Behind High Walls


On the eve of my departure from Iran in last August, we were dining with a rich textile merchant somewhere on the heights of northern Tehran.

His daughter, a cellist, a friend of a friend, had told us about the musical world in Tehran, a world between occidental and oriental classical music, between jazz and traditional singing, between male and female voices – and between public concerts and clandestine gatherings.

In her car, while slowly coming through the usual traffic jam in the evening, we listened to some of her favourite tracks until we arrived at the foot of the building, a high-rise block, very Parisian in its looks, with grey mansard roof and white shutters, planted in the middle of a green emerald garden with a wrought iron gate worthy of Versailles. Upstairs, in a huge living room with closed blinds, drawn curtains, in complete darkness, we had small talk with the young lady and her mother, each of us sitting at meters from each other. Then we had dinner with the head of the family, we had small talk again, sitting again at meters from each other around the huge table.

The scene was eerie – not a single personal object, not a single sign of inner life in the room, just the emptiness. Furniture closed on itself. The distant sound of a Qatar TV channel – the heir of the trading house, a ski teacher in his spare time, was awaiting the return of the snow.

Later, as I was about to leave, the merchant wanted me to admire his collection of rugs – the finest Isfahan carpets of the most delicate, silky and smooth fashion. The most delicate, indeed. Dozens of carpets, nearly all identical, white and creamy.

He insisted on their delicacy, the number and quality of knots, their regularity – nothing like Tabriz rugs, he said with contempt. There, they work with metal hooks. But these rugs are completely hand-knotted – but you need to have very thin fingers, the thinnest possible fingers, so there will be no irregularities. He stopped and he made a gesture with the hand: he drew a tiny hand in the air, and then he caressed a small, invisible head, sitting very low below us.

High like that.


Kayhan Kalhor & Madjid Khaladj, Endless Endearments (Har Saayeh, Khaasti…). From the CD Voices of the Shades (2011)

Here again, I was in a strange world.


One or one and a half century ago, in the time of the Qâjârs (1785-1925), the rich Persian or Armenian merchants had their homes built as lavish as palaces. Undoubtedly they also silenced their wives, sons and daughters when, sitting on their finest carpets, they entertained their guests from faraway countries.

But their palaces did not have wrought iron gates, and their gardens were not on display for passers-by. In Kashan, Isfahan or Shiraz, these proud houses are still hidden behind high walls. In Kashan, the walls are unexpectedly low and without windows, as if the houses were mere earthen cubes, several levels deep around the hollowness of their courtyards, always lower towards the water revealing itself. In Shiraz, the higher walls permit to see only the treetops of the wonderful gardens.

The Abbasi House is in Kashan the largest among the traditional houses, these historic homes from the Qâjâr period which all stand in the same neighborhood, just a few hundred meters from the Âghâ Bozorg Mosque with its dome of mud and sunken court.

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Built in the late 18th century, the Abbasi House is a magnificent exemple of a traditional Persian residence. A huge maze with numerous courtyards, all very similar and yet all different. The house was built for a family of clerics, but it seems large enough to house dozens of people. A fortified house, fully enclosed on itself behind its high walls, it is said to have had several secret passages that allowed to flee the city in case of an attack.

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Like most of these houses, it has a ceiling covered with fragments of mirrors, to convey at night, at candlelight, the feeling of being under a sky full of stars.


Kayhan Kalhor & Madjid Khaladj, Separating Shades (Saayeh-Roshan). From the CD Voices of the Shades (2011)

The Tabâtabâei House

The Abbasi House is the oldest, and undoubtely the most beautiful, but probably not the most astonishing of the historic houses in Kashan. Three of these houses were built in the late nineteenth century by the same architect, Ustad Ali Maryam: the Tabâtabâei House around 1840, the impressive Borujerdi House in 1857, and the Timcheh-ye Amin od-Dowleh in 1863.

