Vacation Pictures: Heidi, Jenni, Kelly

Crossing Alborz

By Heidi Noroozy

Crossing Iran’s Alborz Mountains on the Chalous Road from Tehran to the Caspian Sea is sometimes breathtaking, often hair-raising, and always an adventure. The road twists in a multitude of hairpin turns, and I hold my breath as we scrape past rough rocky walls, swerve around oncoming cars that straddle the lanes, and seem about to plunge into endlessly deep ravines. The road runs through a multicolored landscape—gray and red rock on the Tehran side, white-capped peaks at the summit, and green valleys on the descent to the land-locked sea. Early in the journey, we pass the Karaj Dam with its lake of blue-green water. A village on the far shore, cradled by rocky cliffs, is accessible only by boat. Higher up, the road tunnels through the mountain, and avalanche shelters protect it from bits of broken glacier. Villages, farms, and restaurants crop up in places that seem too bleak to support human life. Roadside shops sell everything from cigarettes to yogurt strained through huge white cloth bags that dangle from the eaves. I always keep an eye peeled for the haft sheytoon (seven devils), cone-shaped rock formations that line the road. There are only five devils now, since two of them broke off and fell into the valley below, victims of an earthquake or the wrath of God, depending on who’s telling the tale. When I spot the deep blue expanse of the Caspian Sea peaking through the trees, I feel my muscles relax. Once again, I’ve survived the perilous journey across the Alborz Range.

Oregon Coast

By Jenni Gate

On home leave from Africa or Asia every couple of years, we traveled the U.S., visiting every relative my parents could think of. My earliest memories of the Oregon Coast are from one of these trips, when I was about 7 years old. We traveled from seeing family in Oregon down the Oregon Coast, through the Redwoods in Northern California and into central California to see more relatives. I don’t remember much about the family we visited, but the Oregon Coast made a deep impression. In California, the beaches were warm and inviting, but in Oregon they are wild. The rocks rising from the waters off the coast create a raw, stormy beauty matched by few other places. Its treacherous, rugged coastline inspires artists and photographers the world over. In college, I visited the Oregon Coast and fell in love all over again. When my son was about 3, we traveled with my parents to Brookings, and it was a joy to see my son experience the surf and sand for the first time. Now it is still my favorite place on the planet, one I have the opportunity to visit occasionally. Whether during a violent winter storm or a sun-kissed summer day, my favorite memories are of contemplating the vast ocean and hiking the cliff trails, sand dunes, and beaches of the Oregon Coast.

For more of my tales, please check my blog at Nomad Trails and Tales and like my page on Facebook. You can also follow me on Pinterest.

Snowy Mountains, Tripping Stream

By Kelly Raftery

This picture always garners the question, “Where in Kyrgyzstan was this taken?” It always reminds me why we chose Colorado as our home. Colorado, we are proud to call you home, for all that you are that reminds us of Kyrgyzstan, for all the opportunities you have given us. This photo was from a trip we took two years ago, just after my husband landed the job that brought us to the Front Range.

I remember this warm, sunny day, stopping alongside the road, walking in a mountain meadow and watching the stream rush by, washing our hands in the ice cold water. After three years of trying to escape Las Vegas’s severe economic downturn, we would be in our new home by the end of the month.

This photo marks a week when our lives took a new direction. Once in Colorado, my son was able to take dance lessons (he is now competing on the national level), my husband was able to find a challenging and fulfilling job and I was able to find time to pursue my passion for writing.

Those snowy mountains, that tripping stream, thank you for leading us home.

The Impermanence of Identity

By Kelly Raftery
 
I lived in Russia for most of my early twenties. I studied at Leningrad State University, worked in St. Petersburg and Moscow and, visited countless other cities and towns as well. I have never stopped being completely enchanted by White Nights in St. Petersburg and never tired of exploring Moscow’s hidden treasures. The cupolas of the Assumption Cathedral in Sergiev Possad, painted a deep cobalt blue with a scattering of golden stars, always leave me deeply awed. 

White Nights in St. Petersburg,
one of the sights I would like to
show my husband, but can't.
Photo by Victor Griagas

I would love to show my son and husband the places that I lived in, places that I grew to love so deeply when I lived there. But, I can’t, I won’t. You see, my husband is not Russian, he is Kyrgyz. To most readers, this means precisely nothing. To people from this area of the world, no further explanations are needed.

