The Call Of The Red Desert

Three years ago I traveled in Jordan and happened to have an unforgettable cup of tea in a Bedouin tent near Petra. That trip inspired a short story which won first prize in the fiction category of Moondance Film Festival last year. As it is too long for a blog, I am posting an excerpt here, just to give you a flavor of the unique Bedouin culture, the red desert, and the black sage tea.

Zeina al-Husseini watched the early sunrise over the pink mountains of Petra from the kitchen window of her new apartment. The sunrays danced on the rifts and fissures that crossed the mountains like wrinkles cut the skin of her old face. She had watched the sunrise for many springs, while shepherding goats as a little girl, while cradling her many children in her arms, yet not with a single grandchild of her own. Petra, the ancient Jordanian city, was now a world heritage site opened to mass tourism. Two years ago, the Jordanian government moved the Dulles, Zeina’s Bedouin tribe, from the rocks and sands they inhabited for hundreds of years into new houses with running water and flush toilets.

Zeina fixed her black hatla, the traditional Arabic headscarf that covered her forehead as well as the chin, and left the window. Behind her, a tea kettle boiled on a stove fueled by a rusty gas tank. Zeina removed the lid and smelled the brew – a mixture of sage, cardamom seeds, cinnamon sticks and sugar. She tossed in a handful of black tea, replaced the lid and let the kettle simmer to blend the spices into aromatic Arabic tea. From the outside came a sound of a car engine, still rare in the Dulle’s world of donkeys and camels, and Zeina harried for the door, brushing the sage crumbs off her long black robe. Her dry lips parted in a soft smile as she reached for the latch.

“Yamma!” Khaleed, her youngest son, exclaimed as he stepped in and gave her a long gentle hug. “Mother! I missed you, I haven’t seen you for such a long time!”

Three daughters and two sons bore Zeina before her husband passed away from a night’s chill at the age of thirty, but the dysentery took three of them and the fourth one left and never came back. Khaleed, her favorite, had moved to Amman to study at the University years ago. Now he worked at the Ministry of Ecology and Agriculture paying visits to his mother once a year on a good year.

She hugged him back and studied him intensely, noticing a few lines on his face and a few strands of grey in his hair, contemplating the same question as always. “Aimtah, ibn, aimtah? When, son? When will I stop watching my neighbors’ grandchildren to watch my own?”  The last few visits she stopped asking. His answer was always the same. The Jordanian women weren’t interested in a man who spent his days travelling the desert, taking water samples from the Oasis of Azraq and planting trees on the barren plains of the Dead Sea Valley. They weren’t interested in a modest government salary. A modern Jordanian bride expected her husband to come with a house, a car and money to spend on a dowry – a price paid to her family for taking her away. And of course, for keeping herself chaste and pure until the wedding day.

“I’ve just made tea,” Zeina said instead of asking her question. “Have some.”

“Your tea is always great, yamma,” Khaleed said tenderly. “It turns tastier just like you look younger every time you make it.”

“Don’t flatter me,” Zeina said as she poured tea into two glass cups and tossed in fresh mint leaves. She had her own touch to the ancient Bedouin recipe designed to reduce the body temperature in the desert heat. “My old woodstove made good tea. I used to leave my pot inside with the coals to simmer for an hour. This gas jet is good for nothing. If I boil the pot even for thirty minutes, the tea comes out burnt and bitter.”

“Maybe you just need a new pot. I’ll get you one.”

Zeina shook her head as she brought a dish of dates and dried figs to the table. “My pot is fine. The stove is not.”

Khaleed sipped his tea and took a date.

“Why don’t you answer the cell phone I got for you?” Khaleed asked as he chewed. “It would be nice to call and talk to you once in a while. I had to call the Mohammad family to let you know I was coming.”

“Your cell phone fell asleep two days after you left and wouldn’t wake up,” Zeina said indignantly. “I lived without it for eighty years, why do I need it now?”

“Did you charge it? Did you plug it in with that wire it came with?”

Zeina gave him a blank stare. Khaleed couldn’t help a chuckle.

“You have to feed your phone, yamma, just like you do a camel. You feed it once, it lasts for two or three days.”

