Why Zuzanna Ginczanka wrote in Polish? (poetry from Poland cycle)

Some time ago I started a blog with English versions of poems inspired by poems written originally in polish, it was called Polish Poetry in English.  However, for some reason which I don't understand one day I was denied access and could not continue. I thought recently that I might as well place those poems here, after all you can also ask a globetrotter about poetry. I'll start with Zuzanna Ginczanka, whose poem "Non omnis moriar" cannot really be translated as such, only written anew. But this is actually not very characteristic poem, her poetry was much more optimistic, full of light and colours and dreams of love. So I add a few more poems.

Zuzanna Ginczanka was born in 1917 in Kiev as Zuzanna Polina Gincburg. Soon after the Russian Revolution her parents moved to Rowne, which was then in a newly created Republic of Poland (it is in Ukraine now). Rowne was a town whose majority of inhabitants spoke Yiddish, but Zuzanna's parents were emancipated Jews and spoke Russian at home. Thus she had a choice of a language: either Yiddish of the shtetl, Russian of her parents or Polish of her school friends. Fascinated by Polish poetry, she chose Polish and wanted to become a Polish poet. She started publishing her poems when still at school. During her studies in Warsaw she entered literary circles; one of her friends was Witold Gombrowicz, another Julian Tuwim. She published her works mostly in periodicals, only one book of poems appeared before the war. As a pen-name she used half of her Jewish surname with a Polish ending.

During the war she lived at first in Lvov, later in Cracow. Her life is a perfect example of the tension between the Polish underground state, which tried to protect its Jewish citizens, and some of the anti-Semitic Poles, who co-operated with the Nazi authorities. As a fluent Polish speaker she could pass for a non-Jew (most Yiddish speakers spoke Polish with a strong accent), and her friends, who were involved in resistance, found her a new identity. However, her neighbour in Lvov, one Mrs. Chominowa, reported to the Nazis that a Jewish woman lived next door and they came to arrest her. Zuzanna's Polish friends managed to spirit her away in time and she moved to Cracow. There she was arrested again, this time as a member of the resistance, not as a Jew. She was executed in 1944, not long before Russian troops entered Cracow.

Her most famous poem – NON OMNIS MORIAR – is really impossible to translate, most of all because this is really a paraphrase of a well known Polish poem written by Juliusz Slowacki, one of the great authors of old Polish poetry. It is as if someone took one of Shakespeare's sonnets and paraphrased it. Which is exactly what I have done in the version proposed below.

After the war she was forgotten, not because her poetry was bad (it certainly was not), but because communist censors decided it was undesirable. During the 45 years of communist rule in Poland only two small selections of her poems appeared. She was re-discovered by Izolda Kiec, who in 1990 published a selection of her forgotten poems in "Czas Kultury" magazine, and later a couple of years later prepared three more collections of poems in a book form. All my versions are based on poems from Izolda's selections.

NON OMNIS MORIAR

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments, love is not love

When it does not love the neighbour and all his belongings

Always ready those belongings to remove.

You, Mrs. Chominowa, you are my neighbour

You will inherit my things after I am taken.

I have no worldly heir, you have grassed on me

In order to speed up my journey to heaven.

Soon you’ll be ready to search for that Jewish gold

It must be hidden in quilts and pillows of down.

You’ll rip them open, and the feathers from the pillows

Will stick to your hands and arms, still wet with my blood.

With those hands like wings you will be an angel

And you'll be ready to fly straight to Heaven."

INSTEAD OF A ROSY LETTER

There are too many streets in my not-too-big town

(I count them every morning but I can't find the one).

My little town is too little, not enough streets in it

(Unfortunately not there, the street where we'd meet).

My little town, although little, a thousand streets could contain

Each leading somewhere far, with both sides nicely paved.

Millions of narrow houses along each of those streets,

Each house as full of people as pumpkins full of pips.

Full of your loving could be a different street every day,

The houses for our meeting would organ music play

On a colourful keyboard, each key a different house,

And we would walk along.

Silence would be

In us.

My little town could stand along a single street

A lonely little streetlet as narrow as a stream.

This little narrow streetlet just two houses could have

Like two little bell flowers, each with a smiling face.

We could come out one evening from our houses' doors;

Maybe one happy evening, maybe one happy dawn,

And this could be the meeting, our hearts ringing like bells,

And we would stay together,

Forever

Till our deaths.

Not enough streets in my town, for it is far too small

Too many streets are in it, I'll never count them all.

PROCLAMATION

THE ARGUMENT

Animals with rough tongues can really enjoy the taste

The wolves of love and of hunger know very well the sensation.

Here's the present moment:

Bees drill for it in lilies.

Wasps with their sharp stings reached the bottom of sweetness.

The earth - a roasted deer - turns on a spit smelling sweetly.

The sun is that bonfire that heats up its fat sides.

O feast of carnivores!

Ready for hunger as ever

animals with their rough tongues really enjoy the taste.

THE COUNTER-ARGUMENT

People of feeble muscles know after-taste and foretaste.

After-taste - it is old age

Foretaste - prophetic light.

The plums are plump and purple, cherries cheerful and juicy

far behind the window, their texture soft as brain.

(History - spring tide of nations, riots like forest fires

the year forty eight, noisy and memorable.

Prophecy - colonies spring tide will light up on the high seas.

It'll come in forty eight, African forest fires.)

They hide in hides of goats,

in furs of cuddly bears.

They know:

it was

it will be.

Today - empty eye-sockets.

Today the day-time half moon floats in a milky cloud.

Forests grow in the cafés - tables from trees now dead.

THE CONCLUSION

I know the swinging foretaste

and after-taste's endless calm.

I caress with my lips

warm moment when it wakes up.

I can't be anything else but a wiser animal

and nothing else i can be - only a watchful human.

