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Archives for June 2011

Pendle Chronicles: 50 days after the marriage

Hamid Ismailov Hamid Ismailov | 06:05 UK time, Friday, 24 June 2011

All my thoughts are with our colleague Urunboy Usmonov who is still imprisoned in Tajikistan despite of mounting international pressure.

In fact this week I'm flying to Tajikistan to meet officials and make a strong case for his immediate release.

I will update you on progress here, on the and .

While I'm away I have decided to go back to our Pendle couple, who married on the same day as Prince William and Kate Middleton.

The media is a strange flock, which can all of a sudden fly in the thousands over a certain story, but then its attention is drawn somewhere else, completely forgetting the other day's feast.

We have marked 100 days and 50 days before the wedding, so here's Catriona's story after the first 50 days of marriage to Nick:

I am now writing as a married lady. In fact, in four days' time I'll have been married for two months. Clearly I am not yet qualified to write a précis on how married life is, but I can say it has been calm. Wonderfully calm, relaxed and fun.

The run up to the wedding and the last four days in particular, were hectic. I was on track with all the major organisational things like the cake, band and transport, but it was the little things that crept up and overwhelmed me two days before the wedding.

I had to re-do the seating plan because someone couldn't make it, then sorting out the names places became difficult (it's amazing how many plus-ones' surnames you don't know!)

Nick was well intending, if slightly ineffective (adding fuel to my argument that it is nearly always the bride that single-handedly organises her own wedding).

Catriona: Nick, what is your great aunts full name?
Nick: Oh just put Aunty Rene, that's what we call her.
Catriona: Please find out her name. And while you're at it can you get Charlie's surname too?
Nick: Charlie? Nah, don't worry about it, we all just use his nickname. Just use that.
Catriona: [Sceptical stare]
Nick: Come on, it'll be funny!

While Nick then went shopping for honeymoon attire (jealous, moi?!), I went up a generation to Nick's Mum, who was much more informed when it came to family names.

My only piece of advice that I would pass on to other pre-wedded couples would be to get everyone's (full) name, including partners, and addresses, and keep it easily accessible.

I had some names and addresses in my head, some on my laptop and some in my Mother-in-law's address book .

Oh, and one more piece of advice, Brides-to-be: don't forget to buy some new clothes for your honeymoon, lest your newly-acquired husband outshines you in your season-old beach attire (!)

The wedding day itself went amazingly well. I was awake early, incredibly excited.

The sun was shining. Dad was at the bottom of the garden practicing his speech.

Of the two of us, I'm not sure who, at that stage, was the most nervous.

I got ready at home and our family friend drove us to the church at around 2 o'clock. I remember it being quite windy and being concerned my hair would blow everywhere in the wind (which it kind of did, but it didn't really matter).

The sun shone for us, the church was full of well-wishers, our family and friends sang for us in church and it was truly beautiful.

The day flew by in a complete whirlwind. A good friend told me to make sure I stop at some point and take it all in, because it's like a snowball rolling down a hill. Once the day starts, it gathers a momentum of its own and just goes.

Two of the best parts of the day, beyond the service itself, were the drive between the church and the reception. We were on a tiny country road, and stopped for a brief, peaceful minute to enjoy the view over the Strid Valley, complete with celebratory glass of champagne.

The second moment was the last, impromptu song played by the band, at which point all our friends had gathered on the dancefloor around Nick and I as we danced our feet off (thinking we looked great, though photo evidence suggests otherwise by this stage of the night).

It was a really special day, full of laughter and fun, and filled with many, many happy memories that I wish I could bottle, but can't: Dad's speech. Mum's hat blowing off into the river Wharfe and my brother's flying dive to retrieve it. Nick's speech.

But better than the day itself is where it has got us - and the gentle but undeniable warmth and contentment I feel knowing I'm part of a duo with Nick for the rest of our lives.


What does it take to be a journalist in Central Asia?

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Hamid Ismailov Hamid Ismailov | 14:58 UK time, Thursday, 16 June 2011

This week I was planning to write a light entry on Royal Ascot, but the life of a journalist is unpredictable.

On 14 June in the morning, I received an email from a colleague in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, who told me that our reporter in Hodjand in the north of the country - Urunboy Usmonov - had disappeared after work the previous day.

His relatives rang all the hospitals and morgues without any news.

In the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s Central Asian service, we know Urunboy very well.

He is 59. He is a poet and writer who has worked for us for the last 10 years, covering all kinds of stories: local politics, religion, social and cultural issues.

He is a solid and serious man, not the sort you would expect to embark on a silly adventure.

