Sardoba Hunters, Part II TASHKENT, Uzbekistan July 31, 1997 By Adam Smith Albion Presented below, an edited Transcription of the Author's FIELD-BOOK being the Jour- nal ofa Field-Trip across the Steppes with Dr. Astor Nizomov, undertaken to investigate historical Methods of Irrigation and Water-Management in Central Asia; incorporating Material drawnj'om DI: Nizomov's Lectures on that Subject, and his didactic Discourses on a Range of other Subjects as well; not omitting Descriptions of Noteworthy Occur- rences on and off the Road, Altercations with DI: Nizomov, Reconciliations, Philosophi- cal Digressions and other Divagations &c. &c. "...The simplest irrigation device is a bucket...You bring your bucket to the river, fill it with water, carry it to your field and tip it over the crop. That is the essence of irrigation. And irrigation is the origin of civilization... "That is why it is an error to maintain that the first great human invention was the wheel. The wheel was an afterthought! Mesoamerican cultures managed without it altogether. But the bucket that is fundamental. From this we must conclude that mankind's founding genius was the inventor of the bucket" [A. Nizomov, near the Labi-Hauz, Bukhara, 12 July 1997]. have promoted this bizarre conjecture of Asror's to the head of my notes as the leit-motif of our trip. It is an absurd argument a reductio ad absurdum in fact yet curiously challenging and appropriate on the lips of a man emotionally devoted to pre-modern forms of irrigation. recognize that Asror is urging the priority of the bucket literally. But I find that the antithesis "wheel" versus "bucket" can also be construed symbolically in a sat- isfying way so as to reflect his whole world view: it suggests the contrast between industrial and pastoral, between the factory and the farm, between the machine with its spinning parts and the plodding plow, between the mechanized tempo of the new and the time-honored pace of the old... In short, between everything Asror likes and everything he doesn't. Our wheels definitely needfixing. Now, this is not a metaphorical utterance about the breakdown of modern civilization, it is a judgment on Asror's Zhiguli, which sputtered to a halt in the middle of nowhere today, and not for the first time. The two of us had to push to restart it. The car is also clearly incontinent which is to say, it is unable to hold its water. We now have to replenish it every few hours from our canister, yet we cannot detect the leak although the car leaves wet spots behind it on the road and puddles when we park. Therefore we drive under con- stant threat of overheating, with one eye riveted to the temperature gauge and our For the background to this journey and the origin of the author's "field-booK" the reader is kindly referred to ASA-22 Sardoba Hunters, Part I. minds engrossed by Central Asia's perennial problem, had reached the perimeter of Tashkent when the bottles where tofind water. appeared. In the United States, desert-city limits are ap- proximately congruent with "Last Chance for Gas" signs. Do not imagine obtaining water on the Karshi steppe The Central Asian equivalent is a long line of plastic soda is a simple matter. It is a desolate place, known in the past bottles filled with petrol or motor oil. They are set at in- as "the Land of Yellow Silence" (Kray zholtogo bezmolviya). tervals along the roadside on upturned crates while their We came across small canals, many owing their existence owners, usually teenage boys, lounge in the shade under to the Karshi Land Development Project of the 1970' s. We poplar trees. Petrol runs 30-35 sum / liter (U.S.$0.21 0.25), pulled over hopefully, and slithered down their banks oil costs 60 sum/liter ($0.43). We shot past and found our- canister in hand, but they were often so silty and weed- selves at once in the countryside. infested that we feared the water would choke the radia- tor. Thus we saw with our own eyes how in many places On either side of us stretched fields of cotton and wa- the irrigation infrastructure was collapsing for lack of termelons irrigated by the Chirchik river. Asror pointed maintenance and funds. So we wer. forced to become out many empty fields where the wheat sown in April suppliants, knocking on doors whenever houses came had been harvested in June. They had already been into view. But even if the taps were working (and there newly plowed and awaited a second planting-- usually was no guarantee of that), people were frequently very of corn, but occasionally carrots, onions or turnips. These chary about sharing their precious reserves with us. Their second crops would