FULLNESS OF AUGUST

O pale-faced mothers of rosy-cheeked children; O fertile, proud, happy mothers

You'll go to gather cherries' juiciness with hands smooth from children's caresses

You'll go to celebrate the hot August weather of hearts as ripe as ears of rye

You'll go to venerate with your bare feet the black and swollen fertile soil

I've seen the lips, like fresh fruit's flesh, of lazy daydreaming peasant girls

In clanging warmth of dreamy gardens nostalgia sleeps in spiders webs

Boughs in the orchards are full of fresh juices that give sudden smell of ripeness

You'll go to gather golden aroma of warm trees' resin into your nostrils

In mellow, windy and sunny middays go and proclaim sacred birth giving

Look at the rye leaves shining in sunlight, our daily bread of joyful summers

You may praise the passing blossom that turns into ripening fruits

Everything passes, nothing ends here, in the transforming warmth of the sun

At night you'll take the willow baskets so you can fill them with endless dreams

Go to celebrate red apple pickings and go to harvest ripeness of dreams

The moon is hanging in pear-tree branches like a golden boat on a Christmas tree

Lips of raspberries won't whisper legends about the hearts that bled at night.

RETURN

Waters that thundered on rocks slowly quiet down

The current has slowed down, broad waves come and calm.

Clouds hanging in the sky are stiff in a cold morning,

The distant balls of planets roll round and round

Bees lick from flowers fragrant liquid honey.

Whence comes this radiance? There! From fresh forests.

A stream of brilliant light flows through leaves and rustles.

A bunch of teenage witches jump high between the trees

They look in the high grass for chicks that fell from nests.

In the wood walks Minerva, the goddess of ripe wisdom.

The wisdom of experience that brings about order.

With her calm eye she glances the waters that don't thunder,

Adjusts a bunch of violets she pinned to her dress

and says:

Throw an embroidered cover over secret things

So that the shape of meaning cannot be worked out.

Make peace with appearances and connect with the world

Not by tiresome reason but by life-giving love.

Hasten your solemn return to the age-old truths

With the sound of brass trumpets and flutter of flags

With bagpipes, drums and flutes. Call evil what is evil

And you'll know what to shun. The marching band approaches.

Return to the warm hugs of tender family love,

To the firm and long handshakes of the strong lasting friendships,

To thoughts pious and humble, to joys that don't disturb,

To never ceasing work so that the job is well done.

No need to try to find fire in your love for you husband,

There are no obvious signs that distinguish such love.

Choose a brave young man, give him your tender promise

And a quick flame from lips will also ignite your heart.

Calm landscapes spread like lakes that flood all precipices.

Their sources are in dreams and I sail on these waters.

I sail back to pick up the things the I had passed before

Or noticed at a wrong time. My flag is rolled up.

I remember the warnings and I see all around

The world full of harmony, of lights, beautiful forms

And of noble restraint. No storm is in sight.

Waters are calm as glass. They won't break. I am calm.

If you would like to read these poems (and some more) on paper, 

You can get a printout of my book "POLISH INSPIRATIONS"

You must never forget

"Allahu Akbar!"

The call of a muezzin from the loudspeaker at the top of the minaret remainds everybody that God is Great. You have to remember this all the time, you must never forget God, this is what His Prophet said. Some people stop their work, go to the mosque, wash their feet in the fountain in the middle of the mosque's yard, and hands and head as well. This is what the Prophet told his believers to do. Then they enter the mosque and fall to their faces before the invisible Allah. Only the Muslims can enter, we - the infidels - can only stand at the entry and peep inside. A few prostrations and the prayer is over, Muslims go back to their occupations so abruptly interrupted.

Mediaeval Fez - a city built more than a millennium ago and hardly changed since then. Grinning battlements surround the mediaeval medina. A dual carriage way divides the old city from a modern bus station but once a traveller leaves the station and walks into the city, he is transported, as if by a magic carpet, into a world of 1001 nights. Streets narrow and winding, no vehicles can drive there, all transport is on the back of pack animals. Shops along streets with vendors shouting loudly to attract attention. Heaps of vegetables, heaps of sheep's heads or cow's trotters still dripping with blood, heaps of colourful glazed pots and most of all heaps of things made of leather, bags, sandals, whatever, this is what this city is famous for. In one part of the old town there are traditional tanneries where leather is processed with pigeon droppings. This is where the characteristic smell of this town comes from.

In the very centre of the mediaeval metropolis, hidden in a labyrinth of winding streets, stands the mausoleum of Maulay Idries the Second, a descendant of the Prophet. Maulay Idries, who in the 9th century made Fez the capital of Morocco, did not recognise the caliphs of Baghdad. His dynasty ruled Morocco for several centuries. When five centuries after his death an uncorrupted body was found, it was decided that it must be the body of Idries, as only he could be so holy that his body would not decompose. A mausoleum was built over his tomb and now is a sign of God's Presence in the city. We, the unbelievers, cannot enter it but we can stand at the door and peep in, so we can see the believers hugging the tomb decorated with carpets.

Transport in Fez

The unbelievers can enter Madrasa Bou Inania, this is a sight for tourists. It is a masterpiece of 14th century Muslim architecture, its walls covered with sculpted calligraphy no worse than Alhambra. Much cheaper than Alhambra, though: the entry ticket costs just a few dirhams. There is no queue here either. The entry to the madrasa is opposite the shop with heaps of blood-dripping sheep's heads for sale. Self-appointed guides, several of whom gather in front of the madrasa, offer their services. A man in striped jelaba and a red fez talks to us politely in English but when told that we don't need a guide, curses us in much less polite words. Another man asked which way to an ancient synagogue leads us there (even though we only asked for directions) and then he demands money. He even says that 10 dirhams (about £1) is not enough, he wants 25 dirhams.

