Abakan flashbacks of Kazan

Hi folks, We made it back to Abakan, capital of the Khakassia Republic. I believe Miia is at this very moment giving an update of recent experiences, so please allow me to indulge in a flashback to Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan in Western Siberia.

Our overnight train trip from Moscow to Kazan was perhaps our best of the trip. We very quickly met Regina, a retired theatre actress, Ivan, a 21-yr.-old returning home from 3 months in New York State (who became our trip translator), Tanya, and a nice lady who bought us tea after talking to us at length in Russian before realizing our responses were clueless and in English (I think she was hard of hearing). She felt a little silly when she clued in but was nothing but gracious to us. En route the train stopped long enough for us to stretch our legs in Vekovka, where employees of the local glass factories were hawking giant chrystal chandaliers and classy wine glasses. We bought some chicken and fried potato bread instead.

I had another encounter with zenophobia as I stumbled to the train's bathroom in the night. A young man low on vodka growled at me in the isles and wouldn't let me pass until his friend made light of the situation by teasing my English 'excuse me' and pushed his friend aside (it's always the little ones who make the most noise). He followed me back to my bed and tippy-toed to reach my upper bunk face and let loosed a soft but stern Russian-language lecture. As he leaned closer and closer and I prepared for the possibility of a physical encounter, Regina tapped the back of his knees and told him to bugger off. Saved by an old lady again! The babushkas reign supreme here and I am fortunate that they seem generally charmed by my wife and me.

So much was Regina charmed that she invited us to her soviet bloc apartment, which was tiny and crammed with mementos of an epic life story (and one social worker who rents the only bedroom.) Regina showed us her photo album, the pages of which spilled forth Hollywood-style imagery of an actress in her prime, beautiful and expressive. There were also her travel pictures - she backpacked all the way to the Kamchatka Peninsula (in the far northeast of Siberia, not too far from Alaska) with a rough cloth backpack and had a few stunning photographs that sparkled through their black and white past. In her bed we took a much needed nap and she treated us to a wonderful home-made soup to power us up for a day on the town before our next overnight train (to Omsk).

Kazan has a slight majority of muslim Tatars and a plethora of landmark mosques dotting the skyline amidst the usual dazzling display of Orthodox churches. Our first stop was the mosque practically in Regina's backyard. We asked around a bit until we found a woman who agreed with no hesitation to take us inside, asking every person along the way if they spoke English. Miia looked up 'community' in our dictionary and the woman agreed that the sense of community around the mosque is very strong. We took our shoes off at the entrance and one of the glass-eyed men there handed Miia a head-scarf. She told me later that it was a bit strange to wear it mainly because I didn't have to and that difference separated us. (I told her I feel the same way whenever she wheres a dress.)

The inside of the mosque was uniformly adorned with a gorgeous patterned pale red rug that seemed to funnel us in the proper direction: upstairs, where the men were praying, some on their individual prayer rugs facing Mecca, some singing to God from a private corner. Collectives their calls to God filled the cavernous well-lit room, which bounced the sounds back into our bodies and filled us with a great inspiration, power, strength, beauty. We stood and smiled like idiot tourists do and just felt it: spirit.

Outside our hostess finally found someone who speaks English: Rashad, a teacher at the Islamic university. He gave us a tour of the city block and informed us that Ramadan had just begun and he was now fasting, which he finds easier and more joyful every year. He asked us what we knew of Islam and we said some, but far from much. He asked what we thought of the practice of women wearing a headscarf and Miia said it was not for us to pass judgement on someone else's traditions. I observed that in Indonesia many women choose to wear it (called the jilbab in Indonesia if I recall correctly) and many choose not to, that there it is a personal choice. He nodded, seeming appreciative of the tidbit. He himself is from Azerbaijan, but before I could ask him if it was difficult to fast when days can be so long in the north, he said his goodbyes. Being a university professor I imagine he is quite busy and, remembering a time when I was too busy, I appreciated the time he took to spend with us. I think perhaps I got more from the exchange because he never looked Miia in the eye.

We navigated Kazan easily, it was a grid and the smallest city we'd yet seen in Russia. We wandered down the canal, past the United Colours of Beneton sign, through a markplace of cafes and into the Peter & Paul Cathedral, yet another towering piece of art filled with golden icons climbing sculpted walls toward Jesus. Miia bought a nice little souvenir placard with a saintly image that we think is Peter the Great.

On we went, all the way to the Kremlin at the northwest extreme, was an open chest of treasures. We were first drawn to the Kul Sharif Mosque, a staggeringly big turqoise crested jewel in the middle of a marketplace selling pillbox hats, wool scarves, and the usual postcard kitsch. A babushka, upon learning we were Canadian, did her best to work us past the door's guards, but it was prayer time and closed to the public. We gained a full understanding of why an hour later, when we joined a non-muslim noisy stampede through the sacred ground, some flashing photos in front of the 'no photography please' sign. It was quite the contrast from our trip to the other mosque, during which we felt more like visitors than tourists. Still, the Kul Sharif is a beautiful spectacle to see.

At night-time we took a slow pace back to Regina's, nursing sore throats with green tea at a Russian pizzeria and comparing the tendency for 'ethnic' restaurants run by immigrants in Canada v. the same run by Russians in Russia. We took a quick peak at a statue of Lenin, who was kicked out of a the Tatar university for being too radical and associating with shadowy revolutionary types, then returned to Regina's bleak apartment complex and warm apartment in the dark of night. We showed her some of our own photos on our laptop and she lamented her current poverty; she cannot afford to travel like us, and she has never swam in anything resembling the lakes of Finland. We felt guilty of our own privilege then, but it reinforced how lucky we are, and how important it is to get back to social justice work, even if we fail, better to have tried to even the playing field of life just a little bit.

Chris