You know Harry?

You know Harry, Sagar and the others?  Of course his actual name might not be Harry but it’s what they call him.  I did too.  Anyway, they were the ones I knew before I knew that I knew them.  It was only after we met, actually, that they were able to explain and I was able to understand that we’d known each other already for a couple of years.

I don’t know, maybe such circumstances are common in Rajasthan, and it’s not a bad thing to discover at a first meeting.  It’s kind of an unexpected head start.  Anyway, it happened in the small desert town of Phalodi where tourists rarely tread.

If I think of the beginning it’s likely a bit tragic, you see, because it is so too often for me that at the beginning comes tea.  Well, I exaggerate.  The tea came in the middle of the start, and the start of the start was more the hired white Ambassador stopping.  It was not due to mechanical fault but rather an idea that brought the vehicle to a halt: the desire to stop somewhere random, away from the tourist towns, to see if we couldn’t find the real, unadulterated Rajasthan.  Phalodi was a fair choice.

Now, I know there’s more to the town than that singular dusty road leading up from the highway, with the usual assortment of desert homes, small shops and light bustle.   But I didn’t know it then so it seemed the only way to proceed.  And not too far along that road, on the left side, was a primary school gate.  It was as we were passing, and my Australian friend Lachlan was there then, that the school kids started calling out to us, making a bit of a fuss.  They were excited to see foreigners and I don’t remember what words they used, but it likely included ‘One pen, one pen?’, the phrase that seemed ubiquitous in Rajasthan.

Of course one of the teachers, Madan, came to the gate to see what the students were getting excited about and I can say now that his curiosity was likely not less than theirs, though he didn’t show it.  He did however ask where we were from and told us to wait, at the gate, while he consulted with the headmaster.  He wished to invite us into the staff room cum headmaster’s office for tea.

Approval came forthwith and we sat in the staff room cum headmaster’s office with the headmaster behind his desk and several teachers finding places to stand or sit about the room.  Well I don’t recall exactly but the conversation must’ve mentioned cricket and there may have been a song or two, while we waited for tea.  Madan struggled with his English but through simple words and understanding communication found its way.

It’s a simple thing, tea, and although it took a while to arrive it came in cups with saucers in much the usual way.  It was only when the drinking commenced that the trouble started.

Well, we couldn’t have anticipated the slurping.  The first one or two loud, unashamed slurps might’ve been overlooked as unfortunate: in Australia slurping tea is not the thing to do.  But when it progressed into a kind of random chorus of slurps from all corners of the room a smile started to work its way onto my face.  I wondered if those slurps could be heard back at the white Ambassador down the street.

I sat there looking down, thinking of Lachlan.  ‘Please don’t slurp, please don’t slurp!’ I was thinking, knowing that if he did I would no longer be able to contain my laughter at the strangeness of things.  Besides, I wanted to compose myself enough to take a loud, unashamed slurp of my own that would set him off instead.

‘Don’t look at him! Don’t look at him!’ I told myself; but sure enough, when I felt composed and strong I made the mistake of giving him a small glance and he was ahead of me, as it were, just then taking the boldest, most unrepentant slurp of his tea.  It sent me into fits of uncontrollable laughter, and it spread to Lachlan too.  And there was nothing to say, you know, when the slurping for them was a way of complimenting the tea, when they asked why we were laughing.  I think we made something up about the white Ambassador but it was embarrassing.

Well Madan, as it were, didn’t quite write us off as mad.  Instead, he introduced us to his class and I saw they used slates to write on, with chalk.  And he took us to his home, a little further up the street, where he showed some nice pictures of traditional Rajasthani puppets and introduced us to his family.  And that was that: we were soon on our way towards Jodhpur as planned.

He’d walked with us back to the highway though, and we’d stopped for a second, farewell tea at a stall there.  Strangely that tea too was remarkable.  It had various spices in it and stood out as the finest cup of tea we found in the whole three months of that Indian adventure.

