My father was the manager of a shoe factory in Tashkent during WWII. He was one of more than one million Holocaust-fleeing Jews (1) who passed through Uzbekistan during the war.


So when I came across this photo from Andrew Sullivan's the Daily Dish - the view from your window, of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, 3.30 pm. from someone's window, I thought I should write some of my thoughts about the place.

I was born in 1945 in Tashkent, the Capital of Uzbekistan, and left there when I was only a few months old. I obviously recall nothing about the city. For the next 50 years I never came across anyone who was also born in Uzbekistan. At one point, I thought I never would. Then 17 years ago I placed an ad in the Newark Star Ledger for a computer programmer and received a call from a young man with a slight Russian accent.

During the phone interview, on a whim, I asked the young man if he was from Uzbekistan. After a slight hesitation he stammered, "Yes....." Then I asked if he was from Tashkent. Now he was astounded. He asked, how could I know?

I told him it was merely a guess. I suppose if you are from a really far away place calling for a job interview and your prospective boss hits where you're from on the nail, it can be awe inspiring. I told him to come in for an in-depth interview and he did, although he later told me he half expected to be arrested by immigration when he arrived even though he was here legally on a temporary visa. Later that day I let him in on the fact that I too was born in Tashkent. He wound up becoming a citizen and worked for me for 10 years before striking out on his own.

I have since hired four others from Uzbekistan as programmers. Perhaps I'm on some list in Uzbekistan somewhere as a person who hires programmers.

Until the War on Terror and our use of airbases in Uzbekistan, I spent most of my life explaining to people that I was born in a country near Afghanistan. Of course, most Americans have no idea where Afghanistan is either but at least they've heard of Afghanistan (read my article Why So Many Americans Think the Boston Bombers Came From Czechoslovakia). Then I would say it's a few hundred miles west of China and everything would be clearer, sort of.

I should mention that I now live in Bayonne, N.J. Latitude N 40° 40' which is less than two-thirds of a degree south of Tashkent Latitude N 41° 16' or to put it another way, I now live about 41 miles south of where I was born latitude-wise in a sort of Geographical Kismet.

Uzbekistan is a Tyrannosaurus Rex-shaped country of mostly Uzbek Muslims, see map below:

I've googled now and then for images of Uzbekistan, but aside from some monuments and camels I never found a picture that made me feel nostalgic for a place I feel no connection with. I was born there but I certainly don't feel Uzbek. My parents were born in Poland, and I can get around speaking the language but I don't feel Polish.

However I do feel Jewish although my father, at one time a very religious Jew who later became nonreligious never once discussed anything in the Torah with me, ever. Funny that, eh?

But I feel American more than anything else. Perhaps that's because I chose to become an American citizen when I was 18 and choosing is more important than where you were accidentally born or the ethnicity of your parents.