In the remote step of Kyrgyzstan, we came upon a yurt that was made in the style of the nomads of this area. It was built of a wooden frame and covered in skins and tarps and was designed to be easily dissembled and moved. Outside, a herd of goats congregated, bowing their heads against a strong wind that whipped up dust and sand.
We pushed aside the flap that covered the primary entrance to the dwelling, and it fluttered noisy in the gale. Once inside, however, things were still, and the yurts own greeted us with a warm cup of tea.
Through our host, he told us something incredible.
“I am glad you came,” he said. “I have been working some time on this. It has taken me a very long time to gather all of the parts that I need. I had to travel many days to get some of the necessary pieces. When I show it to you, you must be very courageous, because it can be difficult to witness what you are about to see.”
He went to the far side of the tent and moved a tarp to reveal a wooden box with two holes cut out. From the interior, a glow emerged, clearly bright, but small, as if from a point source.
“What is it?” we asked.
“It is a box,” he said. We laughed. He did not.
“What does it do?” we asked.
“It allows you to see yourself as if you were someone else,” he said solemnly, and he blew into one of the holes. A puff of dust came out the other. He sat back, looked at us, and raised his eyebrows.
“Do you want to try it?” he asked.
There was a long silence.
“I will warn you” he said. “It will reveal things that are not expected.”
“Like what?” we asked.
“Well,” he said. He sipped his tea.
“Well,” he said again. “For one thing, it will show you how strange you look and sound.”
He was a man of about 35, slight, wearing glasses, speaking in English heavily accented by his native German. He demeanor was downtrodden and timid. He had dark rings under his eyes revealing that he hardly slept, and he struggled to maintain eye contact during conversation.
“There it is again!” he whispered.
“There what is?” we asked.
“The Bengal tiger!” he said. “It has never stopped following me.”
We glanced around the room. There was nothing of the sort in this room, which was a parlor dedicated to polite gatherings and light dining. Guests milled about, chatting and laughing. There was a mild growl of conversation, and a light twinkling of glasses, but as for Bengal Tigers, precisely none.
“Where is it?” we asked him.
“It hides among crowds,” he told us. “Its camouflage is flawless. It is as cunning as it is cruel. Whenever I leave my house, it stalks me.”
Fascinating. “How long has it pursued you?” we asked him.
“It has been after me since I came of age,” he said. He began to act increasingly agitated, glancing around the room and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Though, when I was young I could not identify it. It was a beast of some sort, of that I was sure. It haunted me so menacingly that its form became ever more apparent with each sighting, until eventually I was able to identify it. It is the Bengal Tiger Panthera tigris tigris, native to India and Bangladesh.”
We asked him how he had discovered this classification, and he told us that he scoured through an illustrated book of natural history at a state library. Only then could he make a firm identification.
“There are strategies for dealing with Bengal Tigers,” he said, still visibly fearful. “The natives of the Hindu Kush fashion masks which they wear backwards on their heads. The beast will not pounce headlong onto its prey, so it waits in vain for a chance to attack from the back.”
He motioned for us to come nearer. He was whispering now. From inside his jacket he pulled a crude mask with an elastic band affixed to either side.
“I bring this with me when I go to places I know will have people. It looks nothing like me, but it keeps the tiger at bay.”
With that, he excused himself and ducked out of the room, moving quickly down the hall, looking as if he were legitimately being pursued.
“Is he mad?” we asked our host.
“No more so than you or I,” our host said. “Though perhaps his vision is slightly clearer.”
“Well at that time I was so young,” she told us. She looked off into the distance. “At that time I was so young.”
“In those days of course it was a big thing to have a supermarket in town. I mean the type of place that would have all the food. And we were just changing, back then, to go to the market once a week, or two times a week instead of every day. It was about that same time that my father got himself a brand new car which was a long Chevy with white wheel wells that he used to make us kids clean. And if we ever played around it or managed to make it dirty we knew we were really in for it.
It was just becoming easier to take the car out and fill it up with food for the week rather than going back day after day.
And so we piled into the car one week, it was me and my two sisters and my older brother and my mother and my father. In those day it was common for us to all go together to do things like this.
And of course it was so hot. It was August after all. And you know how the weather is out here when it’s hot. It was the sort of day when you could just feel a storm coming. But we knew that feeling. We were used to it, so we piled inot the car anyway.