Is it possible that Allah is present among those sheep's heads, smells of tannery and people polite for money? Maybe His name is only an empty sound on people's lips

Little coffee shops where only men sit do not invite tourists. When I enter one of them with Ewa, the waiter makes an impression of not really wanting us there and doesn't try to stop us when we leave. Only around Bab Bou Jeloud (the famous Blue Gate) there are restaurants for tourists, where waiters invite passers-by of both sexes. Moroccan women do not go to coffee shops. Instead they go to hammams, or public baths. There are no secrets in a public bath, everybody is naked and ladies spend long hours there exchanging local gossip. Public baths are, of course, unisex; only the hammams for tourists are exceptions. These tourists are strange people, they have to go together everywhere, even to a hammam. So the hammams for tourists are coed, but nevertheless they are true hammams, Turkish baths where one sweats like hell, after which one is properly kneaded by a masseur.

Moulay Idries Mausoleum

Shops with heaps of colourful ceramic do invite tourists of either sex. We enter one where pitchers, vases and bowls painted in colourful arabesques fill shelves and cupboards. It is lunchtime, the attendants sit on the floor in the middle of the shop around a huge pot of soup, everyone tears a piece off a great flat bread and uses it as an edible spoon. They invite us to join them, tear off pieces of bread for us. We join them. This is pure hospitality, they do not expect us to pay or buy anything.

But buy we do. How can one not to in this world of 1001 nights? Hand made Berber earrings, camel wool fabrics, sandals in any colour, everything so cheap and everything hand made! After a walk along the Talaa Sghira street one has no cash left to buy a packet of Saharawi tea of 14 herbs from an old man sitting in a corner of a winding narrow passage. How much does one packet cost? Ten dirhams. But I don't have anything. A cash machine is just round the corner but it doesn't give cash. The next cash machine is near Bab Bou Jeloud, about half an hour walk through crowded Talaa Sghira. I ask the old man to put one packet aside for me.

The old man does not speak French, my Arabic is good enough to ask for the price but hardly more, so a young sandal vendor from the other side of the street comes to help. He tells the old man that we have to go to draw money and will be back in half an hour. The old man hearing that gives me a packet and waves his hand showing me to go. Having gone to Bab Bou Jeloud to draw money I was back almost an hour later. Seeing me the old man spoke to the sandal seller and the accompanying gesture suggested it was something like "I told you, didn't I?"

The world of 1001 nights ends at the bus station. A dual carriage way leads from there out of the town via Ville Nouvelle, the part of the town built when the French ruled here. Trees covered in blue blossom grow along the road. The road leads into the mountains, Middle Atlas covered in cedar forest with apes jumping between trees, then across a small plane that divides Middle Atlas from High Atlas. The town of Midelt is in the middle of that plane. This is where we get off. The bus driver remembers that we wanted to get off at Midelt, stops at a Shell station and gets our luggage out.

Tattouine

"Is this the bus station?"

"This is Midelt."

Where is the bus station? Charif is supposed to wait for us there. I phone him. He says he is at the new bus station 5 km out of the town but he will come.

Will I recognise him? I stayed with him for a couple of days six years ago. I then wrote down his telephone number just in case I wanted to come again. I phoned him before we left England and again from Fez. He told me he would meet us at the Midelt bus station. Perhaps I won't recognise him but he won't have problems recognising two tourists at the Shell petrol station.

Soon a Berber in a blue turban approaches: here he is. Together we walk to the place from which a pick-up will take us to Tattouine. This is a village deep in the mountains, the last one before the main ridge of High Atlas. One can see the snow covered peak of Jabal Ayachi, the highest in the region. the highest peaks are covered in snow, other mountains are pink, we can see the panorama from the back of the pick-up on which we travel. Pink rocks seldom covered in any vegetation, very different from the green mountains of Europe. Charif, who is a Berber from here but speaks French, asks:

"Are you Polish? Sister Barbara will be happy."

Tattouine is a village of adobe houses whose walls are of the same colour as the mountains. In one of those houses, at the very end of the village, live two Franciscan nuns: sister Marie and sister Barbara.

Jabal Ayachi

As it happens on the day of our arrival they have a feast in their house for all the inhabitants of the village. The feast is organised by Charif and his wife Hasna but it is in the house of the nuns because it is in memory of another nun who had lived here but recently died. Charif leads us to the nuns' house. They have prayers there, partly readings from the Koran (because all the villages are Muslims) and partly from the Gospels in French. After the prayers great bowls with tajine cooked in Hasna's house are brought in, one bowl for each table. The villagers sit in the bigger room, we are invited to a smaller room where all the conversation is in French because most of the guests there are French. There is a dentist who half a year works in France and earns good money and the other half he travels in Africa and repairs teeth of the Berber people for free. There are two monks from a Trappist monastery in Midelt, where also lives (not present at the feast) the last survivor of the Algerian monastery at Thibrine. I don't know the story of Thibrine but my interlocutors know it very well. It was a village very much like Tattouine, where the Christian monks lived in perfect harmony with Muslim villagers. Somebody clearly didn't like that harmony and one night all monks were killed. The Algerian government claims the murderers were Muslim extremists but the perpetrators have never been found. My interlocutors didn't believe in this explanation. They suspect that the government needed this murder to clamp down on other dissidents.

In Tattouine the harmony is still there. Big bowls of food prepared by Muslim Berbers are brought into the house of Franciscan nuns. Among the guests are Berbers from the mountains, Trappist monks from Midelt, French Medicins-sans-frontieres. One bowl for each table. People sitting around tear a morsel off a big flat bread and using is as cutlery try to tear off a morsel of a chicken cooked whole in vegetables. All the meals in the house of Hasna and Charif are served thus. The Bedouin whom we will visit the following day will also serve their meals this way.

For breakfest the following day we have freshly baked flat bread dipped in olive oil and very sweet green tea with fresh green mint. As we eat Hasna and Charif put all luggage we need for two days on the back of a mule, so we don't need to carry any rucksacks when we hike up the valley.