“A camel can go for weeks without food,” Zeina retorted. “I’d rather have my camel and sheep back than the silly black thing with more buttons than I’ve seen moons. The children are skilled with buttons nowadays. They talk on the phones while they sell postcards to tourists. Right where I used to take my herd to graze. There’s no place to graze anymore so everyone’s losing their stock. I lost mine last year, remember?” 

Jordan overgrazing, deforestation and bad agricultural practices was a big problem the government was trying to solve. Khaleed’s department worked hard on replanting trees, replenishing water reservoirs and reseeding pastures. Rebuilding the desert took time, but the old tribes had no patience. Khaleed had tried to explain it to his mother many times, but she refused to listen. An old saying stated the young and the old were the same – they listened to thy words, but couldn’t hear.

Khaleed poured himself more tea.

“You still have Dhabu the donkey, yamma?”

“Dhabu died three moons ago. If he hadn’t, I would’ve packed my pots and rode him to Wadi Rum, to move with cousin Mustafa.”

“May Allah’s blessing be with you! Wadi Rum is a three day ride! You can’t ride a donkey for three days at your age. And what would you do at uncle Mustafa’s? You have a new apartment with running water and a gas stove. He still lives in a tent woven from goat hair, sleeps on the rugs and cooks his lamb in a sandpit fire.”

Zeina closed her eyes drawing images of Wadi Rum in her mind. Wadi Rum was the famous red-sand desert, with granite Siqs, the deep sharp fissures created by the earth crust pressures thousands of years ago, the moon-like landscape and whistling wind. Finally she answered. . 

“I’d herd the sheep and goats in the Siqs. I’d watch Mustafa’s grandchildren play and grow. I’d meet the sun every morning on the red rocks and bath in the rays before they get hot. I’d listen to the birds and stare at the night stars from his house of hair. It’s better than getting old in a house of running water.” 

“Why would you want to sleep on the rugs when you have a bed? And as to the birds, you can still listen to them in Petra.”

“You wouldn’t hear a donkey braying in Petra,” Zeina said. “Five hundred thousand tourists have trumped over my city this year, or so the teachers told the children at school. The kids speak English better than Arabic for they talk to strangers more than they play with each other. The children offer camel rides to the tourists so that families can buy canned food instead of fresh meat. I still have the deed signed by King Abdullah the First which states this land belongs to the Dulle tribe. I want my desert back and if the cursed tourists won’t leave, I will.”

They sat quietly together like two camels, the ultimate desert creatures who knew the quarrel was as useless as whirling dust balls. Why argue? The desert had been here a thousand year ago and it would be here a thousand years from now.

Finally, Khaleed spoke again.

“Yamma, why don’t you come with me to Amman? There’s no place there for goats, but there are places for you to watch the sunrise. I meant to ask you to come, that’s why I drove here. Come for a few days and decide if you want to stay.”

Zeina slowly ate a date and poured herself another cup of tea.

“A strange place it must be,” she murmured. “All the roads and no sand, all the cars and no animals. What would I do there, ibn? Can I watch the sunrise dancing on the rocks? Are there cliffs? What color are they?”

“There are no cliffs, but there are hills. There’s an old citadel and the old Roman ruins that are being excavated right next to my apartment. You’ll watch the entire city bath in sunrays from the top of the citadel. And if you don’t feel like walking, you can greet the sun from my terrace. I live on the eighth floor and the entire city will lie down below at your feet. I can see the palace where King Abdullah and Queen Ranya live from my terrace. I’ll show it to you. I’ll take you over to see it.”

Zeina mulled over his speech. The possibility of seeing the king and the queen, even from far away, was tempting.

“People say Queen Ranya doesn’t wear hatla,” she said.

Khaleed nodded. “Queen Ranya has very western ways. She doesn’t cover her hair.”

Zeina shook her head in amazement and then suddenly frowned.

“I can’t travel to Amman! I don’t have Dhabu!”

“You’d have to ride with me in the car,” Khaleed told her tenderly. “I know it’s closed in and you can’t see the sky, but you don’t have to cover up from the sand and the wind. Plus, it’s air-conditioned. You can get used to it, just try one more time.”

