Day 79 Easter

SYNOPSIS:   This is about how I spent Easter in Meymand.  Vom Eise befreit sind Strom und Baeche.It was 3:30 AM and all the dogs in town were barking…  This night was not as silent and restful as I had hoped.  I tried to figure out what day of the week this would be and it turned out to be Easter morning.  That made up for all the noise and aching.  At every turn in my “bed” I slid a bit further down the slope and had to adjust to a new bent and dent in the stone floor.  My bones were aching.  But to be in a cave at Easter morning was something so incredibly symbolic that I was in awe over how these things at times coincide.By 5:30 AM I gave in and plugged my ears.  There was total silence, rudely interrupted by the village dogs that now had something to say about every 15 minutes.  Just before the sun flooded over the mountains, I got up, packed my camera and surrounded the village.  The houses are almost all located along a North-South gorge on either the Eastern or the Western hill.  As I slowly walked along the rim of the valley, I zoomed in on people’s early morning activities:  Rinsing dishes, cooking tea, snoozing in the sun.  As I entered the village at the Southern end, some people had spotted me and waived me over to come to their homes.  I did and had tea with several of them.  I definitely landed at the dirtiest family’s place.  I am glad I saw a few other homes along the way.  Some were equally messy, but others were very tidy cave dwellings.  Some homes consist of entire suites of rooms.  Other homes are made up of single, unconnected rooms.  In the “king’s” cave –which is empty over the summer, there was even a lower level cave!“From Eise befreit sind Strom und Baeche”… popped into my mind; the famous poem of the Easter morning by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, immortalized in his book Faust.  Every year, for decades, I have gone on an Easter walk reciting this poem.  I remember my childhood as the daughter of a church musician whose first service was at 6 AM out in the grave yard of the church to commemorate the three Mary’s who came to Christ’s open and empty tomb.  So many empty caves were yawning at me with their dark open mouths.   Easter means little here and it means different things to me now than it meant then.  But I was grateful, that today was a slow day, a day of sitting in a cave writing.  Every two hours I emerged and made the rounds with my camera catching this or that, making new friends or waiving a hello to old ones.The village used to have simple outdoor, open air toilets and in the olden days a real hamam (bath house).  Now there are only two communal toilets.  No showers.  If I miss one thing aside from the internet, it is a shower.  In this heat I depend on it for comfort and it was hard to swallow that I would have to do without a shower for almost three days.  But as I have learned, something always manifests itself.  After one of my rounds I ran into Fatima, my hostess.  She invited me to follow her to her friend’s house.When I looked at her friend first, I was sure to look at a man’s face in woman’s clothes.  But I soon found out that she was a real woman, much younger than her face would suggest.  She was boiling water in her secluded entrance way as we arrived and before I knew it, she had stripped herself of all of her clothes and Fatima was pouring bowls of hot water over her for her weekly, monthly, annual bath?  I am not kidding.  The dirt, she scrubbed off herself was substantial.  And she scrubbed for a good 20 minutes.  In the desert of Jordan I had met a Bedouin who had only had a single bath in his entire life.  There is something about the skin that happens to people who live in the desert which prevents sweating.  The skin becomes almost leather-like.  Since I was privy to this very intimate event, I decided to do my part and to help scrub the woman’s back.  I also donated my expensive import shampoos and shower gels.  We had a good time.  Well, I had my answer how baths are taken in this village in lieu of a shower stall or a bath house.  Take it or leave it was the option.  I decided to take it.  And so, I took my turn in this open air three-way shower event.I also visited the local sights:  There is the restored old hamam (bath house).  Nothing much to see.  There was the religious center – closed.  Nobody could tell me what was in it either.  It wasn’t a mosque.  That was another building and it was open.  I looked for the museum-closed.  But a villager was able to obtain the key.  A suite of caves was filled with some old baskets and tools, but mainly photographs of the village, many of them during winter.  There is lots of snow here!  I can hardly picture life in this village for months on end inside with smoking fireplaces blowing soot into the air in tightly sealed caves – every tar-crusted ceiling attests to it.  I hiked up to the pretentiously labeled “Grand Project of Meymand Village” – which I understand is the effort of some locals and historians to get UNESCO status for this village.  There was the village computer, but no internet.  There was a cave full of books and brochures – not a single one in English; and a man in charge of the project – not a single word of English…  I believe that world-wide interest in a sight is part of the UNESCO requirement.  If foreign visitors are left in the dark to this extent, a lot has yet to be done.  On the other hand, once this status is granted, the guest house is open year round, the project director speaks English, and the village is flooded with foreign visitors, the experiences I had here today, will no longer be possible.  I am grateful I am here now.I spent much of my day in my cool cave writing, interspersed by walking around visiting and photographing the homes, animals, and people.  The day passed quietly and after a really bad dinner of old rice it’s time for a good night’s sleep in a rock hard cave with a rock hard pillow.I hope the dogs will not be up all night.Happy Easter!