Notes from Cottonwood

The St. Tomas parish took a bus to Iyık Janyl for the Feast of St. Janyl (24 August), with the pilgrims. It took the whole day to get there, in a bus with no air conditioning and forty people singing. The Church of St. Janyl is on a hill. The line to touch the doors went down the whole hill, and an old Iradi woman beside me kept pressing a handful of candy into Lily's hand.

Inside it's nothing like our churches. A dome, no pews, no statues, and a screen made of carved walnut in front of the altar. The chant was strange and beautiful and I understood none of it. I stood in the back with my eyes shut. I think that's how it is meant to be listened to.

The hill at the end of the day.

August in Talas means melons. The bazaar road looks like a sea of green and yellow: big striped ones, long yellow ones, small round ones that smell like honey. Rahim ata gave me a heavy one (3 som) and showed me how to tap it: "if it sounds like a drum, no good; if it sounds like a closed door, good."

I tapped fifteen melons before I picked one. I'm told that this is normal.

The melon road. Don't ask me which one was mine.