The Many Faces of Iran

Khatam (marquetry) boxes from Isfahan

By Heidi Noroozy

Every year, Tehran hosts a folklore festival that celebrates Iran’s vast ethnic diversity. For seven days, the locals get to sample cuisines from every corner of their country, check out displays of colorful handicrafts, and experience a small slice of life in villages and nomadic communities from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf, from the Afghan/Pakistani border to the Zagros Mountains.

By some stroke of luck, my latest trip to Iran coincided with that festival, and I spent a sunny afternoon with friends one day, wandering about the grounds of the Bahman Cultural Center, where we sampled Kurdish koloocheh (a kind of flat doughnut) and sipped tea in a nomad’s tent whose sides were draped with colorful carpets. We watched a Qashqa’i tribeswoman make butter by gently rocking a cream-filled sheepskin suspended from a makeshift wooden frame. When night fell and the dancing demonstrations began, the master of ceremonies kindly saved me a seat right in front of the “stage” (a clearing in the crowd), which not only gave me an unobstructed view of the dancers but also a deafening proximity to the Qashqa’i drummer.

Like any nation with a long history, Iran’s diverse population reflects the country’s geographic shifts, with borders expanding in one period and shrinking in another, with entire communities being relocated to suit a leader’s political ambitions.

There are too many ethnic groups to describe in one short post, but here are a few that I've encountered on past visits:

Azeri dancers at the Bahman Cultural Center
in Tehran

The Azeris, or Azerbaijanis, are the largest minority, accounting for 15 to 25 percent of the population. They occupy four provinces in the northwestern part of the country—Eastern Azerbaijan, Western Azerbaijan, Ardabil, and Zanjan—and speak a Turkic language. If you’ve been following the news of the Iran earthquake that took place last month, its epicenter lay near Tabriz, the capital of East Azerbaijan. Azeris refer to themselves colloquially as “Turks” (torki), and most are Shia Muslims. They are well integrated into society and play important roles in business and politics. Many merchants at the Grand Bazaar belong to this ethnic group, and their language can be heard throughout the marketplace. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is half Azeri, with a father from Tabriz.

The Kurds are a Sunni Muslim minority whose territory spans four countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. The Kurdish populations of all four countries have pushed for autonomy from their governments in a desire to form their own independent nation. But even non-separatist Kurds in Iran are fiercely proud of their heritage, as I discovered on a trip through the Zagros Mountains. Close to midnight, my companions decided to stop by the side of the road—to stretch their legs, they said. We drove up a short dirt track to wide plateau, where they cranked up the CD player. After piling out of the car, we formed a line and danced to the rhythm of a lively Kurdish folk tune—with me stumbling along to keep up with the fancy footwork. The leader took my scarf and twirled it through the air as the line wove back and forth under a bright moon. When headlights signaled an approaching vehicle, one man reached through the window and silenced the CD player. We stood motionless under the starry sky until the other car had passed.

Iran has several Christian minorities, the largest of which is the Armenian community. This ethnic group traces its history back to the 16^th century when its members got caught up in a war between the Persians, led by Shah Abbas of the Safavids, and their Ottoman neighbors. As part of a “scorched earth” policy to prevent the Ottomans from launching attacks from Armenian villages, Abbas depopulated the border region and resettled the people in his nation’s interior. Because the Armenians were known for their artistic skills, he used them to help build his new capital of Isfahan, and the city’s Jolfa neighborhood is still a center of Armenian life in Iran. It has an Armenian school, 12 churches, and the beautiful Vank Cathedral.

Making butter in a sheepskin

The Qashqa’is hail from a nomadic tribe that traditionally led a pastoral life, following their herds of sheep from summer pastures in the mountains near Shiraz to winter quarters along the Persian Gulf. Today, most of them have abandoned the nomadic life, but they are still known for their skill in weaving colorful textiles, using homespun wool and natural dyes. Gabbeh, a movie by the Iranian filmmaker, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, paints a lyrical (if fictionalized) picture of life in a Qashqa’i tribe.

