdoors in the  courtyard.  The kids skated and bicycled and generally ran amok any time of the day or night.   Ramadan began on July 8th as the hottest days of summer began. Because of the daytime heat,  playtime and visits from neighbors and other family members stretched late into the night. Dinner began just after sundown and stretched out until the last of the visitors left or the last television special ended and I staggered off to my room and gave thanks for all the sets of earplugs I had thought to bring with me.  Often I seemed to forget about school the next morning.

Here is a quick shot of a typical dinner - plov made

The toes at the top are not mine

of turmeric rice with onions, carrots, eggplant sometimes and bits of meat atop it all. We had separate salad plates, kamak or sour sour cheese, wonderful servings of flat bread and most often bowls of soup. Notice the large spoon against the plov plate. That was for yours truly, who was not adept at using my fingers to scoop out servings for herself.  Dessert was copious amounts of melon and watermelon and compote and a delicious juice made from the fruits of their sour cherry tree. If Sherali, Muharram's husband who worked as an ice-cream truck driver, had extra, there would be ice cream

Courtyard with open water drain running across

all around .
This meal was for the five of us, although Umarjon
spent before-dinner time snitching candy and grand slices of melon, so he ate very little dinner, unless we all watched and tried to curb his bad habits.
It seemed to me because we all ate from  a common dish and so were all aware of who was eating what, we tended to eat less.  At least I did.
No one took more than they were entitled to eat.
The children definitely waited till they saw that their elders had enough.  
As a guest of honor I was periodically prodded by Muharram to eat, eat and then eat some more.
I so wished I could fill my plate, but I didn't have "my own plate".