Bedouin hospitality

The valley seems to be a desert but here and there in the valley we see Bedouin tents. Here the two worlds meet. The Bedouin know the desert tracks but a city is alien to them, for them a point of contact with the so-called civilisation is the surgery of sister Barbara in Tattouine. If they have a health problem they travel on foot many days through the mountains to reach her. We are also travelling on foot through the mountains, not because we have health problems but for pleasure. We want to get away from the so-called civilisation for a few days. This means a walk through pink mountains. There is no grass here but sheep of the Bedouin find some herbs that thrive in this climate. We stay with the Bedouin for the night, share their meals from a single bowl, sleep on the floor on rugs, bedbugs (or shall I say rugbugs) bite us at night.

The nuns also regularly travel through the mountains, they visit the tents of the nomads and offer medical help. Recently they do this just one month every year but earlier they would spent half of every year travelling around, sleeping in their own Bedouin tent. They even have a portable tabernacle, a miniature Bedouin travel bag, which they hang in a separate part of their tent which serves as a chapel. When the sisters are in the village, the bag hangs on a wall of the chapel they arranged in their house. The bag is empty then because the hosts are kept in a permanent tabernacle in the wall. The hosts are kept there in a container made with several silver Bedouin bracelets. When the sisters travel, the container travel with them in the travel bag.

The chapel in the house is very simple: white walls, a Bedouin rug given by grateful patients, one sits on it during prayers. On one of the walls a waist rope belt worn by Bedouin women hanged so that it forms the Arabic word Allah. On another wall a copy of an icon of Andrei Rublev showing three visitors of a Bedouin named Abraham. There is also a beautiful portrait of pope John Paul embroidered by a boy who lost his right hand as a result of an accident with a scythe when he worked in the fields.

Sister Marie

They only travel one month in a year but they are very active nevertheless. Sister Marie is a teacher, she created a nursery and runs it. Children from the village come to the nursery for half a day. The sisters charge 10 dirhams per child for a term. They could do it for free but they charge because if the parents have to pay, they have respect for it and bring the children regularly. The nursery is in an adobe house like all houses in the village but inside it is equipped like a kindergarten somewhere in Stockholm. One day some well-to-do Swedes visited this place and asked how they could help. Sister Marie told them that they need some equipment for a nursery. Some time later a lorry came to Tattouine and brought all this. Berber children learn here what to do with paper and pencil, they learn the shape of Arabic letters. When they go to school they will have it much easier than if they went there straight from a Bedouin tent.

Sister Barbara runs the surgery and works with the Medicins-sans-frontieres. She is a nurse herself. When we go to see her in her nursery she shows us a little boy with walking impairment. She had several sessions of physiotherapy with him and he made huge progress. Sister Barbara likes to talk. She tells us about the most unusual medical cases she encountered among the Bedouin. Sometimes an inner voice tells her to get up and go. Like recently, when she learned that certain lady was in labour and a local Bedouin midwife was with her. Sister Barbara considers this midwife to be quite competent but nevertheless, even though this was in the middle of the night, she got up and went there. When she arrived the baby was already born and properly wrapped, but Barbara without any particular reason wanted to see the baby unwrapped. It turned out that the baby was all covered in blood, the unbilical cord was tied but got loose and started bleeding. It was very slow but a newborn doesn't have a lot of blood and till the morning could bleed to death.

Sister Barbara

Talking about births, there was an interesting story of a Bedouin who came to the sisters saying that he was worthless because he was born in a cave like a goat. So the sisters told him the story of Jesus, who was also born in a cave. For the Muslims Jesus is the prophet Isa, so the Bedouin went home happy telling everyone that he was born in a cave like the prophet Isa.

In our long talks with the sisters we never heard about a single case of conversion from one religion to another. Perhaps this is not the reason why they are there. But why are they there?

On the day of our departure the sisters invite us for their morning prayer. The prayer consists of a few readings followed by a long silence. Very long silence, certainly more than an hour. After the prayer we go for breakfest to Charif and Hasna. The breakfast consists of bread and olive oil and a pot of very sweet green tea with mint. This is the taste of this country: bread dipped in olive oil and very sweet green tea with mint.

What are the missionaries here for if they don't convert anybody?

Perhaps they are there to remind people about God? After all - you must never forget about God.

The nuns' chapel

You will find this story, and many others, in my book "ASK A GLOBETROTTER".

Navajoland

Spider Goddess rock in Canyon de Chelly

The great river Rio Grande cuts through the plateau of New Mexico creating a gorge so deep that one can get dizzy standing on its verge. Farther west the Colorado river cuts through colourful rock creating a canyon that takes a breath of a viewer. It seldom rains on the plateau between these rivers. Only the Chuska Mountains in the middle of it get enough rain to support some trees. There are also mountain ranges around the plateau: Sangre the Christo to the east, San Matteo to the south, San Francisco to the west and San Juan to the north. They bear names of Catholic saints but it is the spirits of nature that live there, not the saints. Whoever understands those spirits and knows how to call them for help can be sure that the grass for sheep in Chuska Mountains will be green and plentiful, that maize planted in spring will grow despite infrequent rains and that peaches in orchards in Canyon de Chelly will bear fruit. The Navajos do know how to call the spirits. The country between the two great rivers is theirs.

How long have the Navajo been living there? They themselves say that they have always lived there. This is the country which the Creator gave to the Navajos and told them to plant peaches in Canyon de Chelly, to graze sheep in Chuska Mountains and to weave blankets from sheep's wool. In Canyon de Chelly there is a rock where the Spider Goddess taught Navajo women how to weave. Anybody can go there and see it.

As often is the case - white scholars don't believe the old myths and have their own theories, even if they have seen the Spider Goddess rock. The main theory is that the Navajos came to Arizona from north Canada because the Indians of that region - around Lake Athabasca - speak languages similar to the Navajo. The Navajos themselves confirm this, they say they understand the Canadian Indians speech. They also say that the language of Navajos and Apaches is basically the same, only pronunciation of some words is different. So the theory says that the Navajos and Apaches came to Arizona not very long ago, only a few hundred years, maybe at the same time as the Spaniards.