Russia is and always has been a multi-ethnic nation. Today, there are almost 200 different ethnic groups living in Russia from Abkhazians to Yakuts. Some people in Russia are white skinned and European looking, including Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians. Others such as Armenians, Azeris, Georgians, and Chechens more closely resemble Mediterranean peoples like Italians or Greeks. Still further east are the peoples of Central Asia and the tribes of Siberia, who are Asian looking, more resembling Mongolians. The tribes of Russia’s Far North are most similar to their cousins across the Bering Strait, Alaskan Eskimos. You can read more about Russia’s ethnic mix in two earlier posts that I wrote here and here.

Jewish victims of Russian Pogroms.

It was not until I lived in Russia full time that I began to understand and grasp the full range of ethnic stereotypes and how these ideas impact on Russian and post-Soviet society. This complex interplay between nationalities and nations is a constant undercurrent that is ignored at one’s own peril. Ethnic hatred and directed violence are certainly nothing new to Russia. My mother’s grandparents fled Tsarist Russia during anti-Semitic pogroms over a hundred years ago. I was always cautious when I lived there, not telling anyone that I was Jewish by heritage.  But I had the freedom to cloak my background and if anyone probed beyond “American,” I could always hide behind my very Irish name.

  
My husband (and millions of others like him) is not as fortunate, as his ethnicity is written in the color of his hair, the shape of his eyes, and the hue of his skin. Soccer fans in St. Petersburg have taunted minority players with bananas and last year demanded that Russian National Champion team, Zenit, “preserve the traditional identity” of the team by not signing dark-skinned or gay athletes. In polling citied by an extensive article on Russian xenophobia, “One in five Russians strongly agrees with the slogan ‘Russia for Russians,’ while 43 percent believe that any measure taken to protect “my people” is good, according to research by Higher School of Economy professor Mark Ustinov. Nearly 70 percent of Russians have negative feelings toward people of another ethnicity, Ustinov’s research found.” 
 
When I talk about my concerns about traveling with my husband to Russian friends, they look at me in surprise and protest, “But, your husband is not like those people!  He is a professional!”  In my mind I often respond that I don't think a racial attack starts with a resume review.


One memorable evening a number of years ago, a Russian friend started ranting about the “darkies” who were despoiling the purity of Russia and continued on in a similar vein for twenty minutes. Once he had wound down, my husband looked him in the eyes and said in a quiet voice, “You do realize I am one of those dark people you hate so much, right?”  Our friend looked at him in complete shock, denied that my husband was “one of them” 
and in all honesty made no connection between my Central Asian husband and the Central Asian migrant workers he despised for ruining Russia.

Imagine my surprise when we were at a company picnic in Las Vegas a few years ago and one of my husband’s co-workers blithely informed me that he was “not a real Asian.”  My husband’s office was made up primarily of Chinese and Chinese-American technology workers and I was shocked to realize that none of them considered him Asian. In fact, they considered him Caucasian. Recently, I was discussing mixed race (Asian/Caucasian) marriages and specifically the phenomenon of white men actively seeking out Asian women to marry, or what my friend called “Yellow Fever.”  My friend is American, of Chinese heritage, and when I asked her if she considered my dark skinned, dark haired husband Asian, she promptly answered, “no.” When I probed a bit deeper, she told me that maybe it was because he speaks Russian that she doesn’t consider him Asian, but she really wasn’t sure. Another friend of Japanese and African-American heritage, who proudly considers herself a “person of color” told me that she doesn’t consider my husband Asian because he is light-skinned.

Imagine the irony – in Russia, my husband could be the target of vicious taunts and possible violence by merit of the color of his skin, the shape of his eyes. Many Russians would not hesitate to point out that my husband’s “kind” was not wanted in Russia. Yet, here in America, he is not even considered a “real Asian” by a considerable swath of the Asian community. Even white friends don’t necessarily consider my husband Asian, which I also find fascinating. Each person’s perception of my husband seemingly throws up a reflected image of the world in which that person lives.
 

Shooting the Moon - Yuri Gagarin, First Earthling in Space

By Kelly Raftery 

Soviet heroes, including Yuri Gagarin were interned in the red brick walls
(denoted by the black plaques) of the Kremlin near Red Square.
Photo by Bern Rostad.

