A Carpet Ride to Khiva: Seven Years on the Silk Road (18 page)

As the day drew to a close, the wedding feast began. Plastic chairs and tables were set up outside the groom’s house and lighting was rigged. A large factory-made carpet hung as a backdrop,
the names of the couple written on it in cotton-wool. Live music blasted, distorted, through speakers and made conversation almost impossible; for there should be no distraction from the main entertainment provided by the professional dancer. Dancers were usually considered ‘bad girls’ and were often available for other services after the celebration. Men leered as the dancer swayed her voluptuous
hips – her plump figure almost bursting out of a sequinned costume, tiny braids flying as she spun.

It was the dancer’s job to collect money from the male relatives, who were expected to finance the musicians. She danced up to their table and one by one they staggered drunkenly to their feet, bank notes in hand, offering a token few. These were glanced at disparagingly, and with a toss of
her head and shimmy of her shoulders, the dancer looked enquiringly for more. This continued until the dancer was satisfied with the sum or the drunk relative stuffed it down her bra and stalked off.

A few times I had been called upon to present money in this fashion, and – hoping for more lucrative business after the wedding – the dancers exceeded themselves in flirtation. Despite the hoots
of laughter my embarrassment produced, this was still preferable to making speeches. I rarely escaped without a microphone being thrust into my face by the roving master of ceremonies, with demands that ‘our guest from afar’ say a few words. My first speech had been a rough translation of what I might have said in English and was a complete disaster. It was far too short, lacking in superlatives,
and with no deluge of extravagant wishes.

People I scarcely knew invited me to their weddings, hoping the exotic garnishing of a foreign guest would improve their status within the community. I avoided these if possible, but always enjoyed workshop weddings. The entire group was usually invited, and the uninhibited weavers could be relied on to get the dancing started. I enjoyed the astonishment
produced when, as a foreigner, I danced the traditional lazgi. I learnt to make better speeches, parroting the same formulaic blessings as everyone else. Toychi the dyer disgraced himself, getting violently drunk on numerous occasions and trying to start fights with the groom’s relatives. Each time he would appear hungover and penitent the next day, vowing never to touch another drop.

My
most memorable wedding was Shoira’s. She was a small, pale orphan who lived with her brother and his wife who mistreated her. Quiet, and self-conscious about her speech impediment, she was both damaged and vulnerable. She wasn’t a particularly good weaver, although she improved dramatically under Fatima-the-twin’s tyranny. Once she tried to kill herself, drinking a bottle of powerful vinegar but
thankfully vomiting. Her throat was damaged and she was unable to speak or eat solids for two weeks.

As an orphan from a poor family, unable to defend herself, she was picked on at first by one or two of the weavers who were swiftly castigated by the others. They became quite protective of her, knowing the beatings and other hardships she endured at home. One day Shoira entered the workshop,
eyes shining, and invited us all to her wedding. She was marrying a poor village boy but that didn’t matter, because he had told her that he liked her and no one had ever said that to her before.

She looked stunning at the wedding, wearing a particularly lavish wedding dress. It was only afterwards that I heard the story behind this. Her in-laws, happy with their bargain bride, had presented
her with a stained and dirty old wedding dress to wear for the occasion. Devastated, she’d wept with shame until the outraged weavers had taken the matter in hand. They pooled their wages and presented her with a brand-new outfit. Speechless with gratitude, she wore the dress with pride. At that moment our workshop became more than just a collection of weavers and dyers; we became family.

* * *

I had attended enough weddings to know that the bride and groom weren’t expected to look happy. Both were unused to all the attention and still tired from the preceding days of preparation. The couples, usually in their late teens or early twenties, often felt awkward with each other, having met only a few times previously. The bride, at least, was allowed to look miserable, her eyes
downcast and unsmiling. She had, after all, just left her family; and there was also the ordeal of the wedding night looming.