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The first one, the Tabâtabâei House (Khâneh-ye Tabâtabâeihâ) was built in the 1840s for a family of wealthy carpet merchants, who were active all along the Silk Road. The house of great beauty and harmony was built around four courtyards. The walls were painted and carved, the windows made of stained glass. The house is organized symmetrically around the central courtyard and its long pool. The pater familias and master of the house received his guests in the central pavilion, at the intersection of the four courtyards, from where he could watch the activities in the house – the more so, as his married sons lived in the lateral buildings.


Kayhan Kalhor & Madjid Khaladj, Devotion of the Unveiled (Paaybandi-e Oryaan). From the CD Voices of the Shades (2011)

The Borujerdi House

The Borujerdi House (Khâneh-ye Borujerdi) is another historical house in Kashan, and perhaps the most surprising of all. The house was offered in 1857 as a wedding gift by a rich merchant, Haji Mehdi Borujerdi to his wife. The bride was from the Tabâtabâei family, for whom Ustad Ali had built the above presented house just a few years earlier.

The house is organized around a single long courtyard. The main rooms were decorated with the paintings by Kamal al-Molk. Three 40-meter high badgirs (wind towers) help to cool the house on hot days: it is a natural air conditioning system which plays with the difference between the indoor and outdoor temperature. The decoration and the design of the house are characteristic of traditional Persian architecture: stucco reliefs on the facade; the three entrances of the house arranged to force oncoming people to change direction as they enter from outside (biruni) into a space oriented towards Mecca; the building organized around this axis materialized by the central pool in a courtyard enlivened by pomegranate and fig trees.

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But the strangest part of the building is not visible from outside. You have to climb on the roof of the adjacent hammam to discover the stupendous domes of the Borujerdi House.

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In Shiraz, the architecture is quite different – richer, if not this original. These two beautiful houses face each other on either side of a narrow, yellow and dry street to the east of the Regent’s Bazaar. Above the high walls you can only see the crown of palm trees fluttering in the wind. Behind the walls, the Bagh-e Eram, or Garden of Paradise was designed in the late nineteenth century as an imitation of the Persian gardens created by the Seljuks seven or eight hundred years earlier.

At the end of this garden there stands the Qavam House, rather a small palace, built between 1879 and 1886 by Mirza Ibrahim Khan. The Qavam family were merchants from Qazvin, who came to Shiraz in the 18th century, after the foundation of the local Zand dynasty, and acceded to high offices. Mirza Ibrahim Khan was Governor of the region of Fars. The Qavam House was only part of the Qavam residence, the building designed to accommodate the guests, so it is a house turned outward (biruni).

On the other side of the street, but connected to the first house by an underground passage, you find the house Zinat al-Mulk, a home designed for family life, and thus turned inward (andaruni).

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Derrière de hauts murs


A la veille de quitter l’Iran, en août dernier, nous dînions avec un riche négociant en textile quelque part sur les hauteurs au nord de Téhéran.

Sa fille violoncelliste, une amie d’amis, nous avait décrit la vie musicale à Téhéran, entre musiques classiques occidentale et orientale, entre jazz et chants traditionnels, entre voix d’hommes et voix de femmes — entre concerts publics et moments clandestins.

Dans sa voiture, en venant à travers les embouteillages habituels en soirée, nous avions écouté quelques uns de ses morceaux préférés jusqu’à ce que nous arrivions au pied de l’immeuble, une tour d’inspiration parisienne avec toit d’ardoise mansardé et volets blancs, plantée au milieu d’un jardin vert émeraude clos de grilles dignes de Versailles. Là-haut, dans un salon immense aux stores baissés, aux rideaux tirés, plongé dans la pénombre, nous avions échangé des paroles banales avec la jeune femme et sa mère, chacune de nous assise à des mètres l’une de l’autre — avant de dîner avec le maître de maison et d’échanger des propos tout aussi banals, à une vaste table, chacun de nous assis à des mètres les uns des autres.

La scène était troublante — aucun objet personnel, aucun signe de vie dans la pièce, le vide. Des meubles refermés sur eux-mêmes. Le son distant d’une chaîne qatarie dans le lointain — l’héritier de la maison de commerce, professeur de ski à ses heures perdues, attendait le retour de la neige.

