The Café

Sherzod called again and I invited him out to dinner to one of my favorite places which was called The Café. The place was difficult to find and no one was ever sure of the name of the place, but it actually was called just that --The Café and was located on streets that were called Chekov and Shevchenko, street names that hadn't changed since the Soviet times.

Hidden away on these quiet streets, the Café was likely one of the most expensive places to eat in Tashkent, which meant that a dinner for two could come to as much as $30, which is the average monthly salary of an Uzbek citizen. The Cafe was filled with expatriates from the diplomatic, business and humanitarian assistance crowds, and sometimes you would find mafia types and their personal bodyguards/drivers, would would sit separately at one of the round tables by the entrance.

This was one of the few places guaranteed to have soap and toilet paper in the bathroom, which was not always to be expected in Tashkent. There was always an attendant by the bathroom to personally hand you soap and a hand towel when you washed your hands. The hygienic aspect was comforting. Furthermore, they had a full-stocked bar with a selection of alcohol that was difficult to come by in Tashkent outside the airport duty free shop.

Funny, the whisky, scotch, tequila I drank there, these were things I never even tried in the US, but here seemed so essential to my survival, crutches to help me forget the reality of my surroundings, my past, my loneliness, family issues at home. And it seemed like everyone else here seemed to do the same. Had I carried on in such a way in New York, it is likely that my friends and family might have pegged me for an alcoholic; in Uzbekistan, my drinking was not excessive, relative to the others, and with my friends here it was borne of a love of forgetfulness and escape. A hangover here was as understood and expected as common colds in winter, and Saturday nights was a little more subdued than Friday nights, with everyone a little bit weaker, a bit redder in the eye, and puffier underneath, and nursing themselves with a bit more alcohol.

The Cafe, when I entered with Sherzod was loud and noisy, the buzz of conversations in several different languages fought with the piano, the violins playing the habanera. Sherzod looked around him as though having landed suddenly from the silent, grim, poorly lit Tashkent street into a foreign country of light and music. Never in his life, not in Uzbekistan had he seen such a place, known of such a place; such places existed for him, perhaps only on the TV set when they showed other countries, but not Uzbekistan.

Few Uzbeks came there. I suppose that was a detail that I hadn’t paid too much attention to before; this was a place I felt comfortable, where people didn’t stare at me and I could eat a meal in peace. But for Sherzod, this was the first thing he noticed.

“All the men are foreign. All the women are Russian,” he pointed out. I thought that that might be a generalization, but looking around me, I realized it was fact.

The kind of women that accompanied foreign men here were labelled prostitutes by the Uzbeks. Were the women actually prostitutes? By a foreigner's account, no. But in a broad definition of the term, and in the Uzbek sense -- yes. Uzbeks had a very definite opinion of a proper woman’s role, and a prostitute could be any girl who wasn’t a virgin, who wasn’t married, and who wasn’t a chaste spinster. These women likely spoke English, worked with foreigners, were lovely, and probably saw an opportunity for a better life with these usually older foreign men, who often left their wives and families for them. It wasn’t the same with Uzbek women, who tended to be tied to the home, married off at young ages.

“Is that OK?” I asked.

He shrugged. And the waiter came to take our orders. I wondered if in these pairings throughout the café, of foreign men with Russian women, he saw something mirroring us, and as a result, putting him in the place of the Russian girl of questional moral standing. He seemed sullen, barely looking into the menu. When the waiter came, he simply ordered what I ordered. If I ordered the steak, he ordered the steak. If I ordered the onion soup, he ordered the onion soup. If I ordered the ice tea, he ordered the ice tea.

It was a pity, really. I loved going to The Cafe, and I wondered whether Sherzod would always feel uncomfortable in the places where I felt comfortable. And inevitably, one of us would probably always feel uncomfortable. If we went to a place that Sherzod liked, that was full of Uzbeks, I would be the one feeling self-conscious and stared at. Wherever we were to go, one of us was bound to feel like he was sticking out.

There was an awkward silence and I couldn't tell whether it was because of Sherzod's discomfort or simply because there wasn’t much in common or if it was because of the language barrier, the limits of his English, the limits of his Russian. It was boring to sit in silence...Nothing was worth that. Not even sex.

When the food came, I was happy to have some activity to break the silence. He mentioned wanting to go to the United Arab Emirates. “To do what?” I asked.

“To work”

“What kind of work?”

“I don’t know. Maybe in a hotel.”

I didn’t know how to respond. So I kept quiet, not out of disinterest, but just because I didn’t know what to say. And he offered little more. Uzbeks were living all over the world as labor migrants, doing all kinds of things. But to move someplace you didn’t know anything about, I thought was strange. Then again, that’s how I wound up in Tashkent.

“Is that what you want to do?”

He shrugged. “There is no work here,” he said.

It was not unusual for me to see this resigned attitude. All Uzbeks seemed to throw up their hands; it was a national characteristic I’d seen so many times before. Who was I to argue with him over what he should do with his life. I had a job. I had a comfortable life. People around me didn't have that. There was something I often came back to and alcohol helped me forget.

I ordered a shot of whiskey and asked Sherzod if he'd join me. He said he didn’t drink at all. When the waiter asked what we might like for desert, I ordered the profiteroles. Sherzod ordered the same, not saying the word profiteroles. Did he know what they were? No. They were not indigenous to here. When they arrived, he moved them around on his plate for a few minutes before trying them. And he seemed to like them. But he didn't finish them.  ¶ 6:30 PM