Days in the Caucasus

by Banine

  They all loved card games, which they played with the greatest enthusiasm, due in part to their manual dexterity. Gulnar and I knew full well that they were cheating like mad, but this didn’t stop us playing, as we’d been bitten by the bug too. Sometimes we caught the cheats red-handed, and then things would become heated and quickly descend into a fight which always ended in tears for us girls, now penniless. The brothers, though, would compensate us for some of our losses: very generously they would occasionally invite us to secret orgies of tomato and aubergine conserve, so rich and highly seasoned that we would be left stupefied for a good while. They bought the conserves secretly from a one-eyed, pockmarked pedlar.

  But their most advanced skill was lying. They lied equally well out of necessity as for the fun of it, and even claimed that they lied out of kindness to spare adults the trouble of punishing them. They were confident, natural liars. I would even say they were graceful liars. They would take in the sharpest people with their air of absolute frankness that came more easily when they were telling the worst lies than when they were being totally honest.

  They took it upon themselves to explain to me the inanity of the theory, dear to Fräulein Anna, that a cabbage was the procreator of the human genus. They considered the theory hilarious and dismissed anyone who tried to promote it. ‘They think we’re idiots. I’ll show you a cabbage,’ Asad would say, making an obscene gesture.

  Dirty and scruffy by nature, they had a horror of water. But the lure of the pools was irresistible during the scorching heat of summer.

  In this desert land where nothing grew without artificial irrigation, water had to be drawn from great depths, emptied into pools and then channelled to the plants and flowers that would otherwise wither beneath the cloudless sky. More than a dozen gardeners spent their days watering the vast, walled garden. Shovel in hand, they would stop up the mouth of one channel with earth to divert the water into another, open and close taps, clean the empty pools and fill up the others. These pools were dotted liberally across the estate and came in all shapes and sizes: large and small, round and square, long and rectangular. Some were surrounded by walnut trees, others by roses. In some, mildew covered the bottom and the green water smelt of slime; in others, the glittering clarity of the water was an invitation to dive in.

  Nobody ever bathed in the largest of the pools, which was really a big, raised tank. It was too big for the gardeners to clean the bottom, so green slime built up there, smelling foul and giving the water a strange hue. The pool stood in the middle of a circle of poplars, which intersected the property’s broadest and longest avenue. Rather than walk round it, we would climb a large ladder to the top, stroll around the very broad ledge and descend via a symmetrical ladder on the opposite side. But there were no railings! I still don’t understand how Asad and Ali could hold frantic races in this dangerous place without ever falling, either on the garden side, where they would have broken a leg because of the big drop, or into the pool where they would have been drenched in delightful slime.

  Walnut trees surrounded the pool with a thick green curtain. Two benches faced each other on the ledge, placed in the shade of the trees’ highest branches. The ripe nuts would burst before our eyes and our indolent hands could gather them with no effort at all.

  Far from the house, this solitary spot exuded an air of poetic serenity. The opaque, bottle-green water seemed to hide mysterious creatures and when no one was there to tell me not to, I would lie flat on my stomach, bend my head towards the water and stare intently, straining my ears, hoping to catch these aquatic animals unawares. I would stay like this for a long time, holding my breath, until my shoulders froze. I would end up giving myself a fright, finding two terrified eyes fixed on me. Forgetting they were my own and remembering the Hans Christian Andersen story in which a naughty girl is lured into the depths and tortured by sea monsters, I would run as fast as my legs could carry me towards more prosaic spots, where the shouts of children brought me back to a reassuring world.

  We found our greatest aquatic pleasure in the Caspian, though. Just a few kilometres away, it looked very close and deep blue when seen from our estate, which stood at the end of a high ridge. Hundreds of squat, flat-roofed houses descended neatly towards the sea. They wallowed in sand, in which fig trees, mulberry trees and vines grew modestly. These small gardens and squat houses were not the property of proud Baku oil barons; this was where their poor relatives lived, ignored by fortune.