Months later I wrote to him and I couldn’t help but mention the tastiest tea in India.  Indeed I asked for the recipe; I was missing chai by then.

About a month later I came home to a letter, from Phalodi.  The envelope was large and oddly fattened at the bottom.  Inside was a plastic bag with a greyish, brownish powder in it.  Madan didn’t only send the recipe, but a sample of the spices used in the tastiest tea in India!

To be honest I felt slightly uneasy about getting a strange powdery substance through the post.  I can only be grateful that the sniffer dogs at Sydney Airport would not appear to be trained to detect Rajasthani tea spices in the midst of mail bags.  Anyway, there was nothing to do but boil the milk and try it out.  And I read the letter, thinking his written English was surprisingly good.

It was two years before I reached India again, and in that time Madan and I had exchanged several letters.  From that small first encounter it had become essential to revisit Phalodi.  With a train and bus from Delhi I arrived once more in the small desert town.  Madan didn’t know what day I’d come exactly, because neither did I.  So I wandered up the street wondering if I could recognise his house again.  It was just as well to ask: Phalodi is a small enough town for that.

Whoever it was led me through new alleyways until I was sure I was hopelessly lost and would never find Madan, when eventually we stopped at a small telephone shop.  It was Madan’s family’s business and he was there.

It was just a few days, the second visit; but of course he introduced me to Harry and Sagar and the others.  We rode motorbikes through the surrounding desert countryside visiting various picturesque village temples of older and newer construction.  There were parties, a staged drama featuring the school students, Harry climbed a tree and Sagar was apologising for only being able to take part of the time I was there as leave from his job.  I wondered why he’d think to do that for a complete stranger.

Madan had started losing his hair by then; but the more interesting development was in his spoken English.  It was dramatically improved and I was able to explain about the cultural difference in the tea slurping.  ‘How did you do that?’  I asked, about his English.

‘If you really wish to learn something,’ he said, ‘the best way is to teach it.’ 

He’d become the school’s English teacher.  And he took me back there one day, where I gave the very first English class of my own, only it was cheating since the lesson I taught, his class had learnt the day before.  They knew all the answers to the foreigner’s questions and they gained confidence from that.

It was strange, meanwhile, how much Harry, Sagar and the others seemed to know about me.  Madan must have said a lot, I thought.  It wasn’t long before I left that it made sense, when they thought to explain, a little sheepishly, that every time I’d sent a letter they’d all sat together to read it, discuss it, definitely in Hindi, and gradually draft the English reply!   

‘That’s why Madan’s written script was so good,’ I thought.  Each Phalodi letter might’ve been signed with his name but it was a team effort.  I’d been writing to all of them and through those letters, it wasn’t only Madan I’d come to know, but the entirety of one little social circle in a small desert town.  It was really rather good that the white Ambassador had stopped there, at the start.

India elsewhere? 

              Bangladesh?

                               Iran?







This article also published in Star Magazine, here: You Know Harry?

Valley of Faith

Perhaps it was wrong to assume.  Perhaps I was wrong to think that because wars leave scars they mightn’t want to hear about it.  It can be that the fissures brought to human understanding by communalism are not easy to ford, but it’s equally true that humans are adaptable and flexible.  They can heal.  Perhaps I underestimated them and it was cowardly not to mention Bangladesh.

The Kadisha Valley in Lebanon’s north is a traditional Maronite Christian stronghold and Lebanon’s civil war in the 1980s cannot but have encouraged that.  Opinions seemed ridged, or so I assumed, memories too fresh.  I felt lucky not to be directly affected by that history.  But Bangladesh played no role in that war and neither had I, so could I not have mentioned the similarity between Bangladeshi Muslim hospitality and their hospitality-of-the-cedars?

They say that little Lebanon is a country where you can ski and swim in the same day and I’d taken the bus from Tripoli on Lebanon’s Mediterranean to the heights of the valley to stand at the base of a ski slope.  I wasn’t there to ski but to admire the trees.  I wanted to see the cedars.