Plus tard, alors que je m’apprêtais à partir, le négociant me fit admirer sa collection de tapis — rien que des tapis d’Ispahan du modèle plus fin, le plus soyeux, le plus lisse. Le plus fin, vraiment. Des dizaines tous sensiblement identiques, blanc et crème.

Il insista sur la finesse, le nombre et la qualité des nœuds, leur régularité — rien à voir, me dit-il en retroussant ses lèvres avec morgue, rien à voir avec les tapis de Tabriz. Là-bas, ils travaillent avec un crochet métallique — non, ces tapis-ci sont entièrement noués à la main, tout le travail est fait avec les doigts — mais il faut des doigts très fins, des doigts les plus fins possible pour qu’il n’y ait pas d’irrégularité. Il s’arrête et sa main esquisse un geste : il dessine en l’air une toute petite main puis flatte une petite tête invisible, assise très bas en dessous de nous.

Haute comme ça.


Kayhan Kalhor & Madjid Khaladj, Endless Endearments (Har Saayeh, Khaasti…). Du CD Voices of the Shades (2011)

Ici encore, j’étais dans un monde qui m’était étranger.


Il y a un siècle, un siècle et demi, au temps des Qâdjârs (1785-1925), les riches négociants persans ou arméniens se faisaient construire des maisons aussi somptueuses que des palais. Sans doute eux aussi faisaient taire épouses, fils et filles quand, assis sur leurs tapis les plus fins, ils accueillaient leurs invités venus de loin.

Mais leurs palais ne se dressaient pas au-delà de grilles et leurs jardins ne se montraient pas aux passants : à Kashan, Ispahan ou Shiraz, ces maisons orgueilleuses se cachent toujours derrière de hauts murs. A Kashan, ce sont même des murs aveugles et bas comme si elles n’étaient que de modestes cubes de terre alors qu’elles descendent leurs étages en profondeur dans le creux de leurs cours, toujours plus bas vers l’eau qui affleure ; à Shiraz, des murs plus hauts laissent dépasser la cime des arbres de merveilleux jardins.

La maison Abbasi est la plus vaste des maisons traditionnelles de Kashan, de ces maisons historiques de l’époque qâdjâre qui se regroupent toutes dans le même quartier, à quelques centaines de mètres de la mosquée Āghā Bozorg, avec sa coupole de terre jaune et sa cour creusée en contrebas.

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Bâtie à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, la maison Abbasi est un somptueux exemple de résidence persane traditionnelle : un labyrinthe immense aux multiples cours, à la fois très semblables et pourtant toutes différentes. La maison aurait été construite pour une famille de clercs mais elle semble assez vaste pour abriter des dizaines de personnes. Maison forteresse, entièrement close sur elle-même derrière ses hauts murs, elle possédait dit-on plusieurs passages secrets qui permettait de fuir la ville en cas d’attaque.

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Comme dans d’autres maisons, elle comporte une pièce au plafond couvert d’éclats de miroirs afin d’avoir l’impression, la nuit, à la lumière des bougies, de se trouver sous un ciel étoilé.


Kayhan Kalhor & Madjid Khaladj, Separating Shades (Saayeh-Roshan). Du CD Voices of the Shades (2011)

La maison Tabātabāei

La maison Abbasi est la plus ancienne et sans doute la plus belle, mais peut-être pas la plus surprenante des maisons historiques de Kashan. Trois de ces maisons ont été bâties au XIXe siècle par le même architecte, Ustad Ali Maryam : la maison Tabātabāei autour de 1840, ici, puis l’extraordinaire maison Borujerdi (1857) et le Timcheh-ye Amin od-Dowleh (en 1863).

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La première, la maison des Tabātabāei (Khāneh-ye Tabātabāeihā) fut construite dans les années 1840 pour de riches négociants en tapis, actifs tout au long de la route de la soie. La maison, d’une très grande beauté et harmonie, est construite autour de quatre cours. Les murs étaient peints et gravés, les fenêtres décorées de vitraux. La maison s’organise symétriquement tout autour de la cour principale et d’un un long bassin. Le père de famille et maître de maison recevait ses visiteurs dans le pavillon central, au croisement de quatre cours, d’où il pouvait veiller sur le bon fonctionnement de la maison — d’autant plus que ses fils mariés étaient logés dans les bâtiments de part et d’autre.