  The Caspian Sea is said to be in slow decline: to be shrinking, evaporating, vanishing. Imagining the day when it would no longer be visible from the terrace, I would be overwhelmed by sadness. At this tender age I was already troubled by the thought of the changes that befall everyone and everything in this world. But while awaiting its disappearance in a distant future, the blue sea shone magnificently and I would spend long periods contemplating it. We often saw tankers sailing by; sometimes they were ours and would greet us with a sonorous voice as they passed.

  Trips to this nearby sea were made complicated by the tediously bad roads. The sand was so deep on the road to the sea that it was passable only by cart, mule or pedestrian, taking two hours to reach the coveted beach. However, our intense longing for seawater meant we made this miniature expedition several times. The carts would be hitched up and covered inside with old, threadbare carpets. The party would take their places there, surrounded by bundles of linen and piles of bread and fruit. Off we went while those who stayed behind called Allah’s blessing on our burnt heads. The carts’ high wooden wheels would creak on the uneven rocks, then plunge into bottomless sand, throwing it spinning into the air. Since Asad and Ali preferred to walk, I did too, and we would follow the carts, hurling insults and making fun of everything, easily pleased as we were. The rocks hurt our bare feet and the sand burned them—but neither the rough rocks nor the burning sand, nor the prickly dry plants that managed to grow in this terrain, could stop us. Luckily our feet were used to all the hazards of the ground. My father had an impressive number of health rules, one of which was to give up shoes in summer. So we lived barefoot and the soles of our feet were permanently scratched, cooked by the heat and battered by the uneven ground, becoming as tough as those of savages. But however much we suffered on this arduous route (and we did, especially towards the end of the road), none of us would seek salvation by getting into the cart. As the oriental saying goes, ‘It’s a disgrace to get on a donkey, but a great disgrace to get off it.’ So, since we had chosen the thorny path of endurance, there was no getting into a cart for us.

  Our estate was located on a ridge: a steep slope led down to a valley, beyond which was the sea. As I’ve already explained, this valley was populated by non-oil barons, a good race but a little contemptible to our oil baron eyes. The differences were immediately apparent: the houses were smaller, the walls around the gardens lower, and in the gardens themselves were only fig trees and vines. No deep wells skilfully sunk, no artificial irrigation and its corollary, dozens of sweaty, labouring gardeners. A small, hand-operated well provided only enough water for the animals (including the humans) to drink. Houses were no longer lit by electricity but by oil.

  The race of non-oil barons was very kind, though: our journey would be punctuated by cries of welcome, and we had constantly to fend off invitations shouted over a wall or from the flat roof of the house. If their cries wore us down and we stopped at the home of a relative, we would be plied with cool water and force-fed grapes or figs, but also subjected to a barrage of gossip, rattled off at a remarkable rate in order to get everything out in as short a time as possible. ‘This is what Aghabaji did,’ and, ‘This is what Bahar Khanim said,’ and everyone would be shouting and laughing at once and, sometimes, cursing.

  Despite these visits to my grandmother’s cousin’s sister-in-law or my great-aunt’s son-in-law’s great-uncle, we would eventually reach the sea. Our bodies could sense its proximity before we saw it; our ears heard it, our noses picked up its indescrib
able smell, and breaking shells hurt our feet. Then we would turn a corner and it would suddenly be revealed to us in all its fresh, blue beauty; small, frothy waves hid modestly in the wet sand and a gentle breeze (as though from the evaporated sea) revived us after the twists and turns of the sandy road.

  The ‘civilized’ among us decked themselves out in the extravagant bathing costumes of the day: great black, shapeless sacks, made only more comical by their supposedly pretty ruffles. But those who remained faithful to Allah bathed in their undergarments: a long-sleeved shirt and long bloomers, an ensemble similar to modern pyjamas.