In Moscow, a visit to Red Square is a must. When you are there, you will see the worldwide symbol of Russia, St. Basil’s Cathedral’s colorful domes, stand at the spot where Ivan the Terrible beheaded his loyal guard, gawk at the expansive commercialism of the central department store, GUM, and just across the square, you will see a squat little red granite building that has the name Ленин emblazoned across the top. It has been many years since I was a tourist in Moscow, but in my day, the official guide led the group into the cool dimness of Lenin’s Tomb, past the preserved leader (wax, not wax –the debate continues), and back outside again. A long pathway takes one back to the main square. To one side is a deep red wall with black plaques denoting the burial or internment spots of Soviet notables, on the other side are graves, including those of Stalin, Brezhnev and Chernenko.

Internment or burial under, near, or in the actual historic red wall of the fortress was a place of great honor granted to very few individuals. One of those is perhaps one of history’s greatest travelers—Yuri Gagarin. 

Yuri Gagarin,
first person in space.

Without the bravery of Yuri Gagarin, there would have been no Neil Armstrong, no “Houston, we have a problem” and no International Space Station. Gagarin was the first man to be strapped to a rocket and catapulted into space. Yes, as much as we celebrate our own moon landing, the simple fact is that the Soviets beat us into space initially. Not many Americans know that fact or anything about the man who is a Soviet hero. Today, the crew of the international space station still leaves earth from the same place Yuri Gagarin did in 1961. Americans would not visit the moon until years after this accomplishment. 

The Russian archive entry on Gagarin states, “he was the first man to see that the earth was indeed round, indeed mostly water, and indeed magnificent.” What an incredible journey that must have been for a child of a rural Russian village who spent years of his youth in a 3x3 meter mud dugout after the Nazis confiscated the family home and sent his elder siblings to Germany as slave labor. Yuri Gagarin’s father was a bricklayer, his mother a milk maid on a collective farm in southern Russia. 

Having left home to continue his education, Yuri Gagarin learned to fly biplanes as a teen-ager; he was later drafted into the Soviet military, which taught him to fly a MiG. At the time Gagarin was serving, the Soviets had begun their search for pilots for their space program. The diminutive Gagarin (five feet two inches tall) was among around twenty pilots chosen for the initial training who went through extensive physical and psychological testing before being narrowed down to just two men—Yuri Gagarin and German Titov, both short men who were better able to fit into the Vostok capsule. Gagarin would go on to make history.

 

The Vostok-1 Capsule.

On April 12, 1961, the Soviets launched Vostok-1 into space, with 27 year-old Yuri Gagarin on board. The Vostok capsule was hurled into space at a speed of about 5 miles per second. Gagarin orbited the earth one time, his entire flight lasting a mere 108 minutes from beginning to end. He described seeing rivers and geographic terrain from space and commented on the odd feeling of weightlessness. The capsule had been packed with supplies in case Gagarin landed somewhere far away from civilization and had to walk back.   

The Space Race had begun. Yuri Gagarin returned to earth a national hero deemed too valuable to the Soviet Union to be risked on any further flights. Gagarin traveled the world and graciously accepted the cheers of adoring crowds. Always a social drinker, Gagarin at some point developed a problem with alcohol, drinking heavily, even by Russian standards. In 1968, Yuri Gagarin was killed during a training flight, an incident that has become the focus of speculation and conspiracy theories. Gagarin left an incredible legacy behind, including a pre-flight tradition that continues on to this day. 

At the last minute, Gagarin hopped off the transport on the way to the capsule, wanting to relieve himself one more time before leaving earth. To this day, departing (only male) space explorers (of all nationalities) get off the bus and take a quick moment to grace the back tire of the vehicle with urine before continuing on to the launch pad. If you don’t believe me, you can see a photo of this tradition. 

Yuri Gagarin is among the great travelers of history, the very first earthling to have seen our big blue marble from the perspective of space.

The Accidental Explorer

By Kelly Raftery

My name is Miriam, and I am an orphan in this place. 

My father brought me here, hoping to build a new life for us after my mother’s death. Instead, death claimed him too. Here I am, now, in a place that is in neither Europe nor Asia, destined to live life out in this tiny corner of the city where we Jews must live. 

