Snow
It began early morning winter, let up mid day, but settled in a night’s sky. Its chill has been felt in the thin air since. A week ago the season veered torrential. Little ones watched the world blowing this way and that from their window. Tired neighbors huddled by fires, and those without heat tucked under heavy woolen blankets. Big shops closed. Cars wouldn’t start.
I awoke to the turn. In my home, what came with the white wonders of winter was no gas, no electricity, no water, and a dying cell phone.
As the beep on my Siemans screamed its final seconds, I texted my go-to in times like this: “I’m coming.”
Yes, that’s a great idea! Go! You should get out while you still can! yelled my neighbors I slushed in the fresh white to the bus stop.
But in the big city three hours north of my town, the weather was far worse. The froth in the air was a call to far-north China Volunteers. My tiny toes were frost bitten with the bus ride, and outside snow had dried to ice, which stuck hard to the sidewalks.
“Where is the ice skating rink?” I asked Kelsey.
“We’re coming to it,” she replied, as we followed the dense, uneven ice across the train tracks.
Into the braze of the bazaar, Kelsey, whose enthusiasm for Iowa could win her some sort of award, began, “In Iowa, we call this black ice.” I nodded, assuring that only in Iowa they call it such. “You can slip and fall on this. See,” she pointed to the circular puddle with chunks of frozen molt, “black ice.”
Our limbs tripped to the ground as Kels reasoned, “Why don’t they put salt on this?” I hadn’t thought of this. They do that in the Sierras, up 50, I think.
Endlessly brainstorming best practices for development, we agreed salt shakers and the two of us would best accomplish this job.
Above our heads icicles held tight to ends of towels. After women use bare hands to wash linen, they hang the linen on lines connected to old, rusted polls which cause them to freeze and melt onto heads.
These are things I didn’t know about snow. I didn’t grow up in cold climate, so momentarily powder is Godsend; it is witnessing perfection in a chilled instant. It covers trash, feeds plants, and creates fresh water droplets for the little spotted birds that nest above my balcony. It selflessly delivers so much to the earth.
But Eric once told me that in Maine citizens wake to frozen car engines. Sometimes it gets so cold one has to rush to his destination in 30 seconds or less to avoid frost bite and losing a limb. What the fuck?
There is one grave difference between Maine and Azerbaijan: In America there is central heating, and here there is a small gas petch, like the ones cowboys in Western films to warm their hands by after a long ride in from town.
Most of this country, including the capital, is not set up for the condition it’s in. Pipes freeze because they are not wrapped or secured underground. When roads aren’t paved, days after snow, the melt-off freezes, while offside mud becomes fixed to the bottom of my boots.
Nearing the tarped green bazaar, I explained to Kelsey that this is what Sacramento would be like if it snowed. America would have to come a long way for that to happen, she assured me, as she pointed to the skating rink which is the road to the bazaar.
3/14
My Computer is Working at the Moment. That is a title and a statement.
It might be the electricity. Since Referendum Day and Novruz, the most celebrated holiday in Azerbaijan, are forthcoming, the power has been on most of the time.
Perhaps Allah heard my counterpart’s prayers. “I prayed that your computer would work so I can have your music.” Or maybe I have been plugging something in upside down, or have had the computer positioned at an odd angle, a display of my eternal inadequacy of operating Western technology. All likely stories, where water flows and oil shoots from the ground, yet operate with as much certainty as my mind.
“Sasha Teacher, is ‘set’ a word?” “Yes, Salam, but what does it mean?” “Pen?” “No.” “Table.” “Uh-uh.” “Ummm. Cup?” he points to the miniature coffee mug set on the table next to the pen. “No Salam.”Simple games like Scrabble, Hang Man and versions of Pictionary are surprisingly popular with these little folk.
The dialogue-centered conversation club switched to an English games club when I noticed students like Salam taking more water breaks than wanting to participate in Q and A round-robin exercises.
Scrabble is now part of my weekly routine. To simplify the game (No, I have nixed rules like you can’t attach words to the tail end of another, while I’ve added others such as you must know the translation of a word to play it.