  Hardly any of these ladies had good figures, the price perhaps of a sedentary life, most of which was spent sitting on the floor. Sagging breasts and bellies were everywhere; it was a competition to see who was the hairiest, who had the shortest neck and the biggest buttocks. I often thought they had pretty faces but ugly bodies, may Allah forgive me. Fräulein Anna, in her smooth whiteness, seemed to me to be an exotic beauty and I couldn’t help both admiring and envying her.

  Leaving my heroic cousins to their maritime exploits, I lay in the shallows and let the little waves like white horses ripple over my body and withdraw, revealing me to the sun’s rays, before they washed over me again. I could have stayed like this for hours, but Fräulein Anna was on guard; she too was armed with an arsenal of health rules. She claimed that the Caspian, saturated with salt, was debilitating and after twenty minutes or so beneath the wavelets I would hear the German command to come out. Why did I always have to do as I was told? I thought with longing. Would it be like this all my life? I wondered, anxious and with a presentiment of the truth. Tedious duties would sadly always stretch time out into infinity, relieved only by meagre interludes of small pleasures. I sighed and as consolation for woes, both present and future, stuffed myself with fruit and bread, then bread and fruit…

  3

  My astonishing grandmother dominated the clan which gathered around her every summer. Her dimensions alone set her apart. When she rose to her feet, she looked like a giant from one of Perrault’s fairy tales. Looking like this, it would have been absurd for her to be meek and gentle, and she certainly wasn’t. All day long she could be heard giving orders, making demands and hurling insults, shaking the house to its foundations.

  Almost immobilized by her monstrous weight, like Louis XIV she found it practical to spend much of her time on a commode, a jug for ablutions within reach. Sitting regally on this throne, she received her supplicants, including men, before whom she modestly covered her face, as became a good Muslim woman. It should also be noted that she looked not only very grand but also perfectly respectable, since her traditional, richly pleated skirt fell all around her chair. Thus installed, Grandmother would reduce to dust some trembling, grovelling gardener.

  Her daughters, her sons, her sons-in-law—in short, everybody—submitted to the same strict treatment. Even when my father became head of the family on the death of his father, this made no impression on her. Really, he did as he liked but he nevertheless always sought to please her. It was only us, her grandchildren, who escaped her tyranny. We were her weakness, and we exploited this to extract a thousand and one favours. She plied us with her famous nut jam, the best in the world, hid us in her generous skirts when Fräulein Anna came looking, gave us pieces of cloth for our dolls, and loved us so much that she would even bestow a few kopeks on us from time to time. One of her most sought-after favours was, however, admission to her famous hammam parties.

  On those days an eager crowd of poor relations—the women from the valley, who constituted Grandmother’s regular retinue—would turn up with their babies and bundles of linen under their arms. Since morning the gardeners would have been at work heating the hammam, which consisted of an anteroom, a room for undressing and, finally, the hammam proper. The hammam contained two large pools, surrounded by stone benches; one pool held hot water, the other cold, liberally dispensed from the numerous taps protruding from their high sides.

  Many were the pleasures to be had in this blessed place. Hair was washed with a type of clay; massages were given and received; body hair was removed using thread, a method unknown to Europeans, and depilatory creams, which were forerunners of the Taky brand but even fouler smelling; henna was applied to every possible part of the body. At other times, there would be a massacre of lice; for reasons that remain a mystery to me the poor women were often infested with them, despite their conscientious weekly washing.

  But these corporeal concerns still left room for matters of the spirit and, while they bathed, the women would chat, gossip and tell stories. The dense steam went to their heads like wine. Between washing their hair and depilating their thighs, they would on occasion be bold enough to arrange a marriage, which only increased the prestige and renown of the hammam parties.

  I stopped at nothing to gain admission to these celebrations of body and soul. On one occasion, Grandmother had refused me entry to paradise for no good reason; feeling most aggrieved, I decided to get my revenge. I waited until all the women had gone into the hammam, then locked them in with the key that was kept outside and hid it. This cunning trick accomplished, I went off to play with the other children and forgot all about it.