Arizona has been, nevertheless, inhabited for millennia by peoples cultivating maize and building fortified villages. In Canyon de Chelly one can see those villages built of stone high in the canyon walls, clearly for defence. Now they are deserted and have been so for centuries. The Navajos, who live there now, never lived in stone villages. In fact they don't live in any villages at all, their dwellings are dispersed around the mountains. Traditionally the Navajos lived in conical structures made of wood and called hogan. A hogan has to be on a round plan because ceremonies that are sometimes celebrated in it require a round floor. It is easy to build wherever trees grow. The Navajos build their hogans wherever they move, and they move constantly as they follow their sheep high up the mountains in summer and down to the plains in winter.

Ruins in Canyon de Chelly

The Navajos and Apaches treated the peoples who cultivated maize very much like the Spaniards did: they robbed them of maize and women and ran away to their mountains. Of course there was a difference: the Spaniards invaded once and built their city they called Holy Faith (Santa Fe) and told the settled Indians to bring their maize and women to that city if they don't want to be robbed. The settled Indians lived in villages, a village is called pueblo in Spanish, so they were called "Pueblo Indians". The Spaniards were also a settled people, they set up their haciendas and... were robbed by Navajos, who afterwards ran away and hid in the labyrinthine Canyon de Chelly. The Spaniards chased them there, killed a few Indians and returned, but those Navajos who weren't killed wanted revenge, so robbed some more haciendas and... so on.

The Pueblo Indians, who lived in villages, were easier to control but it they weren't necessarily more docile. In 1680 they made a big uprising and drove all Spaniards from New Mexico. The Spaniards returned ten years later and pacified the rebels. Some of the rebels didn't like the idea of being pacified, escaped towards Chuska Mountains and nobody knows what happened to them. We do know, however, that the Navajo learned things that the Pueblo Indians practised earlier. They learned to cultivate maize, to make decorative pottery, to weave pretty blankets and to breed sheep to get wool for the blankets. They also learned how to breed horses. Using horses they could travel far into Mexico to rob haciendas. After those raids the Spaniards would send a punitive expedition... and so on.

In the meantime in a far away country events took place that did not appear to have anything to do with what happened in Arizona. In 1776 several thousands miles from Canyon de Chelly, on the eastern coast of the continent, a new independent country was created. Would anybody expect then that barely 70 years later Canyon de Chelly would be within the borders of this country? This is exactly what happened: in 1848 a peace treaty ending a war between Mexico and the United States was signed and as a result Arizona became a U.S. territory. Of course nobody asked the Navajo if they wanted their country to be within anybody's borders. One can guess that if anybody did ask them they would be rather surprised as that never gave their country to anybody. The Spaniards claimed that the country was theirs because once a discoverer furled out a flag and took possession of it in the name of the Spanish king. They never managed to persuade the Navajos to accept this fact. The Americans took possession of the land because somewhere in a distant city somebody signed a piece of paper. Unlike the Spaniards, the Americans were determined to make the Navajos accept this fact.

Hogan new style

The Americans wouldn't mind mind the Navajos grazing their sheep in their remote country, if they could do this in peace. However, the Navajos had a tradition of raids to steal horses or sheep from Mexicans. They did not understand why the Americans should have a problem with that, after all they themselves fought the Mexicans only recently. A peace treaty was not a concept the Navajos could easily understand. Even less comprehensible was an idea that some Mexicans, those who lived in the city of Holy Faith, were now American citizens and the U.S. Army was supposed to protect them. Anyway the Navajos didn't have any central government that could sign anything like a peace treaty. Great chiefs had respect but no more than this, they couldn't impose their will on anybody. If a group of youngsters wanted to steal some horses nobody could stop them, they didn't ask anybody's permission anyway. In this situation the Americans decided to force the Navajos to move to a reservation in a distant country, where they wouldn't feel at home. Maybe then they would understand that it is better to give up raiding.

The commander of the U.S. troops in Santa Fe at the time was gen. Carleton. He decided to settle the Apaches and Navajos on a reservation called Bosque Redondo on the shores of Rio Pecos. The first to be settled there were the Mescalero Apaches, Navajos were to be next. In the summer of 1863 col. Kit Carson led a detachment of volunteers, as the regular army was busy fighting the civil war in the east. Kit Carson grew up in Missouri and knew Indians well, he certainly knew how to talk to them. He declared that by June 1863 all Navajos are to surrender and move to the reservation. He promised that at first the government would feed the Indians but later they would have to rely on their own harvests.

The Navajos didn't want to move anywhere. They had enough food in their own country. They ignored the call to surrender. Carson then entered their country with the volunteers, who were much better armed than the Navajos. The Indians realised this so they fled whenever his detachment approached. Carson did not chase the Indians, he just killed their sheep which were left behind, burned corn, cut down orchards. In the autumn the Indians suddenly realised that they don't have enough food for winter after all. They started surrendering, first in small groups, but when the word leaked out that the Americans don't torture prisoners but feed them - more people gave themselves up. In the end most of the Navajos decided that the American rations are better than starvation and agreed to move to the reservation. In April 1864 they started the long march to Rio Pecos.

Window Rock 

The Navajos remember their exile in Bosque Redondo as the Jews remember Babylon. Even today one can hear stories how old people couldn't walk fast enough and stayed behind, how the rapid current of Rio Grande (which had to be crossed) carried away babies, how there was not enough wood for heating in Bosque Redondo, how the harvest were poor because the soil was not good. Most important the medicine men couldn't celebrate ceremonies because the ones that the Navajo knew had their power between the sacred mountain ranges that surrounded their country. The white people not only didn't understand ceremonies, they didn't even know they existed and it was difficult to explain to them that ceremonies may influence the harvests.

It was a difficult time for the Navajos but also the time of big changes. Until then they never had any central authority. In Bosque Redondo the American officers were the superior authority but they let the traditional chiefs run internal affairs. Today one can hear stories how chiefs Manuelito and Barboncito negotiated a possibility of returning to their old country. With each passing year the Americans were more likely to consider this. At Bosque Redondo the Navajos were fed by the goverment whereas the Navajos claimed they knew how to breed sheep in Chuska Mountains and how to grow maize in Canyon de Chelly. In the end in 1968 the Americans agreed on the condition that the raids stop definitely.

