I’ve been asked by some people if they could leave comments to my story about finding my grandfather’s grave. Initially, I did allow comments, but, at a friend’s suggestion (that I risked having people post frivolous or inappropriate stuff) I removed the facility.

Now I’m unsure. So I’ve decided to put the decision to you, dear readers… please cast your votes, and I’ll implement the decision when I reach China next week.

- Voting closed – comments now allowed – thanks for your votes -

As a postscript to this entry, my cousin Julia sent me this link to a site which details the history of the Polish exodus, and some of the experiences of those who were affected by it. Be warned, it is not a story for the squeamish, but if you want an idea of how my grandfather ended up buried in Uzbekistan, it’s an excellent resource.

While in Bukhara, we took the opportunity to visit Nurafshon Bukhara FC, who are currently lying 8th in the Uzbekistan Premier League. The visit was organised by the ever-efficient Shukhrat, who accompanied us to the training ground to meet the players and staff…

Bukhara FC Trainer

We met the trainer, (name in cyrillic, will update when I can… sorry, my friend) who filled us in on the club’s history and current standing in the league.

Bukhara FC Assistant Trainer

His assistant kindly arranged for us to train with the team, but, all of us being well past the playing age of anyone other than a goalkeeper, we politely declined. Phil and Chris were, however, kept happily amused taking shots at the keeper for half an hour or so, until they were told that he had to do something to actually exercise his skills.

Phil and Rich, proud of the banners given to them by the club.

The constant movement, being so close to Chris (I love him too but the wedding’s off after this trip ends, unless someone would like to sponsor us separate rooms?!!) and mollicoddling travel agencies are driving me bananas.

The tourist trade seems to turn the whole world into a theme pub that tourists trawl round offering nothing in return, keeping visitors apart from the visited. If you do have something to offer in the wilds of other cultures, the wilds become tame and you are no longer a scared ‘holidaymaker’ getting a ‘taste’ of some ‘exotic’ land, but a contributor.

Everywhere is dangerous and on your own is just as safe and far more expressive. So my paranoia abates. I am honourable in my requirements and my givings and head out on my own. This in turn gives Chris and I some space (wedding’s still off darling). Fear mongering is rubbish. George Bush is another perpetrator.

—-Anyway, rant me up Scotty

Chris adds:

NOT, for example, to be found in the tourist brochures is this image of Aral Sea shrinkage from NASA.

The day before Richard left for Tajikistan, we arranged to film the Ball falling from Bukhara’s landmark minaret. The minaret is justifiable famous for its role in satisfying the considerable blood-lust of the local khan, who used to dispose of people by having them thrown off the top.

The only person to survive the fall was a woman, who when asked for her final wish, elected to wear her entire wardrobe, consisting of forty dresses. This gave her sufficient padding to withstand the impact, and indeed, to this day, Uzbek brides are given forty dresses on their wedding day. For good luck, I assume…

After filming, we were surprised to find that the medrassah which the minaret is attached to was also used by the locals as a boundary for their regular evening five-a-side games… so of course we asked to join in…

After playing for twenty minutes in mixed teams, the locals suggested we play by the rules they use when the are too many players present. We split into three teams of five. Each time a goal was scored, the team that conceded would be replaced by the team on the sidelines. The two local teams started playing, while we organised ourselves…

Earlier that day, I had met Tim, another traveller on his way to the World Cup, in an internet cafe in town. I’d suggested to him that we meet up later that evening. I told him where we would be filming, and when he turned up at the minaret, we had four players… the fifth was a Tajik on loan from German Agro Action (yep, there really is a charity with that name) whom Richard knew from Dushanbe, and whom we had met at the top of the minaret.

So then, we had a team, we had opposition, and we had a ball.

Phil tries to chip the keeper

Unfortunately, we didn’t anticipate just how good the opposition would be. Or how bad we were. Within a minute of taking the field, I managed to thump the ball over the medrassa wall, resulting in a little lad scampering off to retrieve it. In the meantime, we began playing with the local’s ball, and within seconds had conceded a giveaway goal. None of us, it seemed, had figured out who was playing keeper.