  When the ladies had finished their complex cleansing rituals and wanted to leave the hammam, to their surprise the door wouldn’t budge. They started banging on the door and shouting, but nobody passed that way. The windows were high up in the bathhouse so the women couldn’t reach them; they were shut in. An hour of banging and shouting met with no response. They fell into tragic despair. Another hour passed of hunger, steam and increasing commotion. At last a gardener happened to walk by the hammam, which was set apart from the other outbuildings, and heard the racket. He went up and listened through the door to their catalogue of woe, interspersed with hysterical sobs. He discovered that the key was missing and raised the alarm. Another key was easily found and the poor women were freed, half-baked, suffocated and totally drained of emotion.

  I nearly fainted from terror when I realized the enormity of my crime. I took the coward’s way out and didn’t own up, letting suspicion fall on Asad and Ali, whose vehement protestations of innocence were not believed. Their punishment was light, for lack of proof of their misdemeanour, but it seemed harsh to the innocent boys. Once my fear had passed, I revelled in the comedy of the situation: for once my cousins were not lying, just for once… and they were not believed. What just injustice!

  On other days the poor relations came to do their laundry in the frog pool under Grandmother’s watchful eye. The frogs had made the pool their headquarters, hence its name; when evening came, a fearful, deafening racket started up. ‘Those frogs,’ everyone would say in tones of disapproval, shaking their heads, but the frogs couldn’t care less and just croaked more loudly.

  The pool was low with a broad rim, two features that made it the ideal spot to do the weekly laundry. The murky, even dirty, water did not deter the washerwomen. This was where ablutions were performed, babies bathed, and a wide range of other things washed, from feet to Grandmother’s dishes.

  One day Asad and Ali came to find me, bringing some good news: they were planning to play a trick on a great-great-aunt three times removed by the name of Amidostu, whom we hated for reasons that were obscure: she had never done anything to us. So I followed my beloved cousins as we headed for the frog pool, looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in our mouths.

  That day a dozen washerwomen were sitting on the rim of the pool, furiously pounding their laundry. Their veils fluttered behind them like banners, as the women didn’t bother to cover their hot, sweaty faces—they knew that no man of the household would come near the pool on the weekly washing day. Brown hands, fingers and palms dyed with henna beat, rinsed and wrung the laundry. The water in the pool became choppy, large waves rippling from one side to the other. But manual labour in no way impaired the women’s verbal capacity. The greater their physical exertion, the grea
ter their need to give vent to their feelings. The conversation was, therefore, intense, rapid-fire and riotous. Only when Grandmother spoke did the women fall into an immediate, respectful silence. Grandmother didn’t do any washing, but kept her beady eye on the laundry’s progress while dropping words of wisdom into the choppy waters of the pool. Grandmother didn’t really address anyone in particular; her words were intended as much for the mulberry trees as for the birds, for the water as for the women.

  Grandmother was speaking as we approached, but stopped for a moment to look us up and down suspiciously.

  ‘What are you doing here, creatures of Shaytan?’* she asked.

  ‘Nothing, Grandmother, nothing at all. We’ve come to keep you company,’ we replied sweetly, keeping up our performance by kissing her cheeks, damp with perspiration in the sweltering heat.

  Grandmother was not convinced and continued her mistrustful scrutiny. She knew from experience that nothing good ever came of Asad and Ali looking demure. But we sat down quietly around her, and Grandmother turned away, sighing.

  Asad and Ali had not yet reached the fateful age of thirteen, which would bar them entry to feminine society. While they were not yet fully fledged males, they did not miss out on the intoxicating and pleasurable atmosphere of the weaker sex. These ladies left their streaming faces uncovered before them; their veils continued to flutter on their shoulders like banners and they beat and rubbed and wrung out their laundry with an ardour that even the sun could not extinguish.