Two weeks ago was a special day in the household of Nasorjon. It was his wife’s birthday. Weeks of conversations revealed that this was to be a celebration indeed, and many conversations were had regarding what I should buy her for a present. A birthday cake was decided upon as it was too expensive for them to afford (£3).
The evening before two relatives arrived, a ten year old boy and thirteen year old girl, ostensibly to assist in the preparations. After several hours of playing (boys) and gossiping (girls) I realised this was not the case, and when high speed Uzbek was still being spoken between the two girls at 3am I suggested that they may want to sleep in order to be able to prepare fully for the next day. This was in the most part motivated by the fact I was sleep deprived and sleeping in the same room as them.
At 11am a few more relatives turned up, all under the age of 18, and swiftly rolled their sleeves up and crouched down on the floor ready to roll dough for lagman, a traditional Uighur dish. The Uighurs are a people group who are mostly located in the North West Xinjiang province of China, with sizable populations dispersed throughout Central Asia. I for one am particularly grateful to them for their contribution to Central Asian cuisine.
Cooking lagman is truly an art form, one which I am slowly learning under the beady eyes of my adopted Uzbek mother. It involves mixing flour, oil, salt and water to create dough and then three processes of rolling the dough to create noodles. These then have to be carefully stringed together and beaten on the table. When I say table I actually mean the floor. Uzbeks have little concepts of tables, and eat, cook and generally live life from the position of sitting on the floor. As a result they have mastered many sitting positions which I can only dream of adopting.
After an hour there were seven women kneeling down making noodles, laughing at my attempts to create noodles worthy enough for consumption and my Uzbek karaoke attempts. Gradually more women appeared, taking layers of headscarves off once safely inside, and brandishing togoro containing food covered entirely by brightly covered table clothes. The best way of explaining this is to imagine a washing up bowl with hand crafted foods composed largely of flour and oil, wrapped in cloths of contrasting colours tied to create a handle. These are commonplace on the streets of Osh as women take them whenever they visit relatives or friends.
The two rooms of the house were prepared for guests, with tablecloths on the floor and mattresses placed in a square shape. The tablecloths were loaded with dried fruit, sweets and biscuits. The less tablecloth visible the better the host is considered to be. In achieving this quest bread comes in useful, and remains integral to Uzbek life. Placing bread upside down is considered a sin, and bread must be treated as something holy. I leave you to ponder on the religious connotations...
After the thirty female guests had arrived and the lagman had been prepared, the younger unmarried girls went into one room and the older married girls and children sat in the adjoining room underneath a poster of Mecca. This left me in a slight quandary as virtually all Uzbek girls my age have been married for three years and have several children. I was therefore too old to sit in one room, and yet remained unmarried and childless. I am considering buying a kitten to compensate for this; it may not be a child but it will give me something to hold in similar situations where all girls my age are holding children.
Thus followed my first truly gender segregated birthday party. The only four males present stayed outside whilst the majority of women remained seated in one position for a five hour period, simply eating and talking. Pure genius.