For the Navajos this was not the end but the beginning. They were given a reservation that contained the Chuska Mountains and Canyon de Chelly. The Reservation Council was established under the leadership of chiefs Manuelito and Barboncito. The Navajos returned from their exile with only the remnants of their old flocks but they didn't loose the knowledge how to breed them. Most of all the ceremonies could be conducted in a proper way.

The Navajos also learned a few things from their white oppressors. They for example learned how to build log houses. They didn't build them on a plan of a rectangle because ceremonies could not be conducted in a rectangular house. They built their new houses on an octagonal plan and called them hogan, as always. The iron stove was in the middle, where the fireplace used to be. The iron stoves were bought from money raised from raising sheep. The first years after their return to the old country were difficult but soon the flocks multiplied and there was surplus that could be sold. American traders that specialised in Indian trade set up trading posts on the reservation. They bought colourful rugs for which the Navajos became famous. The flocks grew, there was not enough pastures in Chuska Mountains but the chiefs managed to negotiate expansion of the reservation. Little buy little bits were added until the Navajoland became the biggest Indian reservation in the U.S. All this was happening when Geronimo became famous for evading the U.S. Army. Geronimo was on the front pages of newspapers. Manuelito was not, but the Navajo Reservation is still the biggest in the U.S.

The Navajo Reservation borders with the Grand Canyon National Park and some of the tourists cross the Navajoland to get there. They sometimes stop at Indian stands that sell arts and crafts. The tourists usually don't realise that they could also visit Window Rock, the capital of Navajoland. They could enter the Navajo Parliament and listen what they talk about. 

Jerry Manuelito

Window Rock is not a tourist attraction but it has some charm. It is placed on the southern slopes of Chuska Mountains among fantastically shaped rocks. One of the rocks has a huge round hole right through the middle, hence the name.

One could actually wonder why the capital of the reservation is so far from Canyon de Chelly, which is considered the heartland of Navajoland. However, I am writing these words with a pen with words "Navajo Technical University" written on it. It is a school which has a campus in Chinle, right at the mouth of the Canyon. I received this pen from a lecturer of this school. He also gave me his business card. I saw the name: Jerry Manuelito. I asked if he was a descendant of the great chief.

"Yes," he said. "The great chief always stressed the importance of education. He said that this is the way for the nation to be reborn, not running with a gun around the mountains."

Indeed, one who runs with a gun in the mountains evading cavalry can get to the headlines of newspapers printed somewhere far, at the other side of the continent. One can get to the headlines without knowing that these newspapers exist and without even knowing what a newspaper actually is. However, if one understands what is written in those newspapers, even not knowing that those papers exist, one can rebuild a country between four mountain ranges.

* * *

Window Rock is a capital, but not a city or even a village. There is a parliament there, the laws of the reservation are discussed in it. There is the office of the chief, ministries, a library, a supermarket and a MacDonald, but there are no houses. Nobody lives there. Navajos in general don't live in cities, they are scattered around the reservation, most of them only come to Window Rock for a yearly fair.

We were in Navajoland at the time of the fair and wanted to see it. The fair was planned to last a week, but do we need to be there for the whole of it? A week before the fair, while on the Hopi reservation, I saw the weekly paper "Navajo Times" and checked the program. In the beginning of the week there were to be elections of Miss Navajo and gardening competitions (who will grow the biggest pumpkin and the like), at the end of the week there was to be more exciting stuff, like a powwow and a rodeo. We decided that we didn't come to an Indian Reservation to watch a boob competition so we decided to come to the fair later.

Inside the Navajo Parliament

When we arrived there, the things were still being organised. For example an art exhibition. There was a special pavilion for artists to show their work. There certainly is no shortage of artists among the Navajo. There were some modern "artists" showing some strange objects which did not attract my attention, but the traditional arts certainly did. For example pottery. One can say that Indian pottery of New Mexico and Arizona is a separate genre of art. Each pueblo has its own style and Navajo pottery presents itself very well in this company. It is true that today it is mostly produced for tourist market but this fact does not diminish its quality. Once the pots were used to carry water but today they are like canvass for a masterpiece. Among the Navajo it is mostly women who are potters. The weavers are also usually women even though among the Pueblo Indians it is usually a male occupation. There were also some sand paintings on the exhibition. Sand painting is probably a Navajo speciality, I have never heard of anyone else doing this. Admittedly I had never heard of the Navajo sand painting before I came to Navajoland, but I did read a bit about it since then.

I can hear a question of my readers: what is sand painting? It sounds like something that would be blown away rather easily.

Of course it would be blown away. Normally sand paintings are created on a floor of a hogan for a ceremony and are not very durable. They are made in the morning and swept in the evening. These are medicine ceremonies, they are supposed to heal illnesses physical or psychical, like hate, envy, anger, fear. Or they are supposed to bring blessings for the task at hand, like a war or exams. A ceremony is conducted by a hataali, a priest (this word is sometimes translated as "shaman", which is misleading, as a hataali is supposed to know how to conduct a ceremony correctly, how to create the sand painting and how to sing the songs; he is not supposed to get into trance, like Siberian shamans). In the Navajo language the sand painting is called ikaah, which can be translated as 'calling gods". The image is created so the gods come and are present during the ceremony. A sand painting made correctly is a bit like the correct words spoken by a Catholic priest over unleavened bread. Of course a sand painting is just as sacred as the unleavened bread after the consecration.

Sandpainding designs on Navajo pots

However, it turned out that tourists would like to buy sand paintings just as they buy pots and rugs. Somebody has found a way to make a sand painting on a board covered with glue. Nowadays sand paintings are a trade item, just like pots and rugs. Moreover, sand painting designs are nowadays woven into elaborate rugs, which of course are more expensive because such a design is far more difficult to weave than a geometric pattern. I have seen sand painting designs on pots, too. If there is demand, there will be supply as well. Something that used to be holy because it caused divine presence to come - became a souvenir to hang in a living room. Perhaps this is the spirit of the age.