My husband is an ethnic Persian, but his extended family includes Kurds and Azeris. Through their eyes, I’ve learned about different cultural practices, languages, and—best of all—cuisines, which together form the colorful patchwork of Iran’s multicultural society.

Off The Beaten Track: Teaching in Georgia

TaChalla Ferris served in Georgia from 2009 to 2011 where she taught English to primary and secondary school students as a team teacher with Georgian counterpart (CP) teachers. Currently, she works in a public library in DC and is studying to get her master’s in library science.

When I was on the soccer team in high school, I wasn’t the MVP. I was picked to be on the team because I never stopped trying. I can be very persistent, which can be a weakness as much as a strength.

In Peace Corps, one mistake I made was comparing my school with the schools of other volunteers. Big mistake, I know. But when I listened to the other volunteers’ experiences, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was doing all that I should and could do as a Peace Corps volunteer.

So I tried some of the activities other volunteers were doing, and one (but not just one) failed completely. I thought it would be great if I bought the seniors notebooks and once a week they would get a writing topic (some I made up, some chosen from the national exam they have to take) and we would spend class time correcting their essays (if you can call one paragraph an essay).

With students in Georgia

It worked in the beginning, but after a while they just did not like it. Attendance was very low because as seniors they were spending a lot of their time with their tutors during and after school hours. This was frustrating for me because here I was (a volunteer) willing to stay after school to help them, but they chose a different path. I was a little hurt. I thought there must be something wrong with me.

Later on, I learned that some of their tutors were also their teachers during school. So the students would play during the day, but in the afternoon they would go to their teacher’s house for private lessons (lessons they should have been learning during school, not after). Also, I think there was an issue of loyalty. The students were comfortable and familiar with their teachers.

So, it could have been me or it could have been a question of respect and loyalty. I suppose I will never know. However, I did not let this stop me! I still gave writing topics to my seniors every week because even if they weren’t doing the work at least they were giving the topic some consideration. The topics I chose were topics that demanded the use of their critical thinking skills. Maybe they didn’t think about it that day or the next, but the idea was planted in the back of their minds. Or at least I like to think so….

With students and counterpart teacher in Georgia

About 85% of my time in Peace Corps, I felt like a failure. I couldn’t get my students or my counterpart (CP) teachers motivated. Even my host siblings did not seem to care. Many times, I just wanted to fling my arms up in the air, call it quits, and go home. But I didn’t. I stuck it out. During those moments of frustration I wondered why I stayed, but deep down, I knew the answer. I couldn’t quit. I was afraid to. In the villages, the schools were in poor condition with outdated resources. Teachers were poorly paid, often with little training. If there was a chance I could help even one person, I was going to take it. 

And not every day was a bad day. There were many wonderful, rewarding moments as well. Such as a getting my class of 25 fourth graders to pay attention in class and do their homework (thanks to great teamwork with my CP), convincing one of my CPs to attend a teachers’ training conference in the capital by herself (she was really glad she went, in the end), and taking the female seniors to the Peace Corps office to meet the female staff for a chance to get advice on going to a university and choosing a career (they really enjoyed it). 

In short, school drove me crazy, but it never failed to do what a school always does: educate. I learned a lot! I hope the students and teachers did too.

School Daze

By Patricia Winton

Stacks of notebooks and packs of pencils dominate the shops. New backpacks and diaries lure students to choose their annual identifying statement. But nothing signals the approach of the new school year in Italy like racks of grembiule (smocks) hanging outside shops catering to children. In the primary grades, pupils wear smocks over their street clothes, traditionally pink for girls and blue for boys. In recent years, that practice has given way to predominately white smocks with a touch of pink or blue collars or piping. And with a nod to the shameless advertising that targets children, pockets embroidered with images of Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse vie for attention.

These smocks are one of the most visible differences between Italian schools and American ones. I have no children studying here, nor am I employed by the Italian education system, but I do work for an adult program that contracts with secondary schools to hold classes after hours. Thus, I’ve seen inside a variety of classrooms over the past ten years.

