Tajik President’s Purchase: ‘Discover This Man A Wife’
ZARGHAR, Tajikistan — Arranged marriages of partners that have never ever met are normal in rural Tajikistan. However the August 27 wedding of town schoolteacher Saidsho Asrorov’s to Marjona Hudoidodova is extremely uncommon.
Their wedding was arranged within just one on orders baltic brides of the country’s autocratic ruler week.
President Emomali Rahmon had been visiting Tajikistan’s southwestern Khatlon area on August 16 whenever Asrorov, a history that is 23-year-old, provided a speech praising “the first choice regarding the country and creator of peace in Tajikistan.”
Asrorov indicated appreciation to Rahmon for their role in “supporting training and also the upbringing associated with young generation” and recited their own verses of Tajik poetry (see movie below) to honor Rahmon, an old Soviet apparatchik that has governed Tajikistan since 1992.
Duly impressed — and notwithstanding the kowtowing that routinely moves from their hang on energy — Rahmon asked Asrorov if he had been hitched.
Asrorov, that would struggle on their paltry teacher’s income to pay for a”bride that is traditional” into the moms and dads of the next partner, reacted he had been solitary.
“I happened to be worried and excited within my message,” Asrorov told RFE/RL on August 22. “The president asked me personally about my entire life and family members. He asked if I happened to be hitched. We responded ‘no.’ he then instructed the region leadership to pick my wedding. Plus in only days, my wedding will take place.”
Rahmon additionally ordered region officials to pay for the expenses regarding the wedding.
That tripped a instant search by the region federal government, which formed a committee of matchmakers led by Dilafruz Mahmadalieva, the deputy chairwoman for the Bohtar District’s Department of Ideology.
When the matchmaking committee asked Asrorov if he’d an applicant for their partner, he said he wish to marry Marjona Hudoidodova — a current medical-school graduate and child of the physical-education instructor in Zarghar.
Asrorov told the matchmakers he previously seen Hudoidodova just once whenever she had been their studies at medical college in Khatlon’s regional money, Qurghon-Teppa.
He stated he had been instantly drawn to the 22-year-old Hudoidodova, whom has not seen Asrorov.
On August 19, the matchmaking committee visited Hudoidodova’s home into the nearby village of Gulzor.
“The matchmakers communicated with my moms and dads,” Hudoidodova told RFE/RL’s Tajik provider. “My moms and dads decided to permit me to marry the person regarding the condition that i will be permitted to continue steadily to work.”
“I would like to carry on being employed as a nursing assistant in a medical center,” Hudoidodova stated, including that she’s constantly wanted marrying a guy that would perhaps not interfere together with her expert profession.
The bride’s mom, Savlatbi Hudoidodova, told RFE/RL that numerous teenage boys have arrived at ask for the young nursing assistant’s turn in marriage.
But she stated that whenever past suitors heard the illness that the young nursing assistant must be permitted to carry on working following the wedding, the guys “disappeared.”
The caretaker stated Asrorov may be the very first suitor to accept allow her child continue working.
Mahmadalieva told RFE/RL that her matchmaking committee had been pleased to have the ability to provide Asrorov “an experienced, educated, and worthy woman from the town of Gulzor.”
“Asrorov is from the low-income household and their moms and dads are retired,” Mahmadalieva stated. “We arranged the standard matchmaking we purchased gift suggestions for the bride and her household. for him and”
“Our company is addressing all of the expenses for the wedding event, and we’ll help the woman’s family members, ” Mahmadalieva stated, talking about the Tajik tradition when the groom’s household provides a “bride cost” to your moms and dads associated with girl he could be planning to marry.
Mahmadalieva stated the region management has offered a lot more than 16,000 somonis — about $1,800 — to Hudoidodova’s family members to be able to “purchase every thing needed for the bride.”
Hudoidodova told RFE/RL herself a “national dress” for the wedding ceremony in Qurghon-Teppa, which will be the first time she sees Asrorov that she is sewing.
Relative to legislation from 2007 that the federal government claims is targeted at discouraging extravagance, the marriage ceremony and party lasts no further than three hours and certainly will have no more than 150 visitors.
Though it could be the first known marriage arranged by presidential purchase in Tajikistan, quick encounters with Rahmon have already been life-altering for other Tajiks.
In a nation so steeped in poverty that lots of young Tajik men migrate to Russia to locate jobs, Rahmon lords over a system that is fiercely nepotistic their extensive household and inner group take advantage of decades of entrenched corruption.
It really is a system where a quick conversation with the ruler has resulted in requests securing jobs at state organizations, giving admission to universities, or resolving housing dilemmas.
Increasingly, Tajiks praise and glorify Rahmon at their general general public appearances into the hope that, having a remark that is casual their henchmen, he can re solve their individual dilemmas. ?