The spirit of the age is also present in the pavilion where various institutions try to recruit candidates. For example the Indian police that serves on the reservation, National Park Service (Monument Valley is actually on the reservation whereas the Grand Canyon is just outside), or schools, like the Navajo Technical University. There I meet Jerry Manuelito, a lecturer. He says it is a great school that also takes students from overseas. We chat for a while and I ask him about many things, like the sand paintings. He says there was a big controversy about it. Some people say that these images are sacred and should never be even created outside the ceremony, let alone sold as souvenirs. Others say that if there are potential buyers then why not earn a few bucks? In the end it was agreed that the sand paintings for sale will always be made so that something is not quite right, so it is not the actual mythical scene. The sand paintings used for ceremony have to be swept in the evening and the sand taken to a maize field. Why maize? Because it is a sacred plant. There are many different ceremonies. Like blackening, when the patient to be cured is painted completely black. Sometimes the patient has to lie down on the sand painting. I ask whether these ceremonies have any connection with peyote cult but my interlocutor says no, there is no connection. Sand paintings are a part of the traditional Navajo religion whereas peyote is propagated by the American Indian Church, really a new religion. The peyote priests are called roadmen, they don't know how to make correct sand paintings. Peyote ceremonies are prayers that last all night. They should be held in a tipi but sometimes they are in a hogan. It is better in a hogan because one can sit by a wall and lean on it, in a tipi there is nowhere to lean and one has to sit cross legged all night.

Traditional Navajo costume

The art exhibition is really a minor thing, far more important are exhibitions of cattle and especially sheep, always a pride of the Navajos. There are also musical events, like a powwow. Dancers dressed in outfits full of feathers and jingles, musicians singing in high falsettos to the rhythm of drums - exactly as we imagine the Sioux. In fact a powwow is a colourful event derived in a big part from traditions of the Sioux. In recent years it became kind of pan-Indian, but for the Navajos it is quite new. The traditional Navajo music and dance can also be seen at the fair but at a different corner of the grounds. Having seen a powwow a few times I go to see the Navajo traditional dance. Dancers are dressed in a traditional way, but a traditional Navajo dress has nothing to do with what we imagine as an Indian dress. Long skirts made of fabric, velvet shirts, cowboy hats and boots, turquoise and silver jewellery, bracelets, earrings, necklaces, all worn by both men and women. Fethers are nowhere to be seen. The music is sung, a few voices accompanied only by a little drum. The melodic line is (to my European ear) not that different from the powwow chant but here it is sung with a normal voice, not falsetto. Everything is much less showy, less exotic, but does it matter? This is not for tourists. Here the Navajos dance and play for themselves.

Of course there is also a rodeo, a national sport in Navajoland. There are a few disciplines during a rodeo, like lassoing a calf or catching a calf by the horns from the saddle. I could guess these are normal work for cowboys (by the way all cowboys here are Indians), but there are also absurd disciplines, like bull riding. The point is to get on a bull's back and stay there for more than eight seconds. I guess in Europe this discipline would not be legal because of health and safety regulations. The cowboy of course always falls of the bull and to make sure the bull is no more interested in him - there are other guys in the ring shaking rags at the bull. The bull starts chasing them and the cowboy can pick himself up and walk away. When the bull feels nobody on his back, he calms down and is driven from the ring.

Everybody comes with tents to the fair because there otherwise there is nowhere to stay in Window Rock. Thank God there is a supermarket where one can find food and the latest issue of Navajo Times. I have bought it and I saw pictures from... you won't believe it - Miss Navajo competition. Do you think I learned whether Navajo girls have big or small boobs? Not at all! This is not the point of this competition. The ladies come to the competition fully dressed in a Navajo traditional costume (which itself is a surprise, as I explained above). Miss Navajo had to prove that she can do well what Navajo women are supposed to do. Of course she has to be a fluent Navajo speaker, without it she cannot even enter. She has to prove that she can bake bread on a camp fire. She has to prove also that she can change a sheep into mutton. She has to cut its throat, skin it and roast it. There were some pictures from it in the paper.

Well, it looks like I missed a good photo opportunity.

* * * 

Falling off a bull

Our neighbours in the camp site are bullfighters employed at the rodeo. These are the guys who run around the ring trying to attract attention of the bull after the rider has been thrown off his back. They are a friendly bunch, come for a cup of coffee and a chat every morning and every evening. Hearing my questions about the life on the rez one of them, named Theron, says:

"You should stay on the reservation for some time. I can show you around. Then you could see more about real life of the Indians."

After the fair we drive to his place, following his car. We drive along the road that runs parallel to the Chuska Mountains, directly to the north. The Chuska Mountains cut through Navajoland from north to south like the spine. On both sides of it there is a plain on which here and there stand fantastically shaped rocks like huge animals petrified by some magic spell. The Navajos say they they are indeed animals that were turned into rock long ago so people could be safe. For example a rock that raises nearly five hundred metres above the plain, called Shiprock by the whites, is really a huge bird better to be kept at a distance. Even roads are built far around it. Even the road that runs right through the reservation from north to south, parallel to the mountains, most of the time straight like an arrow, bending only when there is a magic rock animal to keep at a safe distance. Some bends have names on a map as if it was a village or something, but there is no village to be seen there, just a bend of the road. Buffalo Springs, where Theron lives, is such a named bend of the road. Theron lives in a caravan in the yard of a western-style house, where his father lives with his young wife. There are not many western-style houses on the reservation, most Navajos still live in hogans. This may be because traditionally after a person's death everything he or she owned is burned, house included. Perhaps it is easier to burn a hogan than a two-storey house with several bedrooms.