One of the first things I noticed when I began teaching here was the omnipresent religious icon in most classrooms. Despite what you may think, Italy has no official religion, having rejected that idea after wrenching itself free from centuries of papal domination in 1870. Yet most classrooms sport a crucifix or an image of the Madonna—or both. For Italians, this is normal; many people hang such an icon over their beds at home.

The second thing I noticed is that schools do not have pencil sharpeners. Each student carries a small case supplied with pens and pencils, perhaps a short ruler and white-out, and always a little pencil sharpener such as the one I use for my eye liner. Students sharpen their pencils at their desks, often sweeping the shavings onto the floor. The more fastidious ones carefully catch the scrapings onto a piece of paper and carry them to the trash can.

Another notable item usually missing is toilet paper. It’s customary to retreat from the classroom with a little packet of tissue tucked in your palm. It’s simply normal. The stalls in Italian public restrooms have floor-to-ceiling walls with a real door, so it’s not unusual for males and females to use the same facility since there’s perfect privacy within the stalls themselves. In a couple of schools where I’ve worked, that unisex principle applied.

The classrooms themselves are basic. In the secondary schools where I teach, the students sit side by side at tables for two. Each is equipped with slots for holding books and an ingenious hook for suspending bags. There is generally a place to hang coats along the back wall. Most of the time, the blackboard stands free from the wall and can be flipped so you can write on both sides. I actually like this feature because I can write something I want to share later in the lesson and have it all ready when the time comes.

And then there are the bars. Every school has one. Students and faculty alike go for coffee or juice, water or sandwiches. Many school bars serve lunch, complete with pasta dishes and main courses. And while alcohol is not prominently displayed like it is in a public bar, an adult (over 16) can have a glass of wine with lunch or a bit of grappa in the coffee. And while I’ve never seen a student imbibe in alcohol on school premises, I’ve seen the principal have both.

My observations are superficial at best, but they represent the things that first struck me when I arrived in Rome ten years ago. But the longer I’m here, the more normal they seem.

Please visit me at Italian Intrigues  on alternate Thursdays. Next week, I’m writing about a special cheese

Ruled by School

By Beth Green

A public high school English class Beth
visited in Guizhou, China in 2009

They zoomed by on rusty bicycles, dressed in uniform polyester track suits that betrayed their school affiliation. Scraped-up rubber-soled shoes dragged on the pavement as brakes, while a buddy (or sometimes two) clung on the newspaper rack behind. The first time I noticed the kids in my neighborhood in China, I mostly noted their prowess in dodging through gaps in traffic that I, as a Westerner, perceived as an impenetrable mass of cruel speeding metal.

A few weeks later, my street-crossing skills having developed to a point where I could actually notice anything else, I checked my watch when I saw the scores of students zipping across the busy street to our housing development. It was already 10 p.m., but these high schoolers looked like they were just then making it home.

Around that same time, I began to teach my first English lessons to Chinese children at a private training center. For me, the job was quite a switch from teaching businesspeople in Europe—there, I’d worked Monday to Friday during regular business hours. But now, I taught nights and weekends. This was perfect for me, as I now had the weekdays free to explore China. But, inversely, what did it mean for my students?

With interest, I noticed that even our kindergarten-level English lessons went on till 9 or 10 p.m.; our grade-school level classes on weekday evenings were attended by kids hauling literal suitcases full of homework; our middle-school kids wore their school uniforms even on weekends. These kids’ lives were ruled by school.

World newspapers have already reported it: China has taken top marks in theworld’s scorecard for math, science and reading. My students were, to read about it in the news, braniacs in the making, trouncing the competition at international levels and jam-packing their brains full of the all-holy knowledge that was bridging the gap from the Second World to the First.

But when, I wondered, did these kids get to be kids? School is an important part of growing up (I am a teacher after all), but, in the West we’re taught that we are the sum of our experiences, not the grand total of our knowledge.