Sounds familiar, eh, Rob

“Take care of your gates properly” as Dinar put it in a previous blog entry

The previous team of locals took the field again, and we sat watching for twenty minutes as they battled it out together – great end-to-end stuff, much energy, much shouting, and many interruptions by little girls trying to sell people coffee-table books about the city.

Eventually, we got to play again, but the happy scene came abruptly to an end when Richard realised that our dinner would be on the table, and that our formidable hosts at Farkhad and Maya’s would not be lending a sympathetic ear to us when we pleaded that were defending our honour as football players.

Chris arrives in Kanimech

I’m writing this entry as a personal aside. It’s not football related, but tells the story of how I found my grandfather’s grave – something I have dreamt of doing since I first heard the almost impossibly traumatic tale of my family’s exodus from Poland.

Bronislaw Wach, my paternal grandfather, was born in Providence, Rhode Island. How he ended up buried in a cemetery in Kanimech, Uzbekistan has always been a matter of considerable fascination to me. The story has always been shrouded in half-truths and rumour… yet he always seemed a character to whom I could relate, since I too seem bitten by the nomadic bug.

The journey that we are currently making to the World Cup in Japan afforded me an opportunity not only to meet up with Richard, fresh from a long stint in Afghanistan, but also to see if, by any chance, I could locate Bronislaw’s final resting place.

After hooking up with Rich in Samarkhand, the three of us set off with our guide, Shukhrat, to Bukhara. I knew – thanks to the efforts of Julia, my cousin – that Kanimech was located between Samarkhand and Bukhara, somewhere north of the provincial town of Navoi, and that my grandfather was buried in grave 163-1. This was all I knew for sure. My sense of anticipation rose as we drove through the unfamiliar terrain, though so too did my trepidation and anxiety.

Finally we arrived in Kanimech district, marked, as all provincial districts in Uzbekistan are, by a monument of gigantic proportions. Well at least the town was no myth. A stone mason working on the base of the monument warned me that most of the old cemetaries were wrecked, or in a terrible state of repair. We drove onwards, unsure of how to proceed in the task of finding the cemetery, but, as we drove over the brow of a hill and saw Kanimech lying in the valley beyond, we noticed a cemetery directly on our right. Had we arrived?

The first graveyard

Excitedly, we all leapt out of the car and hopped the fence into what looked like a very run-down graveyard. There could be no doubt that it was in some way linked with Kanimech, but the graves that existed were very new, and those which were old were unmarked. It was an eerie and haunting experience, wandering through a field of bumps in the ground looking for graves that might have a wartime date on them. I felt sorry for those whose remains lay there, untended, unremembered and uncared for. I became more and more morose, thinking that this was perhaps all that I would find.

The day before, however, Richard had suggested that if we found Bronislaw’s grave unmarked, or if we should find nothing at all, that we should get a local stonemason to make some kind of memorial for him. I will always be grateful to Rich for this suggestion, but although it made the search somehow less fearful, I also felt a pang of shame that I had not struck upon this thought myself. Nonetheless, knowing that, one way or another, there would now be something to commemorate Bronislaw here comforted me. As we left the cemetery to drive into town, I resigned myself to this course of action, and Shukhrat seemed sure that we could find someone local to do the job.

Kanimech town centre

We arrived in the town and drove around for a while… Shukhrat asked a resident where the municipal cemetery was, and we set off at some pace toward the other side of town. I took this to mean that the previous cemetery had not been the only one, and my spirits lifted once more.

Turning right at yet another monument, I saw a newly constructed archway, and as we drew up, it became clear that this was a very different place to the one we had just left. I jumped out of the car, and hurried into the compound, which seemed to be full of the paraphernalia of burial, from the slabs used to wash the bodies to the pile of marble chippings left over from creating headstones.

