The big sofas of Central Asia: Samarkand

Ouzbékistan, Samarcande, tapshan, tapchane, Registan, médersa Cher-Dor, © L. Gigout, 2012

Tapchane d'exposition dans la cour de la médersa Cher-Dor, Registan, Samarcande.

Ouzbékistan, Samarcande, Registan, Céramique, © L. Gigout, 2012

Motif de céramique du Registan à Samarcande.

City of Samarkand. Of course I decided to start my journey by Samarkand. Not that it is the best (I prefer Bukhara), but it was my first aesthetic and poetic shock when I visited for the first time Uzbekistan. What nevertheless was my surprise when I arrived in Samarkand, this Wednesday, July 21 1999, with my Olizane pocket guide. Impatient to discover the "very noble and grand" city described by Marco Polo in the Book of Wonders, I saw here and there industrial rubble, black scrap, broken windows, half-collapsed walls, precarious sun-drenched houses. So was my beautiful scented oasis! Only streets with dated, noisy and polluting cars. I ruminated darkly at night in my hotel, along the syndrome known by the Japanese arriving in Paris, disappointed not to find the idealized city described by travel magazines. Did my guide cheated on me ? My enchantment came the next day, while I was standing in front of the Registan.

Three buildings almost symmetrical, high facades with monumental pointed-arch gates, majestic domes, minarets. The walls are covered with mosaics of blue and yellow tiles endlessly repeating geometric friezes. The Registan is considered the show window of a civilization that erected the tangible beauty supreme value. Sitting on a patch of grass, I imagined crossing the caravans. I saw the caravanserais and the turbaned dignitaries, half lying under colorful canopies. Supreme audacity, I entered illegally in their harem where I heard the slighting laugh of the girls. When I opened my eyes, I stood surrounded by Nafisa, Nargiza and Sharnoza. They were students and made up the numbers for the great festival of Asian art which was to take place a month later. They were young and pretty and we began to converse pleasantly. I was charmed. Myths and reality came together.
- What is it especially good, Nafisa told me, is that with the festival, we will not go to cotton.

Friday, August 10, 2012. After my installation in the Legend Hotel, I have lunch with Nargiza in the chaikhana (tea house in persian, the word is passed into the russian language) Lyabigor, who had previously, as an emblem, a live eagle tied by the leg to its perch. The eagle is always present but stuffed. The place is nice, with an airy, cool and equipped with tapshans terrace. It is frequented both by local and tourists. Nargiza, whom is familiar to me because I saw her almost every year thanks to its professional visits in Paris since our first meeting at the Registan, organized my stay in her country. She works for an Uzbek tourist agency where she is responsible for the French department and plans to come to school in France for training in the responsible tourism.

Up the next morning before seven o'clock, I start to walk the streets in the old town located in the Imam Said district sides of the Umarov street. We find tapshans everywhere. Inside the Registan, they are there as a testimony to the skills of the craftsmen and to accommodate spectators folkloric ballets. We settle down there in chaïkhani for tea or meals. In the house of mahalla (district), the aksakals (literally white beard in Turkish, but also wise in charge of the tradition) take place there to discuss the public life. And in the gardens of private homes, they are reserved for family and guests. Some tapshans seem abandoned on a street corner, in a park or in a closed chaikhana. The men meet there to play chess and, sometimes, discreetly sharing a bottle of vodka. In the Siab market chaikhana, we eat for cheap samsas (pastry triangles stuffed with vegetables and meat) served with a slightly spicy sauce, manties (steamed ravioli with pumpkin or meat) and a chorba nearest the pot-au-feu than soup noodles. Tea is the rule even if they serve a stale beer. Clientele are mainly people who came to shop in the multitude of stalls lined up in the covered market where you can find spices, fruits and vegetables. An couple of old persons. She, her face quite lined, wearing a beautiful silk dress "ikatée" called khan atlas. He, wearing the inevitable uzbek embroidered skullcap. Further, a "white beard", his head covered with a white cotton turban. The waitresses are dressed in flowered dresses over colorful pants. A light scarf is required. At the end of the meal, I get up and turn to the waitress.
- Rahmat, I told her just to show that I know the country.
- Ok, she replies.