So we started to worry and rang all our local contacts.

By midday we had a text message from his son Oybek, saying that Urunboy was back home accompanied by a number of men.

At that moment, we were happy - thinking the reporter was safe and sound.

While myself and colleagues were guessing who the men with Urunboy might be, we had another SMS saying that security officers were searching Urunboy's home.

I rang Oybek immediately and asked to speak to the officers: to find out what was going on, but I overheard one of them say that nobody was going to talk to anyone.

Oybek told us that the officers were behaving quite rudely and were looking for Hizb ut-Tahrir flyers and books (an outlawed Islamic organisation).

He also said that the face of his father was bruised.

Some time later the officers took Urunboy to the provincial security service headquarters.

Leaving his home he whispered to his family: "It's because of my work. I can't take another night like the last one. I can't survive."

Now we were in the picture.

Yes, we have commissioned stories on Hizb ut-Tahrir in Northern Tajikistan, and as a reporter - and as a journalist - Urunboy would have had journalistic contacts with some members of that outlawed organisation, covering their trials.

But in no way does it mean that he was sympathetic towards their ideas or was a member of their organisation.

I rang Farzona Hodjandi - a famous Tajik poet - who knew Urunboy really well, because they used to work together.

"No!" she exclaimed, "He is the purest democrat!"

Whoever I spoke to that day - even officials at the Tajik Foreign Ministry - were all surprised by this incident.

But apparently the grip of the security services is so strong in Tajikistan that even high-ranking officials in local government couldn't clarify the situation, let alone assist in his release.

Next day the ´óÏó´«Ã½ issued a statement asking for the immediate release of its correspondent Urunboy Usmonov.

The British Embassy in Tajikistan also officially expressed its concerns over the detention of Urunboy.

Several international organisations issued or are issuing similar statements.

So far there's no official response from the Tajik authorities.

Our biggest concern is that Urunboy, who has a heart condition, is deprived of his medicine.

He has already been denied access both to his lawyer and family for several days.

I lost my friend - ´óÏó´«Ã½ correspondent Muhiddin Olimpur in Tajikistan. He was killed in 1995.

I lost another friend, Alisher Soipov, who also worked for the ´óÏó´«Ã½ in Kyrgyzstan and was murdered in 2007.

My colleagues from Uzbekistan had to leave the country after the Andijan tragedy and another friend and colleague, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ correspondent in Central Asia Monica Whitlock was deported from the country for her work.

Ogulsapar Muradova - a journalist from Turkmenistan, who helped ´óÏó´«Ã½ correspondents, was imprisoned and died custody in 2006.

I can tell stories and stories of the cost of being a journalist in Central Asia and I'm really concerned that the case of Urunboy Usmanov could become another chapter of that tragic narrative.

A Sad Anniversary

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Hamid Ismailov Hamid Ismailov | 07:05 UK time, Friday, 10 June 2011

It has been a year since the tragic events in southern Kyrgyzstan, when more than 400 people died in the inter-ethnic clashes between Kyrgyzs and Uzbeks.

Houses were set on fire. Thousands of people fled their homes.

I come from Osh - the area where the violence happened. I have relatives there among both the Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities.

I can tell you that both sides suffered and are still suffering from those events.

The report from the Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission (KIC) investigated the causes and the chronology of the events of that time: establishing the number of people who were killed, fled, left without homes, were charged with crimes and sentenced.

These figures are available and largely agreed by everyone, including the Kyrgyz President who admitted that the majority of those killed were Uzbeks.

Establishing what happened can help us learn lessons for the future, but looking at the past tragic events I find myself drawn to not to stories of horrific atrocity, but quite the opposite.

Abiddin Shakirov is 76 years old.

He is Kyrgyz.

A year ago, on 10 June, his son Asqar Shakirov - a member of a local government - heard about the clashes and rushed to try to stop them.

Seven Uzbek builders were working at his courtyard, building a new house.

He drove with four of them to Osh city centre to take them back home.

He never returned.

He was killed in the city.

When his father Abiddin learnt about the death of his son and went to the city hospital, his first thought was: "What will happen to those three Uzbeks still left at the house?"

If they were killed too, their parents would have to go through the same anguish that he was experiencing at that moment.

And so he returned to go and get those remaining Uzbek builders and get them to their parents in the Uzbek neighbourhood...

There are also reports of Uzbek hiding their Kyrgyz neighbours too.

Recently I heard a talk by the Dalai Lama called The Power of Forgiveness.

He gave this speech at Limerick University in Ireland, in the presence of his friend Richard Moore who had been blinded at the age of 10 by rubber bullets fired by soldiers in Northern Ireland. He had forgiven them.

