Girl, you wear your bathrobe with STYLE!

I wish I had any pictures from that morning, but words will have to create the scene instead. Every Saturday is the Tajik Bazaar. On this day, the peoples of from either side of the Tajikistan border come together to mix and mingle, sell their goods and reveal close up the juxtaposition of two very different worlds.

A river runs between the two countries and at one place the river splits, leaving a small piece of land in between. You cross a bridge on either side of it, leaving your passport behind at the border station and a lingering question haunts you, "which country am I in right now?" There's probably a legal answer for this, but on Saturday, bumping shoulders with Tajiks and Afghans, it's anybody's guess.

It's mostly men at the bazaar from the Afghan side. My friends and I walk through the crowd, feeling a bit like celebrities as the local governer, the principle of the school, the head of security, and the border commander all stop to say hi and give their greetings, many of them wearing their Karzai-style coat giving them an air of dignity and even, maybe, royalty, at least in this small village-kingdom that they rule.

The thing that strikes me however, is the women. My head has been so immersed in Afghan style, literally even, as I wrap my headscarf around me as it keeps getting blown off by the wind, that I am taken aback at how different Tajik style is. (and feeling a bit shameful as I remember a time when I looked at a map with all the "stans" and thought, isn't it all the same?!). The Tajik women are both selling and buying at the bazaar...already revealing the somewhat greater freedom of movement and involvement outside the home. They are dressed in what I can best describe as a flowered moo-moos, and of course, their pants underneath are another pattern and color scheme entirely than the top. I brush by girls in their young twenties who would look right at home in America: skinny jeans and t-shirts with name brands boldly printed across the front.

Janna, one of the other girls on my team, elbows me and whispers "oh my goodness. Check out that girl!" A Tajik girl walks by us with head held high. She has around her a terry-cloth robe which is brightly pink striped with the words "I love you" written all over it. It's dotted with red hearts. She has on pants just as bright and knee-high rubber boots. What I might wear to a "bad taste party" she has carefully purchased, dressed in and paraded through the bazaar in this collision of cultures.