Zeina gave it another thought and made a decision.

“Let me put on my obaya, and pack my herbs,” she told Khaleed. “I shall see for myself whether Queen Ranya doesn’t cover her hair.”

***

Our Fleeting Past

A little over a year ago, an 85-year-old woman named Boa Sr died on a remote chain of islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Not just any woman. Boa Sr’s passing marked the death of one of the world’s oldest tribes and one of the world’s earliest languages.

In fact, Boa Sr was the last surviving member of the Great Andamanese, one of a group of 10 tribes believed to be the first descendents of early humans who migrated from Africa 70,000 years ago and arrived on the Andaman Islands around 65,000 years ago. Other groups migrated on to Australia and Indonesia, but in part because of their isolation, the handful of ancient tribes of the Andamans for the most part retained their way of life better than some.

Though they are part of Indian territory,
the Andaman and Nicobar islands are
geographically closer to Indonesia.

The cluster of 306 islands that make up the Indian territory of the Andaman and Nicobar islands northwest of the Indonesian island of Sumatra has a fascinating history.

Back in 1857, the British housed a penal colony there to imprison Indian freedom fighters. The native tribesmen weren’t too happy about their new neighborhood prison. Within the first 10 months of its use, the natives killed a third of the convicts with arrows. At least 70 escaped prisoners disappeared without a trace. Later, with the help of friendly tribal guides, the British government used Indian prisoners from the mainland to clear forests. There were reports of violence, arson, and an exchange of gunfire and arrows from encounters with resisting tribes.

Fast forward 150 years, and this chain of gorgeous, remote islands is a microcosm of the extremes of our modern world. On the one hand, the Andaman and Nicobar islands have become a major source of ecotourism for the Indian government, with their stunning unspoiled beaches, majestic coral reefs, and tropical rainforests. Estimated to be less than a third of today’s local population, the tribes that remain are slowly becoming more open to contact with outsiders and new settlers to the islands. The Andamanese hunt and forage part of the time and come into the new settlements at others, learning a bit of the local Hindi dialect so they're able to communicate with the newcomers and eating rice and dal as they do.

The population of Andamanese and Nicobarese are diminishing though. The ones living on the reserves rely on wild pigs and potatoes, for example, but these resources are dwindling because of all the encroachment, some from the poor migrants from the coastal parts of India and mainly from the large, popular resorts that attract flocks of international tourists. The trend began much earlier though, most rampantly in the 19th century, when the natives began dying off after contracting diseases from the outsiders.

Today, there are only five remaining primitive tribes on these islands, with a combined population of fewer than 500. Of these, about half, from the Onge and Shompen tribes, live on island reserves and have started to open up to outsiders, even receiving government welfare.

The Indian government tried to befriend another tribe, the Jarawas, from the 1970s through the 1990s, with mixed results. They sent boatloads of “gifts” to initiate contact. Literally boatloads: they got as close as they could to the island by ship then pushed boats filled with bananas, coconuts, strips of cloth, metal pots, and nails in the direction of the Jarawas who came out to watch from the shore. The Jarawas accepted the gifts but just didn’t want to be friends. Their hostility towards outsiders has only recently started to lift. (According to one report, there hasn’t been a “random” killing in almost a year.)

The Sentinelese, on the other hand, are probably the world’s only Paleolithic people surviving today without contact from any outside group, including the other native tribes. The Sentinelese are very hostile and never leave their island. Following the 2004 earthquake off the coast of Indonesia and the ensuing devastating tsunamis, an Indian Coast Guard helicopter flew over as part of a reconnaissance mission and released this famous picture, at left, of the Sentinelese preparing to shoot arrows at it.

The Great Andamanese, from which Boa Sr hailed, was once thought to have the largest population of all of these tribes. When first discovered around 1789, they numbered about 10,000. By 1857, when the British built its prison, the tribesmen had dwindled to about 5,000, with about 10 distinct groups speaking their own languages. By 1970, the Indian government moved the remaining 24 Great Andamanese to a reserve on the tiny Strait Island near Port Blair. They multiplied to a whopping 41 by by 1999, and today, there are about 56.