There's a saying "blood can't be washed out by blood, only by tears".

Mahatma Ghandi also said: "If everyone follows the eye for eye principle, the world will turn blind'"

So however difficult and painful it is, forgiveness is probably the way forward.

Sometimes those people who have suffered the most - people like Abiddin, who lost his son, or Uzbek women from Cheremushki mahallya who lost their brothers and husbands - can be the most restrained in their sorrow.

But there are also those on both sides, who try to exploit the hatred and distrust that exists - mostly for their own political ends.

They are so intolerant, that appealing for revenge against the other nation, they would also kill everyone on their own side who doesn't agree with them.

I know people who, like me, have relatives on boths sides, but unlike me, have been cursed by both sides: Kyrgyzs denied them as Uzbeks, Uzbeks refused them as Kyrgyzs.

But we also know of many mixed families still living together against all odds.

It must be extremely difficult because of the distrust between two communities.

I don't want to sound optimistic, because many of my Uzbek relatives have fled perhaps forever to Russia and Kazakhstan and my Kyrgyz cousins had to move to Bishkek.

All I want to say is that a human being has got many different clothes to put on: it could be a Kyrgyz hut or an Uzbek cap, a military uniform or a civic suit, a judge wig or a priest's cassock.

Not to lose one's human heart under those garments is what those people can teach us, be they Uzbeks or Kyrgyzs

People who have lived humanly through the hell of the last summer events.

31 May - Last Evening of Spring

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Hamid Ismailov Hamid Ismailov | 11:21 UK time, Friday, 3 June 2011

I don't know why, but two ordinary days in a year are special to me: 22 November and 31 May.

Usually I remember what I felt and did on those days, though there's no obvious reason for that.

Yesterday in the evening after the working day I went to the Tudor Sport Ground near my home.

The ground is in fact a golf course with a field at its centre for cricket.

You can imagine an English evening with black trees around the edges of the lawns and Turneresque sky above it.

The sun has just set and the twilight is so soft and tranquil that the rare tweets of birds are echoed by the faraway horn of a car.

An empty tennis court with a net hanging tiredly.

An old uninhabited building with a sign 'AD 1920' on the front, meant to be the cricketers' dressing rooms.

If you go further - a line on the grass, bordering the cricket field.

On your left a squeaky see-saw, playing in the darkness with a soft draught.

You can feel a smell of burnt paper in the air, kids' voices can be heard from afar - a hint on what's happening there, behind the bushes, which separate the golf course from the cricket field.

A rare train, a random passer-by, an occasional dog running towards you... The evening of the 31 of May.

As if everything around you tries to say something to you.

You start to deconstruct meanings: the blackened trees, which you know by names: oaks, maples, sycamores, ash- and lime-trees, standing here for a century or two - you came - they were here, you'll leave, they will be here...

The greenish sky with rare brushstrokes of yellowish clouds - what does that symbolise? About the routine waking of the sun? About the principal darkness of the universe and a small gulp of the light which we are lucky to have? About you soul as immense and as sad in the middle of this evening?

What does the white lane on the grass represent? What about the forgotten tennis net? What about the empty see-saw?

Ultimately you can answer these questions in some metaphoric or straight way, but there will be always a gap of dissatisfaction, which is the starting point of any poetry.

Because first of all it's all about you.

It's you who are lending language to the grotty building with an 'AD 1920' sign on its front, to the lonely flapping flag over the golf-hole, to the empty bench in the name of someone, who loved to sit here many years ago... 31 of May... The last evening of spring...

But are your perennial sentiments of 'les temps perdu' - of the lost times - sufficient for the apology of poetry?

Imagine people in this world who are tortured, who are imprisoned, who are starving, who are fighting for their lives.

Will they accept it?! Maybe not just the answers, which you gave, but the questions, and even the whole language, which you applied to the lost and late plane, leaving a cloudlike trace in the sky, to the smell of burnt paper in the air, to the siren-like sound of the horn from afar - are wrong?

Maybe there's nothing extra in it: this metal table under the birch-tree is scheduled for people to play bridge or read newspapers, when they are not eating a sandwich or drinking a coke.

This plastic bin next to the play ground is a box where mums dispose nappies or cigarette ends, when they bring their kids to play on the see-saw and dog-owners taking their terriers for a walk throw litter.

It's just 'out of office' time for all this equipment and stuff. I think it's 21.47 train from the Welwyn Garden City passed there to London. It's time to go back home...

So the 31 of May, 2011 has ended.

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