Kayhan Kalhor & Madjid Khaladj, Devotion of the Unveiled (Paaybandi-e Oryaan). Du CD Voices of the Shades (2011)

La maison Borujerdi

La maison Borujerdi (Khāneh-ye Borujerdi) est une autre des maisons historiques de Kashan, la plus surprenante sans doute. La maison fut offerte en 1857 en cadeau de noces à la femme de Haji Mehdi Borujerdi, un riche marchand de la ville. La mariée était originaire de la famille Tabātabāei, pour qui Ustad Ali avait construit une maison quelques années plus tôt — celle que nous venons de voir plus haut.

La maison s’organise autour d’une seule longue cour. Les pièces principales sont ornées de peintures du peintre Kamal al-Molk. Trois badgirs (tours à vent) hautes de 40 mètres aident à rafraîchir la maison les jours de chaleur : c’est tout un système de climatisation naturelle qui joue sur la différence entre la température extérieure et la température intérieure. Le décor, le plan de la maison sont caractéristique de l’architecture persane traditionnelle : bas reliefs de la façade en stuc ; les trois entrées de la maison disposées de façon à contraindre celui qui arrive à changer de direction par rapport à l’extérieur (biruni) en entrant dans un espace orienté quant à lui dans la direction de La Mecque ; les bâtiments organisés autour de cet axe matérialisé par le bassin central qui orne une cour plantée de grenadiers et de figuiers.

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Mais la partie la plus étrange n’est visible que de l’extérieur. Il faut monter sur le toit du hammam adjacent pour découvrir les coupoles qui ornent la maison Borujerdi.

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A Shiraz, l’architecture est très différente — plus riche sinon plus originale. Ce sont ainsi deux très belles maisons qui se font face, de part et d’autre d’une rue étroite, jaune et sèche, à l’est du bazar du Régent. Au-dessus des murs, on ne voit que les branchages des palmiers qui s’agitent dans le vent. Derrière les murs, le Bagh-e Eram ou jardin du paradis a été dessiné à la fin du XIXe siècle sur le modèle des jardins persans créés par les Seljukides sept ou huit cents ans plus tôt.

Au fond de ce jardin, c’est un petit palais plutôt qu’une maison, la maison Qavam bâtie entre 1879 et 1886 par Mirza Ibrahim Khan — la famille Qavam étaient des marchants originaires de Qazvin qui avait suivi l’établissement de la dynastie Zand à Shiraz au XVIIIe siècle et y avaient accédé à de hautes fonctions : Mirza Ibrahim Khan fut le Gouverneur de la région du Fars. La maison Qavam n’était qu’une partie de la résidence familiale, celle destinée à accueillir les hôtes : une maison tournée donc vers l’extérieur (biruni).

De l’autre côté de la rue, mais reliée à la première maison par un passage souterrain, on trouve la maison Zinat al Mulk — une maison conçue pour la vie familiale, tournée donc vers l’intérieur (andaruni).

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The little guide

Greetings from Kőrösmező/Yasinya! German field post, 27 July 1917


It would have been best to publish the following text right after the post about the memorial plaques in Kőrösmező/Yasinya, they have so many common threads: the place, the time, and partly even the actors and fates, as we will see. The Transylvanian writer Sándor Török (1904-1985), Jewish by origin, Protestant by religion and adventurous by nature, author of a number of favorite books of our childhood, visited Subcarpathia in the summer of 1939, after the region was regained for five years by Hungary. His travel diary A szemtanú naplója (Diary of the Eyewitness, 1941) is a unique report, among others, about the uncertain and evolving ethnic identities of this peculiar multi-ethnic mountainous region. In an earlier post we already accompanied him to the town of Huszt/Khust, in the company of his local guide, who was a strange mixture of Rusyn-Russian-Hungarian ethnic identity. Below we quote from a day he spent in Kőrösmező/Yasinya, his excursion to the pre-1918 Hungarian-Polish border, restored between 1939 and 1944, and his encounters with the transitory cultures of the borderland.