While that sounds like an upward swing, consider Boa Sr. When the chief of her particular tribe died in 2005, she was one of only a few remaining elders, including her husband. Soon, she was the sole survivor of that tribe. And now, no speakers of the Bo language remain.

Here’s a recordingof Boa Sr speaking this now-lost language:

Once in a Lifetime

A still from the new footage of an uncontacted Amazon tribe in Brazil.
© BBC/FUNAI/Survival VIA www.survivalinternational.org

When I wander through the ruins of ancient civilizations, I try to imagine what life was like in those times. Did people hold their babies in their arms and guard them with their lives, just like we do? Did they wonder why relationships had to be so complicated? Did they spend their childhood annoying their siblings? My musings may appear trivial, but I truly believe it doesn’t matter how different our cultures are, there are some basic human characteristics that are a part of our DNA, whether we like it or not.

As with other parts of the world, Latin America has its fair share of extinct cultures--the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas to name but a few. Learning about the ruins and how these once powerful civilizations fell has been an endless source of fascination for me. So much so, my last book, Vestige, explored a way the Incas could have perished. But what about the indigenous groups that live in Latin America right now?

Globalisation has been wonderful in a lot of ways. I love that I can chat via computer to a friend on the other side of the world. Using a phone, emailing, and faxing are all part of modern day society and have become ingrained in our lives. I do wonder, though, at what point this western globalization will go too far. Not everyone wants to be in contact via email, cell phone, and Facebook. And not everyone wants to dress like westerners or live our kind of lifestyle. 

In the 1500s, when the Europeans first arrived in South America, many indigenous populations vanished because of diseases such as smallpox, measles, and the flu. It’s not much different today. Some communities have lived in isolation for thousands of years and still use their centuries old techniques for hunting, eating, birthing, and medicine. They have no knowledge of the western world and no immunity to our diseases. It doesn’t take a scientist to work out what would happen if these people came into contact with outsiders. 

As an armchair anthropologist, I love to learn about both ancient and modern communities. I like to find out about a community’s way of life, religious ceremonies, and their relationships with each other and the world they live in. We can learn a lot from other cultures. But, as with most things, there are lines that shouldn’t be crossed.

The inquisitive side of me wants to know more about the tribes that live in isolation today. However, this information comes at a cost. I could never justify anyone suffering at the hands of someone else in a quest for knowledge, or even worse, for natural resources.

Photo via www.survivalinternational.org

In 1836, Charles Goodyear invented rubber, and by the late 19^th and 20^th centuries, the Amazon was targeted as the perfect place to harvest sap from the rubber tree. When mahogany became the wood du jour, loggers forced their way into the forests. Unfortunately, these are the places where many indigenous tribes live, and as a result, they have come face to face with a modern world. The people either fled deeper into the jungle, or became displaced and westernized. 

Thankfully, groups such as the Peruvian Native Federation of the Madre de Rios River and Tributaries (FENAMAD), and the Racimos de Ungurahui Project, have managed to secure territorial reserves in south-eastern Peru. The reserve protects three groups of indigenous people who now live in voluntary isolation and this ensures their rights are finally respected. 

Of course, these types of decisions can cause great controversy, as seen only a few weeks ago. Fisticuffs erupted in Peru after officials from the outgoing administration let slip there were plans to modify—and perhaps revoke—the protected status for reserves set aside for indigenous groups and the surrounding rainforests. With over 15 nomadic or semi-nomadic groups inhabiting eastern Peru, this would have a detrimental effect on the inhabitants if companies moved in to take the natural resources. Groups such as http://www.survivalinternational.org will ensure the new Peruvian government, which only came into power a few days ago, is aware of the impact on the indigenous people should the restrictions be lifted. 

Photo via www.survivalinternational.org

Growing up in Australia, I am well and truly aware of the impact one society can have on another, especially if the contact is forced. The city where I grew up, Geelong, has a long association with the Wathaurong tribe, and I am afraid to say the way the English settlers treated the Aborigines was atrocious. It doesn’t sit well to know there are groups of people in the world today who could be subjected to unwanted contact and their way of life changed forever. The last thing I want to do is travel to the Amazon in ten years time, look at the ruins of a village, and hear stories about the indigenous people that became extinct in my lifetime.

