Pursuits
Modern Tajikistan Offers Persian, Pop Music, Wrestling
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“I like this atmosphere,” said Muzafar, a 20-something volunteer at the American Corner, an outreach program of the U.S. Embassy, as we walked along a boulevard in the Tajikistan capital city of Dushanbe. “I just remember the civil war, growing up, and now these days!”
It was Nowruz, the Persian New Year, celebrated on the first day of spring, and all of Dushanbe’s more than 1 million residents seemed to be out on the streets in a display of the smash-cut of folksy-traditional and trendy-metro that is its bipolar mood this decade.