Those trees are not only Lebanon’s national symbol, featured on the flag.  The rings of history are the essence of their trunks.  Ancient Egyptians used their resin in mummification and with the boats the Phoenicians built with their timbers they spread their civilisation across the Mediterranean.  In the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh the cedar forests were considered the dwelling of the Gods, while Moses, according to the Bible, used their bark in circumcisions and to cure leprosy.  King Solomon’s temple was built from their wood.

There aren’t many of Lebanon’s cedars left, and for the most part they are difficult to access; and all I got to see were a few specimens in the town of Bcharre, which doubles as a ski resort.  It’s not that there haven’t been attempts to preserve them: Roman Emperor Hadrian decreed a law to this effect as did the Mamluk Caliphs.  In 1876 Queen Victoria financed a wall to protect their limbs from foraging goats.

There were trees, just a few, and they were just trees.  But the cedars are Lebanon and the heritage of half the world.

Yet in the Kadisha Valley where names tend to echo it wasn’t Biblical or Ancient ones that seemed to predominate.  Rather there were two of more modern vintage: the early twentieth century Lebanese-American artist, poet and writer Khalil Gibran who was born in Bcharre, where there is a museum dedicated to his life that was closed on a Sunday; and the nineteenth century Maronite Christian saint, St. Charbel Makhluf.

I discovered this because there was no bus down the mountain again.  It’s the sort of thing I am good at neglecting to plan, return transport.  Better still I hoped to reach Beirut by late evening.  There’s a freeway that runs along the coast and it is possible, theoretically, to see the cedars and reach the capital in the same day. 

I stood on the little road through Bcharre and waited for a passing car. 

And it was Lebanon so the very first one stopped.

Tony was driving and his friend was there.  But the small thrill of not having to wait for more than thirty seconds was undone when he said they lived in the next village and would only go that far.  It was nonetheless a small start.

It can’t have been more than ten minutes to his village, but in the ten minutes we struck up a conversation.  He strung English words together in a similar fashion to the largish house he’d constructed, room by room as he could, by his own hand.  Coffee was offered.  Yes, Beirut was far, but perhaps a thick, black coffee wouldn’t hurt.

It helped being an Australian because in the 1980s Australia had more compassion to it than it has these days and many Lebanese refugees resettled there.  In Lebanon everybody had a relative or neighbour that now lived in Sydney. 

His wife made the coffee and it didn’t take long.  Tony was proud of the house he’d built, as he should have been.  By the end of the coffee his friend had extended an invitation to his house and Tony had suggested a walk around the village, in particular to see a special church nearby.  Yes, Beirut was far but perhaps a village tour wouldn’t hurt.  Local insight: the traveller’s jewel.

Of the village there’s little to report apart from the striking valley views and that about every second home was boarded up.  Why is that, I asked Tony.  ‘They all live in Sydney,’ he said, ‘but they come here from time to time.’

Of the church, well, it was remarkable.  It was built into a cliff face with a small round hole and a ladder that had to be climbed to get inside.  The church itself was a narrow section, a ledge walled up on the outside with some kind of bricks, compact and historical.  It was built in the time of wars between Muslims and Christians, in centuries past, and, Tony explained, the ladder entry enabled the priests inside to protect themselves.  They kept swords to use on any that might think to climb that ladder to attack them.

I wouldn’t have seen that church if it wasn’t for Tony.  At his friend’s house, again over coffee, he said it was really rather better to stay the night and leave in the morning; and yes, Beirut was far.  Perhaps a day later wouldn’t hurt: I really had no fixed schedule.

For dinner, Tony’s wife made a type of kebab wrapped in flat bread and I liked that they put them on top of the heater to keep them warm.  We played cards and we must have spoken on many topics, including my travels and life.  But I didn’t mention Bangladesh.