I ask Theron's father, who after all lives in a big house, whether the custom of burning the house is still practised. He says yes, but only if that person dies at home. If he or she dies in a hospital, then there is no need to burn the house. The house where he lives with his present wife used to belong to her grandmother, but she died in a hospital in Gallup and the granddaughter inherited it. Her parents live in a hogan nearby. There are also hogans where nobody lives, they are used for ceremonies only. 

Navajo weaver

The Navajos have their share of problems that plague our modern society. Theron lives in a caravan because his wife chucked him out and he cannot see his daughter. His father also split up with Theron's mum after many years of marriage and found another wife, half his age. Theron lives with his father but he takes us to see his mum as well. She is a traditional Navajo weaver. She does not live in a hogan but in a little housing estate where a few modern houses have been built close to each other. They have been funded by the Reservation Council. Theron's mum says that it is strange to live so close to other people. When she was little her family didn't live in one place but moved with the seasons. They had one hogan down on the plains, one up on high alps and one in between. When she was very little they had to carry beds from place to place but later the beds stayed and they only moved mattresses. A hogan would have just one space indoors but her present home has several rooms.

In her bedroom she has a loom set up. It is an Indian upright loom so it doesn't take much space. Indian weaving is not a simple thing. It has many secrets that have to be learned over many years. When the weaver is ready then there is an initiation ceremony. She herself was taught and initiated by her grandfather. Recently the Todlaena Trading Post published a book about some weavers who had never been initiated. They were probably more accessible to talk to because the real weavers don't want to reveal their secrets. Now that the book is published the tourists will but it and will think that those ladies are the elite of Navajo weavers, but they are not.

I am also shown things that Theron's mum made recently. For example a birthing belt. In the old days the Navajo women would give birth kneeling, holding a belt that was tied high above her, for example to a tree branch. Afterwards the belt would be tightly tied around her waist so the good figure would be preserved.

Theron's mum started her flow of words as soon as she heard that I am interested in Navajo culture. I like interviews like this, when I don't have to ask anything and my interlocutor tells me what is important to him or her.

She tells me about traditional herbal medicine. There are plenty of secrets there, too. Not only the knowledge of the plants is needed, also what to say to the plants while gathering them. When gathering herbs one has to talk about the patient, otherwise the plants don't even know whom they are supposed to heal. The herbs that one can buy at the market in little packets are useless because when they were gathered they didn't hear whom they were supposed to heal. Theron's mum is herself a herbalist but her mum knows much more and if I am interested in it I could go to see her. She is still alive but doesn't feel well and is now in a care home. Ever since her husband died she lost her will to live.

Theron says that he has huge respect for his grandmother and will gladly take us to see her. He says that it was the grandmother who was his guide in life. He could always trust her advice. We go to see her the next day in Farmington, a town just outside the rez. It is actually a hospital, the nurses are Navajo girls who speak the language. This is important as some patients don't know English. We go to the room where the grandmother was. There are also other ladies in that room. One of them doesn't speak English, which was immaterial because she is completely deaf. Justyna tries to communicate with her somehow and every so often both of them burst laughing.

"This is an old cowgirl, she used to be a rodeo champion", says Theron.

He himself talks long to his grandmother. I can't take part in the conversation because it is all conducted in Navajo. He later explains to her why we came but she is not in a good shape and there is no point asking her about herbs. As we drive back he tells us what he talked about with the granny: he asked her whether it was a right time to date another woman.

Old cowgirl

There is one more person to ask about the dating issue, Theron's uncle who is a roadman of the American Indian Church. American Indian Church is a new religion that has nothing to do with healing ceremonies celebrated on sand paintings. Ordinary Indians nevertheless consider roadmen to be somehow connected to the supernatural world and go to them if they have problems in life. Theron wants to show us the life of the rez, but why not ask some personal question as well? There must be some evil forces involved if his wife left him, he can't see the children and doesn't have anybody, doesn't even have a place to live. He doesn't have anybody and is not sure whether to look for somebody else as it may complicate matters even more.

The uncle lives in a normal house but just next door there is a cleanly kept hogan, probably for ceremonies. We are received not in the hogan but in a kitchen of the house. A kitchen apparently can be used for ceremonies, too. The uncle has a toolbox in which one would expect to see a set of wrenches and files, but he keeps other things in it. There is an eagle feather, a red stone pipe, a crystal, a little cactus and a few other objects. I have seen collections like this among the Ojibways in Canada, although they kept them in their sacred bundles. These sacred bundles nowadays look like expensive wallets. Apparently in Arizona a toolbox can be used for the same purpose.

The ceremony itself is short. On a small rug (Navajo style, of course) a few objects are arranged: a little flute, a little crystal, a cactus. The uncle says something in Navajo, plays the flute for a minute, stares into the crystal. I don't even notice when the ceremony is over because both it and the conversation between Theron and the uncle are in Navajo. At one point the uncle asks if I have any questions. I am not prepared for an interview but I do ask about the little cactus. It is peyote, it doesn't grow in Arizona. It has to be brought from Texas and it costs a lot of money. I m given the little cactus to hold for a moment.

"I inherited this one from my father and he inherited it from his" says the uncle.

On our way back Theron says he couldn't believe I was given the little cactus to hold.

"It is considered so holy that during ceremonies it is at the top of the altar and can only be seen from afar".

Theron is fantastic, he does whatever he can to show us his country - Navajoland - and indeed we can see much more than an overage tourist would, but we probably will never be able to see it the way he sees it. Some evil forces are afoot, therefore he lives in a trailer. The uncle can see something about these forces staring in his crystal. And how about the huge animals turned into stone? All over Navajoland there are these rocks that look like huge animals and for the Navajos this exactly what they are. They have been turned into stone but better to keep away from them. Even roads are built around them with an wide arch.

Shiprock is a good example. It may look like a ship to the white people but the Navajos know: it is a huge bird, better to be seen from afar. Thank God the road goes around it by a wide margin.

Shiprock

You will find this text, 
and many more on the subject, 
in my book "DO THEY STILL LIVE IN WIGWAMS?":