And we got to the super market. And my father was going up and down the aisles with my mother and choosing the food for the week and we kids were bringing back candy or cookies or whatever we wanted to have and we would try to sneak it into the cart when our parents weren’t looking. And bit by bit outside it grew darker and darker.
And before long I looked out the window and I saw that the wind had really picked up and there were branches and leaves and things flying past the big windows out front and I pulled on my mothers skirt and I said ‘Momma don’t you think we should hide? Shouldn’t we hide?’ I was really scared, because I hadn’t seen clouds like that and wind like that before. But she told me don’t be silly.
Well we kept on like that but before long it was so dark outside and sure enough the manager of the store came on the intercom and said there’s a tornado in the area, and there has been a warning declared. And so the manager ordered all us shoppers into the back room of the store there where the offices were.
It not being a established store there wasn’t anything in there except for a small light and about 20 of us shoppers. We huddled in there and it was hot and it was dark except for this one swinging lightbulb. And my father kept grumbling under his breath like “That car better not have a scratch on it when I get outta here.”
I remember my brother had this big smile on his face like he was about to have his birthday or something. And it was odd to me because I knew he was sacred just like the rest of us but he just kept on similing. And he smiled on and on as the noise outside got louder and louder. Weirdest thing. And he smiled even when the room started to shake. And there was a noise like a car was ebing ripped right in half, and the roof came off where we were.
“The roof came off?” we asked her.
“Striaght off,” she said.
And up there in the sky was all this rain and cloud and lighting and thunder adn it was as if God himself was lookign down at us all angry. And just like that, the wind left that little room, and wouldn’t you know it, it riped the clothes clean off our bodies.”
“No.” we said.
“Yes.” she said. “And if you’ll listen to this—It ripped the clothes clean off. You hear of things ike this. Of a tornado leaving a chicken with no feathers. Well there we were a bunch of chickens with no feathers. It was maybe 20 seconds after that that the storm passed on. They end just as suddenly as they begin. We were all stunned, and we were trying to get ourselves all covered up, but we knew we had to get out of there as a first step, since the wind had blown everything all around. And so the manager of the store he unlocks the door to where we are and we exit out of that little room. and we walk out into where the store had been, and there was hardly anything left. everyhtign was gone. and we wandered out and I remember my father looked out to where his car had been, and it was gone. It was just plain gone.
And we were all looking around ourselves at all the nothing that had used to be something. And all of a sudden it started raining food.
“Raining food?”
“Raining food. It all started falling down what had been sucked up into the sky by the storm. I stil remember apples and bananas and loaves of bread all starting falling around us. And we all just looked at each other. And I looked over at my brother, and he was still smiling. And I just remember him looking around, and there was this deadening silence. Because for the first time we had been revealed, you know, for what we were. Chickens with no feathers, you know. And there were no rich people or poor people or adults or children and it was raining, I mean it was actually raining food. And you know what my brohter said?”
“What?”
“He said, “It’s the Garden of Eden.” He said it softly at first and then he shouted it. And the noise of him shouting that was enough to rouse my father out of his stupor, I suppose, because he walked over to where his car had been, with the white wall wheels, and he took a look across the parking lot and he saw it, and saw that it was completely smashed. And there was my brother running around naked looking at all this food, laughing and shouting like it was his birthday or something. Fresh food from all over the planet, you know. And it really was miraculous, I’ll never forget it, standing there and realizing how much food there was. There was no way we could ever have eaten it all. It was the lowest moment of our lives, in some ways, because town was completely wrecked, but there we were and we the whole ground was covered with good things to eat.
Well, my father took a look at his car and he heard my brother hollering about the garden of Eden. And he walked right over to my brother, and my father, who was still stark naked, hit my brother across the face. He smaked him full on in the face and he said “You’re acting like a lunatic. Stop that! Can’t you see that everything is ruined? You’re acting like a lunatic.”
And the smack, you know, that noise, that brought he rest of us out of it a little bit. And my mother began gathering rags to cover us. And my father went to call an insurance man about the car but of course the phone was out. And the manager of the store went around gathering up the food. Gathering up all that food that had rained from the sky. He thought it was his. He really did.”
“Sometimes there is a love that does not make you feel like you are young at all,” he said. “Sometimes there is a love that makes you feel like you are so old. It makes you feel like you have seen everything, known everything, done everything. There is a love like this.”
“Oh,” we said.
“It comes and goes, I suppose,” he said. “But if you have felt it even for an instant, then you will…you will….”
