Card Palace by Wanceslas Square

What is obvious these days is the utter decadence of the Tajik RFE/RL. Great thinkers like Taher Abdoljabbar & Emamnazar Khalnazar are out, youngsters on the path of journalism are out and now a good journalist in Dushanbe has left it voluntarily. Rahmatkarim Dawlat, my friend and double-ex-colleague (since we used to work together in Tajik TV too), has spat on the face of Prague by sending the following message:

"Salom,
Az hamkoiri va hamrohii har yaki shumo minnatpaziram. Vale man zindagii mushkil dar sharoiti Tojikistonro bar kor va fa'oliyat zeri bori farmon va fishori ravoni va ruhi tarjeh dodam. Kor dar Ozodi bo vujudi mafod baroi man, mutaasifona mushkil va dushvor niz anjom shuda. Khususan, munosibati akhiri Kh. Baqozoda baroi man dardovar bud. Man, in vaz'ro, ki yak mudir meoyad, zeri bori yak guruh va mudiri digar, ki
meoyad zeri bopri guruhi digar boyad qaror girifa bosham, digar tahammul
nadoram. Binobar in az ta'rikhi 11. 12. 2006 man az hamkori bo ozodii tojiki sarfi nazar kardam. Bo vujude guftam az kase niz ba surati judogona gila nadoram.
Bo salom, RD"

I know Djavadi is going to get him back on his return from Baku and I know RD presumably will re-join them. However, I feel really sorry for RFE/RL Tajik Svc. It seems it's falling apart with a blow of the wind of change.

Thinking in The Dark

Cork popped out and rocked me back and forth.

“Setareh!”

Silence got back to me to say that I was all alone on all three floors…

I had asked him too if he was comfortable with the way I address him. “Setareh” is his surname, but we have three Hosseins among our colleagues and contributors. He was OK with it, perhaps because his surname sounds more poetic, hence more Persian. He’s one of the whales of the station and our technical credibility lays on his shoulders almost entirely. A modest intelligent guy in his late thirties endowed with long brown hair that he likes caressing while speaking to you before laying them down on his right shoulder bunched as a pony tail and forgetting them for a short while. Yeah, he is my neighbor who I happen to see once a day and that’s in the office, drawn in his work that he enjoys so vividly. But his speech adds to your general knowledge a lot. For instance, before I talked to him I didn’t know why lanes and streets in London were so curved and winding and buildings were so sharp-edged with half of them jumping out of the designated space. His explanation was simple but wise: just in order to break the wind, otherwise they couldn’t withstand the Genghis strength of the London winds. Winding roads to break the winds!

Tonight it’s windy out there too. Just got back from work while my birds must be in bed by now in London. The rain was washing my eyeglasses and turning me into a blind-walker in still-strange alleys of a soulless city of Amsterdam. Before picking up one more Marlboro I felt the annoying weight of Niquitin patches in my right jacket pocket. Suddenly recalled Mehdi’s saying: Some people prefer to live long and tasteless, while some others choose to live short but joyful… And lit one more fag. With the image of G.W.B. in front of my eyes jerking around the entire world, the significance of my smoking problem diminished momentarily. We got more serious things to care about.

Now I’m sitting in my huge kitchen attached to the lounge with a huge mirror on the wall and a big “Loewe” TV set beside it. (I guess “Loewe” is Lion in Dutch. Haven’t started taking Dutch courses yet). A bottle of Santa Ana Argentine Chardonnay begging for my attention on the dining table.

Nostalgic sound of the rain squeezing into my ears from the top-opened window of the kitchen and the seeking wind that calms down as soon as touches me. Whispering leaves behind the window, invisible to my un-armed eyes (I wet my glasses with the rain, remember?) That’s my entire company for tonight.

My first impressions from Amsterdam are as follows: gigantic spinning windmills stealing your gaze everywhere, numerous bridges over unnumbered canals, streams of bicycles that would love to run you over, dangerous cycle lanes (fietspaden) that could turn into a place of accident for you, dedicated road signs and traffic lights for bicycles (!), plus special bike (!)-routes linking the city, plentiful of gay faces and places & an easy city scheme. And of course, close to fluent English of its inhabitants with no English signs and writings in the entire capital.

Torn away from my beloved ones sometimes I feel lost. Even my Mum doesn’t know yet that my birds are not with me. At times I wished to be forgotten by everyone and now I feel it indeed. Thrown away by a weak bunch of Tajiks in Prague, wandering somewhere on Earth and trying to establish myself anew. My future was seductive before and now it is illusive. There was a thud behind the door of my heart: You will serve your nation, because you have to! Now I’m losing my ability to hear it, as if the people I want to serve and who really need me do not want my service anymore.

Amsterdam
05.12.06
01:00 AM