Its only May and already I cannot escape the heat. Indeed, during the madness of the wedding that lasted two days this week, I escaped the bustle and the heat by hiding out in the “padval” (a kind of basement pantry where food is kept cool). The family’s nine year old niece and I decided to shirk our assigned task of running plates of food back and forth to the hundreds of streaming guests. Instead, we stole a few of the juiciest and sweetest tomatoes I’ve ever eaten, and sat squatting in the padval peeking through the small window to watch frantic pacing feet. Occasionally, someone would come in to fetch more food and we’d hide the tomatoes underneath our dresses! This was my favorite memory from the momentous event.
An Uzbek “to’y” (wedding) begins in the early morning. A band of traditional trumpets and drums arrived at the groom’s house around 4.30am. The women in my family hardly slept for more than one or two hours the night before as they were chopping mounds of meat, carrots, onions, and cleaning sacks of rice and other grains – enough to feed a few hundred people. All this food was to be served to the guests who began to arrive in the early morning. Only men come at this time, wearing white shirts and “dopa” (traditional Uzbek men’s hat). After washing their hands from the offered urns, they sit at one of the many tables that have been set beneath a large tent in the street in front of the house. On the tables are plates of nuts, raisins, candies, strawberries, “non” (traditional Uzbek bread) and “choi” (tea). As they arrive, bowls of “shavla” (a kind of soup) are served. They eat, make toasts, talk amongst each other, and then leave to go about their day.
Later that morning, a truck arrives with the “keilin’s” (bride’s) dowry, which consisted of a pile of “korpachas” (sitting mats), furniture, and two huge trunks full of new clothes. The korpachas are promptly piled along the back of the keilin’s sitting room, from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. The floor around the room is then set with some of these korpachas to form a long rectangular sitting area backed by lush pillows against the walls. The center is again set with a cornucopia of food awaiting female guests. The keilin’s new clothes has a significant role in the series of ceremonies that I don’t yet understand. From her trunks, the clothes are hung around the walls of this sitting room, displayed above the array of guests as they sit, eat and talk among them as if dining inside a huge closet. From what I am told, the clothes remain like that for up to one month, during which time, guests can call upon the family to meet the kailin in this room and admire all of her new clothes.
It was a colorful, hectic, hot, exotic and interesting morning…and there was still a day and a half left to go…
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