Click for a full map of pre-1918 Máramaros/Maramureș county

…The previous night the traveler asked his hosts to look for an intelligent boy for the morning, who knows Hungarian and would accompany him to the Polish border. Now it is five o’clock in the morning, and the traveler is standing in front of the gate, not knowing what to admire more: this clean, beautiful morning under the mountains, or that at five in the morning he is already up and is here, waiting for the boy. For in Körösmező certainly there are many intelligent boys, and also enough poor boys whom one or two pengős come in handy. But from the whole constellation – a poor boy who for those few pengős is willing to go the way which is about 25-26 kilometers there and back; an intelligent one who also knows Hungarian – a Jewish boy must appear. And in fact, he appears, giving occasion to the traveler to admire the assimilating power of the landscape.

This young Jewish boy was born in 1924, that is, under the Czechs. – What is your name? – Artúr Blutreich – he says – but… please call me Nyumi. I’m also called this at school. Artúr… it is… it is so ugly.
The traveler is not surprised at all that the Jewish Artúr Blutreich in Kőrösmező speaks Hungarian with more or less the same accent as the lad of Huszt, József Kovács, who claims to be a Protestant and Little Russian. The traveler is already not surprised at anything, he has given up. He accepts the fact that if he closes his eyes, he can believe that this boy here is Little Russian. And vice versa, he might also believe that József Kovács of Huszt is a Jew. Perhaps Nyumi’s speech is somewhat kinder and softer, more Rusyn-like, for he himself lives among Rusyns. The clever rural force of his expressions is also akin to those of the Rusyns of Huszt or here, but there is also a great difference between him and the lad of Huszt, which the objective traveler cannot ignore. On the question concerning his identity, the lad of Huszt proudly replied that he is a Great Russian who “loves Hungarians”, and he said that the Hungarian language “just stuck to him” in the course of his wanderings, and his brothers and relatives do not know Hungarian, only Russian. Nyumi, however, considers himself Hungarian, and went to a Russian school – he adds: there was no other! –, and on the question as to from where then he knows Hungarian so well, he says: from home! – So do you talk in Hungarian at home? – And lo, he replies on the question with a question. Why, a Jew remains a Jew. He spreads his arms, and says: – Well, how should we talk?


• After the first formalities of getting acquainted, Nyumi – as if casting the job in a final form – says: well then, so we go over to Pole. – This is the local, border region railwayman and postman argot: we go over to Pole. – So Nyumi says it like this.
On the way Nyumi praises the little calf like this: very cute little cow. – He examines the horses of the oncoming military cart, and by stopping and staring long after them, he says: you have great nice horses. – I think you do not have to be one particularly involved in languages and words to understand from these few examples, how this Jewish boy of Kőrösmező – who, as you know, went to Russian school – learned Hungarian at home, or more precisely, what kind of Hungarian language he learnt. Well, certainly, it is a very beautiful Hungarian language. As in Budapest certain classes, Jews or non-Jews, standing roughly at the same low cultural level, speak alike the so-called “boulevard argot”, here in Kőrösmező Nyumi Blutreich speaks a clear Hungarian, whose basic components of thought are identical to those of the Rusyn peasants.
For example: we are already coming back, when it turns out that if we had just arrived earlier at the Polish border, then the Hungarian commander would have put us on a military cart, and we could have come back more conveniently. The traveler regrets it. Nyumi, however, comforts him: no matter, it is better to go than to travel. And reassures the traveler: we will surely reach the train, as to home we go faster. The horse also goes faster when it senses the smell of his stables.
Nyumi knows the things of trees, grasses, mountains, animals. He climbs up the mountains like the Rusyn of Huszt or like local people in general. On the Tisza bridge he steps up on the small concrete sidewalk – it really impresses him – and asks the traveler: Are there sidewalks like this everywhere in cities? I have been to Rahó/Rakhiv many times, and there it is! – The little Jewish boy steps on the sidewalk, but after three or four steps he jumps off the road again, and says: it is not good to go on it, it’s very hard.


