Tuyi Tojiki

My friend Dan Stanley got married last week to the very lovely Tojinisso Rahmonova, who is somehow related to Tajikistan's head honcho, Emomali Rahmon. Unfortunately, family connections didn't allow Dan and Nisso to bend Tajikistan's new law that limits the size of wedding parties to 150 guests in an effort to lessen the country's economic hardships. I checking the guest lists for parties is a bigger priority than say... prosecuting corruption. In Dushanbe, for relatively affluent people, weddings of 400 were not uncommon before the law and for good reasons: people here have huge extended families, wedding parties (along with circumcisions and funerals) are Tajiks' main social events, and since there's no postal service, people extended invitations by word of mouth and planned for a crowd. Now the rule of thumb is stay away. There were probably less than 125 people at the wedding, though scores of Nisso's relatives would have liked to come. In any case, the food was just as lavish as before the new law. Believe it or not, what's on the table is just the first course!