Contributor: Amy Spindler

Me (left) and Apa with a plateful of freshly-baked bread. Photo: courtesy of Amy Spindler

Crouched next to the fire, I warm my hands as my Afghan neighbour fans smoke into the heavens. The moon illuminates the mountains, and then the valley swallows the light before it can reach us. Ramadan began last night with the new moon and we’re breaking our first daily fast. The old woman heats oil in the kazan and fries some flattened dough. The sweet, oily smell wafts through the cold air and our neighbour shoos it upward.

“We need to remind our ancestors of everything God gave them while on earth,” she tells me.

Whoa. I’m so far away from home. So far away from everything that’s familiar.

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In this photo essay, Amy Spindler captures the deep culture, colour and spirit of Tajikistan.

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Garm residents celebrated the National Day of Reconciliation last month. Photo: Amy Spindler/Mercy Corps

Just a couple of weeks after celebrating the National Day of Reconciliation, tensions are rising here in Rasht. The ghosts of the civil war that I’ve written about seem to be more than just apparitions. My colleague, a refugee during the civil war, woke up last night afraid that soldiers were at her door. My neighbour, a former United Tajik Opposition commander and still highly influential in Rasht, is offering interviews to the media. The Garm militia has sent its men up into the nearby mountains to block any militants from coming here.

And my beloved colleagues have advised me not to travel this week, telling me stories of checkpoints being ambushed with the possibility of a foreigner being taken. “But it’s unlikely,” they say calmly. The roads in and out of Rasht are choked with checkpoints.

“We have a problem with foreigners,” the military police told me at the time. Rumours were swirling that more than 300 militants had come from Afghanistan and Pakistan, some seeking asylum and others trouble. Many are followers of feared former warlord Mullo Abdullo, who has supposedly spent the last few years with the Taliban. And while the government claims it’s supporting an operation to combat drug trafficking, the locals say it is to squash any uprising. Reports of attacks on government checkpoints abound. And then there is the killing of Mirzo Ziyoyev.

Our work continues near the border with Kyrgyzstan this week. We are finishing the distribution of 800 metric tons of wheat flour, oil and lentils. The work is demanding and not without its problems —somehow all tied to transportation and the road — but spirits are high as we’re welcomed warmly into the communities.

This small Kyrgyz girl attended our food distirbution in Dombrachi, near the Kyrgyz border. She deserves to grow up in a country without war. Photo: Amy Spindler/Mercy Corps

I lived in southern Kyrgyzstan for two years and am surprised by how much Kyrgyz I still understand and speak. Every conversation starts with me happily exclaiming: “I understand you!” Of course, community members in these remote and marginalised villages are also surprised that I speak Kyrgyz. Many of them do not speak Tajik, limiting their opportunities for work and education. During distribution, I talk to the women about breastfeeding, complementary foods for their babies and the success of their greenhouses.

Touring a greenhouse in the early morning, a volunteer named Delbar beams as she shows me ripe cucumbers, round tomatoes and flowering melon vines. The Kyrgyz communities were skeptical when Mercy Corps introduced greenhouses, wondering if they would work in such a harsh climate. “But eating is believing. Now we ask one another about our greenhouses as if they are our children,” Delbar says.

We laugh. There is a cool drizzle this July morning and the sun begins to peek through the clouds. Quietly. Peacefully.

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This past Saturday we celebrated the National Day of Reconciliation, which marks the day when President Imomali Rakhmonov and United Tajik Opposition leader Said Abdullo Nuri signed a peace agreement in Moscow in 1997. That agreement ended the civil war that displaced 1.2 million people and killed somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000 men over a five-year period.

Those ghosts hover here, perhaps especially in the Rasht Valley where a majority of the opposition was based. Nearly every day, someone tells me their own story about the civil war.

Photo: Amy Spindler/Mercy Corps

Despite this, the atmosphere was festive on Saturday as crowds of Tajiks strolled the streets eating ice cream; enjoyed plov and cold soda downtown; and filled the stands at the stadium to watch wrestling (a national sport?) and traditional dancing and singing.

While women and girls are mostly absent from the public sphere, it was refreshing to see them walking hand-in-hand, laughing and chatting. Young girls played together and many wore the traditional Tajik dress. Yet, I was still the ONLY woman who ventured into the stadium seats to watch wrestling. And while the men stared at me with curiosity, they were also very friendly — asking if I wanted to get closer so I can take some photos.

I splurged on a Sprite — imported from Kabul, Afghanistan — and popcorn. Popcorn! I love popcorn and here it suddenly appeared on the street. This is a celebration! A young boy operated the ancient red machine, filling a small popper with oil and kernels and waiting patiently. Slowly, slowly, it popped some corn. I could eat a bucket, but that would take hours so I settled for a small bag. The plastic melted against the un-popped hot kernels as I happily scooped the corn into my mouth.

It’s at this celebration that I felt a strong sense of community. One of the most interesting ideas related to community development theory is the concept that the soul is significant in building community capacity. I love this. One way to build community capacity is through rituals because they involve relating, healing and celebrating. Ritual can also provide stability and promote a sense of solidarity and cohesion. I think that creating space for ritual may be an avenue to rebuilding fragile communities.

