My son was eleven when I took him to his first match against Bukhara, and in the second minute he asked why the men on the other side were being so friendly to us. They had passed sunflower seeds over the fence. I had no good answer, so I said that is how it works between old cities, and he accepted it the way children accept most things I say, with one eyebrow up.

Every Friday evening I sit with a glass of tea and read the Dinamo squad and league table on this site, mostly to see who is in the squad before my son starts telling me. The Bukhara game is the one he asks about first, long before the dates are out, and he has never once asked about a better team. In my house that is the match of the year, whatever the table says.

Seeds over the fence

People call it the derby of the ancient cities, Samarkand against Bukhara, and the fans of the two clubs are friends. Not polite friends. Real ones, with phone numbers. Before the match you will see men from both cities eating together by the gate, and the argument about who has the better plov lasts longer than any argument about football.

The match itself is not gentle. Tackles go in, somebody shouts at the referee, my son learned a new word in 2019. But when it ends everybody shakes hands and goes for tea, and I think that is the right way to have a rival. I have seen derbies in other places on television and I would not trade.

A tiger on the coat of arms

The club is called the tigers, Yo'lbarslar, because of the tiger on the arms of the city. My son has a small tiger on his phone case. When he was little he asked if the players were really tigers and I said only on Saturdays. He believed me for about a year, which is longer than I expected.

The other nickname, the old-towners, Ko'hna shaharliklar, I like more, but nobody sings it. You cannot fit it in a chant. The tiger fits in everything, so the tiger won.

Sixteen thousand, then thirteen

The stadium opened in 1962 and for fifty years it held sixteen thousand. Then in 2012 they rebuilt it and now it is 13,800, with proper seats instead of the concrete steps I grew up on. I miss the steps a little. You knew who your neighbours were, because you were sharing a cushion with them. Now everyone has a numbered seat and the old men argue about whose number it is.

My father took me to the old one when I was six or seven, and what I remember is not the match but the smell of the oil the men used on their sunflower seeds and the roar when the ball hit the net. I wish I could say who scored. I cannot.

Nebitchi, twice

In the 2000/01 Cup Winners' Cup the club played Nebitchi of Turkmenistan, and the two games ended 4:3 and 2:3. Twelve goals in two matches. I listened to both on the radio in the shop, flour to the elbows, and my wife had to take a customer's money because I could not stop shouting.

It is not a trophy and nobody puts it on a wall. But when somebody asks me about the club's big nights, this is the one I tell them about first, ahead of the cup final, because I was there for it, in a way, with the oven going and the radio turned all the way up.

I light the oven at five. Not half past, not when the sun comes up, five, because the first customers are already standing outside at a quarter to six and they do not like to wait. The oven is a tandoor sunk into the floor, older than my sons, and it has one temperament: it wants the fire built before you want the bread.

I have been doing this since I was nineteen, first as the boy who carried the flour sacks and then, after old Karim-aka retired, as the one whose name is on the key. Samarkand wakes up slowly in winter and fast in summer, and the bread sells the same either way. Round non, the thick kind with the pattern pressed into the middle with a stamp, forty or fifty trays on a good morning.

My wife says I talk about the oven like it is a relative. She is probably right. I know when it is in a bad mood by the sound the wood makes, and I know when somebody has used the wrong flour by the colour of the crust before I even taste it.

Flour, water, the bad week in July

Dough is simple and it is not simple. Flour, water, salt, a little yeast, and the part nobody writes down, which is how long you leave it and what the room feels like. In July the dough rises in half the time and in January it sulks. I have tried to teach this to my nephew with a thermometer and a timer and he writes it all in a notebook, and the bread still comes out better when I do it by feel.

There was one week in July a few years back when the temperature in the shop reached forty-six and I lost three batches in a row. Overproofed, flat, sour. I gave the bad ones to the man with the goats on the next street and he said they were the best goat bread he had ever had. That is the only compliment I took seriously that week.

Radio in the corner

There is a small radio on the shelf above the flour bins. In the morning it is the news, then music, and on Saturdays, when there is a Dinamo match, I turn it to the football and my nephew rolls his eyes because it means I will be slow with the money. I do not care. I stand with my hands in the flour and listen to a man shout about a game I will see in the afternoon anyway.

At half past two my nephew takes over the shop. I wash my hands, put on the good jacket, and my son and I walk to the stadium, the one on Mirzo Ulugbek street, with a paper bag of warm non in my pocket for the match. We always sit in about the same place. The stands are never full and nobody minds, because it means you can put your feet on the seat in front and drink your tea in peace. I keep a thermos in the bag, always, even in August, because tea is tea.

There is also the question of the neighbours. The man who sells onions across the street has been buying my first non of the day for twenty-two years, and in all that time we have said maybe two hundred words to each other, most of them about the weather. It suits us both.

Tea at the third hour

By ten the first rush is over and my wife brings the kettle. This is the best hour. The oven is still hot and the street is loud, and for twenty minutes nobody needs anything from me. I sit on an upturned crate by the back door and drink three cups, black, with a lump of sugar I do not put in the tea but hold in my teeth.

My wife says the third cup is for the oven. I do not argue. Whatever it is that makes the second batch come out better than the first, I am not going to be the one who stops the tea.

Last week a boy of about eight came in with a coin and asked for half a non. I do not sell half. I gave him a whole one and told him to bring the coin tomorrow. He did.

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