The big sofas of Central Asia: Tashkent


Immeuble et végétation, quartier de la station de métro Kosmonavtlar, Tachkent (1999

Ouzbékistan, Tachkent, Amir Timur, © L. Gigout, 1999

Place Amir Timur, le centre, avec la statue équestre de Tamerlan (2010).

What is striking when we fly over the city before landing at the Yuzhniy Airport, is the dominance of the green. At my first visit in 1999, I did not expect to find so many trees in the capital of the steppes. But the irrigation works wonders. The numerous canals fed by the river Chirchik were built more than two thousand years ago. Now, the city has in addition the gigantic Charvaq reservoir because the river is not longer sufficient to provide water for the capital with a population of more than two million inhabitants. I called it then, not without benevolence, the city-garden. The Amir Timour Square was planted with 100-year-old plane trees and the pedestrian Sayilgoh Street, nicknamed Broadway, was a very busy place with its department stores, its chashlik restaurants, its gift shops, its portraitits and its Gypsy circus. The town planning dated from the period after the earthquake in 1966. A major reconstruction program was launched thanks to the participation of all the Soviet Republics. A network of canals and fountains was built to water lawns and trees massively planted in the new districts. From the Soviet period, the city has also inherited pipes which follow streets, sometimes cutting a pavement, spaning a street, to reach the blocks of flat. Areas between these buildings were gradually overgrown with a wild vegetation. The clematises and the Virginia creeper dressed the austere walls, giving to districts a vaguely agrestic appearance. This vegetation which grew here abundantly, invading the passages and the porch ways and climbing furiously along walls, dispensed its protective shade like a chlorophyll battlement against the solar radiation. I remember the bird's song, children playing to start a fire and, stopped in a passage and harnessed to a donkey, a cart loaded with beautiful et big watermelons.

But the capital Uzbek has changed. The plane trees on the Amir Timour Square were cut down. There are no more chachlik restaurants or Gypsy circus in Broadway, pavements are separated from lanes by massive railings or by marble balustrades, make the pedestrian walk long detours to cross a street. Areas between the low-rises buildings were divided and delimited by fences to privatize the access of them. Disappeared the funny garages, big metallic boxes placed in an anarchy manner. Remains the facades and their frescos, with abstract shapes or allegories in the pure style of Soviet realism, or even designed as a combination of geometric figures forming friezes inspired by the constructivism. Often, the side walls are decorated with huge mosaics. In spite their run-down appearance, these buildings continue to compose an urban landscape which has its personality and its charm.

Ouzbékistan, Tachkent, Labzac, tapshan, tapchane, © L. Gigout, 2012

Jardins derrière les maisons dans le quartier Labzac.

Ouzbékistan, Tachkent, chaïkhana Iwan, tapshan, tapchane, © L. Gigout, 2012

Chaïkhana Iwan au bord de la rivière Ankor.

An old woman is sitting at the corner of a building. After the classic "Otkuda ?", she speaks lengthily without worrying whether I understand something. I find Nargiza near the Maktab book market and we go for lunch in the terrace of the Golubyie Kupola chaykhana. A terrace where are original tapshans with a canopy shaped like Uzbek hat.

Kamola, a young brilliant student a bit of a tomboy, accompanies me in the Abdul Kassim medersa, a former renowned Koranic university where is hosting now shops and workshops. They are wood engravers, cabinet makers, ceramists, miniature painters, jewelers. We meet Alisher, a cabinet maker who makes tapshans. He shows me his catalog. His models go from the standard tapshan to a sophisticated object, with columns and covering. With his trainee, it takes three months to make a tapschan. Like all craftsmen in the médersa, he rightly considers his craft an art and tapshans is only a part of its know-how.
- If you want, he can make one for you, says Kamola.
- Why not. How much costs this one ?
- Five thousand dollars.
- Not bad ! I would like a tapshan with a roof.
- A tapshan with a roof, corrects Kamola, is not a tapshan. Because when you sleep on the tapshan, you should be able to see the moon and the stars.