When did the youth of China get to have fun? In my English class, it turned out, and precious few other times.

There’s a Chinese maxim, which all students learn. In Chinese it probably sounds like any other proverb, but in English, you can see the emphasis: “Study Study Hard, Day Day Up.”

Many of my students, and not only the richer ones (though, it must be said, because I was teaching at a private training center, which required a not-small payment of yuan in exchange for tutelage, most of my students were at least middle-class) opted to board at school after age 11 or 12, not because their schools were far away (one girl told me her middle school was just down the road from her parents’ home) but so there would be less distraction from the all-important homework.

Homework (that dreaded H-word) made up such a large part of my students’ lives that it was a rare class indeed when my students didn’t bring it up—even in modules where I wasn’t assigning any homework.

“What did you do yesterday?” I’d ask, in my on-going war for correct usage of the past tense. “Homework,” I’d hear mumbled from all corners of the room. “What are you going to do the day after tomorrow?” I’d ask, jazzing up the group for a lesson on future tenses. “Homework,” a student would cry, flinging her hands up in the air and then mock-slamming her forehead on the desk. The only time I could get away from homework when talking about their daily routines was when I’d ask, “What do you do in your spare time?” Then, the answer was positively depressing: “Sleep.”

Beth with an adult English class in China in 2007

The debate between which educational system is better—the Western or the Asian—I cannot answer. Test scores speak volumes for discipline and the value families place on education. However, as anyone who has read the book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua knows, pushing kids to achieve-achieve-achieve can backfire as well. The scary statistics on student suicides also make an emphatic point against such high-stress education. But, I can offer some anecdotal evidence from my own years teaching.

My students in China found it easy—laughable, in fact—to memorize short vocabulary lists. Grammar rules were duly noted and could be recited (if not always followed). Games like “Hangman” or charades were played not on intuition or by inspiration but through a strategy (if it was a five-letter word, the students would often flip through the textbook, looking for words of the same length and not bothering to call out letters of the alphabet).

But, public speaking? The semester the foreign teachers decided all high-school level students had to sign up for, prepare and then deliver a two-minute presentation (on any topic—one girl talked about her shoes, another about a favorite Korean pop star), you’d have thought we’d asked them to break wild stallions. I had few students who were comfortable with addressing a group, even if they had time to prepare and rehearse—and, with no penalty for making errors, as we gave them marks just for doing it.

Group work was similarly difficult, even downright scary for them. My students shared with me that their public schools had zero emphasis on teamwork or on projects. While, sure, you can learn math, physics or English without doing a group project, there are few jobs in today’s world that don’t require some group participation.

A student practices writing an informal letter

Writing essays or mock letters—which is a standard requirement for many international English tests, for example the ones required of university students before they are allowed to study abroad—was a whole other quagmire of problems and misunderstandings. Several students attempted to memorize entire books of handy business letter phrases, then fit them together like a puzzle. In theory, that sounds good. In practice, I can tell you, it isn’t pretty.

So, those kids in Shanghai who knock the socks off their American counterparts with their blazing-hot test scores? Kudos to those kids, they’ve worked hard for their grades, and likely have sacrificed what we in the West nostalgically idolize as our “childhoods” for them. And, the rest of the world? Westerners are doing good with learning practical skills in their school experiences—can we learn some discipline too?

What do you think? Is there more to school than just tests?

A Bearly Alaskan Adventure, part 1

By Karen J. Laubenstein

Now in her second half-century with new bionic ears after being profoundly deaf for more than 40 years, Karen is President of Arctic Cliffhangers (Alaska Chapter of Sisters in Crime); Alaska State Writer-Editor, US Department of the Interior; passionate photographer; author; former speechwriter and ghostwriter for President George H.W. Bush and Senator Edward M. Kennedy; and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Benin, W. Africa); wife and mom; and, an inadvertent adventurer from Anchorage, Alaska.

