The day that I leave

Pollença

Carlos Di Fulvio (*1939): The chacarera, on a Quechua melody, sung by Sebastiano Solís. From the CD El Gaucho, el Inca y la Nueva Música (1982).

Hace tiempo voy buscando por ahí una chacarera entre los montes que hay en el pago campo afuera campos de la rudita, monte adentro 'e Tulumba la he de encontrar linda en su bata de percal baila Doña Dominga la chacarera. Abajito de un tala la vi por ser montaraza y unos crisoles de leña mansa la aromaban. La aromaban con su olor unos gajos de tala que supo cortar mi amigo Don Vimas al caer el invierno pasado para su corral. Y en la tierrita suelta al barrer de las alpargatas entre los montes subió la luna pa' alumbrarla. Como nube en el alba quedó un polvaderal ojito, hay tala, flecos de luna, la chacarera. Con su bata de puro percal va Doña Dominga todas las flores que hay en el monte se la envidian. Se la envidian porque no hay color más hermoso que el de su percal, ni moza que sepa regalar el donaire que tiene su buen zarandear. Y las niñas quisieran bailar como lo hace ella la trenza al viento y una manito en la cadera. Su cadera es un vaivén parecido al del mimbre y al sauce también, esa es mi abuela se saben decir los changos del monte en cuantito la ven. Si a los setenta la baila asi, ¡lo que ha sido enantes!, una corzuela, lujosa de ágil, dejen nomás. Como nube en el alba quedó un polvaderal ojito hay tala, flecos de luna, la chacarera.

For a long time I’ve been looking for a chacarera here between the mountains, on the clearing over the fields over the fallow fields on the mountains above Tulumba there I found her as in her calico coat was beautifully dancing Doña Dominga the chacarera. I saw her near to a fallen tree for she is a forest girl and some boughs of apple tree lent their fragrance to her. To her lent their fragrance the twigs of apple tree cut by my friend Don Vivas at the beginning of last winter in his courtyard. And in the clearing swept clean by the canvas shoes between the mountains the moon rose to shed light on her. Cloud of the soul, light dust was lifting above the twigs: fringes of the moon: the chacarera! In her clean calico coat is dancing Doña Dominga, all the flowers in the mountains envy her. They envy her because there is no color more beautiful than the color of her calico, neither girl who knows how to dance it with more grace than her swinging. How the girls would love to dance as she is dancing her braids in the wind and her hand on her hip. Her hip is swinging as the wicker and as the willow tree, this is my grandmother, as every mountain Chango can say it as soon as he sees her! If at seventy she dances like this what a gracious doe she was before, more agile than anyone else! Cloud of the soul, light dust was lifting above the twigs: fringes of the moon: the chacarera!

Pollença. Carrer de Montision, c. 1900

Facundo Cabral: The day that I leave. Music and song by Sebastiano Solís. From the CD El Gaucho, el Inca y la Nueva Música (1982).

The Argentine poet Facundo Cabral (*1937) grew up in an asylum. “I did not speak until I was nine years old, I was illiterate until the age of fourteen, at forty-six I first met my father. After escaping the asylum, I learned singing from peasants. On 24 February 1954 a tramp recited to me the Sermon on the Mount, and I discovered that I was reborn. Then I wrote the lullaby Vuele bajo. This is how it all started.”

Una milonga sureña un par de botas tejanas, una esperanza infinita y una flor en la ventana. Una canción inconclusa y un jorongo mexicano, amores en todo el mundo y nada preso en la mano. Un amigo en el desierto y un maestro en la montaña, la libertad más hermosa y la idea más extraña. Esas cosas dejaré el día que yo me vaya, querida perdóname si a ti no te dejo nada. Una cerveza en Holanda un pintor en Salamanca, una hoguera junto al Nilo, un poema en Casablanca. Una pregunta en el aire y una respuesta en el alma, las noches en el mar Rojo, y los veranos de España. La voluntad y el delirio, una vieja gorra griega un turbante del Neguev, dos máscaras, una quena. Esas cosas dejaré el día que yo me muera, querida perdóname si a ti no te dejo nada. La lluvia sobre Marruecos, en el bolso, pan y queso, y la Biblia liberando a mis sueños y a mis huesos. La locura satisfecha y la conciencia tranquila, los temores que perdí en París o Alejandría. Amo y señor de mí mismo sin bandera y sin espada, al viento devolveré las maravillas prestadas. Las alegrías de ser y hacer lo que uno ama, querida perdóname, si a ti no te dejo nada.

