The dead meat

Food is not a problem

I mean, if you have to feed yourself and your stomach is making noises as a donkey in agony, you eat EVERYTHING. Also your nails with ketchup.

But this time was reeeeally challenging.

I was with Anna.

My mentor, my friend, my teacher in that old times in Tajikistan and sometimes my mother. We went to monitor an old project. Water supply system, as usual. And the village was something like 6 hours by car (always the Niva) up to the mountains.

As usual the landscape was something to overcome your sight: feminine curvy definitive mountains with cattle and cotton sloppy growing, sun and light as a benediction and colorful dressed people.

We visit some fountains, water was working as it supposed to do,  and we were invited by the mayor for lunch.

I felt so happy, my stomach was –as mentioned before- braying like a donkey.

We sat in the carpets of the dining room, and the women showed us the beautiful carpets they were doing with natural wool. We bought two. My parents still have one in front of the chimney. White and black.  Simple as a theorem.

And then the food arrived.

Special food. For the special guest Anna was: the virago who screamed and fight for months with the Muslim hierarchy to be accepted as a prepared engineer, but that at the end brought the fucking safe water in the village.

Fruit. Incredible, rare as a truffle, in that miser land, bread, and….a full bowl of…dead meat. The most valuable and honorable dish they could offer us.

Pieces of lamb, fried to death with salt to dehydrate it and then buried in a clay jar for eight months.

Eight months.

They have no fridge.

Tasted like a nasty grandma’s cupboards.

But we eat it. Smiling and thanking.

Whenever I watch to the carpet, in my parent’s chimney front, I still think of it. That deep experience.

My stomach never dare to bray anymore.

how to refuse it? Never to full for that