Voice from inside a blockaded Osh neighborhood

It took many tries to get ahold of my Uzbek friends in Osh this evening, making me worry about their well-being. Finally, I was able to reach them at their home number.

Nargiza (name changed) answered and her voice sounded like a child’s. Unlike last time, when she expressed her excitement to hear from me, she remained somber. “We’re not doing very well,” she said in a low, quiet voice. “We’re all still healthy, but you know, it’s a war zone.”

A few days earlier, she expressed regret that her sons were out guarding the neighborhood and couldn’t talk to me. Tonight, there was no discussion of friendly chats. Her husband and sons were busy sleeping in shifts of 1-2 hours, taking short breaks from a constant guarding of the neighborhood.

“I’m very scared for my children,” she said. “None of us are getting much sleep.”

She said the men in her neighborhood have blockaded it, so the people and the houses have remained safe. But they feel they are in a state of war, and the stress and the lack of the sleep are wearing on them.

“We can still hear shooting,” she said. “We keep hoping that someone from outside will come to provide security, but it hasn’t happened yet. We don’t believe anyone in Kyrgyzstan anymore, so we want someone from the outside to help.”

She says it has been a bit quieter since Monday, though they can still hear shooting. The people within her neighborhood were told not to venture out, so she hadn’t seen the city outside her street for several days. “People have run in different directions,” she said. “The Kyrgyz to their villages and the places they came from, the Uzbeks into Uzbekistan. There might not be many left in Osh.”

They are left with a sense of incomprehension. “We don’t know who killed people or who was killed. The Kyrgyz say it was people specially prepared to do this. I know the Kyrgyz are good and peaceful people. We’ve lived among them and shared space at the market together. Still, there is a war with Kyrgyz and Uzbeks killing each other. They burned Uzbek homes and destroyed their stores.”

“I’d like for my children to be able to leave,” she said. I asked where they could go and she didn’t know. “Uzbekistan isn’t letting anyone else in. They let in 80,000 and said they don’t have any more room. There are a 100,000 people lined up at the border. Those who went first to Uzbekistan were those who had no protection, who had nowhere else to go.” She is in regular contact with relatives in Tashkent, but says they are unable to do anything.

A few days ago, she spoke about how the family had begun the process of remodeling their house to put in an addition for their eldest son. They wanted a space ready for him so that he could marry and bring his future wife into their home. In a matter of a few days, they are willing to give it all up. “A part of me is ready to leave this all behind, to give up our house and everything for our family to be able to leave.”

While the men protect her neighborhood, she and her female neighbors huddle together at home. They have food, water, electricity and telephone service. “I hear talk about humanitarian relief being organized,” she said. “We have plenty of food. No one in our neighborhood will die due to a lack of food. What we need is protection. I’m very, very afraid of something happening.”

One Family Waits Out the Osh Unrest

I became very worried about reading the news about the last two days of ethnic violence in Osh. I lived with an Uzbek family in Osh for close to a year. The mother traveled to my wedding in the United States, her first time ever on an airplane. She has three sons who are young men and I feared any of them could be at risk. I wondered what it must be like to live in fear in your own house, the place I also used to consider home. The Uzbek neighborhoods, or mahalas, are close knit. But they are also segregated by ethnicity and easily identifiable.

As soon as possible, I called to find out. Nargiza (name changed) said that her husband and her two sons that are in Osh spent all night guarding the street. The men sit together on the street, guarding their neighborhoods. “But they don’t have guns,” she said. “I don’t know how much they can do.”

She wanted her sons to stay home, but “they are grown up now, and don’t listen to me.”

Markets and workplaces have been closed for the past two days. Her youngest son was supposed to take his last exam to graduate high school today, but that didn’t happen. She said some houses were burned in a nearby neighborhood and that she heard gunshots. She heard that many of the nice, large shops that were constructed in recent years, many by Uzbeks, were looted.

“It’s been terrible,” she said. “Two nights and a day of violence.”

Nargiza has a stall at the market, where she sells dishes. Her dishes are in storage at her market stall. I asked if her goods were in damage of being looted. “I don’t know. I didn’t have time to think about that,” she said. “This happened so suddenly. I haven’t been there for the past two days.”

She was hopeful the unrest would blow over within a few days and said the presence of the troops seems to be helping.

I asked what relations at work would be like after this. How would her husband and son return to work, where most of their colleagues would be Kyrgyz? How would they be treated?

“Relations between the Uzbek and the Kyrgyz in the city are fine, very friendly,” she said. “This has been caused by wild people brought in from other places, rural areas in the south. It’s only been a problem since Bakiyev was removed.”

A Taste of Kyrgyzstan/Uzbekistan in New York

I lost count of how many times people in Kyrgyzstan told me about their compatriot who opened a restaurant in New York City. They all knew the name, Arzu, the same name as a popular restaurant in Bishkek. They told me it was wildly successful, that all the New Yorkers ate there. So of course, when I returned to New York, I had to look this place up.

I found it described as a hole-in-the-wall, with rock-bottom prices and great food. So I went to see for myself.

Arzu is located in Queens and the sign is so easy to miss we walked right past it. It caters to people from the former Soviet Union and the waitstaff exhibit the typical sullenness and will speak to you in Russian before English. The menu is very much like one you’d see in Kyrgyzstan – featuring pelmeni, Korean carrot salad, manti, kebabs, lepushka bread.

The lepushka was the big disappointment. It lacked the doughy, yeasty softness that makes a good lepushka in Kyrgyzstan. The other items had been modified a little to meet American tastes (ie. the Korean carrot salad lost some of it’s typical spice), but they were good. The winners were the pelmeni soup and the kebabs with tender, succulent meat.

With nothing over $7 or so , no one will complain about the price. You’ll leave stuffed and will probably have some cash left over after a substantial meal.