Sometimes the results of impulsively grabbing an opportunity can be terrifying.  An hour before the deadline, a Facebook friend, Coby Brock posted information about a photo-opportunity-of-a-lifetime at the McNeil River State Game and Wildlife Sanctuary lottery. The sanctuary hosts the largest concentration of wild brown (grizzly) bears in the world and offers a lottery for 185 individual permits for a four-day period each year to visit and photograph the bears.  I quickly found the Alaska Department of Fish and Game website, completed the online permit application, and paid the $25 lottery fee. The odds were not good with thousands of people world-wide applying; I promptly forgot about it.

My first reaction a month later on learning I had won a permit was not exultation or a sense of victory, it was fear!  I have always associated grizzly bears with danger unless they were safely housed behind electrified fencing like at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center or the Alaska Zoo.  While bears are usually in the local news on almost a daily basis throughout the Alaskan summer months when they're not hibernating, the few wild bear sightings I've experienced I could count on one hand, and most of those were from inside a vehicle or train.

This is how I ended up flying August 6 on a small green and white Beaver-type floatplane after paying more than I could afford to haul enough food and gear to be self-sustaining in a tent for five- to-10 days.  As we rose over the town of about 5,000 and flew over Kachemak Bay and Cook Inlet in the direction of the Mt. Augustine steaming volcano, my heart recaptured the terror that began with the email and letter announcing I had won. As many as 144 individual bears have been observed at McNeil River through the summer, with as many as 74 observed at one time.

As the plane reached the land of McNeil River behind the volcano, snuggled between Katmai National Park and Preserve and Mt. Iliamna National Park, the sun turned the cliffs golden, the water glistened with many green hues, and the pilot flew low over McNeil River Falls as he circled around to the lagoon, and I got my first sight of wild bears!  They were furry blobs scattered around on the rocks, banks, and in the water at the Upper and Lower Falls.  I also saw a small group of humans with camera equipment sitting on a gravel pad right in the midst of the bears! 

I never felt even a jolt taking off or landing in that floatplane!  We taxied up to a half-mile long, high spit of gravel that separates the lagoon from the ocean waters of Kamishak Bay, and people stood there with luggage piled on rusty wheelbarrows waiting for their ride back to Homer.  Men in hip boots pulled the plane flush with the sandy shore.  Soon, I was standing in the midst of blooming fireweed and tundra shrubs with my bags and camera gear around me in front of the cook shack, choosing one of the empty tent sites to set up.  There were enough mosquitoes to be annoying, but not enough to call it bad, unless you've never lived in Alaska.  Small sparrow-like birds flitted through the underbrush, and sounds of people laughing came out of the cook shack beyond.

I opened my new tent and began setting it up, feeling odd not to have my husband or son helping, and hoping I was going to be able to do it alone.

"See the bear?"  A man smiled, pointing northwest at the spit.  Sure enough, there was a beautiful bear, its coat shimmering light brown in the sunshine; it ignored us and walked up over the spit we had traversed only moments earlier.  I fumbled for my Nikon to capture the moment.  My first McNeil bear!  A wild bear!  Only about 100 yards away!

That was the beginning of what became the adventure. 

I managed to set up the tent, realizing it wasn't high enough to fully stand in, but large enough for three people to sleep comfortably and thus fit all my bags and framed backpack.  We had to put any food or things with odors—face lotion, waterless hand cleaner, bug spray, sunscreen, breath mints, gum, etc.—on a shelf in the cook shack.  We transported water from a creek about one-quarter mile away in five-gallon jugs via the wheelbarrow.  We had to treat it or boil it for 10 minutes.  Everything I brought was dehydrated backpacking food, so water was crucial.  My military water filter was too slow, and tablets took too long, so I boiled. 

The cook shack has six propane burners with outside tanks, and Friends of McNeil River provided cookware and teapots.  The building has an extensive library, two large tables with benches, a wood-burning stove, and some gear, like 'crazy chairs,' which fold flat and are used daily on the trails when we stopped for bear viewing or waiting until it was safe to proceed. 

