Nobody is forgotten, nothing is forgotten.

This is what the citizens of the former U.S.S.R. say regarding the Second World War. It is also what is written on nearly every monument to the veterans, heros and victims of the war. It explains why, if anybody does more WWII documentaries than The History Channel, it’s Russian television.

Last year I did a big post on the TV specials. This year, we went to Park Pobedy (in Tajik, that’s Boghi Ghalaba) to see what was there. The funicular was still working, though it has no windows and the operator looked a little sketchy. We took it up to the top of a hill overlooking all of Dushanbe. Artemis gets so hot in the carrier in this weather so I let her whole top hang out. However when she falls asleep she kind of flops about as sleepy babies do so I wasn’t hands-free as usual.

She was awake for the funicular, though. She didn’t seem to get any thrill of being high up, possibly because she has no concept of falling.

At the park there was a much higher proportion of Russians than one usually sees in Dushanbe these days. There were also the children of jugi (the local name for Roma) stealing the flowers that the Russians set down near the eternal flame.

This year there were no parades here, just a small official ceremony up at the park for the veterans. We also didn’t get a May Day parade. Is Rahmon- he took off the “ov” from his name and now he’s just Emomali Rahmon- trying to distance Tajikistan from its Soviet and Russian periods as part of a nationalistic push? Or does he just want people to forget how happy they were?

We walked around the park in the searing heat, saw the monuments, said hello to some people my husband knew, then went to a little outdoor restaurant with nice wooden picnic tables and tropical straw hut-type shades, and had ice-cream and beer and then went home.

This is what Victory Day has come to, in Dushanbe.

Yay, The Economist

Tom from The Economist has been slumming around our humble corner of the blogosphere and he’s asked me to ask you to take a look at a new project they’re sponsoring: Project Red Stripe. Basically, the greedy capitalists want to steal your great ideas so that they can make money off them or get credit. In return, you get their everlasting gratefulness (possibly) and fame. Nonetheless, if you are like me and know that without such capitalists your ideas are never going to get past the stage where your mother tells you that you should go for it, this is very tempting.

So go to Project Red Stripe and help make the Internet a better place. Or more profitable. Or both.

Boo, Kleptocracy

Bref: Instead of selling electricity at reasonable prices to its citizens, which would merely enable it to pay government salaries etc., the Tajik government is selling electricity to Iran, The United States (in Afghanistan), the Afghan government, Uzbekistan, and possibly others in return for cold hard cash, which will presumably be used to buy more trips to Switzerland and other exotic presents for everybody’s favorite Kulobi, Emomali
Rahmanov.

Because of this, electricity has been rationed in the capital everywhere except in the center. They started by turning it off a few nights a week after eleven p.m. but it has since gone downhill and now we never get it after ten.

And One that Didn’t Make It into the Title

Coming Anarchy has a good link on. Too true, my friends, too true.

Somehow the title seemed right.

The Economist’s Moscow correspondent has left and he’s written a beautiful diary entry on Russia. It sounds so cliche unless you’ve tried to write the exact same thing.

I have long wondered what the Russian equivalent for “WERE YOU BORN IN A BARN? SHUT THE FREAKIN’ DOOR!” is. Well today, it was written (in black permanent marker) on the doors to the entrance to my very own pod’yezd! It is:

“ZAKROYTE DVERI ZA SEBYA! VY CHTO, RODILIS V LIFTE?”

(Shut the door after yourself! Were you born in an elevator?)

If only I’d learned that when I worked in an office where we had to all chip in for the air conditioner.

I’ve learned some new things living practically on my own here in the 33rd mikrorayon. For exampe: pilovi hamsoya, which means, “Neighbourly Pilaf”.

In Tajikistan, whenever you make a big proper dinner- say, pilov (a.k.a. plov, pilaf, pilaw…) or a big soup, you should take a plate to the neighbour as well. This is particularly true if the neighbour is somehow needy but it goes for all neighbours that are on speaking terms. However I think in apartments you just do it for your friendly neighbours because nobody brings a plate of pilaf to all four or all ten of their pod’yezdniki.

As it turns out I am needy in the sense that I am alone with a small infant, so my neighbours are always bringing me food. However there is a corollary: you can’t return the plate empty.

I’m also presuming that you don’t return it full of burnt oatmeal, either, which makes this kind tough for me. They say that if you haven’t made anything decent, then you can return it full of sweets or fruits. However that has its limits as well. I don’t want to return every plate full of the same chocolate-covered waffle treats, and since fruits are so expensive, I don’t want them to feel I’m showing off by giving them a week’s salary of fruit in return for some pilaf.

This has forced me to try to cook. As someone who enjoys cooking but not peeling potatoes, it’s been a little tough. After all that’s so time consuming and who can do it with a tiny baby? But that’s what I’m off to do now. I’ll bring them some when I re-heat it tomorrow as it’s already embarrassingly late to be starting dinner.

So far I’ve gotten five plates of theirs, four of which contained real food, and have returned only two with real food, and the rest with semi-food such as homemade halva, fruits, and chocolates. Slacker.