Young men discussed just how much blood should be spilt on the wedding sheets to really prove a girl’s virginity, and were unrestrained on the first night. Despite a female relative discreetly monitoring proceedings, new kelins’ first sexual experience was invariably
painful, many unable to sit down properly for days afterwards.

A newly married kelin’s life wasn’t a happy one – a system perpetuated by miserable young women who eventually became mothers-in-law, keen to inflict cruelty on the next generation. In Khorezm, kelins were expected to wake at five in the morning and sweep the street outside the house. This was followed by preparation of breakfast
and domestic drudgery to keep her busy until late at night. She mustn’t look at her mother-in-law but keep her eyes downcast, and must speak only when spoken to. Her lowly status gradually eased as she bore sons, or as her younger brothers-in-law married, bringing a new, lowlier kelin
to the household.

Right from the start there was pressure to produce children, kelins experiencing regular
interrogation from their mothers-in-law as to why they were still menstruating. They were expected to greet all in-laws with three slow bows, rubbing their hands against their knees at the same time. Kelins often lost weight, feeling ashamed to eat more than a few silent bites at the table. Insubordination led to beatings, often administered by mothers-in-law, or by husbands at their mother’s command.
The first birth was always a big occasion, demanding another large feast and further debt. While everyone wanted their first-born to be male, daughters were a pragmatic consolation as they would soon be doing the cooking and cleaning around the house.

Why any woman would want to marry at all, I wasn’t sure, but it was still the most important aspiration for the younger weavers at the workshop.
I assumed that once our weavers got married, this would be the last we would see of them. After all, they had streets to sweep, dinners to cook and drudgery to do. Thankfully, the economic realities of independence meant that no one could afford to give up a good job, and even the most controlling mother-in-law returned her new cash-cow to the workshop, eager for the extra income. Most newly
married kelins
were given two weeks off to begin a honeymoon of silent servitude, before gratefully returning to the workshop.

At the workshop, silent and demure kelins reconstituted themselves into the vibrant young women they were. Free from the tyrannies of mothers-in-law, they could talk and laugh, eat as much as they liked and enjoy their freedom. They could show off their new wardrobe
and their gold-hooped earrings fitted with turquoise stones, while gaining marital advice from the older weavers. Each new kelin
wore a gold-embroidered square skull-cap with tassels for the first month or so, and a headscarf after that to show her married status.

Earning a wage brought all the women in the workshop more status within their families. Kelins gained more freedom and were less
likely to receive severe beatings, and older women were able to save money their husbands might otherwise have drunk, to buy clothes and food for their children.

Although the workshop increased status, it didn’t stop domestic abuse. A number of the married women arrived at work purple and bruised, having ‘fallen over’ – an excuse that would be met with knowing glances from the other women.
Of all the workshop girls, Kamolat suffered the most. She was a stunning young woman with huge dark eyes, full lips and porcelain skin. On one of my morning rounds, the girls in her cell announced that Kamolat had just got engaged. I congratulated her and asked her what her fiancé was like. There was an awkward silence which provided a clear answer.

I asked her why she was getting married
to someone she didn’t like. He was the son of her father’s good friend and everything was already arranged, so why make a fuss? Toychi knew her fiancé, who was a notorious drunk and good-for-nothing.

After the wedding, Kamolat took the usual couple of weeks off. She returned having aged at least a decade in the process, her skin pallid, large rings under her eyes and a vacant, dead expression
where once there had been such animation and life. Everyone noticed but said nothing. Soon she came to work bruised. Of course, the weavers agreed, it was permissible for a man to beat his wife occasionally, but Kamolat was being thrashed on a regular basis.

I insisted that we do something but was told quite clearly that my interference would only make the problem worse. Her loom-mates wove
more on her behalf and tried to lift her spirits. She developed a steely streak that had not been there before, declaring that she would attend a birthday party despite the fact that her husband had forbidden it.

