But Bukhara's religious institutions are built almost entirely in mud brick. The effect is more subtle, and it's also on a more human scale. The timeless ritual of sipping green chai contrasted with a thumping soundtrack of Iranian pop music. Many here speak Tajik, a Persian dialect, and the region around Bukhara retains more of Uzbekistan's ancient Iranian heritage than the rest of the country, though there has been an immense amount of cultural interchange between the Tajiks and the Uzbek nomads who gave the country its name and language. Nature, however, no longer exempts Bukhara from its dictates.
Birds can fly away, but buildings stay to suffer the consequences of environmental neglect.
A rising water table and mineral salts has begun eating the mud bricks and majolica tiles like destructive pets nibbling on precious furniture. Preservation efforts currently amount to architectural triage. In the meantime, historic buildings survive through creative reuse. In another former madrasa that had been given over to shops, I entered a small cell for a consultation with a fortuneteller, or tabib. She was an attractive woman in her 30s, with black hair and copper skin, and was originally from Kokand in the Fergana Valley, in Uzbekistan's northeast corner.