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18 May China
Subject: inner sanctum
the strangeness mounts
have now seemingly met every member of the circus mafia. lots of fat old
guys with houses like iced cakes and rooms with lavish red and purple and
orange silk covered floor mat couch things and bowls of figs and mulberries
and nuts and other unidentified small dried fruits and bowls of tea. The
interiors of their houses are all the more surreal considering the exteriors
are your basic bludgeon soviet block variety.
spent this morning with Kurbanjan, psychic/healer/fortune teller
extraordinare who is unfortunately convinced that I am his ticket to
infomercial fame and fortune in AMERIKA. He has this amazing giant photo of
himself superimposed in front of cliffs and sunsets. He is holding up his
clenched fists which are bright red, he claims, from heat generated from his
body when the genies work through him. Yesterday his upstairs neighbor,
Mijit, showed me a spoon Kurbanjan had twisted with rays from his brain.
Mijit is the manager of the most famous tightrope walker in the land, Adil.
Adil lives on the 2nd floor of this same building. I met him yesterday too,
and am going to visit him and his tightrope team this weekend while they're
training. They're getting ready for this big anniversary festival
happening next month in kashgar. They've invited me to tour with them
there. Hopefully can go to yengisar first and hang out with some of the
dinkier homlier troupes. And also see the knife dagger factory.
So yeah, a whole building full of vegas dreaming muslim circus performers.
damn.
I've been led to this sanctum of circus elite by a crazed uighur reporter i
met named Ilyar who knows more people than even edmar. He reminds me a bit
of juris, at least in terms of his frenzied bursts of energy, frequent
inexplicable disappearances, and lurching thought process. He's trying to
enlist his sister as my translator. Which should be interesting as she
doesn't really speak english. I went with ilyar last night to a
circumcision party. Weenie bash. It was huge and lavish. They piled up
plates on top of plates. It was a little wierd to sit with Ilyar, at a
table full of men, on the men's side of the banquet hall. All the women sat
on the other side. Oh well. Absolved by my foreignness. There was freaky
middle eastern type wailing/singing by ladies in prom dresses and lots of
very sparkly costumed dancers doing something between low knee bend russian
folk dance and arabian, wrist gyrating, belly dance type stuff. There were
also lots of acrobats and circus kids contorting into crazy shapes with
candleabras perched on every limb.
These people are hardcore into entertainment.
Yesterday had a fun bus incident. Our driver was, as is typical, driving in
the lanes of oncoming traffic at high speeds trying to pass some very
marginally slower busses on the right. He actually did amazingly well until
we got onto the hill in the midst of the main turk street vendors market.
At this point we smashed into another bus, naturally causing both vehicles
to lurch to a stop so the drivers could get out and paruse the damage. Most
of the passengers took this opportunity to escape, but many just joined the
growing throng around the two drivers who had by now begun a fist fight.
The exciting part was that then some of our passengers started fighting with
the passengers from the other bus. This, as far as I could tell, was
instigated by this fat guy with bulgy eyes who was on our bus claiming that
some rival bus passenger had grabbed his ass. Anyway, everybody was
punching everybody else. Of course none of the traffic behind us could pass
becuase our busses were blocking our own lane and most of the oncoming
lane. This didn't stop a few intrepid sorts from ramming their taxis and
landrovers onto the vendor packed sidewalks, doubtlessly crushing any in
their path. At one point a police van with flashing lights came by in the
other direction but chose not to aknowldege the chaos. A half hour later we
finally moved again, bloodied passengers and all. i shudder to think of the
traffic pile up that was created behind us.
Tonight am meeting a uighur instrument maker who makes those cool long
necked roundy stringed instruments. I hope he plays some too.
ok. going to go do some yoga and eat a popsiscle and relax in the shade.
from your eastern emmisary lovingly known by chinese paging operators as
'jiahbolah'
take care
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