Tajikistan – Return of the monobrow

On the edge of South, Central and East Asia, in a corner of the former Soviet Union, the edge of the Indo-European family, in a country that would be Tajikistan, in a valley wedged between the Hindu Kush and the Pamirs there is a village named Yumk. Before the Silk Road ground to a halt, before the British and the Russians vied for it in the Great Game, before Stalin created the genesis for the nation state there was a valley bespeckled with tiny emirate villages filled with blue and green eyes. After Alexander the Great passed through, Genghis Khan, Marco Polo, the Persians and the Arabs, a dispute had arisen in the complex set of treaties that governed relations between villages tied together by tea and the omniscent childness of their shared Ismali version of Islam.