Tajik President’s Purchase: ‘Discover This Man A Wife’

ZARGHAR, Tajikistan — Arranged marriages of partners who possess 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 had been arranged within just one week on instructions associated with the nation’s autocratic ruler.

President Emomali Rahmon ended up being visiting Tajikistan’s southwestern Khatlon area on August 16 whenever Asrorov, a 23-year-old history teacher, offered a speech praising “the top associated with country and creator of comfort in Tajikistan.”

Asrorov expressed appreciation to Rahmon for their part in “supporting training together with upbringing regarding the young generation” and recited their own verses of Tajik poetry (see movie below) to honor Rahmon, a previous Soviet apparatchik who may have governed Tajikistan since 1992.

Duly impressed — and notwithstanding the kowtowing that routinely moves from their hang on power — Rahmon asked Asrorov if he had been married.

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Asrorov, that would struggle on their paltry teacher’s wage to cover a conventional “bride price” towards the parents of the next partner, reacted which he ended up being single.

“I happened to be concerned and excited inside my message,” Asrorov told RFE/RL on 22 august. “The president asked me personally about my entire life and household. He asked if I happened to be hitched. I replied ‘no.’ he then instructed the region leadership to decide on my wedding. Plus in only days, my wedding shall happen.”

Rahmon additionally ordered region officials to cover the expenses regarding the wedding.

That tripped a instant search by the region federal 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 stated he want to marry Marjona Hudoidodova — a current medical-school graduate and child of the physical-education teacher in Zarghar.

Asrorov told the matchmakers he previously seen Hudoidodova only one time whenever she had been their studies at medical school in Khatlon’s local money, Qurghon-Teppa.

He stated he had been straight away drawn to the 22-year-old Hudoidodova, whom has not seen Asrorov.

On August 19, the matchmaking committee visited Hudoidodova’s home when you look at the nearby town of Gulzor.

“The matchmakers communicated with my moms and dads,” Hudoidodova told RFE/RL’s Tajik provider. “My moms and dads consented to permit me to marry the person on 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 got constantly imagined marrying a person who does maybe perhaps not interfere together with her professional job.

The bride’s mother, Savlatbi Hudoidodova, told RFE/RL that numerous teenage boys have actually come to ask when it comes to nurse that is young turn in wedding.

But she stated that whenever past suitors heard the situation that the nurse that is young be permitted to carry on working following the wedding, the guys “disappeared.”

The caretaker stated Asrorov may be the suitor that is first consent to allow her child continue working.

Mahmadalieva told RFE/RL that her matchmaking committee had been pleased to manage to provide Asrorov “an experienced, educated, and worthy woman from the town of Gulzor.”

“Asrorov is from the family that is low-income their moms and dads are resigned,” Mahmadalieva stated. “We arranged the standard matchmaking we bought presents for the bride and her family members. for him and”

“Our company is addressing most of the expenses when it comes to wedding party, and we’ll assist the woman’s household, ” Mahmadalieva stated, discussing the Tajik tradition when the groom’s family members provides a “bride price” to your moms and dads for the girl he could be going to marry.

Mahmadalieva stated the region management has provided a lot more than 16,000 somonis — about $1,800 — to Hudoidodova’s household so that you can “purchase everything needed for the bride.”

Hudoidodova told RFE/RL that this woman is sewing herself a “national dress” when it comes to marriage ceremony in Qurghon-Teppa, which is the first occasion she sees Asrorov.

Prior to legislation from 2007 that the us government claims is targeted at discouraging extravagance, the marriage ceremony and celebration can last no more than three hours and certainly will have no more than 150 guests.

Even though it could be the first marriage that is known by presidential purchase in Tajikistan, brief encounters with Rahmon have already been life-altering for other Tajiks.

In a nation therefore steeped in poverty that lots of young Tajik men migrate to Russia to locate jobs, Rahmon lords over a fiercely nepotistic system while their extensive household and internal group reap the benefits of decades of entrenched corruption.

It’s a method the place where a conversation that is short the ruler has resulted in requests securing jobs at state institutions, giving admission to universities, or resolving housing dilemmas.

Increasingly, Tajiks praise and glorify Rahmon at their general general general public appearances within the hope that, by having a remark that is casual their henchmen, he can re re re solve their individual problems. ?