During an orientation and tour, we saw a sauna beyond the tent areas near a lily-pad pond.  Two outhouses stood a LONG way from the cook shack and tent area beyond a cache built to store food supplies, and the two staff cabins with their solar panels stretched beyond that.  From a lookout deck adjoining the cook shack, we learn the invisible boundaries that made up camp; we were not to go beyond those boundaries without the guides and their bear guns.  We could use air horns if we saw a bear in camp or to take to the outhouses in case a bear trapped us out there.  We learned to call out, "Ho bear!  Hey there, buddy!" in brushy areas or when coming around a boulder or where bear trails and fresh scat showed up.

Karen’s adventure continues next week. Her fear was well-grounded. A grizzly bear killed a hiker in another Alaska park shortly after Karen returned from McNeil River Falls. 

Educating Rita-Joon

By Heidi Noroozy

Tehran can seem like a drab city with its gray buildings and ever-present smog. But anyone who thinks there’s little color to be seen has never visited the city during the school year. Iranian schools are gender-segregated up to the university level, and it’s a common site to see flocks of schoolgirls heading to class or home again in brightly colored uniforms, looking like exotic birds in their pink, purple, and sky blue tunics, with hoods (magna’eh) of a matching or contrasting color.

My husband and I have no kids, and our niece is only three, so my experience with schools in Iran is not extensive. I’ve helped young relatives with their English lessons, only to find that language instruction is heavy on theory and light on actual conversation. As a result, my attempts to get them to speak English with me is often met with utter silence accompanied by much blushing and staring at feet. Iranians who want to become fluent in English generally take private lessons.

I’ve also often encountered these “flocks” of schoolgirls at museums, when their teachers take them out for an educational field trip. Usually, they find me—with my blue eyes, blonde hair, and pale skin—far more interesting than boring old history. And yet I know they study very hard when no khanoum khorigee (foreign lady) is around to distract them. Education is hugely important in Persian families from all walks of life—and not only for the boys.

The Islamic Revolution ushered in a lot of changes in women’s status, most of them not very good. Under Iran’s Islamic laws, a wife can initiate a divorce only under 12 circumstances (things like drug addiction, physical abuse, and abandonment on the part of the husband). A woman has few legal rights to her children, and her testimony in a court of law is worth half that of a man’s. But where access to higher education is concerned, the balance is flipped—in the favor of women.

Depending on which figures you go by, between 52 and 65 percent of Iranian college students are female, and this number is as high as 70 percent in some fields, even traditionally male-dominated ones such as science and engineering. My husband’s family reflects this trend. His younger sister, who was nine years old at the time of the revolution, is now a highly trained physician with a specialty in eye surgery.

Sociologists explain this surge by the fact that deeply religious families have become more willing to send their daughters to college, while more men are skipping college altogether in favor of making money right away (and an academic degree is no guarantee of employment). I wonder if it’s also due to emigration. I have no figures to back this up, but culturally Persian women are often reluctant to leave their families and start life afresh in a new country. Still, two-thirds of the students who passed Iran’s stringent university entrance exam this year were female.

But not everyone is happy with this high percentage of women at universities, as attested by a story that broke last week. When classes resume later this month, 36 Iranian academic institutions will ban women from 77 courses of study, not all of them what you might expect. They include English literature and education as well as nuclear physics, archeology, and business management.

The University of Petroleum Technology will no longer admit any female students at all, claiming that the harsh conditions in the field are unsuitable for their “delicate natures,” although this explanation does beg the question: Why did they accept women in the first place and why ban them now?

The most common argument is an age-old one: empower women through education and watch first the family and then society as a whole collapse. Patriarchal communities around the world have come up with this one from time to time. The heart of the matter is this: Some conservative clerics in Iran feel that the country’s universities are breeding grounds for subversive activity and want to refocus attention on Islamic principles.

Call me an irrepressible optimist, but I don’t think this ban is going to take root. At least not the goal it intends to achieve. The social reform that began under President Mohammed Khatami hasn’t been crushed yet despite many setbacks. Which means that Iranian women are a permanent fixture in public life, and they will always find ways to participate and contribute their full talents.