Click here for a short video that has some amazing footage of a tribe in the Amazon. There are also some very interesting points made by the man in charge of monitoring uncontacted tribes in Brazil.

A Flame Burns In the Desert

Zoroastrian Fire Temple in Yazd. Iran
Photo by Maziart

When the Arabs conquered Persia in the seventh century and imposed Islam as the dominant religion, they assassinated the last Zoroastrian king, Yazdgerd III, and massacred his family. Only one daughter escaped the carnage, Princess Nikbanou. She fled to a cave near Yazd, a city in the Iranian desert, where she begged Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian god, to save her life. In response, the earth opened up and offered refuge from the attackers.

Today, a shrine inside the cave is a major pigrimage site for Zoroastrians from around they world. It’s located near the village of Chak Chak, which means “drop by drop” in Persian, a reference to the dripping spring that marks the spot where Nikbanou disappeared. The drips symbolize the princess’s tears.

Let’s backtrack a thousand years from Nikbanou’s time and visit the Zagros Mountains in modern Iran’s western province of Azerbaijan. A man named Zoroaster (sometimes known as Zarathustra) had a religious vision that changed his life. God appeared to him in the form of Ahura Mazda, a figure with the body of a man and the wings, tail, and claws of a bird.

Zoroaster’s conversation with Ahura Mazda led to the birth of the world’s first monotheistic religion whose philosophy influenced the later faiths that grew in the region: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Zoroaster’s followers were the first to believe in the struggle between good and evil, embodied by the concepts of heaven and hell, as well as a final day of reckoning. At the heart of Zoroastrian philosophy is the trinity of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, reflecting the idea that humanity’s journey is a struggle for the triumph of light over darkness, salvation over damnation.

Tower of Silence in Yazd Province
Photo by Cate Bramster

This quintessentially Persian religion could also be described as the world’s first Earth-friendly one. Because Zoroastrians believe that the earth is a symbol of purity and represents the good side of the cosmic duality, while death is the ultimate evil, they do not bury their dead in the ground. This would contaminate the earth. Instead, they lay the corpses out on “towers of silence,” tall round structures atop mountains, where the bodies are exposed to the elements and birds of prey. When the flesh is consumed, the bones are raked into an ossuary pit in the center of the tower, avoiding contact with the earth. This practice may seem gruesome to modern sensibilities, but when you consider Zoroastrian philosophy, it makes perfect sense.

Zoroastrians are often mistakenly referred to as “fire worshipers” (atesh parast in Persian). This misunderstanding comes from the Zoroastrian practice of worshipping in front of a flame burning in a fire temple. In fact, the fire is not the object of devotion but a symbol, much like a Christian cross.

At the height of the Persian empire, Zoroastrianism dominated the geography of the ancient world, spanning the territory from Greece to Egypt to India. Today, adherents of the religion have dwindled in numbers along with the empire’s shrinking borders. In Iran today, only 45,000 people out of a total population of 70 million follow the Zoroastrian faith, and some put the Zoroastrian population at far less (10,000 to 15,000). So what happened to them?

A great many fled to India shortly after the Arab Conquest, where they still form the world’s largest Zoroastrian community, known as Parsis. (See Supriya’s post on the Parsis here.) Another wave of Indian migration followed nearly a thousand years later during the Safavid Dynasty (1501—1736). At other times, periods of persecution and forced conversion to Islam caused the population to dwindle further.

In the modern Islamic Republic, the official policy toward religious minorities is one of tolerance, as long as the different faiths do not proselytize or try to convert Muslims. However, official policy doesn’t always mean tolerance in practice, and many Zoroastrians have emigrated in the last 30 years. Zoroastrianism has never had much focus on preaching the faith to others, and Iranian Zoroastrians do not believe in inter-faith marriage, which has caused further attrition. Even in Yazd, the desert city where Princess Nikbanou disappeared, and the country’s holiest Zoroastrian center, the community has shrunk to only 200.