In the end, the board looks more like Boggle than Scrabble:
I am not a game person. I’d rather cuddle with a book or watch a B-list film than run a monotonous board for hours on end. Unfortunately, for both her and me, the Volunteer closest in distance to my town is a board game fanatic. But playing with fifth graders whose English is limited to five-letter words and simple sentences has made me understand the value of games I once felt redundant. I should reconsider Settlers of Catan with Jenni on a southern night.
“Sasha Teacher, is, ‘zap’ a word?” What an excellent word!, one that can’t be dismissed because of silly teacher-rules. “Fourteen points, Salaam.”
3/16
Plans with a capital P
People are beginning to talk. About leaving. Peace Corps has posted the Close of Service date. This is where we travel to Baku for paperwork and lectures on ‘post-Peace Corps life." See, the problem is that this was such a goal since the day I heard of such a romantic, hard-core experience, that I haven’t really gotten around to thinking about what could happen next. I mean, I have, like I could get a master’s I suppose, or try to find a job at the hopeful end of our economic delirium (that’s what it is, right?). I guess those are plans. But they’re not Plans. A Plan. I should have some sort of Plan.
Most of the people I know don’t have a Plan, though I have always been this kind of girl, a girl with a Plan. Well into the tail end of my junior year of high school I didn’t know I could go to college at all, little lone receive good enough grades to carry me to where I am now (however much living in the middle of a banana republic no one has heard of is worth). But I always knew I would not be where I once was, and that was the Plan. Ok, so now that I’m out, where am I going?
I want to work. I want to be doing something, like I’m doing here, and which, school, even through a master’s program, doesn’t leave room for. There’s a lotta time in a college day, but not the kind that universities are willing to expend. Head in book. Research. Write paper. Repeat process. But then, I miss this. Why do I miss this? I want good talk, good reads and good discussion ya can't get in the work place, I s'pose.
Chicago Schools Service-learning Program looks inspiring. There’s the doing in education. But do I have to go to back to school to work in schools there? A credential with a master’s? More school. One sister wants me in Portland, temporarily a city too small for my ultra-, super-city radar. Add millions of people to the scene and get New York. From village, Azerbaijan to the Big Apple, perhaps a bit of a culture shock. New Orleans was suggested by a friend the other day. Or Philadelphia, where Peace Corps orientation was held—they had a pretty kickin’ night scene. Seattle. Too rainy. L.A.= shit. Detroit. Dirty and down-trodden, I hear. Dallas. Hot. Also hot: Sacramento. Hasn’t even occurred to me to go back there.
And ahhhh, San Francisco. So many friends have left San Francisco and the places I frequented, and really that’s from where my love of the place resonates. Also, it seems a stepping-stone city, the way a bachelor’s is a stepping stone to a master’s. I should go to a bigger city, with more people, and more potential! But why? So much energy, the kind that expires after five in the afternoon tailing to and from the places of doing. This is a very exhausting exercise. Maybe I want to chill in a village in America for a couple years. Do we have those?
Well, I suppose this reads more like a journal entry than a blog. Or does it? I should read blogs. Add that to my of Post-PC To-Do List.
Ok, so here’s the Plan, me, readers: I am going to come back in approximately five months and find a job. Or something. Maybe go back to school. Somewhere. Sounds about as reasonable as living in Azerbaijan.
4/1
Hasan Baba was a cool cat. He dressed himself in a pale blue brimmed golfer’s hat and dark flip shade glasses. Every day he sat on a rock to collect thoughts and say salaams to passerbys. Sometimes his buddies, who were quaint and cool like him, would gather around the rock to read verse from the Koran. They too would wave hi to passerbys and greet newcomers like me with great sincerity. More often than not, though, this is where you could find Baba, pressing his cane to the earth and puffing a cigarette whose smoke drifted to the Kur, just beyond the old bath house and gray, dilapidated levee. Forty meters west of this rock is where Hasan Baba grew up, and where, in his sleep, on March 31, Hasan Baba passed away.
