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Journalism of Courage
Flying by Uzbek Airlines? You must be crazy,quot; said friends and colleagues in unison. quot;There are better ways of getting to the UK. And if you must die in a plane crash, there are better airlines to choose from.quot; Too true. There are better ways, certainly, of getting to the UK we8217;ll pass on the second comment for now. But the trip stirred within me the latent fascination for a land we have forgotten and dismiss as yet another tinpot Central Asian disaster. Because Uzbekistan is the font of much of our culture, the language we speak, the way we are. Because Uzbekistan was, hundreds of years ago, home to Babar. And the rest, they say, is history.
But we8217;re jumping the gun here.
All this is compensated, though, by the view from the window and for once you offer thanks that this is a low-flying aircraft. The mighty Karakoram range stretches below you, an imperial, impervious, impregnable stretch of rock. It8217;s a vision that brings to mind harshness, cruelty and savagery; traits that made Genghis Khan and his ilk the legends they are. But there8217;s a beauty in the savagery; it doesn8217;t catch your eye immediately, but it sinks in after you8217;ve spent a while gazing at the black mass below you.
Soon, you pick up the inflight magazine and the names spring up: Samarkand, Ferghana, Khiva, Tashkent8230; They roll off your tongue easy enough, as if they are part of your culture. And they are, because much of what we are today stems from the influence of Babar and his successors. And so the flight quickly becomes a journey of discovery. We look for signs in almost everything; each word has a hidden meaning, a ring of familiarity. The perfumed tissue paper is called xushbo8217;y qog8217;oz khushboo-kagaz?. The packet of sugar has shakar written on it. And airlines, in Uzbek, is havo yollari. The familiarity extends only to print, however; spoken Uzbek, especially rapidly-spoken Uzbek, could as well be Greek.
Unfortunately, we can8217;t, from our plane, see any of the magnificent buildings their posters advertise. The brilliant-blue domes, the sparkling, proud minarets, the sprawling gardens. Tashkent is a dusty-brown sprawl of single-storeyed buildings with the odd skyscraper thrown in. Our time at the airport is mainly spent standing in one line or another, perhaps because the man who drives the airport bus is also the fellow at the check-in counter and at security, too.
Despite all this, though, something makes us want to stay on in Tashkent. Maybe it8217;s the urge to discover the real Uzbekistan the one behind the stewardesses8217; iron mask, maybe the romance associated with the Mughals, maybe the joys of a holiday where the rupee is relatively strong. I really don8217;t know. What I do hope, though, is one day we will summon up the courage to look that implacable security guard in the eye and say quot;Ye, we are staying.quot; And tell friends and colleagues that we8217;re flying Uzbek again.
