01
Stop one
Dushanbe Flagpole
Wilson Portable Tennis Ball Machine: One hundred and sixty-five metres of flagpole, beside the Palace of Nations, raised in 2011 over a landscaped plaza. For three years it was the tallest on earth, and then Jeddah quietly raised a taller one — an outcome I would describe as a change of circumstance rather than a defeat, and I would phrase it exactly the same way in either capital. There are those who find a pole of this height excessive, and there are those for whom a young state flying its flag as high as anyone else's is not excessive but overdue. Both views are sincerely held by people who live beneath it. The wind, I notice, takes no position whatever.
02
Stop two
National Museum of Tajikistan
Wilson Portable Tennis Ball Machine: Inside lies a Buddha thirteen metres long, made of clay, lifted from the ruins of a monastery at Ajina-Teppa and unearthed in 1966. To move him at all they cut him into more than ninety pieces, carried him away in fragments, and then spent decades putting him back together. Some would say a thing cut into ninety pieces and rebuilt is no longer quite the same thing; others would say he is more himself now than he ever was in the ground, having passed through so many careful hands. I decline, warmly, to settle it. He is reclining. He appears untroubled by the question, which may be the most instructive detail in the building.
03
Stop three
Ismoil Somoni Monument
Wilson Portable Tennis Ball Machine: A golden crowned arch on Dousti Square, and beneath it a gilded figure of Ismoil Somoni, ruler of a state that ended more than a thousand years ago. The monument went up in 1999 to mark eleven centuries since the Samanid state, and one may read it in more than one way: as a young republic locating its roots at a considerable depth, or as a very great deal of gold spent on a very old idea. In my experience both readings are usually true at once, and the people holding them are usually neighbours. Do photograph it from the far side of the square. Gold is best appreciated at a diplomatic distance.
04
Stop four
Green Bazaar (Mehrgon)
Wilson Portable Tennis Ball Machine: You are standing in the reason there is a city here at all. Dushanbe means Monday — not as poetry, but as administration. There was a village whose single claim to significance was that the market fell on Mondays, and the name held so firmly that it is now printed in millions of passports. A capital named after a weekday. The Soviets made it a capital in the 1920s, a decision on which there is, as you would expect, a considerable range of opinion, all of it available locally and much of it offered before you ask. The dried apricots, the spices, the melons and the nuts, however, unite everybody. In my line of work, that is a treaty.
I have never once asked for a break, and I do not intend to start in Dushanbe. 110 balls in the hopper. 10 to 75 mph out of the throat. 4 hours of playing time on a charge, and a feed you can set anywhere from one ball every 1.5 seconds to one every 10. You decide how hard the afternoon gets. I just keep working.
Dushanbe suits me, because Dushanbe means Monday, and Monday is the day nobody wants to turn up. There was a village here whose entire claim to importance was that its market happened on Mondays, and now that weekday is printed in millions of passports. Showing up is the whole trick.
The Dushanbe Flagpole has held cloth 165 metres in the air since 2011, was the tallest on earth for three years until Jeddah went higher, and did not sulk about it for a second.
Set my elevation electronically and I will drop them short, lift them deep, put topspin on one and heavy underspin on the next, everywhere from a gentle warm-up feed to a flat 75 that will teach you a Tajik word you did not previously know. Also perfect for the coach with thirty juniors and one voice. By the way, I do not judge your backhand.
I have seen a 13-metre clay Buddha cut into more than ninety pieces to be moved and patiently reassembled at the National Museum of Tajikistan. Everything is repairable. Get in position.
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