be ripe by late autumn. We noted lack of generosity seemed to pain them as much as it dis- apple groves, but they were mysteriously devoid of appointed us. After all, these were Uzbek families who, apples or blossoms. Perhaps there had been a blight; we faced by serendipitous guests, would probably have stopped to ask, but no one was around. killed the fatted sheep at the drop of a skull-cap. Yet there they stood on their own thresholds, shifting uneasily Past the Syr Darya river, the Jaxartes of antiquity, we from foot to foot as we importuned five liters of water for encountered a chiy seller dozing in a haystack. Chiy are our car. mats of cross-plaited reeds, bound with twine. They are about the size of a small door. The reeds can be woven in As for filling up at a service station, or simply getting two styles: the plaits of chiy bo'ira are rather tighter and the leak repaired, such facilities are rather rarer in more intricately reticulated than the plaits of chiy bordon., Uzbekistan than desert wells used to be along the Silk and the greater work involved was reflected in the prices Route. Finding petrol also presents significant difficul- m45 sum ($0.32)/mat for the former, 35 sum ($0.25)/mat ties. Thus Asror and I fell into the ancient rhythm of travel for the latter. in Central Asia, as ancient as the caravans. Like them, we came to conceive of our journey across the steppes as a Seeing chiy for the first time, was delighted to think a series of stages. Either we anxiously tacked from town to fairy tale was coming to life. For it was by laying a line of town, or we posted between roadside havens where we chiy across the Hungry Steppe that Khusro, Shah of Per- hoped to find food and water to refresh our beast, the sia, fooled Princess Shirin into marrying him. had flagging Zhiguli, and push on. Consequently, whenever imagined those reed mats of the story were long extinct saw a gas pump or a dripping water spigot in the dis- in Central Asia so the unexpected discovery that they tance, thanked Allah for bringing us in safe. It was prob- continued to exist was very exciting, as if had caught a ably much the same prayer medieval merchants uttered live coelacanth. at the end of the day's march when the caravansarai came into view. It turned out that the man in the haystack who leapt up as we approached, was both salesman and artisan, gath- ering fascicles of reeds from the river banks nearby and We set out from Tashkent early in order to beat the traf- weaving them himself. He was deadly earnest about the fic and the heat, heading southwest on Route M39 toward universal appeal and utility of his product. Why, every- Jizzak. At the edge of town, notwithstanding our precau- one needs a chiy! He was astonished to hear we did not tions, we got caught up in the moil of station wagons, have them in America. They are good for thatching roofs, donkey carts and push-trucks heading for the open-air or covering floors, or sleeping on; they can be used as Hippodrome market. In this hectic emporium the pro- screens, or fences, or trellises; they serve as a handsome spective buyer can browse shirts and leather goods (usu- ornament for your home, or chicken pen, or pumpkin ally imported from Kazakhstan, Turkey and Dubai), plantation. And if I was intending to erect a house and power tools, refrigerators, old pipes and plumbing bits, sought material for the foundation, did he have a recom- second-hand motorcycles and mountains of diverse junk mendation for me! Chiy also make excellent substructures to his heart's content. Despite the early hour (7 a.m.) it for buildings since they soak up damp and keep the salt took us ten minutes to inch through the crowds. in the ground water from rising into the walls. He even claimed they would cushion a house during an earth- A short distance from the Hippodrome, we knew we quake (always a consideration in Uzbekistan), and imme- The plot of Farhad and Shirin is summarized in ASA-22. 2 ASA-23 Institute of Current World Affairs 3 diately demonstrated their springy, shock-absorbent have informed me, Central Asia's best preserved roads quality by throwing a heap onto the ground and enthu- are usually the desert highways of Uzbekistan and siastically trampolining on them. Truly, a gift for the per- Turkmenistan. son who has everything! felt sorry for him when did not buy one. A passing observation of Asror's unexpectedly sparked an argument. As we were driving along, he recalled that One of the products of Stalin's strange gerrymandering an important section of the Silk Route ran from Tashkent of borders in Central Asia is the Jetysai region of to Jizzak.