A Gold Belt Buckle from the 13th Century.
Photo by WolfgangSauber

It was not like this in Venice. I don’t know what father was thinking when he came here. But I have hope, for Nicolo and Maffeo Polo are leaving soon to trade further north. I still have my father’s stock of jewelry and the gold-crafting skills he taught me to make more. Perhaps a commission for the Polo brothers would be enough inducement to let me join them on their journey?  

The Polo brothers, always quick to spot a money-making proposition, agree, and I pack my bags to leave Constantinople. Little do the Polos know I would have offered them far more to get free of those confining walls. I’ve spent my last days in Constantinople collecting my travel goods and, alongside my father’s finely crafted gold pieces, lay glass baubles from Venice in a myriad of bright colors. I hope that these pretty things will catch the eye of a wealthy matron and provide me with a healthy profit. Perhaps then I will return to Venice.

The Polo brothers and I leave Constantinople on a small boat that hugs the shores all the way north towards Sudak. Occasionally, we stop at sizable villages to allow the merchants on board to sell their wares to interested buyers. I can’t say that I enjoy the journey. The never-ending rocking turns my stomach and sends me fleeing for dry land each time we stop for any length of time. My steps are heavy in returning to the vessel when it is time to launch. While the villages are picturesque, no one seems to be the right customers for my father’s finely tooled treasures. Nicolo Polo assures me that wealthy Tatar ladies in Sudak will be more than happy to pay well for my goods, so instead of selling now, I watch the Polo brothers deftly maneuver through local markets, buying and selling in equal measure.

 

Sudak's Venetian Built Fortress.

When we finally arrive in Sudak, a great fortress hovers over the sea on a hilltop, and it is a most welcome sight. Nicolo tells me that the walls were financed by the Venetian traders here as protection. A family the Polos knew in Venice provides us with tidy, well-kept rooms and abundant meals. Every evening our hosts, Nicolo and Maffeo, linger before the fire, drinking deep red wine, exchanging news with old friends and new acquaintances. 

Bukhara's Minaret would have been a
familiar sight for Miriam.

One evening a trader arrives with little more than the clothes on his back and a horrific story. Constantinople has been captured by Emperor Michael, the Venetian Quarter burned to the ground, and the families who lived there either butchered on the spot, captured and eyes gouged out, or forced to escape across the Aegean. The trader tells of standing on a dock watching boats heavy with passengers limp out of port into the sea and the horror of watching an overfilled boat sink beneath the waves, taking all of its passengers with it.

“Miriam, we can send you back with another caravan, if you choose, but Nicolo and I will be heading to Sarai as soon as we have completed our business here. Constantinople holds nothing for us anymore.”  Maffeo looks upon me with soft, brown eyes, kindness in his words. 

  

“No, Signore Polo, I don’t think the Emperor would take kindly to Jewess gold merchants either. Nothing remains for me in Constantinople any longer; my fate lies with you and your brother in the east.”  

Little did I know that this simple statement of fact would lead me to spend the next years of my life traveling with the Polos, first to Sarai then to Bukhara and then even further east to where Kublai Khan holds court. We are novelties among the Horde, exotic pets of the Great Khan to be studied and petted. Clever hands are highly valued here and I have rebuilt all that my father lost in Constantinople and more. The women of the court provide me with gold and steady work creating adornments; the Khan himself wears a ring forged by my hands. 

   
I’ve just had a visit from Maffeo Polo. I thought he had come to pick up a necklace for his local lady love, but instead he brought news that is both exciting and disturbing. The Great Khan has asked the Polos to accompany an Ambassador to the Pope and they soon will be returning to my childhood home of Venice. Maffeo asked if I would join them on their return journey and I was stunned silent. He expects an answer in two days’ time and I have no idea what I will tell him.

The Polo Brothers paying homage to Kublai Khan.

Historic side note: 

This journey took in the years 1260–1269 by Marco Polo’s father and uncle (Nicolo and Maffeo, respectively). It predated the one Marco Polo took and made famous. There are no written records of this earlier trip and, so when I initially conceived of Miriam, the Jewess goldsmith, I thought that women would not have traveled the Silk Road. Only in researching this piece did I discover that archaeological evidence of a grave in China of an Italian woman, who accompanied her father in his journeys, shows that European women did make the fantastic journey from west to east along with their menfolk.