A southern milonga a pair of boots from Texas an infinite hope a flower in the window an unfinished song and a Mexican poncho lovers all over the world and nothing in my hand a friend in the desert and in the mountains a master the most beautiful freedom and the weirdest idea – those things I will leave the day that I leave. Forgive me, my dear if I don’t leave anything to you. A beer in the Netherlands a painter in Salamanca a fire along the Nile a poem in Casablanca a question in the wind and an answer in the soul the nights of the Red Sea and the springs of Spain the will and the delirium an old Greek cap, a turban from the Negev desert, two masks, a Quechua flute – those things I will leave the day that I die. Forgive me, my dear if I don’t leave anything to you. The rain on Morocco bread and cheese in the bag and the Bible which liberates my dreams and my bones, the happy madness and the calm conscience, the fears that I lost in Paris or Alexandria. Master and lord of myself without a flag and a sword I will let into the wind the borrowed marvels the joys of being and that I do what I love. Forgive me, my dear if I don’t leave anything to you.

Khaled Nabi's cemetery

The blog mongγol bičig & manju bithe recently gave news of the sacred cliff Taikhar in Central Mongolia – which was converted into a veritable museum of epigraphy by the Turkic, Mongolian and other inscriptions added to it for more than a millennia – and on the wonderful gravestones with deer and horse representations in the nearby cemetery, founded by an unknown people. This has reminded us of another peculiar cemetery with unusual gravestones in northern Iran, also left behind by an unknown people.

Photos by Ali Majdfar

The cemetery lays in the northern part of Golestan province, in the mountains of Torkaman Sahra (Turkmen Desert) near the border with Turkmenistan. Geographically the region already belongs to the Turkmen steppe, but it is not plain as you might expect of a steppe, but an endless series of low mountain ranges that ripple away to the horizon like a petrified sea. Here, on a mountain peak, towering above an uninhabited valley, stands a small shrine called the tomb of Khaled Nabi, that is, of Prophet Khaled.




The place is not easy to approach. By crossing from Tehran the chains of Mount Elbrus, and then traveling along the Caspian Sea coast, after five hundred kilometers you reach the town of Kalale, from which a fifty kilometers long difficult, winding dirt road starts up to the mountains.


From then on neither Google map indicates any placenames, although in the largest view you see that the road passes through a number of settlements: these are called Tamr Qare Qozi (تمر قره قوزی), Yelli Badraq (یلی بدرق) and Gache Su (گچه سو). After Gache Su a sharply rising, six kilometers long path, passable almost only by foot, leads up to the holy place.





The holy place encompasses actually not one but three shrines, revered by local tradition as the tombs of the prophet Khaled Baba, his father-in-law Alaam Baba and his shepherd Chupan Ata. The Persian-Turkmen name of this latter also means “Father Shepherd” (the Persian word “chobân”, meaning “shepherd”, was adopted in Turkish, a number of Southern Slavic languages and Hungarian as well). However, he was probably no real person but a creature of popular etymology. In fact, in Iran and the surrounding countries the lonely shrines standing on mountaintops and “watching” the surrounding area are called “shepherd churches”, just as the little Armenian chapel standing at the Iranian site of the Aras river opposite the former cemetery of Julfa.

Photos by Ardeshir Soltani

In Shiite areas, such as a large part of Iran, this kind of lonely pilgrimage shrines built over the grave of a holy man are quite frequent. In Majid Majidi’s beautiful film Rang-e Khodâ, “The colors of God” we see how a grandmother takes her grandchildren on a pilgrimage to such a tomb. However, the Turkmen population of northern Golestan is Sunni. This confession theoretically condemns this type of “saint cult”, and they only go on pilgrimage to Mecca. But the Turkmens, strangely, also visit a large number of holy tombs both in the local mountains and across the border, in Turkmenistan. The reason is that Islam came to the Turkmens primarily through the activities of Sufi sheiks, rather than through the mosque and the “high” written tradition of sedentary culture. The Turkmen clans still regard these holy men as their founders and “patron saints”, and their communal identity is focused on the cult of these figures.





A particular Turkmen feature – and probably a pre-Islamic tradition – is the “ribbon tree” standing in front of the shrine, to which ribbons of various colors are added as a sign of a request, a pledge or an accomplished pilgrimage. A version of it is the “hair tree”, also mentioned by Simin Daneshvar in the most influential 20th-century Persian novel, Savushun, on which the women of the Qashqai tribe – that migrated several centuries ago from the Turkmen steppe to the south of Iran around Shiraz – hang their plaits of hair in memory of a close male relative fallen in battle.



Prophet Khaled himself is claimed in the legend hanging on the wall of the sanctuary to have been born in Yemen, his father was called Sanan, and he died here in 528, that is 42 years before the birth of Mohamed and 82 years before the beginning of Mohamed’s prophetic mission. The obvious question concerning the faith of which he was a prophet eighty-two years before the very foundation of Islam, is not raised in the legend. However, it is very probable that he was a Nestorian Christian, one of those who in this period migrated in a growing number to the north-eastern regions of the Persian empire, and from there further to China along the Silk Road. This is also supposed by several Persian researchers of the place, whose opinions are quoted in the post written on the shrines and the cemetery on the blog Parsava-name (“The Book of Parthia”).