The photo album, the boat, the Polaroid camera, and their owner.
The Atlas of Curiosities: Part 28
“I’m nearly 80, if you can believe that,” she said, stepping out of the boat. Under her arm she was carrying a thick book, and around her neck was strung an old Polaroid camera.
She walked slowly, thinking about each step.
“I hardly walk,” she said.
We offered her an arm, to steady her.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m so glad you were here to meet me.”
“Someone always comes to meet me,” she said. “It’s the strangest thing.”
She wore a blue dress with a lace collar. On her feet she had old black heels
As we walked up the boardwalk the boat began to drift, as she had not tied it down. It followed behind her, like a loyal dog.
“I’ll just get some more film, then I am on my way,” she said.
We walked into a convenience store, and she went to the counter to enquire about film.
We stood back watching.
“How does she speak the language here?” we wondered. We certainly did not. She returned to us.
“Ok,” she said. “All set.”
She slowly began hobbling out of the store.
“Where will you be going?” we asked her. We had seen her drift into this harbor with no sail, now paddle, and no motor. Now it seemed she intended to climb back into her boat and drift off again.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Wherever this boat takes me. See?”
She passed us the book that she had been carrying. We opened it. Inside was page after page of Polaroid photos, in brilliant colors and stunning composition, which flowed from one into the next as night follows day.
“That’s 60 years,” she said.
The photos were from everywhere. We recognized the landmarks of the Mediterranean coast, the script of the peoples of the Red Sea, the lush tropical foilage of Asia.
She used our arm to climb into the boat, even as we rushed to take an account of all that had been in that book, all that had been seen in 60 years on a tiny boat.
“You just sit there?” we asked her.
“Why yes,” she said, as the boat began to inch away. “I don’t know any other way to get around.”
She waved a frail arm, and the boat slowly moved away from the shore. As she began drifting away, she took her camera and snapped a photo of us, then stuck it into her book.
The unbelievable occurance before sunset in Istanbul
The Atlas of Curiosities: Part 27
In Istanbul, we went to the zikr of the Mevlevi Sema, the whirling dervishes. The room was dimly lit by lamps in the corner, and the last light of the day came in through an old circular window with no pane high up on the western wall.
A group of musicians was playing. They sat in a line under the window, and there was dust in the air between where we sat and where they were. There were drums, stringed instruments, and the reed flute.
The dancers walked out one by one. They were like solitary towers. Their heads, bowed slightly, were crowned by tall cylindrical hats, their robes hung heavily from their shoulders to the floor.
The dancers stood in a line. Now instead of towers they seemed to be cypress trees lined up one next to the other, swaying only slightly to the music as if being moved by a breeze.
In the center of the room was a fur mat. It was a place reserved for the groups’ sheikh.
As the dance began, each dervish walked slowly to stand before this mat, bowed solemnly, then ever so slowly began to spin.
Our host looked vaguely concerned, and we asked why.
“The dance is arranged like the solar system,” our host said, “and the sheikh stands in the middle as the Sun. The dancers move around this axis even as they spin.
“There is no Sun here,” we whispered.
“I know,” said our host. “We will have to watch.”
The dancers were all moving now, their heads were angled slightly to the side, their eyes shut in what seemed to be peaceful but fierce concentration. Their feet lifted in unison lightly sweeping in a circle before being placed down again onto the old wooden floor.
The robes of the dancers flew out in flurries, they wobbled in the air, they seemed almost buoyant, and then as if in a mirage, we watched as the dancers’ feet lost contact with the floor.
We gasped.
One by one the dancers lost contact with the surface upon which they were dancing. They lifted into the air. Still spinning, they flew around the room.
Even as the musicians played, undeterred, the dancers flew to the upper reaches of the ceiling, obscured by the dust and becoming silhouetted against the light of the old circular window.
We stood. We put our hands to our faces. We looked around the room. And as we stepped forward, the dancers departed, one by one, gracefully out the window.
We ran out of that place and over cobblestone streets. Our host led us down the road and to a hill overlooking the massive dome of the Blue mosque. It was now past sunset, and the minarets were lit by spotlights.
As we looked closer, we could see swirling lines of white spinning around and around the minarets. Now dipping, now rising, they drew delicate and elaborate lines around the ancient architecture. We strained to see the dancers flying in the distance. We were out of breath.
“Those are seagulls,” our host said.
“What did we just see?” we asked.
Our host sat down on a park bench, still watching the birds spinning around the mosque.
