Essay #17 (Gurban Bayram)

Today we began the 3-day holiday of Gurban Bayram, which seems to translate roughly as "sheepskin curb piles," or else "now what part of the sheep am I eating--the what?!" Again, these are rough translations.

I went to my grandma's house for the first time, and we had plov, the national dish of Turkmenistan, and salad, which is cucumber, tomato, and onion sliced or in chunks with oil and salt. I then got a mystery call (How do you know my grandmother?) from Bibi with an invite to a real Turkmen celebration. I headed over, passing sheep slaughter after sheep slaughter. These are occurring on the main road through the city, and the families from 3 floors of apartments line up outside to "make dinner". It's as if State Street businesses had their clearance sales on the sidewalk while the employees killed and plucked chickens for their Caesar salads.

I managed to keep all the plov down even after watching blood drain and made it to Bibi's in time for--how did you guess?--unnamed parts of sheep. Yes, I had some liver and I even tried some lung, but no one was forcing sheep's head soup down my throat! No one! I met Bibi's sister who is quite pretty and kept her mobile phone at her side, though it didn't ring. We had Turkmen tea, and I switched back and forth between Russian and English which has become more natural recently. My Russian is better by the day. We played a few card games, and I decided to head home around 6:00.

I walked out to the street, hoping it would be empty of the sheep that were now filling bellies. I was close. The meat, yes, had been eaten, but now every corner had a 4 foot tall pile of sheepskins guarded by a person on each corner. I didn't feel the need to know the exact process (which would have necessitated standing near the skins long enough to ask), but I'm assuming they organized themselves into buyers and sellers of sheepskin, and the buyers were waiting for more sellers before they filled taxi trunks with wool and headed home!

Since this is a 3-day holiday there may be more surprises along the way, but perhaps I won't be strolling around during dinnertime anymore . . .