In terms of sheer numbers, Zoroastrians in Iran are indeed a vanishing culture. But when you consider the deep legacy the religion has left in Persian life today, the Zoroastrians are still a very strong presence. Their philosophy is found everywhere from fire and water symbols to Iran’s most important secular holidays (Norouz, the Mehregan harvest festival, and Shabeh Yalda, which celebrates the Winter Solstice), and even architecture, garden design, and the Persian reverence for nature.

Consider this: If you look up the city of Yazd on a map of Iran, you’ll find it at the very center of the country, situated in an oasis between two deserts. At the heart of the city stands a famous fire temple where a flame has been burning continuously for the past 1,500 years.

Does that sense of continuity give you a little chill? It sure does me.

Off the Beaten Track: Peace Corps

Edith McClintock returns as our guest this week. She’s an American writer and traveler and makes her living in the environmental field. Her first mystery, Monkey Love and Murder, is set at a spider monkey research camp in the Amazon . Her second is the first in a series about Miami politics. She blogs about her travels off the beaten track at http://awanderingtale.com/.

I’m typing this in Tusheti National Park in the Republic of Georgia, my feet perched on a wood stump in a small detached kitchen as I wait for the wood burning fire to heat up my water. I spent thirty minutes lighting the damn thing, only my caffeine addiction insisting I not give up.

Tusheti is a spectacular alpine region along the southern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains bordering Dagestan and Chechnya. I’m visiting two friends who are living here for the summer. One of them, Tony, trekked up the muddy road this morning to get a bucket of water before leaving for his hour-long walk to work. I’ve already used half of it to wash a few sweaty clothes from yesterday’s hike. I want to use the rest to wash myself, but that leaves nothing for drinking or cleaning hands post-outhouse, so I will save the bathing for another day as I have no idea where to find more water.

Tony and Seth are working at the park headquarters on an ecotourism project. Like me, they’re former Peace Corps volunteers here for three months doing a Peace Corps Response project. Tony is living in what used to be a small park museum, with empty displays and a gorgeous view of the surrounding mountains.

Unlike “normal” Peace Corps, we applied for our jobs (mine is at the Ministry of Environment in Tbilisi). The living standards and salary are the same as Peace Corps, but psychologically it’s light-years away. If we were still in Peace Corps proper, we’d be in training for another month, still learning the language and culture and living with a host family. We’d probably be in culture shock—with two more years to go.

Most Peace Corps volunteers hop on a plane with two suitcases, arrive in their hither-to-fore unknown country, and don’t even learn their assignments until the end of training when they move to their village or town or park—home for the next two years. I was fortunate enough to at least know my assignment when I left for Peace Corps in Suriname, but that jump into the unknown was definitely the scariest thing I’ve ever done.

I learned a lot during those two years. Including the many flaws of Peace Corps as an organization. The volunteers are often young and unprepared for what they’ll face: the rules and gossip endless, the misunderstandings between staff and volunteers often insurmountable. But the more I see of development work around the world, the more I respect Peace Corps volunteers. Not so much for what they do, but how they live.

Few foreigners go deeper into a culture. Because the work and pay is usually at the community level, you have to adjust your attitude to money, to shopping, to what you really need to stay sane and happy. You learn to take local transportation, to haggle over prices, and eat only local foods.

Right before I left for my original two-year Peace Corps assignment, a good friend from Brazil asked me, “Why would you choose to live in the developing world? I escaped from that and thank god every day I made it to the U.S.!”

It’s a legitimate question about why any sane person, certainly anyone over the age of twenty-one would choose near poverty for two years or to place themselves under the rather capricious patriarchal system that is Peace Corps, “the organization”.

It’s certainly not to change the world. If you join Peace Corps thinking that, even in reference to your village or school, you’re destined for disappointment. I think most Peace Corps volunteers will agree it’s more about changing yourself.

It’s better to join for simple, personal reasons. Whether it’s a love of travel, or cultural immersion, or love for teaching, or love for your counterpart. Maybe you just want to work in the development field and need to pay your dues overseas. Or maybe you want to escape the fast-paced technological world. Everyone joins for a different reason. But rarely is it as altruistic as it might seem to outsiders.