Grandpa Hasan was the first local I met in my village. He was far more thrilled to meet me than I him. “Who is this?!” he laughed, clapping his hands and stomping his eternally white sneakers. He looked around to see if anyone else was seeing what he was seeing: a blond-haired, blue-eyed American girl fresh from California, something in all his years he had only recently viewed with clarity via E! on satellite television. “What is she doing here?!” he would laugh.
Gizbast Teacher, my counterpart and his loving daughter-in-law, has prepared the mourning ceremony. I’m not sure what it’s called here, though I suppose it would be the equivalent of a wake.
There are two rooms: the men’s is under a blue tarp outside, and the women’s in one of Hasan Baba’s bedrooms. “Go sit, Sasha. There they cry,” instructs Farida. She points to the women’s room where, poised on a traditional burgundy carpet, the female mullah sings hymns, praises Baba and begs God to receive his body well.
Women are pleased to see me and whisper smiles when I enter the room. They chant, urge me to join, and we lightly slap thighs in unison. This strikes a deep air of sadness and laughter, much like Hasan Baba himself.
“Hasan Baba can’t hear very well,” his son Abdullah would say. “You have to speak loud for him. Dad! Dad! Do you want more bosboscht?!”
“Would you quiet down?! I’m not deaf! And no, I don’t want more tea!”
Gizbast Teacher would explain to Baba why I have come to Azerbaijan and his village in particular, and either for his veiled disinterest or his hard of hearing, Baba’s small eyes would drift to the ceiling and slowly back to his bi-weekly Turkish serial. “Ok! Thank you for being here!” he would laugh.
Hundreds of people have come to mourn already. Some stay to help with cooking, others for only the prayer ceremony. Most everyone in the community, and family from distant cities, will come to weep for Baba.
After the long, deep prayer we eat a meal prepared by Gizbast, the daughter. The women ask about my being there, in the room, and in their village so far away from my own family where this very event could happen too. They ask me for more tea, which I now consider a gesture of treating me as their own, rather than a servant girl I once thought I was. I serve them and we speak for another hour before I excuse myself to a tutoring lesson at four.
I would like to think Hasan Baba and I shared a special bond. When Gizbast Teacher would complain that Baba spends too much time alone, I would defend him, reminding Gizbast that he is old and has spent many years with family and friends, and needs time to reflect. We would laugh at the way his family would yell in his ear, and turn up the T.V. full blast just for him. He would try to tell me about the Soviet Union, not because he wanted to reflect, but because I was an inquisitive youth, and he was a teacher.
Hasan Baba was 88 years old. In Azerbaijani terms, that’s like 130. People just don’t live that long. 55. 60. 65, that’s a good run. Eighty-eight years old. “He’s a hero to our people,” says my co-teacher Nushaba.
For all I know, Hasan Baba could have been a hero. He lived through the rise and fall an empire, and everything that came and went with it: jobs and job security, falling infrastructure, and dissenters’ imprisonments and deaths, many of whom were his friends.
For the spirit to safely reach God, it must be laid to rest as soon as possible. Within 12 hours, Hasan Baba is carried with 15 men to our village cemetery. They march the dirt path while women weep and wave handkerchiefs from Hasan Baba’s balcony. Now, along with the grieving indoors, loved ones can lay flowers on his grave.
Every Thursday for the next week friends will come to Hasan Baba’s to say a prayer. They will visit Baba’s family on Novruz, for Ramazan, and again, one year after his death day.
In Islam the mourning period is seven days, though because it’s not affordable for Gizbast’s family, this one will be only four. “We wanted Baba to see wedding. Mine and Jeyhun,” says Farida, who on Sunday had set her wedding celebration for April 25. She and her brother, both who will marry soon, must postpone their weddings for 40 days after Hasan’s death. This is the amount of days it takes a family to cry, says Farida.
Funerals in America are distant and brief, like too many of the relationships we hold. The
clapping, the chants, the crying and laughing, confined to a room in a moment of remembrance. On Hasan Baba’s death day, and on my birthday, I have been able to grieve.
