Girls and Boys

Today Dilya and I went to the bazaar. We took a bus there and walked back. Dilya is so great, you can’t fluster or hurry her. She just kind of walks at her own pace and does her own thing, and cocks her head when she’s talking to boys. We ran in to one of her classmates on the bus, and while she was chatting with him, I was trying desperately to not look in the direction of the group of boys to my left, because if ever I did, the one kid immediately started muttering under his breath, “devushka, devushka” or “skol’ko vremya?” or some other stock Central Asian boy pick up line. When he got off the bus I pointed him out – macho black shirt, tight jeans, big old sunglasses – to Dilya and explained what he’d been doing the whole bus-ride. Hey, you should have pointed him out to be earlier, was Dilya’s response. I think she was only half kidding.
My favorite pick up story of the day (there were others, basically anywhere I went with my blonde-ish hair I got taken for a Russian and all sorts of little comments – “Zdravstvui, Natasha!” (Hello, Natasha) – which is a pretty safe guess, considering the shortage of Russian girl names. I don’t mind it as long as I’m with Dilya, we just giggle like girls do whenever we can’t see them anymore, though they can probably still see us. I think I’d feel a lot more awkward if I were on my own, which so far I haven’t ever really been, downtown.) was when we were walking through the bazaar, and a boy kind of pushed past us, Dilya was sort of in his way. Dilya looked back at him in her slow, princessly way as he nudged his way past her. He finally looked up and made eye contact, saw the cute girl he had just shoved out of his way, and you could see a moment of pleasant surprise register on his face. He flashed the cheesiest Casanova smile you have ever seen as he walked ahead and swiveled his head around to look back. The only thing that would have made the moment complete is a pair of sunglasses that he could have lifted up as he looked her over. It was fun.

I was finally able to classify and replicate the Tajik boy double-take, I did it for Farangizka and she recognized it immediately and applauded. I’ll see if I can’t describe it. Basically they walk by or past you and glance at you, look away, then look back at you with a grin that stretches out to their ears (in the words of Farangiz) as they start at your feet and look all the way up til they get to your head, where they try to make eye contact. Which is the last thing you want to do, unless of course you’re Farangiz and then you do and say “chyo smotrish’? (what you lookin’ at?)”. I am not Farangiz, but I’m tempted to try it one of these days, because HONESTLY. ☺