“Did you put an egg on it?”

Last Saturday evening, I went hiking with a group of people. At the end of the last hill, only a couple hundred feet from the end of the trail, I fell on my ankle and sprained it—oops! When I got to the end, I told everyone I was fine, no big deal. After we got back, my friend gave me an ace bandage to wrap that sucker up and I went home.

When I woke up on Sunday morning, my ankle really hurt and was super swollen. I didn’t want to deal with it yet, so I went back to sleep. I slept until 10, which I think is a perfectly reasonable wake-up time on the weekend, but my host family disagrees. My host mother came up to check on me right after I woke up.

“Amina!” she said (they’ve renamed me). “What did you do?” I answered, “Yesterday evening I went hiking with some friends and I fell.”

So my host mother says, “Did you put an egg on it?”

I misunderstood that. That doesn’t make sense. I ask for clarification. “An egg?”

“Yes, an egg!”

“You mean an egg?”

“An egg! An egg! Did you put an egg on it?”

“…no?”

“I’ll be back.”

So my host mother disappears for a few minutes, and I’m sitting on my bed wondering what could be a homonym with “egg” in Tajik Persian.

My host mother comes back with a big fluffy piece of cotton with a cracked egg smeared across it and says, “Give me your foot.”

I stick out my foot, and she wraps my ankle with the egg-y fluff. Then she puts a plastic bag over my foot, and rewraps it in the bandage. She orders, “Rest, study, rest all day.” I’m sitting there on my bed. “Rest!” she orders. I stare at her, unsure of what I’m doing that is not considered resting. “Rest! Sleep!” I lay down and look at her quizzically. “Sleep!” she commands. I close my eyes. “Good,” she says. “I have to go, but I will be back later.” “Ok,” I say.

“Rest!”

A little while after my host mother left, one of my host sisters came in. “What happened?” she asked.

“I went hiking and fell.”

“Did you put an egg on it?”

“Yeah, I did this morning,” I answered.

Later that day, another host sister comes in and sees my foot. “Oh no!” she exclaims. “What did you do?”

I give my same answer, and she asks, “Did you put an egg on it?”

“Yeah, I did,” I said, a little confused. Apparently this is something everyone has done before.

I slept the day away, and didn’t move except to occasionally hobble to the bathroom. That evening, my host mother came back to my room with a bucket of hot water. At this point, I’ve had a raw egg strapped to my foot for at least eight hours. She tells me to unwrap my ankle and put my foot in the hot water until the egg fluff all floats away. I do what she says, and after a few minutes pull my foot out. She tsk tsks and says, “It’s still swollen. You have to go to the doctor.”

“The doctor?” I whine. “Let’s see how it is tomorrow morning.”

My host mother says, “If it was going to get better, it would have gotten better with the egg.” Then she says, “We’ll ask my grandson for a cup of [mystery word].”

“For a cup of what?”

“[Mystery word].”

“What’s that?”

“[Mystery word].” I’m not getting it. She starts to mime. “Psssh, pssh! Piss! Piss!”

“Piss!” I’m shocked. She can’t be suggesting that. “No, I can’t. I can’t.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s fine. It’s good for your foot.”

“No. No. I can’t.”

“It doesn’t matter! It’s just water! It’s nothing!”

“Then put water on my foot!”

We could not see eye to eye on this matter. I rolled with it when it came to the egg, but I could not wrap my foot in pee. Nope. No way. But, I agree to go to the doctor the next morning. So we go, and the doctor takes a look, shows me the right way to wrap it, says do this, don’t do that, gives me ibuprofen, and sends me on my way.

I’ve already missed half my classes, but I go to school anyway (though mostly to use the internet, if I’m being honest). After class, I show everyone my purple, blobby foot. One of the administrators, a Tajik man, comes out of the office and asks me how I’m doing. “Fine,” I say. “I’ll be back to normal in two weeks.”

“You know what you should do,” he says, “is get an egg...”

I start to laugh. He insists, “I’m serious! Listen!”

I explain, “No, no, I know. My host mother put an egg on it yesterday.”

“Ah, good! So you know. Very good. Next, you should—are there any small children in your house?”

I can see where this is going, and I don’t like it. “Yes,” I say.

“People have been doing this for a long time. There’s use in it. You need to ask for a cup of pee and…”

I cut him off with my laughter.

“There’s nothing bad about it! If it weren’t useful, people wouldn’t do it.”

“My host mother said the same thing last night. I can’t. I really can’t.”

“Fine,” he says. “But consider it!”

Until my sprain has completely healed, I’ll be limping around Dushanbe. It already feels a little better, though, and it’s slightly less swollen. Maybe the magical healing power of the Tajik egg is the reason for that, or maybe not. Who knows what would have happened if I had let them soak it in the grandson’s urine!