A business trip in December 1993 brought me for the first time to Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan. It was deep winter in Central Asia and heavy snow almost impeded our landing. Just two years after gaining independance from the Soviet Union, the atmosphere was way more Post-Soviet than Islamic. Even in my hotel Post-Sovietism reigned supreme. The lobby was almost dark, service in the lobby non-existant. As usual in hotels in socialist environments, I had to get my room key from the so-called „floor lady“ at the entrance to my floor. Mostly floor ladies were gently-aged woman, oozing natural authority, offering, without being too servile (hey, we were still embedded in Communist-trained behaviour), all kinds of services: Organising an extra blanket, pouring hot water for tea, organising the fixing of technical problems in my hotel room (there were many). Without having ordered it, my floor lady thought that the young traveller might appreciate a very special VIP service: I tried to unlock my room and found it already open. I entered – and to my surprise, I was not the only one to occupy this room. A lady, obviously much younger than my floor lady, dressed in stately-red Cowboy boots but not that much else had already found her comfortable position in the bed meant to be mine. Communicating was difficult but she made quite clear that this was not be the moment for great talk. Rather she suggested she would act as my additional blanket. As it was already 2am in the morning, shy and sheepish as I was these days, and with a room overly well-heated, I decided that I did probably not need an addditional blanket.

I stayed a couple of days in Tashkent, feasted on steamed dumplings with lamb meet and learned they were called Manti. From then on I became a dumpling junkie. On a small restaurant in the bazaar I made for the first time the acquaintance of hand-pulled Lagman noodles, pan-fried with peppers, onions, and tomato paste. I loved them instantly and had my next portion only 22 years later at a delicious bus driver’s cantina during a business trip to Almaty in Kazakhstan. Apart from the bazaar I did not find a trace of the famed Silk Road whose quintessential cities Samarkand, Buchara and Chiva lay all in Uzbekistan.

In 1998 as part of our trip along the ancient Silk Road from Xian in China back to our Persian home in Tehran via Xinjiang and Kyrgyzstan I came back to Uzbekistan in summer.  I this time stayed in Tashkent in a friends’s house. The house had actually more of a palace, with one part called the summer house and another called the winter house, both separated by a garden courtyard where beautiful vines were growing above our heads as protection against the blistering sun. The ceiling in the royal living room shone golden, ist walls were adorned with geometric ornaments and paintings of beautiful women. I almost felt like the proud Timurid sultan and astronomer Ulugh Beg and suddenly the Silk Road was a little papable. Since long I had been fascinated, by its various routes bypassing Taklamakan desert on a northern and a southern route, enabling the exhange not only of silk, spices and other goods but of ideas, religions, philosophies and scientific discoveries. From China to the Mediterranean, it was the first highway of globalizsation.

On this highway we now went from Tashkent to Samarkand and soon stood in awe on Registan Square, surrounded by three grand madrasahs. The square and its majestic minarets were a symphony of intricate turquoise tiles, shimmering under the Central Asian sun. We were aware that we stood in front of an architectural masterpiece. It was frozen in time, but unfortunately the atmosphere was still frozen in Post-Sovietism. We missed the Muezzins calling the believers for prayers, we missed the old men sipping tea and smoking shisha in the bazaars. All was beautiful but everything felt empty and bloodless, with nobody but the rare tourist in sight. More than 100 years of Communism had done a good job.

Then suddenly an old man in traditional dress, accompanied by two little children, stopped his promenade over the great square, turned towards Mecca and started to pray. Albeit even Samarkand could not match the timeless grandeur of Isfahan, here at least, amid the mindblowing Islamic architecture of Registan Square I could feel that the beautiful ghosts of the Silk Road were slowly awakening.