In the cemetery laying a few hundred meters from the shrines around six hundred tombstones have been preserved. The stones are basically two kinds: either long columns ending in round hats which are sometimes two meters high or more, or smaller, squat grave posts similar to a cross where the two arms of the cross are replaced by two semi-circles or almost complete circles. The few Persian sites referring to the cemetery claim that the two types are stylized representations of male and female genitalia. The researchers quoted by Parsava-name, however, rather believe that these stones follow two gravestone types common in the steppe: the column the stele crowned by a hat or helmet, and the lower stone the screw-horned head of a ram. Such ram head or full ram shaped tombstones are widespread throughout the Iranian mountains, from Golestan through the Caucasus to the Bakhtiari tribes of the Zagros. We have already seen some similar stones in the Armenian cemetery of Julfa.





The latter interpretation is supported by the local folk tradition, which sees in the gravestones soldiers turned to stone. In one version of the story the soldiers wanted to attack the prophet, but he with one single gesture changed them into stone. In another version they were brave warriors who, being surrounded, prayed to Allah who turned them into stone so that the enemy could not triumph over them.




I wonder which people could have raised these stones. Persian blogs love to claim them as several millennia old, the cemetery of an unknown people that disappeared without traces, as there are no remnants of any settlement in the neighborhood. However, the researchers referred to in Parsava-name have a different view again. They point out that while Khaled Nabi’s cemetery is unique with its six hundred stones, nevertheless in the northern Golestani mountains there are more than a dozen places where you can still find one or two similar graveposts made out of wood or stone. Cemeteries of this kind were probably more frequent in the past, but only this one was protected by the shrines from being scattered and destroyed. And if we project these places on the map, we see that almost all of them lay north of the majestic Gorgan Wall, built several centuries before Christ which, stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Afghan mountains, defended Iran from the attack of the northern tribes (and which was first excavated by the Hungarian Aurel Stein in 1915). Perhaps these cemeteries belonged to such tribes of the steppe, which would also give an explanation for the lack of any settlement around them. Several Iranian nomadic peoples still have two cemeteries, one near their winter settlement and another near the summer one, where they make every effort to set up grave posts out of an enduring material, otherwise they could not defend them in the other half of the year.




The cemetery is not mentioned in any guidebook, and it is almost completely unknown outside Iran. Even in Iran itself there are only a few passionate photographers who undertake the hardships of a visit to it. They include Ardeshir Soltani, whose photo gallery on the tombstones offers a good overview of the cemetery.

Reality show

In recent days, a mayor major political drift took place in the Russian capital. Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who has been at the head of Moscow for almost twenty years (just as our Gábor Demszky at that of Budapest), has recently come into several conflicts with President Medvedev, and what is more, he has criticized his policy in an open letter. According to some analysts he only dared to do so because Putin is standing behind him, and his criticism makes evident the tension between the two supreme leaders of Russia. However, quite surprisingly, in recent days suddenly light was thrown on a number of corruption cases of Luzhkov and his wife, the businesswoman Jelena Baturina who became the richest woman of Russia during the office of  his husband (about one such case we have also reported here and here), on his environmentally destructive developments, and on his neglectful actions during the summer wildfires around Moscow. On September 28 Medvedev dismissed Luzhkov from his office – as the Mayor of Moscow is not elected, but appointed by the President –, and he also had to leave the United Russia party.


Three days after the decapitation of the Big Boyar, yesterday morning President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin discussed the country’s socio-economic situation on a personal meeting – writes the photo report of Президент России, the Kremlin’s official presidential site. They have raised, among others, a first consultation of the United Russia party which could create a proposal list of the candidates for Mayor of Moscow.


The meeting took place in an intimate environment. The work breakfast of Russian black bread – composed as an elegant still-life and carefully turned towards the camera – and homemade milk eloquently proves the indissoluble unity of the President and the Prime Minister with the people, with the party and of course with each other. Public and common drinking of milk and soft drinks has been a part of the national anti-alcohol campaign of the two presidents anyway.


President Medvedev makes the meeting more intimate with some background music. According to some well-informed, Ronnie James Dio is his most recent favorite. Our expert readers will tell whether the sound system is worthy of the prestige of the Kremlin.


Nevertheless, we should not completely write off Luzhkov. There will be presidential elections in 2012 where Putin can already take part after the obligatorily omitted four years. And heavy-handed executers without scruples will always be needed in the Kremlin.