Flora arrived in Mazar-i-Sharif, North Afghanistan, on July 19. She travelled there to join her husband who is honourably employed supervising the building of a mud brick cultural centre. At the moment, Flora is a lady of leisure, but, despite the heat, she is valiantly searching for situations of interest in the environs.

Friday, October 28, 2005

GRE a la Uzbeque

My husband and I would love to attend graduate school in the US, and with this in mind set about studying for the GRE exam shortly after arriving in Afghanistan. The GRE is a necessary hurdle in the application process whatever subject one intends to study, and it must be sat in October ideally. We discovered that the nearest exam location to Kabul is Tashkent, and so I set about applying for an Uzbek visa several weeks in advance. No response from the relevant ministry.
After days of nail-biting suspense, and many visits to a suave Uzbek consular official with deceptively liberal ideas about world travel (“Borders? They are not God’s work! God created the world, but man created borders! My child and your child are the same underneath!”), I was finally granted a three day Uzbek transit visa – the day before our departure.
Cars are a little scarce in my husband’s organisation since the earthquake in Pakistan, and this NGO’s timely emergency response that stripped its Afghan offices of all essential staff, but nonetheless with a little bargaining we reached Mazar in a day.
I was very happy to see our friends at the guesthouse again, and to catch up with Sugarlump’s latest stories. We crossed the border into Uzbekistan with eerie ease, only to find no one waiting on the other side. So we walked along the path through the fields to the little teahouse, where we sat on a wooden platform under the apricot trees and drank a bottle of mineral water. The tea was a little while in coming as all cooking was being done over an open fire, but an Uzbek matron and her two daughters kept us company. One of them was busy making an extremely elaborate cushion cover using a flower-shaped stitch I had never seen before. They all had gold earrings and teeth and were very cheerful, laughing at anything we said.
Finally we were picked up, and taken to the guesthouse in Termez, where we were fed and watered before being put on the very small plane leaving for Tashkent. [to be continued…]
In Tashkent we were warmly greeted at the airport by our friends from the office there, one of whom had toothache and had swollen up like a hamster. As soon as we were settled into our room, we took great delight in walking out un-chaperoned into the great, dark city. It felt unusually wonderful to walk the dimly lit, tree-lined streets of featureless Tashkent, which had never struck as so pleasant before we had experienced months of Kabul claustrophobia. We found a Uyghur café that was still open (Uyghurs are a Muslim ethnic group from Western China who speak a Turkic language similar to Uzbek), and were welcomed into their warmest room. We had suzma, a tangy cream cheese to be scooped up with bread, and lagman, the Uyghur speciality: long noodles dexterously handmade at high speed, in a rich broth with seasonal vegetables and small chunks of mutton, seasoned with a liquorice-like herb. Old favourites of mine.
The next morning our thoughts were very much taken up by our exam, due to begin at 2pm, and by how to find the venue. We arrived in good time, and sat through our two essays, our 30 mins of verbal acrobatics, our 45 minutes of maths (rather painful), and a mysterious "experimental" section on which we were not won't be marked. I severely ran out of time during the maths part, it almost as bad as being at school again – even after all my revision. Luckily it was all multiple choice, in which blind guessing can also bring its rewards.
We were so glad when it was over – as well as chuffed to realise that both Ed and I had got the maximum score in the verbal section – that we went straight out and blew all of 28 dollars on a huge slap up meal at the most expensive restaurant we could find. This was a most discreetly elegant Korean place with Russian waitresses in tiny scarlet skirts (a most pleasing change from Kabul), where we were given seven types of complimentary salads as a starter - which won my heart already - and then elaborate little mouthfuls wrapped up in seaweed (a bit like sushi), whole roasted fishes, and - forbidden delight - roast pork nuggets with sesame. We only made one bad choice - a scary soup with fermented soy beans in it - but that's good going considering we were deciphering a patchily translated menu.

1 Comments:

Blogger Shannon said...

Congratulations on a sucessful GRE experience. I've been putting off studying for the test myself. What do you hope to study in the states?

12:02 am

 

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