In Contrast To Yesterday

In contrast to yesterday, today was a day I could totally enjoy without judgment or political feelings.

This morning we drove way up into the mountains. How high? I think the name, Cloud Catcher Canyon, says it all. The jeep drove higher and higher up a narrow serpentine road. Periodically we inched our way around fallen boulders, washed-out sections of road, or ambling goats of various colors. Eventually we made one more hairpin turn and the road opened onto a Shangri-la—mountains covered with snow, valleys dotted with sheep, and friendly, coarse-looking men and women variously trudging, washing, working, or just waving.

There’s a steady breeze, the mountains and valleys are spectacular, the people ignore me in a casual way—and suddenly, I have all the time in the world. It’s taken a week-and-a-half of being in a land most humans have never heard of, but I’m finally relaxed.

Xinaliq (pronounced “chin-ah-lik,” accent on the “ah,” “ch” pronounced like “chutzpah”) is an isolated old village of a thousand souls. They speak virtually no Russian, just Azeri and their own unique language spoken nowhere else.

So I’m walking around these mud-walled huts, stumbling over drying cow-dung patties (fuel in winter), barely avoiding the lines of drying lamb (food for winter), holding my breath whenever I pass an outhouse.

The people are friendly, willingly posing for photos if I wish. The woolen-clad women neither look away nor stare. The kids neither run away nor flock to me, clinging or begging. The men smile, all semi-toothless (proving that these guys do follow the Azeri custom of sucking on sugar cubes a dozen times a day.)

It’s all just easy. There’s a steady breeze, the mountains and valleys are spectacular, the people ignore me in a casual way—and suddenly, I have all the time in the world. It’s taken a week-and-a-half of being in a land most humans have never heard of, but I’m finally relaxed.

And then I hear it—an eastern-sounding oboe-type instrument and the faint rhythm of a drum, far away. I ask my guide what it is, and she helpfully replies “music somewhere”, another of her absolutely pointless answers to many of my questions.

I eventually locate the sound—below us and to the right, I think—and Abbas gingerly guides the jeep down a rocky path that looks too steep to walk, much less drive.

And unfolding, right before me, is a village wedding. About a hundred people are, apparently, in the second day of a three-day celebration. There’s enough food to feed Chicago; same-gender dancing that apparently serves advertising and courtship purposes for those not getting married today; and a series of rituals involving, incongruously, the exchange of cash—hundreds of 10-manat bills (each worth $12) changing hands, from observers to dancers, to young boys, to an old guy with a leather attaché case. I also note that someone’s writing down (with a pencil left over from the Khrushchev years) who’s giving what. This guy knows who’s naughty and who’s nice.

I ultimately find out that: it’s an arranged marriage, though the boy and girl “like each other”; she’s 18 and he’s a few years older; married people will tell each of them (separately, of course) what to expect on the wedding night (including the age-old admonition that he must not drink, because “you know, it’s not good for the man’s duty”); when they finally consummate, the blood-stained sheet will be displayed, and then the village men will shoot their guns into the air to celebrate (no psychoanalytic comments here, please).

I was welcomed as if I were a long-lost cousin from a distant valley, and given all the food I was willing to eat (feeling quite prissy with my little hand sanitizer). In this country they eat parts of animals I don’t know the names of—and generally cook them without wasting time washing utensils, ingredients, or the hands that put the two together.

I stayed for hours, swaying to the music, watching the dancing (clearly meaningful to everyone except me), feeling the mountain wind on my sunblock-free face, and smiling to all the strangers who smiled at me.

I knew I had a two-hour drive back down the mountain, so I eventually bade my new family farewell, wistfully wished I could give bride and groom some marital advice (“go slow, and talk to each other!”), and took a last moment to feel relaxed and at peace.

Sometimes, it takes a village.