An Afternoon Feast

Today I’m going on a picnic. Apparently, so is the entire neighborhood. From the corner where I’m standing, I can see a dozen people banging in and out of their gated yards as they repeatedly remember things they’ve forgotten. A couple of scruffy kids, burdened as I am with sheepskin mats, scurry around me. They fire “Hellos” like machine guns: Hello Hello Hi Hello. My eight-year-old host brother, Tamerlane, joins the fray and announces loudly and proudly that I’m his big brother. Just to prove his point, he says in his best English, “What’s up big man?” My casual “Nothin’ ” seals the deal, and he leads the pack of kids off to play.

People are starting to gather, carrying bags filled with cups, plates, sugar and rice. The patterns of red, green and yellow on the mothers’ scarves are made especially vivid beneath the bright sun. The mongoloid faces of sturdy men carrying kazans, giant cast iron woks, serve as another reminder that yes, yes I’m in Asia. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that among Kyrgyzstan’s drab streets and holdover Soviet bureaucracy.

This is turning into quite an affair. There are at least a dozen people on the corner, nearly all women, each one with a husband somewhere. A rickety school bus races toward us in a cloud of dust. Rust orange and clanging like a band of pots and pans—that’s our ride.

Instead of piling on, my companions all announce that they’ve forgotten something and go running off to their homes. Once the dust has settled and we are all on the bus, a few botched starts send the driver to the engine. When he gets back on, he brings our final passenger: a wooly black sheep, which is tied up in the back to bleat, bray, trample and munch. This is my first bus ride with a sheep.

Everyone keeps telling me this is a picnic, but it’s like no picnic I’ve ever seen. Where’s the potato salad, the chips, sandwiches, hot dogs, fried chicken? Why do we need all this stuff: plates, cups, sugar? And if the chaos of departure is any indication, we’ll probably never eat. Heck, we’ll probably never even get there.

How wrong I am. We go off road, and the bus splashes through streams, crunches over brush and veers sharply left then right to avoid trees and rocks too big to be trampled. We stop. And before the bus is even unloaded, everyone is hard at work. Young men gather firewood, older men set up the stoves—two halved barrels that cradle the kazans in their mouths. Women fill samovars, wood fired tea-kettles, and lay out the mats in a giant rectangle. The hearty mountain grass in the middle is covered with a patchwork of plastic tablecloths. The chaos of before has been replaced by an artless order, and it’s not long before we’re seated for tea.

It’s late fall and the sun melts through the brisk air, rewarding our journey. Dense, flat loaves of bread mingle with lighter, rounded loaves; bowls of sugar and jam, playfully teetering on the uneven ground, wait in anticipation of tea. So do I. And so they come, steaming cups of tea steeped in the crisp mountain water. Between the hot beverage, the warm sun and the jovial conversation, I can’t think of a better way to spend a day. The men are hatted—their kalpaks (traditional felt hats) jut up in soft peaks, mimicking the mountain ranges in the distance. As is often the case, I spend my between-sip moments answering questions about America and my thoughts on Kyrgyzstan. Rustam, the local Imam, speaks up for me at one point. He lets them all know that I’ve been going to Mosque and am an excellent student. I think he’s trying to make them feel guilty: “Look, here’s this American, and he comes, why don’t you?” But I doubt it will work. Even though many don’t attend service, Rustam is one of the most respected people in the village, and he takes the lead in many community functions.

For instance, after tea, Rustam leads us in prayer before we kill the sheep. Our swelled ranks, about 25 of us, stand in a group facing Mecca as he gives blessing for the bounty reaped and the sacrifice given. I’m not sure if this is purely Islamic or a commingling of tradition and religion, but the experience is edifying. Going from prayer to the bleeding throat and final gurgled bleats connects me to the food chain like I’ve never experienced. It’s a far cry from packaged lamb chops in a cooler case.

After the sheep’s death, unspoken groups form again. Men sit around the table talking, a few abscond over the hill for vodka and others tend to fires below the hulking kazans. I stay with the sheep, watching it skinned, divested of organs and butchered. The kids run off to the river with a makeshift net in hopes of catching a few big fish. The women are furiously chopping onions and carrots, laughing and talking fast. When I sit with them they make jokes about me that I don’t understand and laugh at my mannerisms and linguistic idiosyncrasies.

The disparate groups reconvene, with a lower sun, around tea once more. After tea, we get down to business: boned slabs of meat. Legs and ribs with copious amounts of clinging fat are distributed. Status dictates portion, and thankfully my status is low. My “guest” cachet is finally wearing off; I used to be treated to a lion’s share—which meant a lot of fat and a little meat. I take my lean, greasy rib in hand, and reach back for my knife. Men carry knives here. Slim and short bladed, they are as far as I can tell only used for occasions like these.

There’s a slight wind. Smells of frying onions, boiling meat, grass and musty river stumble through our repast. While our knives rest, we swill greasy cups of steaming broth. A communal bowl is circulating. It’s filled with broth and organ meat. Each time it passes I submerge my fingers in the broth and pluck out another piece of lung, intestine, liver or kidney. Nothing’s wasted here. Every piece of the sheep is part of the meal. Everyone generously jockeys with their neighbors, trying to get them to take a greater share. Giant plates of plov arrive. We all reach in with our hands and begin heaping our neighbor’s plate with the richly flavored rice dish. From the tea to the rice to the sheep, everyone has shared in creating this feast. It seems as though everyone wants to play host, too.

I’ve experienced this ritual before, dozens of times, at weddings and holidays. But it’s different this time. There aren’t the same signs of exhaustion; the smiles and the conversation are brighter. The only concern is an empty plate. Snowed-in peaks rise up from rugged, grassy hills in the background. I can hear the rushing of the river nearby and the gurgle of the stream. The ground is boggy and gives a little beneath me. Leafless saplings scratch at the sky.

As I look around me I start to understand something. I am struck by the way that the Kyrgyz, a traditionally nomadic people, take to the field with such naturalness and ease. When I picnic, I take an abridged version of my indoor life to the outdoors. Living in houses, they’ve brought their entire outdoor ethos inside. Here, under the sky, is a pilgrimage to a recent past. A celebration of identity and heritage, and an acknowledgement that everything changes and everything stays the same. Or at least that’s how I see it.

The dishes are cleared, and I transfer the grease on my hands to my pants. A group of children run off with the sheepskin to sell it in town and buy candy for everyone. The sun is low in the sky, but the samovars are bubbling and smoking with effort, and we all sit contentedly, waiting for tea.