Khiva - September 15, 2007

September 15, 2007

We began the day touring Khiva, a city whose exact age is unknown but estimated at 2,500 years. Legend has it that Noah’s son, Shem, discovered water after digging a hole in this location and thus founded Khiva. Now, it is the second largest city in Uzbekistan with 115,000 inhabitants, and is situated between two deserts, the KaraKum, meaning Black Sands and the Kyzylkum, meaning Red Sands.

As few sidebars; the Silk Road once extended 12,000 kilometers from Beijing to Rome, and caravans of eight to eight hundred camels with accompanying military for protection, took between 7 ½ to 8 months to complete the journey. Camels are sometimes called ships of the desert having the ability to carry heavy loads, go for days without food or water, and withstand the extremely high desert temperatures. In those days, the value of one camel was from five to ten slaves, but today they command a price of approximately $1,500 USD. Our guide told us that during the Russian time, an edict came down that all camels be rounded up and shipped to Turkmenistan as a central location.

Many graves dot the perimeter along the outside of Khiva’s old city walls. We learned that these half-domed burial sites served two purposes. First, the poor people who lived beyond the walls wanted to be buried closer to the wealthy people residing inside the gates. Second, the Khan wanted the graves close to the walls because enemy could not easily climb the walls to attack because they would not step on the graves.

Originally, the just wealthy people lived within Khiva’s old city walls and they had madrassas built to educate their children. The west gate was the main gate where guests entered, the south gate was where the caravans entered and the east gate was where the slaves were bought and sold. Today we entered at the west gate. The first structure we saw was the Mohammed Amin Khan Madrassa, which originally had seventy-five study rooms, but in its present use as a hotel, it uses 60 rooms. In the courtyard stands a fifty-three foot minaret covered with tiles in various shades of turquoise. The Khan initially wanted to build it seventy meters high so that he could see all the way to Bukhara. After experiencing the drive to Bukhara later in the afternoon, I don’t think that seventy feet would have been high enough, considering that it took us HOURS to get there through the desert.

Meandering through the maze of streets inside the walls, we reached the harem of the Khan and our guide, Sulaymon, intrigued us with her description of life in a harem. Entitled to have four wives, the Khan built this harem with individual quarters for each of his wives. Each displayed different designs and patterns of blue and white tiles covering the full height of their space and was topped with a beautifully painted ceiling. Of course, the Khan’s ceiling was higher than those of his wives’ quarters. His concubines lived across the courtyard, freely moving back and forth between rooms, dancing and singing while the wives remained tucked away from view. However, the concubines did not have a secure life. If the Khan said “talek” three times to a concubine, she had to leave the harem immediately and return to life outside village without going back to retrieve any personal belongings. Knowing their length of stay was unpredictable, the concubines wore all of their jewelry all of the time, day and night, just in case they heard, taloq, taloq, taloq!

We often noticed blue-green tile embedded into some of the walls and found out from our local guide that they mean good luck. The Juma Mosque we visited has 218 intricately carved wood columns supporting the roof and two of these columns date back to the 10th century. A few women selling shawls and other items caught our attention and soon we were carrying another plastic bag of goodies. However, by the time we left the mosque, the rest of our group was not in sight. We asked for help from a woman who did not speak English, but when I mentioned Sulaymon’s name, she motioned for us to follow her. We followed her through several streets and around a few corners, and amazingly enough, the woman reunited us with our group.

We quickly went to the East gate to see the former slave quarters. We were about out of time and needed to return to the bus for the long trip to Bukhara, but not until Sulaymon delighted us with another story. In 1871, as a caravan was on the way to Khiva, they spied two teenage boys fishing along a river, captured them and took them to Khiva. There, the Khan bought these strong boys at the slave market and put them to work building madrassas. One day, when a Russian caravan came through town, one of the boys wrote a letter to the Tsar explaining their situation and smuggled the letter to someone in the caravan asking them to deliver it to the Tsar. When the Tsar read this letter, he contacted the Khan and asked for their release. The Khan explained that he paid a large amount of money for these boys, but if the Tsar would reimburse him, he would gladly release them. The Tsar did not intend to pay money to the Khan, and when no money was forthcoming, the Khan didn’t give any more thought to the matter. Some time later, the Khan left Khiva on a journey and in his absence, Russian forces came and took control of the town, removing the entire treasury and the throne. The Russians gave the town 24 hours to find the Khan and bring him back. When he returned, the town was closed and he could not enter. Instead, a prepared document awaited his signature releasing the boys and requiring the payment of taxes to Russia, which continued until 1920 when the Bolsheviks assumed power.

We received more information about camels, maybe more than we wanted to know. For instance, did you know a man in a desert without food could cut his camel’s neck and drink the blood for both fluids and nourishment and survive another two days? The camel could replenish the lost blood within one week. Also, did you know that scorpions and snakes don’t like camel hair? People stayed within the circle of camels at night for protection. The next time you are in similar situations, you’ll be prepared!

As we made our way out of town, one of the roads was barricaded and farther down the block, people were standing in the street. Like day laborers lining up on corners waiting for work in the US, hundreds of Uzbek workers were waiting here to be selected for work in the cotton fields. Numerous fields throughout the country need the manual labor to pick the cotton during September and October.

Stopping by a cotton field, several of us got out and went to meet some women picking cotton. They wore muslin bags around their bodies to hold the cotton until full, and then transferred it into larger bags. The Polaroid camera was the perfect icebreaker once again. We started to take some photos of these women, and one of them poured water from a shiny kettle to wash her face before posing. Her pantaloons had lace trim at the bottom of each leg. Her hands were dirty, dry and cracked, and we were told that they receive only $10 to $15 per day. It is certainly not an easy life.

The drive through the Kyzylkum desert to Bukhara was uneventful, but during one section of the drive, we followed a river, looking across it into Turkmenistan. We arrived in Bukhara about 6:30 PM and had just a short time to stroll around town before nightfall.

Taloq, but not three times,

Rich, Garry and Tamara

Captions: 1) Woman in cotton fields with muslin bag 2) Map of Silk Road in Khiva
3) Harem 4) Juma Mosque with 218 columns 5) Woman in cotton field washing up for photo 6) East gate in Khiva originally used for slave trading