https://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/Moscow, then home: Iyık Janyl under Cathedral Hill Kündölük 3.4.2enhttps://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2024/09/twelve-years-home.html Mon, 16 Sep 2024 19:10:00 +0600Homehttps://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2024/09/twelve-years-home.html Twelve years since I came home. The walnut gave a lot this year; mama makes the jangak pashtet for the fast days and sells jars to the guests. The season was good. Fewer foreigners than before, more from Talas and Nurzhan. Aigerim's boy is going to Moscow next spring, to the building sites, like…https://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2024/03/a-list-for-april.html Sat, 30 Mar 2024 19:15:00 +0600Homehttps://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2024/03/a-list-for-april.html Things to do before the first guests: whitewash the courtyard wall (mama will check); new hinge for the gate, it screams like a goose; take the sheets out of the chest and air them; tell the cat the rules again; count the jars; ask the cantor's children not to teach my nephew bad words in Syriac.…https://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2023/11/a-quiet-autumn.html Sun, 26 Nov 2023 19:10:00 +0600Homehttps://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2023/11/a-quiet-autumn.html Since October the pages of Kündölük do not open abroad. The Moscow boys cannot read this any more: Mahmud wrote on the phone to say "your Letters no longer come". I told him: I will print them and send. He said, "Don't. I only read the parts about the soup." I know there were worries in the…https://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2023/08/the-feast-2023.html Sun, 27 Aug 2023 20:20:00 +0600Homehttps://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2023/08/the-feast-2023.html Hot, bright, full. 12 nights of guests in a row, three families from Talas, an American writer who asked every day what pashtet is made of. I told her: walnuts and love. She wrote it down. Mama's table at the Feast: nan, pashtet, the jars. Mama made forty jars this year. They sold in a week.…https://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2022/09/almost-normal.html Sun, 18 Sep 2022 19:30:00 +0600Homehttps://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2022/09/almost-normal.html After the Cross: 168 nights, eight countries. A proper season again, not like before, but proper. Fewer from Europe, more from Talas and Nurzhan, and a group from Chicago who spoke to mama in the English she learned from the missionaries in the 1990s. They said she was "the best-spoken woman on…https://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2021/08/the-second-feast-in-masks.html Thu, 26 Aug 2021 20:00:00 +0600Homehttps://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2021/08/the-second-feast-in-masks.html The hill after the evening Qurbana, 24 August. The Feast was open this year, with limits: only 5,000 on the terrace, masks, a mark on the ground for every family. We had seven guests, all from Irad. The pilgrims from the other side were not let in. A new neighbour appeared in the lane last winter:…https://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2020/12/a-winter-of-repairs.html Sun, 20 Dec 2020 18:00:00 +0600Homehttps://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2020/12/a-winter-of-repairs.html No guests since March. We painted every room, changed the curtains, made a proper bathroom on the ground floor, and mama sewed new covers for all the cushions. Aigerim's children helped: they painted the door blue and some of the cat. I counted what we spent on repairs: about as much as we lost in…https://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2020/08/a-feast-without-pilgrims.html Tue, 25 Aug 2020 20:50:00 +0600Homehttps://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2020/08/a-feast-without-pilgrims.html This year the Feast was without pilgrims. The quarantine, the checkpoints between the cities, and the archeparchy asked pilgrims to stay at home. Only the people of the city on the hill, standing apart, in masks. Mar Ephrem blessed from the steps to a half-empty square. The bells sounded louder…https://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2020/03/closed.html Sun, 29 Mar 2020 17:30:00 +0600Homehttps://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2020/03/closed.html The checkpoint is on the road to Tash-Kömür now. The city asked all guest houses to close. I wrote on the board at the gate: "Konok üy Jangak is closed until further notice. Pray for us, we pray for you." Mama added in her own handwriting: "Walnuts for sale." The first week was strange, the whole…https://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2019/08/booking-on-tulpar.html Fri, 30 Aug 2019 20:40:00 +0600Homehttps://blog.attelkom.net/erkin/2019/08/booking-on-tulpar.html First time that a guest wrote through the app: "Do you have a room for the 23rd of August, two people?" I answered in the app, he paid the deposit in the app, and then he arrived on the 23rd and found a room with a mattress that the cat had decided was her own. I removed the cat. He paid the…