‘What can he do? He can only beat me. If he does a good enough job then I won’t be able to work and then we’ll see what his mother has to say.’

I was away when Kamolat’s husband
turned up at the workshop in a drunken rage. He began shouting at her to come home and she refused. He hit her, dragging her screaming by the hair. Madrim had been at the bazaar with Toychi at the time, and the other dyers hadn’t known what to do. I hoped that the husband would try something similar again on workshop property when we were around, so we could press charges – wife-beating being
unacceptable if done in public.

Kamolat’s main aim was to get pregnant, which she managed within eight months of marriage.

‘Of course, he doesn’t care about me,’ she explained, ‘but he’s not going to risk hurting the baby. It might be a son.’

Kamolat begged us to keep a place for her at the workshop, her refuge, after she had the baby, and so we gave her six months’ maternity
leave. A few years later, she finally divorced her husband, able to provide for herself with her weaving wages.

Women also endured the unspoken reality of their husbands’ infidelities. Most were more angry at the money wasted than heartbroken that their husbands would seek another woman’s arms, or so they said. At least they had the status and security of being the official wife. Women who
had lost their reputation often became ‘second wives’ and were kept as mistresses. They had no rights, relying on enticement to keep their man, and were shared with other men if their lover hadn’t the means to keep them.

Most women accepted their husband’s passions, but were unwilling to endure anything more whimsical. Jeanette’s house-help complained over a cup of tea that her husband wanted
her to try ‘positions’.

‘There was none of this nonsense during the Soviet times,’ she declared. ‘Now they have all these films that give them silly ideas. I told my husband, “If you want to try acrobatics, then go and pay some young girl. I’m too old for it.”’

* * *

Spring turned to summer and Khiva quietly simmered. Streets were deserted from midday until late afternoon as
a white heat pervaded everything, hurting the eyes and sapping energy. Those unbound by office hours woke well before sunrise, retiring to a darkened room after lunch for a siesta. In the evenings we didn’t eat until eight or nine, enjoying an after-dinner melon outside with our neighbours, trading gossip.

Baking bread in this weather was an unpleasant task, to be attempted only in the cool
of the evening. Malika was responsible for stamping circular patterns onto the dough; Zulhamar then slapped them against the inner walls of the mud-brick oven, a headscarf low on her forehead to keep her eyebrows from singeing, Koranbeg’s old army jacket protecting her arms. The walls of the oven rippled with heat as the dough puffed and baked, and Zulhamar deftly peeled each piece off, placing
them in a large steaming stack. I tried my hand at this once, succeeding only in burning myself and dropping the dough into the flames.

A carpet-seller had given me a ginger kitten as a gift, which was now fully grown. He flopped dramatically anywhere shaded, rousing himself only at mealtimes to beg for food. The family taught me that cats in Khiva were fed on mouthfuls of masticated bread,
which the cat would bolt down hungrily. What mine really wanted was meat, and I fed him surreptitiously with chunks of mutton until caught by Koranbeg’s mother who had come to live with us for the summer. She hated the cat, who seemed completely oblivious, approaching her for food only to scamper away yelping as she doused him with a bowlful of scalding tea. When the cat wasn’t available, she
did as all Khorezm grannies still do, and lifted the corner of a carpet to deposit the dregs of her tea beneath it.

There were other animal encounters. The roof of our madrassah was the perfect place for snakes to bask peacefully in the summer sun. A snake once managed to slip through the ventilation hole in the centre of the domed ceiling, bounce off my head and drop into my lap. I shrieked
in surprise, as did Safargul, who hadn’t seen the snake but was startled by my sudden outburst. The snake – also startled – shot into a corner looking for a place to hide. Toychi grabbed it, ignoring the bites, and threw it outside, waving it in the faces of a few weavers en route. I was concerned that he might swell up and die, but Toychi assured me that this one wasn’t poisonous, giving the
neat puncture holes on his wrist a cursory rub and spit before returning to work.