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My name is Aron Aronov.
I was born in 1938
in the city of Tashkent. My mother’s roots are in Bukhara.
After the (Russian) Revolution,
my mother went from Bukhara to Tashkent with [her] father and mother.
My father—my father's side—
is from Panjshanbe
near or right next to Samarkand. They also came
to Tashkent from Panjshanbe some hundred years ago. I myself was born in Tashkent.
When I turned seven, I went to school. I studied there for ten years;
it was a Russian school. We [children] mainly talked in Russian.
With our mother and father we spoke in both Bukhori and Russian.
For ten years I studied at school.
When I was finished at the school,
I went to the institute. I learned both English and French there.
Then I learned
German on my own, Spanish [as well]
I speak ten languages. I want to say something. Bukharians—
they are not aware that they are multilingual.
I was talking to a woman and I said, “Have you gone to school at all?” “No,” [she replied]. “Have you read books?” “No.”
I said [to myself]: This woman has never read a book in her life, but she knows five or six languages.
How could it be? She knows the Bukharian language—that is her mother tongue.
If she speaks Bukhori, then she understands both Tajik and Persian—thus three languages.
She knows Uzbek because she lives in Uzbekistan.
If she knows Uzbek,
then she understands Tatar, Kazakh, Turkmen,
and a bit of Turkish—hence five languages.
Besides, she speaks Russian, for we lived under Russian rule,
the Soviet state […]
Now this woman who has never read a book on earth speaks five or six languages. She is Bukharian.
Had she been born Russian, she would know only one language—Russian. Should she be born Bukharian, she will know five or six languages […]
Afterwards, when I finished at the institute,
I became a translator in Bukhara.
After five or six years of translating,
I went to the institute that I had graduated from and began teaching there.
I was a teacher, an English teacher.
Then, in 1989 we came to America. I was then 51 years old.
I was admitted to Nayana [to teach English as second language]. The reason I was admitted was that I said something in Bukhori [during the interview]
and they learned that Bukhori is a language very close to Persian, so they hired me. I worked twenty years as a translator […]
I married in 1969.
Two children were born, two daughters.
[My grandson’s wife] gave birth to a girl and a boy. Now [we have] two grandchildren, male grandchildren,
and two great-grandchildren.
My wife works in a kindergarten
and looks after small kids. She too has worked for some twenty years.
[Our] daughters and [their] children work [as well]. Talking about getting a house,
did I come to own a house, a big house? [No,] I bought a little house, [with] a backyard.
There used to be a garage there; I knocked it and built a Bukharian house.
What else have I done here? I established a museum.
We say muzey in the Bukharian language. I go to Bukhara and Samarqand every year. From there,
I do my best to bring with me the things that have been left over there. I put them in the museum here.
At home my wife and I converse in Russian. With children,
sometimes Russian, sometimes English. Regrettably, the Bukharian language—
[only] those of my age, they speak Bukhori.
Small kids and teenagers—
they don’t know the language. I now have the idea that at Yeshiva and college
the students
should learn Bukhori.
Those individuals
or families who have come from Bukhara,
Navoi, or Samarkand---their children know the Bukharian language at least a little. [Those] from Tashkent and its environs—
they don’t.
If I am asked what my nationality is, I will say I am Bukharian.
How does one know that I am Bukharian? I speak the Bukharian language and if there is no Bukharian food at home and there are pizza and hamburgers [instead], I would not be Bukharian then.
I speak the Bukharian language
[and] our cooking is Bukharian,
[and] our cooking is Bukharian. What do I mean?
[I mean that] if I do not speak Bukhori…
[I mean that] if I do not speak Bukhori…
and if there is no Bukharian food at home and there are pizza and hamburgers [instead], I would not be Bukharian then. I would be Russian,
American…