So the next time I visit Iran and find myself surrounded by schoolgirls peppering me with questions about life in “Amrika,” I will still picture them in the roles they will choose later in life: university professors, industrial engineers, nuclear physicists, and members of parliament. It may be a long time yet before one of them is president, but they can't be relegated to home and hearth.

Off The Beaten Track: Remembering Turkmenistan

Our guest this week is Heather Keyes. Heather now lives in New York City but spent a decade living abroad. She studied international health, spent several years working in international health market research, and now works in medical research, but has remained passionate about writing throughout her career. She believes she may hold some kind of exchange-student record (having been an exchange student in the AFS, Rotary, and Lions Club programs as well as having been a US Peace Corps Volunteer) and plans to write a book (or at least complete a short story) some day. The Tolkuchka market photos were taken by the friend Heather references in this blog entry (who prefers to remain anonymous online when permitted).

From 2000 to 2001, I lived in Lebap Velyat, in the eastern part of Turkmenistan. Before and since that time I’ve lived in New Zealand, South Africa, Norway, the Czech Republic, and Germany, though now I live in my home country (the USA). I’m not a big traveler—which surprises some given my history—but going places to work or study and spending multiple months or years is quite different to planning and taking trips, which is what I define as travel (at least in the sentence “I like to travel”). 

  

Tolkuchka Camel Market

I do not like to travel. I am (very) prone to motion sickness, I do not enjoy airports, planes, or buses, and I am terrible at (in no particular order): identifying what should be seen in/at a destination city; figuring out when a good time to visit would be; driving in a relaxed manner in any setting; altering my sleep schedule significantly; finding reasonably priced transportation; finding accommodation that isn’t overpriced as well as awful; picking restaurants that aren’t overpriced as well as awful; taking pictures; sending postcards; finding souvenirs that I or anyone would ever value; packing suitcases that don’t feel loaded with cement when carrying them; and being without filter coffee (or, as we call it back where I grew up in Minnesota: “coffee”). Because of these deficits—but also because I am well aware of the many interesting places that there are to see in our world—I am a major fan of this blog and I am grateful to friends of mine that indulge me with travel pictures and updates. I genuinely admire those who travel well and enjoy it (even though I know I’ll never be among them).

Tolkuchka Carpet Market

I spent the past weekend with a friend that I know from my time in Turkmenistan. We’ve now been friends for much longer than the time we spent there and many life events have occurred over this decade-plus of friendship. Nonetheless, when together, our conversations regularly take us back to Turkmenistan and this past weekend was no exception. As I rode the train (note the omission of train travel from my list of travel dislikes and deficits above) home to New York City on Sunday night, my mind was alive with memories from that time. As the week has progressed, those memories have spurred others, which have brought back even more.

Visions of camels and carpets and silk worms and mud ovens…that feeling of sinking your teeth into that fresh warm round bread or a ripe pomegranate… images of yurts, bazaars, flamboyant fabrics, and intricate embroidery… reflections on archeological ruins and nomadic peoples and history…memories of picking cotton and desert treks and spotting constellations in sky unimpeded by lights or humidity…thoughts of village parties and former colleagues (and even one former dictator) have been dancing through my head since my visit to my friend. I can feel the sun and the dust and that crunch of the salt underfoot when walking in (parts of) the desert.

Photo by Kerri-Jo Stewart

Re-remembering a place via a weekend of storytelling with someone ‘who was there’ was such a gift. The ability of the mind to collect and tuck away events as well as people, sites, smells, sounds, and stories astounds me. The ability of a friend associated with a time and place to access all those memories makes me grateful. I’m not sure that I’ll ever make it back to Turkmenistan, and I’m not sure that I need to, but something I will take from my experience there—and my experience this past weekend—is the greatest comfort that there is to the travel-challenged: a good adventure really can last a lifetime. 

So, go out and have one (or remember one)!