Porteriana - Islam in the Mountains

The locals were interested in our doctor, Lubov Vladimirovna Shvedova. I tried to be near, because it was very unusual for them to watch a woman walk down the street. They always asked, "Who's that? Why is she here?" I said to them that she was a doctor. That meant something to them. They asked, "Is she your sister?" They couldn't understand why the woman participated in the expedition. What role did she play? A woman doesn't have the right to walk on the streets. If she walks with a group of women, they all have to wear veils. We didn't see any women on our way through the villages. And if we saw some in the distance, they were wearing veils. It was Islam that wasn't touched by civilization.

Men who are capable of feeding several women, usually have several wives. It is normal there. Those who are not able to buy a wife don't get married. That's why everyone tried to be around us while we walked up the path. We were like creatures from outer space to them. Lubov gained everybody's attention. When the strikes arose, she said, "That's terrible! I'm alone here. There are no women at all. Where am I? That is just terrible!"

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Mullah of Diamarey village

Actually, you can't see any women here. They are in their homes. You can only see children on the streets, and if there are girls among them, they are not older than 10 or 12. An older girl tries to hide her face under a kerchief. She feels like a woman.

You notice that delicious food is not common to them. Almost everyone is rather thin. All men wear beards. They are very religious. They pray regularly (at least twice a day). Someone yells, "Allah", and calls everyone. Everybody leans to pray on his own mat. They always pray in the morning and in the evening no matter what kind of situation they are in. Everyone has their own prayer rug.

When we walked on the path, the locals always tried to walk along with us. It irritated us. A lot of people had guns, rifles, submachine guns (of Kalashnikov) and they wore bandoleers. That was a very unusual situation. We asked Samandar Khan about why people had guns with them. We had some thoughts about Samandar Khan being a representative of some kind of an organization, and that's why those people obeyed him. I am not sure, it was just an impression. I have to say that he prepossessed people. Such a man is needed on an expedition. You have to find such a person, because it is very difficult to deal with locals.

The locals tried to start a conversation to find out where we came from. They were trying to guess, and named Spain, America, France and so on, but never said Russia. They had never heard about such a country, and they didn't know where it was. It was a strange land for them, that was impossible to understand. Some had heard about Uzbekistan and Kirghizia. It seemed that there just wasn't any information about our country.

Almost all the locals were illiterate. Some serdars can say things in English even though they were not able to sign papers. It happened that our liaison officer had to hold some people's hand and to direct it to make it possible to sign papers. You can't really get completed documents and signatures from them. All the notes in the documents were made by Carlos or the liaison officer in English and Arabic.

The land is severe. Green plants can not be found everywhere. There are some places which are well groomed. It took a lot of hard work by the people to make it look that way. You can see potatoes, corns, and wheat growing there. Down the path we saw the fields with harvest. They had been furrowed and sewed. The agriculture is really different here. The fields are so tiny that there is no way they can feed people. That's why there was competition for a job in expeditions between porters. Actually no one takes food with them. We couldn't understand what they ate.

Nature itself is beautiful and very exciting. We had to walk up the gorge. Such gorges look very severe even in lowlands. Sand storms are frequent. Animals were grazing in the highlands. There were some green plants and grass even in the base camp. Down the slope there were oxen and cows grazing. The animals are not very big, because the flora is not rich. Even donkeys are tiny and can't carry the same amount of weight our Asian donkeys are able to transport. So we were amazed by the abilities of these people. They try to use each lowland that lets them make a kind of a field. Fields can be 5 to 7, 30 to 40 and 100 to 200 square meters long. The mountain slopes don't allow them to make bigger fields. Those seem to be like an oasis in a desert. The mountains are high and severe. Where there are fields, cultivated by men, there is life. That is very amazing.