GG Saidova

Gulnora Saidova cooks plov for the lunchtime crowds at a Tashkent plov-house, stirring the great kazan cauldrons with a paddle and feeding two hundred strangers a day like family. She learned at her mother's elbow and defends her rice-to-carrot ratio as settled science. The plov-house regulars taught her this game. She uses the cube as a form of hospitality. She offers it when she is losing, as often as not, in the same spirit as she offers a second plate, and she is puzzled that anybody would decline. Nobody has explained the arithmetic to her in a way she found more persuasive than the gesture. She plays with the retirees rather than in the open rooms, because they take the second plate, and at her table nobody has ever left hungry or beaten in peace.