For me, I’ve done it three times now (two years in Suriname as a Peace Corps volunteer and two three-month assignments through Peace Corps Response). I’ve done it for job reasons (wanting to work overseas again) but also for love. Love of the unknown, of the adventure, of disconnecting, of the random, amazing people you meet along the way—even people from your own country you might never have met because of age or class or politics.

I love developing a new appreciation for friends and family back home. For the simple pleasure of a hot bath. For turning on a faucet that produces clean fresh water. But most relevant right now, I love the easy access that comes with visiting other Peace Corps volunteers—Tusheti being a perfect example.

I’m here in a park I’d never heard of a few months ago. I’m a tourist visiting friends. Yet because of their friendship and connections and language skills, we can wander over mountain peaks, through alpine valleys scattered with wildflowers and ancient tower fortresses, and into a remote, nomadic village and have the local policemen invite us in for a feast (a supra) today, a local festival tomorrow, and who knows what the day after.

A Prodigy In My Family?

Levy at a chess tournament

As a working mom, I had to enroll my older son in an after-school care program when he’d entered kindergarten. The program charged $7 for the unstructured afternoon time per day, and $10 for the enrichment option. I signed him up for painting because he loved to draw and chess because every person in my family played it, moi included. No one was particularly hopeful he’d grasp the concept – up to that point, my father’s attempts to teach him the basic principles failed miserably. Levy simply didn’t have the patience to stay in one place for more than a minute. Levy’s father said he’d do much better in gymnastics, but that class was already full. 

I figured Levy would learn the pieces’ names, some moves, and we’d call it a start.

My Size Trophy!

Whether it was the right moment, the right setting, or the right teacher, but the game took. Within months, Levy learned not just the moves, but strategy and tactics. When he started consistently beating every kid in his section, we took him to a children’s tournament hosted by Susan Polgar at her New York chess club (she was the Women's World Chess Champion from 1996 until 1999) – and he won first prize. 

In Russia, chess is as much of a favorite past time as baseball is in America. If you didn’t learn from your parents, you picked it up from your cousins or the elders on the park benches. Schools hosted tournaments, and social clubs sponsored competitions. Coaches scavenged students’ organizations for talent for their teams. Being a chess player was an honor. It meant you were smart.

Depending on the sources, chess arrived in Russia around the 10^th century by way of Baghdad, the Byzantine, or perhaps even the Vikings (see Supriya’s post on its history). Around 1262, it received a name: shakhmaty (checkmate). Supposedly, it was banned in 1550s by Ivan the Terrible for unclear reasons. The first chess book published in Russia was a translation of Benjamin Franklin's Morals of Chess. Then, in 1824, Alexander Petrov, who had held the title of the best Russian player for over half a century, wrote  A Systemized Game of Chess. In 1886, St. Petersburg held a telegraph match against London – and won. 

Infamous for their asinine judgment, the Bolsheviks were precipitous to dub the game as a "decadent bourgeois past time." Yet the ban was short-lived: the tradition had long roots and numerous enthusiasts, including the proponents of the new regime. When Chess Master Ossip Bernstein was arrested for being a bankers’ adviser and ordered shot by a firing squad, a Bolshevik’s officer recognized and released him. A similar story happened to the famous Alexander Alekhine who was awaiting his fate in a death cell in Odessa for alleged spying, when the Commissars’ Council received a petition from his fans, and set him free. The Commissars made the right decision: in 1927, Alekhine became the fourth World Chess Champion by defeating Casablanca. By that time, the socialist state counted 140,000 registered chess players. When the Fédération Internationale des Échecs – World Chess Federation (FIDE) created the Grandmaster title in in 1950, 11 of the 27 first grandmasters hailed from the Soviet Union.

The 1980s brought the world the unforgettable battles of Karpov-Kasparov. 

Garry Kasparov and Levy's team

Anatoliy Karpov learned to play chess at the age of four and became a Soviet National Master at fifteen - the youngest in history. Garry Kasparov, a half Jewish, half Armenian Soviet prodigy, began studying chess seriously after he nonchalantly proposed a solution to a chess problem debated by his parents. Karpov had been enjoying his ten-year world championship tenure when Kasparov challenged the title in 1984. A long and hard battle, it became the one and only world match to be abandoned without result because neither player could score enough points for a win. A year later, using a Sicilian defense while playing black in the 24th game, Kasparov became the youngest world champion at age 22. 

