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On my last night in Samarkand, I went alone at sunset to the opposite side of the city, to Tamerlane's tomb with its pale inscriptions in yellow gold, its ancient alabaster and jade. The outer gates were locked, but I looked through into the courtyard that I had often visited before. Birds were nesting in the trees and a little grey lizard scurried across the ground. The red sun gleamed on ancient tiles and the tops of sun-dried walls. I sat near a stream that flowed along the edge of the road outside, and I thought how old this earth is, this city, and this tomb! The wise men have written that in 362 B.C. Alexander came to Samarkand. In 1221, Genghis Khan. In 1369, Tamerlane. In 1886, the Tsar's General Kauffman. In 1917, the voice of Lenin. And today come the orders of the Communist Party through Stalin of Moscow.

-Langston Hughes, quoted by David Chioni Moore in 'Colored Dispatches from the Uzbek Border'