‘Before today,’ Tony said, and I’ll not forget it, ‘you had one house in Sydney.  But now you have two!’  It’s truer that I had many houses, if not exactly on the deed, but I was really touched by the generosity of his words.  And I should have said it: in Bangladesh for guests they make tea.

He spoke of St Charbel, who as a boy tended sheep and spent his days in prayer in the mountains.  He spent years as a Maronite priest recluse in the simplest of circumstances.  Many miracles are attributed to St. Charbel, including after his death when a partially paralysed woman dreamt of him and awoke cured, with the ability to walk again.  She had two wounds in her neck and St. Charbel had said in her dream that he did surgery to heal her as a symbol, to bring people back to their faith.  ‘If you pray to St. Charbel,’ Tony said, ‘Your prayers will be answered.’

On the following day, down the mountain, I made Beirut: all with private transport.  It’s not really a thing to do but I did. 

It’s funny because within two months I’d be riding a Honda in the Rajasthani desert with a friend there telling me with equal sincerity, ‘If you pray to Sai Baba, your prayers will be answered.’  And in Bangladesh, for guests they make tea.

But it was after that, in Sydney, when my thoughts turned once more to the Kadisha Valley.  I penned a letter and sent some photos.  There was no reply which I just assumed was because Tony wasn’t a letter-writing type of guy.  Indeed, it was at least two years later that I even knew he’d received it.

It happened on one evening when I was at home, in the flat I was renting in a predominantly Muslim suburb of Sydney.  The phone rang.  It was George.  I can say categorically that there’s nothing wrong with receiving a telephone call from George except that I didn’t know any George.  And this George, how did he get my phone number?  ‘I’m Tony’s cousin,’ he said, ‘I live in Sydney but I’ve just been to Lebanon and he was talking a lot about you.  I want to meet you.’

‘Some guy called George rang for you,’ my sister said, without a thought, on the next day, ‘I gave him your number.’

I went to see George one afternoon, how could I not, for coffee, baklava sweets  and chat about the Kadisha Valley and his cousin Tony.   And I couldn’t help it.  I should have known better.  I told him what Tony said about having an extra home, the words stuck in my mind.  ‘Before today,’ said George, ‘you had two homes, but now you have three.’  And in Bangladesh, I should’ve explained it, for guests they  make tea.

‘Spare me the political events and power struggles,’ wrote Gibran, ‘as the whole earth is my homeland and all men are my fellow countrymen.’  Well, that’s what I learnt from the cedars: Lebanon, the heritage of half the world.

But the pigeons are flying to Syria, but there's a wedding going on in Africa, but don't forget the oak tree... 

And in Bangladesh, they make tea.




This article also published in The Star, here: Valley of Faith

Not Bengali, but Love Lungi

Link to my article on BDNews24.com about me, Baridhara and the humble lungi....

Not Bengali, But Love Lungi

In Search of the Zoobr

November Afternoon in Kamenjuki, Belarus

I have indeed, praise be to God, attained my desire in this world, which was to travel through the Earth, and I have attained this honour.

                                                                                                            - Ibn Battuta.

…and in the modern world, where lengthy journeys to previously unheard of lands are no longer possible, we lesser travellers have to make do.

In the 4.30 p.m. November twilight, the surface of the Mukhavets, a little river in western Belarus, had become a varnished brown strip of reflection.  Birch, twisted willow and spongy rotting leaves were imaged upon its surface.  I wonder: do you think the great explorers of ages past found a quiet place to partake of contemplation, before their setting out?

Of Europe’s largest mammal I knew little and being in the city of Brest there seemed nothing for it, but to find out.  To the north, I’d read, was the wilderness which straddled the Polish border and in it, in small numbers, was what the locals called the zoobr. 

Ibn Battuta’s first journey in 1325 lasted twenty-one years.  Marco Polo travelled with his father and his uncle for twenty-four years from 1271 and the Muslim Hui navigator Zheng He, from Yunnan, accomplished his seven voyages within twenty-eight years from 1405.  It might be that I had just a day in hand to find the zoobr, but there’d need to be, surely, an expedition.