The laurels of the world championship come hard, but as a favorite hobby, chess can be motivating and addictive, although no victories come easy. Chess skills take a lot of studying and patience– books, lessons, private coaching. Most importantly, it takes perseverance. 

At age 10, Levy won the State Chess Championship and two years later became the second place player in the country for his age group. Alas, the triumph didn’t last long – his teenage angsts kicked in and he dropped out of the race. Three years later, on a whim, he decided it was time to come back, and within six months, earned the title of the National Master. 

Will I ever see his name in the list of World Champions contestants? I think he has the talent. I don’t know if he’s got the necessary level of obsession. Neither do I think that a fanatical fixation on 64 squares and 32 black and white pieces is healthy either. But I hope he will make an International Master one day. It would be cool to have one in the family.

Kasparov's chess books... autographed!!!

It's Just Not Cricket*

(Photo: B. Sandman)

On April 2, a most spectacular event occurred: India won its first Cricket World Cup in 28 years. I know it was spectacular because even though I don’t follow much of the sport, a global cheer was heard from Indians around the world. It’s a surprise the Internet didn’t shut down with all the high-five-ing that occurred on every social media outlet the instant the winning wicket was won.

Which, of course, led to the most popular joke going viral that day: “good luck getting IT support on the phone.” Clearly, ethnic Indians everywhere were taking the day off to watch the match. And then the rest of the week to party.

But amidst all the jubilation, there was also this major feel-good moment, one I wanted to embrace but couldn’t quite wrap my head around. Indians everywhere felt united by this victory – we were all just one big, happy family. It sounded so positive, so right, but felt so … off. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, nor did I really give it much thought. (I mean, it was only cricket, right?)

Until I read this article.  

Novelist Manu Joseph crystallized my sentiments perfectly when he called this group hug “a deceptive sense of wellbeing.” In India alone, Joseph so aptly explains, daily life “is a fierce contest between the affluent and the educated on the one side, and the brooding impoverished on the other. The pursuit of India’s elite is to protect themselves from India – from its crowds, dust, heat, poverty, politics, governance and everything else that is in plain sight. To achieve this, they embed themselves in their private islands that the forces and the odors of the republic cannot easily penetrate.”

And, he says, “The islands that protect Indians from India are simple and material: A luxurious car with an unspeaking driver who works for 12 hours every day at less than $200 a month, or at least an S.U.V. with strong metal fenders that can absorb routine minor accidents. A house in a beautiful residential community that the Other Indians can enter only as maids and drivers. Membership in an exclusive club. Essentially a life in a bubble…”

Joseph’s theory brings to mind the title of an old book, A Million Mutinies Now, in which Nobel-winning author V.S. Naipaul calls post-colonial India “a country of a million little mutinies.” In the 20 years since he wrote this travelogue, the disparities have only widened – maybe it’s a billion little mutinies now.

Our group hug wasn’t even fleeting – it was just delusional.

Within a week of India’s World Cup victory, two of the country’s activists went on hunger fasts to force the government to introduce anti-corruption legislation. Though the divide between the haves and have-nots are appalling, and the nation’s bureaucracy and corruption staggering, these powerful stances reminded many people of Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance movement and aroused feelings of patriotism among even the most skeptical. Again, global cheers – way to go, men! Show them how it’s done.

Within days, the men called off their fasts when government officials agreed to form a committee aimed at studying the corruption committed by, er, government officials. Woohoo… we … gulp ... won.

Meanwhile, not far off in the Middle East, change has arrived sooner. The ongoing Arab Spring is far from over, but it prompted one observer to wonder if the “heady jasmine scent from North Africa” could “waft across the Arabian Sea to India.”

Soon, I’m thinking, very soon.

In the meantime, there you have it – everything I know about sports, in a nutshell.

* My thanks to Alli for this great headline. "It's just not cricket" is an Aussie term that means "having something that is unjust or just plain wrong done to someone or something. It comes from the game of cricket, which is regarded as a gentleman’s game, where fair play is paramount."