Houses of Sayram

Long and winding: that was the best description of the road between Sayram and Shymkent. But it was nothing to sing about, I thought. The Family pointed out that it was a blind road. When you go through a road in a suburb you expect to see gardens and lawns, people going about, some neighbourly activity visible. There was nothing here. Just walls interrupted with gates. “Isn’t it odd?” she asked. I nodded and began to take photos. It was odd because it wasn’t even the kind of high-income area where people would be obsessed with privacy.

When I looked carefully I could see two kinds of houses on the road. There were those with a gate and blank high walls around it, not even a house in sight beyond it. “Are there houses behind the walls? Or are these plots for development?” I mused. Then there were the walls houses which seemed to back into the street. You could see a row of windows piercing the wall, but no door. Only the large gate seemed to give access to the house. Later we were told that these were Kazakh and Uzbek houses. The Kazakh houses are not visible from the street. The Uzbek houses back on to the street, but open into a secret garden accessible through the gate.

We saw a house under construction. A temporary wall seems to be built first, a gate is set into it, and the construction begins behind it. The temporary wall will be raised later to hide the house from the street. We discovered later that neighbours drop by to each others’ houses, and that there is informal socializing. But none of this is visible to passers by. I wonder about the history which led to this style of life.