Kőrösmező/Yasinya. Railway bridge on the Galician (at the time of the narrative, Polish-Hungarian) border

• Such is this Nyumi like, with whom the traveler makes an agreement for this morning. By the time the traveler gets to know Nyumi, he fairly well suspects the relationships of mountains, waters and people, he traveled through villages of many languages and mixed population, and got to know the dear old Rusyn, Uncle Frickon, who burst into tears by swearing allegiance to the Hungarian motherland, and finished it so: “long live the whole Austrian nation!” – since he was a gunner in Miskolc in 1915: Kanonier Frickon. – It happened to the traveler that in Aknaszlatina/Slatina he asked a coffee house servant whether they had breakfast. And as from her stuttering reply he sensed her Romanian language, he continued: știi mai bine românește? – Da, domnule, da! – Yes, sir, yes – and they continued in Romanian. Ten minutes later an old servant lad came in, who tortured the Hungarian words with the same accent as the girl before. – Știi mai bine românește? – asked the traveler with all familiarity, but he spread his hands, and regretfully replied: I not know Romanian, sir, I be Hungarian… […] But the traveler also sat in the restaurant next to the railway station of a small town, and he wordlessly enjoyed the following scene: the gentlemen coming from “the mother country” – as Hungary is called here – at a long table cruelly cursed the service, the food and the drinks, everything. Of course, doing so by cursing the Jews plentifully and at ease. For the Jewish innkeeper and his family, however, it did not matter if the entire kitchen and all the universe turned over, because they were sitting around the radio, since in Budapest there was a literary evening of Endre Ady! Well, what do they care about a few pieces of wiener schnitzels? Zsigmond Móricz speaks about Endre Ady in Budapest!
The traveler is already beyond all this, he has already listened to the story of the professor in Huszt, who avowed himself to be a Great Russian, so the Ukrainian extremists poked out his eyes with a hot needle. He already knows all these stories, when he meets Nyumi Blutreich, who formulates his opinion on the short-lived Ukrainian rule in Subcarpathia like this: you know, it was like when the hen tries to give birth to ducks.


Kőrösmező/Yasinya, the source of the Tisza. A Hungarian postcard written in Romanian, and posted to the Keviszőllős/Seleuš, today in Serbia, on 30 July 1913.


• If the reader considers the above, he will understand the joy of the traveler on Nyumi’s beautiful Hungarian language.
But the image of Nyumi would not be complete if the traveler held back what the boy asked of him on the way. First – another coincidence – he asked more or less the same as the lad of Huszt: whether Budapest is greater than Prague. This is natural. Any other simple soul would have asked this of the traveler after a morning-long acquaintance. Both also asked whether the Castle of Buda is as beautiful as the Hradžin. – They measure on this how much they – they, personally! – gained with the change of government, where they fell, and what the “new rule” is like. To them it is “new”, since they were born in the “old” one, and the “oldest” one they only know from hearsay. The Russian also asked whether Brünn is larger than Debrecen. So he was in Brünn and heard about Debrecen. And Nyumi asked whether Kecskemét is as large as Rahó. He was never beyond Rahó, and heard about Kecskemét. The answers and descriptions of the traveler helped both of them to understand, to which and how large a country, and into the shadow of what kind of power they had come.
The circle already known by them has more or less the same radius, at least of a different quality: the Russian learned everything himself during his wanderings, and Nyumi learned at home what he could. But they long for the same thing: to get to the city.
Later Nyumi reveals one more field of interest. He asks: what now is the price of stamps? Well, the traveler does not know this. He also inquires about the price of a camera, film and a bike, but soon it turns out that he is interested in them not as a Jew, but as a boy. He has a collection of stamps, had a bike, and would like to have a camera.
Thus, all things considered, it turns out that in language, way of thought and physical characteristics, the traveler has found no essential difference between the Russian lad of Huszt and the Jewish boy of Kőrösmező.