The river spread its arms around the small green island which might not normally have stood out but it was once the centre of Brest, a bustling trade town dating from around 1000 C.E.  The city’s oldest church is still there, with the rest of the town having been moved in 1838 to allow for the construction of a fort.

It is a place of reverence for Belarusians.  The fort is where two Soviet regiments stood their ground when the Nazis attacked in 1941.  They faced five hundred canons, six hundred bombs and lasted a month before the fort was lost, at the start of an occupation that would claim one in four Belarusian lives.

At the island’s centre an eternal flame burns, surrounded by hundreds of Soviet graves watched over by a massive stone head sculpture called ‘Valour.’  In the south of the island bullet holes in the red brick buildings can still be seen.  It’s in the east of Europe that the scale of sacrifice and devastation that marked the Second World War is most acutely felt. 

Zheng He was well-prepared.  It is said he had over three hundred ships and a crew of almost 30,000.  By contrast, the following day, in search of the zoobr, I would follow the example of Ibn Battuta, who left his Moroccan home, alone.  Do you think the great explorers of ages past went to bed early on the night before their departures?

'Valour', Brest, Belarus

A model Soviet city, Brest had wide, clean boulevards with older painted stone cottages and towering unsightly blocks.  It was in one of the latter I was staying, a monumental hotel of sparse décor.  I found some simple, canteen fare for dinner.

On the morning of the grand expedition the preparations were tiring and endless, or at least they would have been, perhaps, had it been several hundred years earlier.  In the twenty-first century I could not match the magnitude of Marco Polo’s preparations, no doubt, when he set off for China.  But I did pack my things and check out of the hotel, before walking to the bus station wholly unaided.

And just as Marco Polo once met the various tribes of Central Asia so I met a taxi tout who sought a hefty fee for a private voyage to the forest.  Zheng He might have had his fleet but Ibn Battuta went largely under his own steam and that was what I wanted to do.  Yet, the taxi driver could help me.  I was having trouble making the bus ticket seller on the other side of the glass window from understanding my intended destination, the village by the forest called Kamenjuki.  I was able to seize the taxi driver’s enthusiasm for my plan.  He pronounced it for me.  Do you think the great explorers overcame various difficulties with the help of locals?  I’d say they did.

But then, looking at my ticket, I noticed that it said Kamyanyets, in Cyrillic.  It was the second dilemma of the expedition: to hope I was not going somewhere entirely different.  Yet, there was nobody to fill in the gaps on the maps for Zheng He, surely, on his way to Bengal’s Sonargaon.  So I took the bus.

An hour on my imaginarily blistered and sore feet later I burst from the vehicle, spent and flailing: or I would have been, had I rather travelled on foot and by camel.  Indeed it was Kamyanyets but fortunately Kamenjuki was a short bus ride further, about eighteen kilometres.  I could almost smell the zoobr from there, Marco Polo’s China.

A good explorer half-hour later I’d arrived in the village of Kamenjuki.  Ibn Battuta once sought assistance in the mountains of Kamaru, from the followers of Shah Jalal, in order to find him in Sylhet.  I asked a girl from the bus where the forest was and she vitally pointed up the road.  After a huge, ten minute trek to the edge of the forest, my expedition started in earnest.

It was icy and cold.  I had to negotiate a snowy bridge over a frozen stream, but I persevered, adjusting my scarf on the way.  If the cold got in, I knew, all might be lost.

I entered the forest, Belavezhskaja Puscha: 1300 square kilometres of primeval, virgin forest, the last such stand in Europe.  Pine and birch, the canopy closed around me. I relied on my natural instincts to hold my direction, watching the sun, feeling the wind, noting the way moss grew on the tree trunks. And following the road.