Ritual is integral to rural life in Tajikistan — from the daily calls to prayer to the wedding celebrations every weekend. Daily rituals, annual celebrations — they create space for the Tajiks to exchange information, build trust and community, and reaffirm their identities.

While peace accords were signed more than a decade ago, there remains a desperate need for the Tajiks to process their experiences and heal. And rituals like this national celebration seem like one step toward healing.

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I’m lost. Well, not completely. I know I’m in the remote Rasht Valley, looking for the village where my Tajik colleagues and I will sleep for the night. As our vehicle crawls along a rutted road, I look out the window and try to imagine what first drew the Tajiks to this land with no horizon, just sheer mountains in every direction. The sun sinks into the imposing peaks and summer’s lush landscape becomes muted. Velvety emerald fields fade. Snowy mountain crevices lose their shimmer. There is a cool bite in the air after a scorching day.

It's the summer of 2008 and I’ve been traversing this region for several weeks, conducting interviews with young mothers about their family’s food security. This is the first time we’ve lost our way. While it's best that we never travel after dark, dusk sets in as we turn down another road. The temperamental tape player skips like a record with each dip in the road and the tinny local pop music comes in bursts now.

Photo: Amy Spindler/Mercy Corps

Abdul-Rahmon drives with both hands wrapped around the steering wheel as his grey eyes stay fixed on the road. I call him "the Bear" because he lumbers more than he walks. He tells me that true Tajiks are fair-skinned and not like Sher-Mahkamah, my translator, with his nearly-black eyes and dark skin.

Sitting next to me in the backseat, Sher-Mahkamah takes this subtle criticism in stride. I’m not too surprised because his family comes from neighboring Uzbekistan, although he’s a proud Tajik who favors the idea of an Islamic state. Both men pray five times daily.

Just this afternoon, we took extra time to pray after a woman breast-fed her baby during an interview. Although she turned her back to us, Sher-Mahkamah was distressed when we left her home because he had been in the presence of what he described as an “immodest woman.”

“Why do you need to ask God to forgive you for seeing a mother feed her baby?” I asked. We begin a lot of our conversations with antagonistic questions, asked good-naturedly with a genuine goal to better understand each other. He sighed. “More than 50,000 men died in our civil war, many fighting for Islam,” he told me. “Was it for nothing? Now we have immodest women like this one.”

This is the same man who innocently flirts with the women we interview, slips wild flowers behind his ear and teases me when he catches a glimpse of my ankle — the only exposed skin other than my hands. We even joke that he may have to start praying six or seven times a day to redeem himself.

Tajikistan’s fragile peace was hard won 11 years ago, but the civil war still haunts daily life. Women talk about husbands who died in the fighting. Abandoned tanks serve as reminders that war once raged in this quiet landscape, right here on this unpaved road. Once, while drinking tea with several men, a Mercy Corps staff member leaned toward me and identified one of the men as a former soldier who pressed a gun to his head during the war. My stomach tightened.

“Don’t worry. We don’t want more fighting. We’ll have peace now. Insha’Allah,” he told me. The Arabic phrase translates as "God willing." And every facet of daily life in Rasht is God willing. Tajik friends smile sympathetically when they hear me talk of future plans. Insha’Allah, they gently remind me. Only God chooses your future.

Photo: Amy Spindler/Mercy Corps

When I announced to my family and friends back home that I was spending the summer here, they responded in chorus: “Where?” When they realized that the country shares a border with Afghanistan, they also responded similarly: “Is it safe over there?” I certainly feel safe. The Tajiks tell me that all guests are a gift from Allah and I am treated as such. There is a spirit of tranquility and warmth among the families who welcome me into their homes each night.

Another burst of music and my head bumps against the window. Abdul-Rahmon slows the vehicle and asks for directions from young soldiers wearing fatigues and cutting grass for fodder. They point to where we just came from. Abdul-Rahmon apologizes.

“We don’t have maps,” he says. Here, life unfolds minute by minute. I’m starting to accept that daily life is unpredictable, despite my planning and organising. I’m forced to live in the moment and trust everyone around me. Alone, I could never find my way out of these mountains if my life depended on it.

We make another turn. And another. It’s dark now. It takes effort for the half-moon to climb above the craggy horizon and illuminate the sky. Finally, Abdul-Rahmon stops the vehicle and sighs.

He slides his hands down across his face and brings them to prayer. It’s been a long day: a day that began before sunrise when the men rose for prayer and I drank warm goat’s milk with the women.

We’re quiet and then Sher-Mahkamah reaches forward and turns up the music. Really cranks it. He hops out and starts to dance with arms extended, shoulders shrugging and fingers snapping. Abdul-Rahmon slowly smiles. I burst out laughing and clap along to the music. He shimmies toward my door and opens it. He grasps my hands and pulls me out of the car. I clumsily twirl my wrists as I’ve observed Tajik women do at wedding parties. We stomp up dust. We laugh. The brisk air moves with us. Suddenly, I don’t feel lost anymore.

Insha’Allah, I’m exactly where I should be.

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