The traveler and his guide leave for the Jablonitsa on this bright morning after five o’clock. The traveler already refuses to describe for the reader the landscape, the elfish game of the sunshine with the water of the mountain creeks, the light and shadows… and then the scents!
Suffice it to say, that as soon as they leave behind Kőrösmező, they start to climb up along the suddenly meandering Lazestina creek in the gradually thickening and darkening pine forest. The sun rises from behind the Hoverla mountain, higher and higher, in the infinite blue, just occasionally covering itself with a small white cloud, just to have this in supply, too. Nyumi presents the traveler with the glistening snow-capped peaks around: there is the Pietros, the Shesa, to the right the Chorna Kleva – and he points with deep reverence behind them: and there, the Bliznitsa!
The Bliznitsa – the name means ʻtwins’ – are two beautiful, majestic, huge snowy peaks, Nyumi’s favorites. Apparently, the Bliznitsa is to him what the post office was to József Kovács in Huszt. Nyumi stops every quarter of a hour, turns back, and points to them: Well, now the Bliznitsa is beautiful! – From here you see well the Bliznitsa! – Now soon from there, from the bend!


Kőrösmező/Yasinya, the Bliznitsa. This postcard was sent from Máramarossziget/Sighetu Marmației shortly after Sándor Török’s journey and at the same time of the tragic last journey of the “stateless Jews”, in August 1941, by a Hungarian soldier on his way to the Russian front: “My dear good Mother and Father. This morning we arrived at Máramarossziget, and soon we go on. Perhaps this night we will already sleep on Russian land…”


Here already only the waters move… sometimes a bird… or a light wind caresses the forest… Down there, far away, the bell of small-horned mountain cows and sheep… and the traveler is listening to the stamping of his own feet.
– Up there – points Nyumi at a red roof emerging from the trees –, it is already the tselnitsa, the customs house. Beautiful red, isn’t it?
– Beautiful.
– Up there it is not that red any more. It appears so red only from here, from the much dark green. – Nyumi knows a lot! And he also knows every grass and tree, the footprints of the animals, everything that belongs here, in the forest. A kite! – he points to the sky – it is hunting. A magpie… can you hear it?
But they already speak little, the traveler and his guide. They have long left the road behind, they climb up in gullies and trails, higher and higher… they cannot hear the bell of the cows and sheep any more, only the rustling of the water and of the trees. Suddenly, a slight noise… and a nice, fat pine cone tumbles at the feet of the traveler. Nyumi points not upwards, but at the cone, by stating: a squirrel! It was thrown down by a squirrel. – The traveler bends down for the cone, then he looks up, and in fact, there is the squirrel sneaking over there, now it jumps away, by saying goodbye with its leafy tail before disappearing in the forest. The traveler puts the cone in the pocket of his jacket, among the acorns, pebbles and other such stuff. Thank you – he says after the squirrel – thank you, young man! And neither the squirrel, nor the traveler know yet, what honor awaits this cone, far away, in Kassa/Košice.


Kőrösmező/Yasinya, customs office on the Hungarian border, 1939-1944

Kőrösmező, from 16 March 1939 to 17 September 1939 Hungarian-Polish, after the division of Poland Hungarian-Soviet border

Kőrösmező, still today with an existing Polish border mark (from the tisza-forras.hu site)

• We are on the Jablonitsa. Beyond, Poland. Things go unceremoniously here. The Hungarian commander looks at the papers of the traveler, but he did not ask for them. The traveler himself took them out. In the meantime two customs officer arrive from the village on motorcycle. They have no official task here, they only came for what the traveler wants: to go over to Pole for a while. All right, let’s go over to Pole. The customs officers lay down their guns, and walk beyond the barrier together with the commander. The Polish commander is already coming. Just so welcoming and informal, rather like a host greeting his guests.
The border – as a border – cannot be sensed here. The traveler forces the Polish commander to have a look at his papers. But he gallantly refuses. They take it literally… or rather sentimentally, that Polish-Hungarian, two brothers. They receive all Hungarians with open arms.


Encounter of Hungarian and Polish soldiers on the Subcarpathian border reannexed to Hungary on 16 March 1939. Life Photo Archive. See also the contemporary Hungarian-Polish newsreel.