Suddenly something stirred ahead.  Could it be the ferocious, mysterious zoobrs I had set out for?  I clutched my camera and trod carefully.  The pine needles were damp and quietened my stride.  But no, it was only a family of wild boar. 

It would be another good ten minutes of arduous hiking before the first zoobr set eyes on me.  In fact it was a small herd led by a large male.  He was enormous, easily as big as ten miniature horses, with horns like the devil himself, a rugged woolly brown coat, legs as thick as saplings, and huge flaring nostrils. 

I wonder what Zheng He thought when he reached Africa and saw his first giraffe.  He captured one and took it back to China where it was believed to be an example of the mythical creature called a qilin, evidence of heavenly blessing on the Emperor of the day.  I thought not to capture a zoobr, except on film.

Zheng He too was said to walk like a tiger.  He didn’t stray from violence when he was threatened.  Faced with a zoobr flaring its nostrils, there was nothing to do but flare my nostrils right back.  One shouldn’t let large wild animals sense one’s fear, or so it might be.  The leader of the beasts took four lumbering steps towards me, through the middle of a mud clearing.  We stood eye to eye now, and if he charged, what would have happened?

When Marco Polo crossed the Pamirs he came across a mountain sheep which ultimately took his name:  the Marco Polo sheep was described in 1271.  But the zoobr had its name, in Russian, and in English where it is called the European bison or wisent.

It could have crushed me without a second thought.  But I held my ground, given that I’ve never heard of anyone suffering death by zoobr and am rarely first at anything; and given that the danger was somewhat reduced by the well-constructed wire fence between us.  Well, there was no point randomly scouring the forest when a few zoobrs had been confined to a pen for easy observation.  Okay, so it wasn’t quite like the great explorers but in the twenty-first century, one has to make do.

The zoobr: legs as thick as saplings and huge flaring nostrils

Also in the small zoo were other examples of local wildlife: moose, deer, wolves, bears and wild horses.  The eyes of the Mona Lisa owl followed me as I passed.

The expedition successful, zoobr sighted, I returned late afternoon to the bus station, really more of a bus shed.  I pushed open the old green doors.  The interior was empty apart from three fellow zoobr-hunters sitting on a bench.  Not a pretty sight considering I had to be three hundred kilometres away in Minsk to find my pre-paid hotel bed.

One man asked where I was going.  "Brest," I replied, and then Minsk".  I wanted to see his reaction.  He didn't burst out laughing, that had to be good.  May be it was realistic.

We introduced ourselves.  It’s how I became 'Onjay' for the afternoon.  Still, they did better than me.  All I knew was that one of them had a name that started with G and the other two didn't.  G kept saying "and you have no wars in Australia?" After Brest fortress one could only say no.  Certainly nothing compared to Belarus.

G. and the Not-Gs., Kamenjuki, Belarus

One of the Not-Gs was swearing about the bus timetable, which was nearly a blank A4 sheet of paper.  "This is an extremely dire and frustrating circumstance in which we find ourselves," he was saying using four-letter Russian words.  "Yeah, but the zoobrs were cool," I replied, and they were.  Only 54 zoobrs existed after World War One; by 2002 there were 3200 of them.

Eventually the bus did come.  The four of us: Onjay, G and the Not-Gs, made it safely back to Brest; and me to Minsk.  I didn’t take back the riches that Marco Polo and Zheng He did, from their journeys, or even the spiritual fulfilment and new wisdom that Ibn Battuta must’ve found, but it had been a nice day.

And at the least I didn’t suffer Marco Polo’s fate.  Upon his return he found Venice at war with Genoa.  He was captured and narrated the tales of his journey to a fellow inmate, in jail.  But I have the luxury of writing this on a laptop, at home.

Zoobrs

Detail from Brest Fort monument

The Eternal Flame, Brest Fort

From Belarus it's not impossible to head south to Kyiv or to take a bus to Riga to meet a secretary to a scientist.

This article also published in Star Magazine, here: In Search of the Zoobr