March 20th and 21st we celebrated the Muslim New Year, Nowruz. Many volunteers used the long weekend as a time to go back and visit the capital, but I had heard from a Turkmen friend that there was a big celebration here, so I decided to stay in town. The whole week before, I started excitedly asking people about the celebration, but they looked at me blankly, “We stay home and do housework.” Then I heard about the concert in the park and convinced my sisters to go. Everyone under eighteen was out, circling the small park in their finest dresses. The park is smaller than a city block. Unfortunately, despite the good turn out, the concert was merely a DJ who played literally two songs before packing up to leave. So much for a spring festival. The exciting part of the park was realizing how many people I know in the town, feeling like I’m starting to integrate.
There is one special thing that many families do for Nowruz: cook sumelek. “Sumelek is a Turkmen national dish,” everyone proudly tells me. It is wheat that has been boiled in a giant vat for twelve hours with constant stirring. Then is it left to sit for another 12 hours. It is a deep brown and has the consistency and likely the taste of library paste. You eat it by dipping your pinky in the bowl and making a wish. You can also make a wish if you are one of the people that helps do the twelve hours worth of stirring.
As it turns out, the big celebration this week was my host-father’s fiftieth birthday. We rented outdoor tables and chairs for fifty guests and served a seven course meal. All the women in the family stayed home to help and I pitched in later when I got back from work. The first course was the hors d’heuvres: four different kinds of salads (beet, potato, layered fish salad and mushroom), a plate of fried foods (chicken, fish, French fries, fried dough and fried meat dumplings), a plate of cucumbers, tomato, dill and scallions. Next came somsas (savory meat pies), followed by goat soup, stuffed cabbage and a sort of casing-free sausage called lule. Each of these four dishes would be a meal in itself on another night. Then came another soup, a broth filled with handmade noodles. The only relatively simple thing was the desert - plates of dried fruits and nuts, chocolates and store-bought baklava.
Throughout it all, the young people served and cleaned while I toggled between trying to help (but generally getting in the way), and sitting at a rowdy table of middle-aged woman, taking shot after shot of vodka. The older women are like frat boys seeking to initiate you, so great is the pressure to drink. Around 10:30, when only the intimate friends and relatives remained, my host uncle gave me a very emotional introduction and called on me to toast my host father. My toasting vocabulary is rather limited, so I had to repeat the toast I had already offered at a smaller table. Though I went to bed around midnight, my sisters tell me that the revelry lasted until three.
THIS IS THE END
14 years ago