With open arms and broken German. And since the traveler does not know German either, the conversation consists mainly of gestures suggesting “thank you”, “everything is so beautiful here”… “Oh, come on, come on!” – The traveler is guided into the neat tourist house, where the walls are decorated with pine branches, and on the main place, the portrait of the Hungarian governor Miklós Horthy, on the other side Moscicky. with Pilsudsky and Ridz-Smigly.



The traveler buys Polish Mewa cigarettes here, the customs officers clink their glasses with Polish wine, and the manager of the tourist house, who is also the postmaster, gives out postcards and stamps, and undertakes to send them home from the other, Polish side. Then, having said goodbye to the Poles, the traveler is standing on the Jablonitsa. There is the Hoverla, with the source of the Lazeshtina, says the Polish officer, showing them around. There, the Pietros, and the Bliznitsa. And here, our mountains, the Svinitsa, the Chomniak, the Gorgon…


The Lazeshtina at sunrise. Río Wang’s Maramureș tour, 2013.

The Hoverla at sunrise. Río Wang’s Maramureș tour, 2013

– Thank you… – says the traveler, and not only to the Polish officer.

• On the way back down in the forest, the traveler and his guide enter a cemetery. Two rows of small concrete crosses are cared for by a huge pine tree. Under the nameless crosses, unknown soldiers have slept for more than twenty years. They fell here, at the Tatar Pass, in the first years of the world war. On the first cross facing the path, a candle has burnt down to the bottom. On the large common cross, an inscription: Valaji K Vam: “Zachorejte mir”. Since then, the traveler would have had occasion to learn what this means – these sorts of things he considers his duty –, but this time he did not do so. According to Nyumi, this simply means: let there be peace… – And the traveler accepts it and forwards this translation.


Kőrösmező/Yasinya, cemetery of fallen soldiers.




korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo korosmezo

Kőrösmező/Yasinya, Jewish cemetrey

The file of Nyumi – Artúr Blutreich – in the death records of the Mauthausen concentration camp

Crossroads


War is upon us, or at least its centenary. Among the large number of exhibitions, events and projects one stands out: the Berlin-based Europeana 1914-1918 project, born from the collaboration of a dozen of Europe’s leading public collections, which has collected and organized and is now publishing on the internet hundreds of thousands of documents, photos, movies and memoirs. Part of the collection is the 650 hours of film footage, which includes such rarities as the more than half-hour long movie capturing the big Palestinian offensive of the British General Allenby’s troops in September 1918.

The opening pictures start with a panorama of Nazareth, taken on 20 September, then we see the soldiers of the 4th Australian Light Cavalry Regiment entering on 25 September into the picturesque Tiberias on the western shore of Lake Galilee, one of the four holy cities of the Palestinian Jews. The Australian cavalrymen marching in endless rows are accompanied by the curious gaze of the local population, including Jews in caftans and shtreimel (2:04 – 2:42).

Then, at 3:50, a signpost shows up.


Above, more modestly, in Arabic, beneath, in clearly visible large letters, in German, it shows the road to the north: Nach Damaskus. Clearly, anyone who has already reached the holy city of Tiberias must already know where the closest metropolis of the same range is. But let us also see which is the other place – obviously of similarly great importance – to which the signpost points in the other direction.


Samach. For this city we would look in vain on the map of modern Israel. In March 1948 it was abandoned, after its about 3,300 Arab residents fled the city from the invading soldiers of the Jewish Haganah. On its former territory now we find the neighboring Degania Alef kibbutz which gradually grew upon it. However, in 1918, it was an important town on the southern shore of Lake Galilee, with an important station on the Jezreel Valley railway line connecting the Hejaz railway with Haifa. In addition, during WWI it also had a German military base with an airport, and on 25 September 1918 here took place one of the bitterest battles of Allenby’s offensive. So it rightly deserves its own signpost.

But what can be the third Middle Eastern metropolis, whose name we find under Samach?


It is not easy to read, the letters are smaller and more blurred. And there is also a number under the German word: 505. Maybe 505 kilometers? No. Because the word above it is not a city name, either. The text of the German inscription is:

Zum Kraftwagenpark 505.

But do not follow that sign. They have left the place for good.