Dushanbe

Dushanbe takes its name from the Tajik word for Monday, the day of the market held at the meeting of three villages beside the Varzob river. It was a small place on the edge of the Emirate of Bukhara until the upheavals that followed the Russian revolution: in 1920 the last emir of Bukhara took refuge here before fleeing to Afghanistan, and the town changed hands several times in the fighting of the early 1920s.

The Soviet authorities chose it as the capital of the new Tajik republic in the mid-1920s, a decision that turned a bazaar village into a planned city. It was named Stalinabad from 1929 to 1961, given a railway link, textile mills and engineering works, and laid out with wide avenues of plane trees, low neoclassical blocks, an opera house and institutes; Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Germans and others were settled alongside Tajiks moved down from the mountains. By the late Soviet period it was a city of several hundred thousand people.

Independence in 1991 was followed by the civil war of 1992–97, which began with demonstrations and street fighting in the capital and emptied it of much of its Russian-speaking population. Peace brought slow reconstruction, then a building boom: since the 2000s the Soviet centre has been steadily replaced by government palaces, a very tall flagpole, a national library and museum, a large mosque and rows of high-rise flats, while the city has grown rapidly with migration from the countryside.

Dushanbe is a Persian-speaking capital, and the language and literary tradition are central to its self-image: Rudaki, the 10th-century poet claimed as the father of Persian poetry, gives his name to the main avenue and the central park, and his monument is one of the city's landmarks. Poetry, the shashmaqom song tradition and the falak music of the mountains are supported by state ensembles, and the opera and ballet theatre from the Soviet years is still in use.

Life is family-centred and hospitable. Weddings are the great social events, large and expensive enough that the state has legislated to limit their size, and guests at any table are fed far more than they can eat. Bread is treated with particular respect, tea is constant, and elders are given precedence in seating and in speech. Dress in the capital mixes Western clothes with bright atlas silks and embroidered dresses, and the embroidered skullcap is worn by men of all ages.

Religion is Sunni Islam, practised under close state regulation: mosques are supervised, and dress and children's religious education are restricted. Nowruz, the spring new year, is the biggest festival of the year, with communal cooking of sumanak, music and games, and Independence Day in September fills the squares. The Pamiri community from the east adds its own music, food and Ismaili tradition to the city's mix.

Something over a million people live in Dushanbe, and the city has grown fast as families move in from Khatlon, the Rasht valley and the mountains. Newcomers often settle in the outer districts, where blocks of flats and half-built houses spread into former orchards and cotton fields, while the central avenue is being rebuilt with towers, hotels and shopping centres.

The capital holds the government, the universities, the banks and most of the country's formal jobs, along with textile and food industries and a large service and construction sector. Even so, wages are low and a very large share of households across the country depend on money sent home by relatives working in Russia; the airport's departure hall and the money-transfer offices are part of ordinary life. Winter electricity rationing, which is severe in the regions, is milder in the capital.

Days begin early, with the bazaars busy soon after dawn and offices starting before eight; the afternoon heat empties the streets in summer, and the evenings fill the parks, fountains and tea houses. Students, families and courting couples walk the avenue after dark, when the fountains are lit. Traffic, housing costs and jobs for the young are the everyday concerns.

The Tajik table is at its fullest in the capital. Oshi palav, the national dish, is rice cooked with mutton, carrot and onion in a wide kazan and served from a shared platter at weddings and guest meals. Qurutob is the dish people name as most particularly Tajik: torn layers of flaky fatir bread soaked in a sauce made from dissolved qurut, dried salted cheese, topped with onions, herbs and often fried meat, and eaten with the hands from a common dish.

Chaikhonas serve shurbo, a mutton and vegetable soup; sambusa baked in a tandoor; laghmon, hand-pulled noodles in broth; manti; and shashlik grilled over coals. Non, the round flatbread stamped with a pattern, comes from tandoors in every district and is never placed upside down. Chakka, strained sour milk with herbs, is eaten with bread, and salads of tomato, cucumber and onion come with almost everything.

The bazaars show the country's fruit: melons and watermelons, apricots, figs, grapes, pomegranates and peaches in summer, dried for winter along with walnuts and almonds. Green tea is poured at every meal and refilled endlessly, black tea appears in winter, and the capital also has European-style cafés, bakeries and beer halls, a legacy of the Soviet decades. Halva, nishalda and sugared nuts are set out on the table for guests.