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05/12/2012

BBC Radio 4 - Uzbek to My Roots

An audio diary from Londoner Amy and her family as they journey back to their Jewish roots

Audio diary tracing young Jewish Londoner Amy's journey back to her family's homeland, along the Silk Road in Uzbekistan, to visit the birthplace of her Bukharian grandpapa John.

Twenty-five-year-old north Londoner Amy Cordell has grown up embracing the rituals, food and music of a far-away world, one that still cleaves to the ancient traditions of her Bukharian grandparents who were once part of a 95,000-strong community of Jews, living in Uzbekistan in central Asia.

Uzbek To My Roots is an audio diary tracing Amy's journey back to her family's homeland, to the teeming provinces of Bukhara and Samarkand along the Silk Road in a reunion involving various cousins, aunts and uncles gathered from the UK, Israel and America.

Together they visit grandpapa John's place of birth, where he went to school, played and worshipped. Against a backdrop of palaces and mosques, wide avenues and imposing, intricate architecture, they find the old Jewish quarter and its cemeteries still largely intact and encounter an array of characters, from carpet and silk sellers to street acrobats to a bazaar filled with gold-teethed women trading in gold, silk and velvet garments.

Amy and her party are embarking on a voyage of discovery: to learn both their family's back-story and to learn about themselves as they travel by coach, car and plane, crossing the length and breadth of this vast cotton growing country where Western impulses are encroaching on long held custom and tradition.

Producer: Sara Parker
A Tonic Production for BBC Radio 4.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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