Language: Tajik Persian
NON. A large, round bread essential to all Tajik meals. SHIRBIRINJ. A breakfast porridge composed of boiled milk and sweet rice.
“Gir, gir, Anisa.” Using my Tajiki name, Khola, my host grandmother, urges, “Take, take.” She wrestles the non, a bread fresh from the market and the size of a large Frisbee, or perhaps the wheel of a small bicycle, rips it in half with triumph, and places a large chunk next to my bowl.
I stutter, “Ah, rahmat, thank you,” but it doesn’t deter her. Her thick fingers push the bowls of cream and jam and sliced cheese towards me. It’s practically an army advancing upon my fortress-sized bowl of shirbirinj that I’m shoveling into my mouth, its texture echoing the Chinese congee porridge my dad makes every Saturdays.
Sweat trickles on my neck, sunshine dripping from the edges of the roof over the table, the miz. Instead of a dining room, our havli, courtyard, has the Miz: tucked at the foot of the main family home’s patio is a raised platform with railings, and upon it is a low table, with mats around it for us to sit, legs crossed or stretched or tucked underneath.
My hands tingle, hesitant. Do I reach for non or tea or flick at the flies sliding down in the chaka cream? Khola latches onto my indecision and peers at me, a glimmer of gold tooth peeking out. “Gir, Anisa. Aren’t you hungry?” She pushes the bread even closer to me. I swallow. I have to leave for class in five minutes, but I wouldn’t finish this in five years. Is this how it’d be, every day? Where do I begin eating? How would I even stop?
TUSHBERA. Bite-sized meat dumplings, the size of a bumblebee wrapped in a lily. Served steamed or fried.
There seems to be some unspoken agreement: Firuza, my exuberant fourteen-year-old host sister, scatters tiny dumpling skins across the tablecloth and pinches thimble-sized meat mounds atop the skins. My Apa, Firuza’s mother, then executes dextrous folds on each one until a tiny curved dumpling sits in her hands — then, repeat.
Aren’t they shaped like wontons? I think. I’ve folded wontons with my mom, but ours are three times bigger. On impulse, I ask, “Metavonam… Can I?” Apa nods sternly, and my hands inch forward. Fold in half, pinch edges, fold in half again to create a meat pocket, bring the corners of the skin halfway around the world, and press them together like a kiss.
I cradle my tushbera-wonton in my palm, thrilled at my handiwork. Firuza’s hands pause, and Apa’s sharp eyes widen in surprise at my impeccable, itty-bitty dumpling. An hour later, I’m sitting at the Miz popping steamed tushbera in my mouth. I don’t have any dumpling sauce to dip them in. But with the tart chaka cream that Apa spoons in my plate, they taste a bit like home.
MANTU. Flaky-skin buns, a sunset-crisp color. Often with sesame seed sprinkled on top. Typically a meat-onion filling; can be a soft triangle or baby-cheek round.
“Anisa, gir.” Khola slides two porcelain platters onto the Miz, laden with both round and triangle mantu. Before I can ask, Khola points to the round buns. “These have sabzavot, vegetables, and” — she pokes a triangle — “these are gush, meat.” A playful lilt tints her chiding. “Anisa doesn’t like gush, so we made vegetable ones.”
“Ah, rahmati kalon.” I bashfully brush my hand over my heart and incline my head in thanks. A blazing Tajikistan afternoon revitalizes itself in my chest, even though my skin is already cooling in the early evening glow. I dip a plump bun into the chaka and take a generous bite, streaks of white converging at the corners of my beam. The golden skin crackles just lovely on my tongue, and I find myself with a delectable mouthful of potato, onion, and cauliflower.
“Bomaza!” I exclaim. I lather on more chaka, munch, munch again, until I’m left with fairy dust on my fingers and creamy lightness on my palate. I eagerly scoop up a triangle — the fatty beef and onion sticks to my teeth, but its savoriness crunches in harmony with the chaka all the same. Firuza, somehow already halfway through her fourth mantu, catches my eye and winks at me.
I weigh a mantu in my hand. The mantu are surprisingly hefty, stuffed like feathered pillowcases. They’re as snug as the turquoise headscarf Khola ties around her hair just after dawn, as snug as her tree-trunk arms when we'd say goodbye.
DINNER FEAST SPECIAL. OSH, the national dish of Tajikistan — a golden rice topped with carrot slices, chickpeas, and beef. Accompanied by salad; FATIR, a rich, flaky bread; and TARBUZ, watermelon. A labor of love from the bosom of every Tajik home kitchen, a classic feast fit for all occasions: birthdays, national holidays — and farewells.
“Ah, assalom aleykum!” My hand dances up over my heart in greeting, surprised at all the neighborhood women my family had invited. With the late-evening sky deepening into vermillion, blurring into the grapevines casting hazy shadows and translucent-green grapes into our havli, we all squeeze in around the Miz. Firuza sits to my left, Khola to my right, Apa across from me. At the center of the table are two enormous platters of osh, with thin carrot slices, plump chickpeas, and generous chunks of fatty beef tumbling down slopes of sand-dune-colored rice. Numerous salad dishes, trays of ripe, coral-pink tarbuz, and pieces of fatir are scattered across the surface. After everyone showers my Khola and Apa with compliments on the attractive spread, the feast commences.
Khola flaps her hand at the lone cucumber plate amongst the tomato-onion salad bowls. She announces, “We prepare cucumbers because Anisa doesn’t like tomatoes.” Our guests murmur, and I flush. But my ears to perk up at the timbre of fondness in her voice. The women chatter delightedly, and the cadence of Tajiki, once a frequency I could not grasp, shimmers around me. Khola elbows me, shaking me out of my daze. “Anisa, it’s your last night. Why don’t you say something?” I stop midbite, a succulent cube of beef waiting patiently atop the mound of golden rice on my spoon.
I blurt out, “Man hanuz ser nestam. I’m not full yet.” She blinks, taken aback. But she recovers a second later, twinkling in her eyes and gold-tooth smile unmistakable. Khola pushes more fatir towards my plate.
“Gir, Anisa. Take — until you’re full.”
“Rahmat. Thank you, Khola.”
As the sky deepens its blush, it disperses light speckles across its indigo expanse, like how Apa scatters sesame seeds across mantu tops before toasting them a rich gold. I scoop up another sandcastle of soft rice, let crisp cucumber crunch between my teeth and watermelon quench my tongue, savor bite after bite of delicate, flaky fatir that dissolves in my mouth with a tingling, sweet warmth. It emanates a mild fieriness like every Dushanbe summer evening, whenever I gaze up from the havli after dinner to soak in Tajikistan’s drowsy twilight sun.
Meet the Writer!
Vanessa is a graduating NJ senior of Livingston High School’s Class of 2019. She is a language enthusiast, competing in the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad since the eighth grade. Under the U.S. State Department’s National Security Language Initiative for Youth, she studied Tajiki Persian in Tajikistan (Summer 2018).
In her downtime, Vanessa likes to do Pilates, dabble in Japanese, bake and drink bubble tea with her sister, and watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine. This summer, she is excited to continue learning Python and to travel to China (and work on her Mandarin!). Vanessa plans to study Linguistics at Harvard starting Fall 2019.