In a side building, Shukhrat found Khundaybergan, the cemetery guard, who, jumping up from his lunch, gestured for us to follow him, muttering the world “Polska” as we walked. He took us down a tunnel of vines, and when we emerged, we saw this wonderful sight in front of us…

The Polish cemetery

See the cemetery in Google Earth.kmz

With Shukhrat’s help translating the old keeper’s words, I learned that last year, a Polish company based in Tashkent, had come along and organised some locals to create this beautiful memorial to the 2000 (or so) Poles who had descended on Kanimech in early 1942. Of those who had arrived, 337 never left.

The Memorial to those who died

I dashed inside, half-expecting that somehow, through some quirk of fate, my grandfather might not have been part of this event. To my enduring surprise, I found his name among the list of the dead.

My Grandfather’s name

But what had happened here? Why were there 13 plaques with inscriptions? Was it possible that my grandad’s grave could still be out there somewhere in the cemetery? I went onwards, looking for signs of old graves.

The only remaining grave from 1942

The guard told me that there had been graves like the one above, and that they had borne inscriptions, but over the years the whole plot had fallen into disrepair. The Polish company had, apparently, exhumed what they could, and had reburied the remains where the marble memorial now stood. At first I felt let down – to have come so far, to have come so close, and yet to be thwarted within the final few yards. Yet as I looked around me and began to take in the scene, I saw that what had been created was enough for me to feel connected.

The only remaining steel cross had once been someone’s grave. That person had once had an identity. But the inscription was long gone, and was most likely unrecoverable. Yet in their anonymity, the grave had become common property, and their simple resting-place had become symbolic of all those who had died here. The names of the dead could be seen inscribed in marble a little way off, but this was where I felt Bronislaw lay.

A little later, we returned to the memorial with two old men from the town; Abdullah Adnayev, the local historian, and Pavel Mardvinzev, his understudy. They informed me with a display of great affection and emotion, that I was the first person to have visited Kanimech in search of a lost relative. I was touched by their warmth and sincerity, and as the understudy stood by the grave of his parents (also within the compound as he was of Russian descent) he assured me that his parents would have known Bronislaw, and was saddened that they had not lived to recount their stories of the “honourable” Poles.

Abdullah Adnayev, the historian who told us tales of the Polish visitors

Pavel Mardvinzev, the historian’s understudy

We sat for over an hour by the graveside as the two men, unprompted, told story after story of the events of 1942 and 1943. Shukhrat valiantly attempted on-the-spot translation, but my guess is that they said far more than he could tell us in the brief pauses. I would like to express my sincerest thanks to Phil and Richard, who kept the video cameras running all the while that they spoke. I know that in doing so they allowed me to be there, while they distanced themselves to frame the shots.

Bronislaw’s final resting place. What a beautiful spot.

So here, then, is where Bronislaw Wach ended up. And what a tale that must be – crossing continents, enduring hardships beyond my imagination, to be laid low with sickness in this tranquil place. But that story is for another place and another time, while this story is now, and is mine.

The Registan in Samarkhand is where Al Ghorasmi wrote his famous text “Al Jabr”. I feel particularly privileged to have sat where he most probably sat – we now recognise his name as ‘algorithm’ and his book gave us ‘algebra’ – I use these every day of my programming life.

A Buckyball

The Ball itself is another mathematical object, named much more recently after R. Buckminster Fuller, another scientific visionary – its basic form is called a Fullerine or a Buckyball. In nature this shape occurs as Carbon 60, a molecular-sized football which can bounce even when travelling at half the speed of light. You can read more about it in this article on soccerballworld.com

So, we’ve met up with our friend Richard Hamilton, who took a taxi from north-eastern Afghanistan to Samarkhand. He’s been running an aid campaign for Concern Worldwide, trucking in relief supplies from Tajikistan in the wake of the “Operation Enduring Freedom.” Richard was going to make this trip with us (the three of us had travelled to France for the 1998 World Cup together) but, unfortunately for us, Afghanistan called to him louder than Seoul. Phil and I are glad that he’s managed to get away for long enough to meet us here.

To celebrate our reunion, we played keep-up in the Registan, followed, as darkness began to fall, by a fast and furious game with a group of children in a park nearby.

After the game, I entertained the kids with a couple of his magic tricks, which seemed to do down well. Judge for yourselves by downloading the MPEG movie clip.