Sven

Sven grew up in South Africa, and his favorite language was Zulu, which is all about clicks and whistles. He tried to speak it to us, with minimal success. Luckily, he and Xeres quickly found a common language, which was French, and chatted away all the while, with occasional clicks and whistles, while me and the other guy were left to ourselves.

Here’s the cautionary tale of the adventures of Sven the Viking in Crimea. “I have to take a beer, go to the end of the pier, and think about my life,” he said when we met him. It turned out that the day before he had found a nice wine cellar on the big road just outside the village. He went in and found some really nice people there. That was all he could remember. He opened his eyes to the first rays of the sun. He was somewhere in the woods, covered with a blanket, with a guy sitting on the ground next to him, reading Crime and Punishment. He checked his pockets for his wallet and camera, and checked out again. When he woke up, the guy was gone. “I have to go to the end of the pier and think about my life,” he said.

“Never sleep in the same place twice when you are in the jungle. They will find you. See the scar?” He had a huge stitch along the whole length of his arm. Some Zulus with machetes found him in the jungle and almost chopped him to pieces. He ran away, bleeding, and reached the road. It was raining, and his artery was cut open. He was covered with water and blood. A car stopped. There was a Zulu guy inside, who rushed him to the hospital. “You see? A Zulu guy almost killed me, and another Zulu guy saved my life.” I try to follow his advice not to sleep in the same place twice, at least not in the jungle.

“You should live either in a big city or in a desert. There you can breathe freely. But not in small towns.” He was working in the countryside in rich people’s gardens. “You know, I work in the gardens of old houses. And they are all full… All full of ghosts.”

Sven the Viking from Zululand could only take his vacation once every two years. He had to go home. We put him in a marshrutka to Simferopol. He was almost sober. Afterwards, he never answered an email. We still miss him.

Surp Hach

Up the hill we went, 500 meters above the sea level and then back down to the sea along the old postal road to get to Surp Hach, the Holy Cross, an ancient Armenian monastery, destroyed under the Bolsheviks and hardly restored. “This divine temple of glory on earth is the paradise of the tree of life,” says the Armenian inscription dating back to 1358 found under the cupola.

The first time I was there, it was just a ruin, with a few strange people staying inside. I came late at night, and they didn’t let me in. I put up a tent outside the wall, behind the church. The moon was full, the church was casting a shadow on my tent, and I could clearly see the cross in the shadow. A guy came and brought me a watermelon and a knife. “Sorry,” he said, “We are a friary. Women can’t stay inside. We don’t have hens here, only roosters. Our dog is male. Our cats are boys. Sorry.” And he disappeared into the darkness. I was sitting alone outside the ancient church on a full moon night in total silence in the middle of the woods, eating a watermelon. I’ve been going to every Armenian church I can find ever since.

In the morning, the guy turned out to be Hakop. He looked like your average elderly homeless guy, and that’s what he was. But nothing is average in Crimea. He was not Armenian, but he decided that he should be. He learned the language, learned the prayers, and learned to sing them. He was staying in this monastery that was nothing but a ruin in the woods, keeping guard over the old stones, praying and carving khachkars, Armenian stone crosses. “Come, have a look.” He took me to the church. The walls had almost nothing left of the old frescoes, but were covered with khachkars, big and small, that people left over the centuries. “Hear me sing, tell me how I sound,” he said and opened a thick prayer book that looked like an old manuscript. He sounded like magic in an empty, abandoned church.

Xeres

When we came this time, it was already a monastery, with visitors and a souvenir stall, and Xeres was chatting non-stop. Back then, he was a Russian speaker and firmly believed that Crimea was Russian. “You see,” he said, “I am from Eski Qirim. I know. It’s a Russian town. I don’t know where all these guys came from and built all those mosques. There were no mosques here before. It’s a Russian town.” The first mosque in Eski Qirim and in Crimea was built in 1314, under the Golden Horde, and it’s still there. “You know, my aunt was a teacher of Ukrainian. She was the Honored Teacher of Crimea. I can speak Ukrainian, no prob. But why should I? Crimea is Russian.”

“People tell me, why don’t you go to America? But is there Crimea in America? Where will I go? What will I do without Crimea? Where else can you find a place like this? I have to be here, this is my home. I’ll be back here next March.”

Next March, I called Xeres in Kyiv and told him not to go. I was following the news, but he wasn’t. He was still a Russian speaker. Crimea had become dangerous. The last flight to Simferopol had to turn back in the air around March 13. Trains were met and searched by some armed clowns calling themselves Russian Cossacks. A Ukrainian film crew was kidnapped. Strange things were happening. “No prob,” said Xeres, “Crimea is my home. I don’t care about your political games. I’m going.” He called me back at the end of the summer, in Ukrainian. “Never again,” he said. “Never again.” I’ve never heard a word of Russian from him since.

Mangup

But we are still in 2013, and I am looking for a cave and for enlightenment. The best place with caves is, of course, Mangup.

“You can take Grotto No. 25,” said the Comandante of Mangup, a small guy who jumped out of nowhere. “You’ll have nice neighbors in Grotto No. 20. My spouse and I, we are staying in a three-room luxury cave with a balcony,” he said and disappeared again. Their son, the Mangup Boy, was born in that cave. I wonder where he is now.

Mangup was a year-round hippie colony on a plateau surrounded by precipices, with ruins of a medieval city, of which almost nothing is known, as is usually the case in Crimea. There’s a Karaim cemetery, an entrance gate of a Byzantine palace, some city walls on the slopes, old water sources, and lots of caves. That’s all we know. The territory is huge and inhabited by Indians, the local hippie tribe. They stay in caves, play drums, weave dreamcatchers, and sell hazelnuts to tourists. Wild poppies cover the fields at the bottom of the rock. Mangup is inaccessible from all sides. You have to know where the path starts to get up.

I dropped dead in my Grotto No. 25 after the hard climb, and in the morning my nice neighbors appeared, following the narrow path on the edge of the abyss. “Hi,” they said, “Have you seen Yulia?” The procession ran away, pounding their drums. Half an hour later, a girl showed up. “Have you seen everyone?” she asked. “You must be Yulia,” I said. The procession passed by twice a day: first everyone looking for Yulia, and then Yulia looking for everyone. I was somehow not surprised when I found her the next winter in my kitchen in Kyiv. “This is Yulia, you don’t know her.” – “Of course, I do.”

The Mangup caves were definitely not good for enlightenment. But that’s not the only cave city in Crimea.

(… to be continued…)

Transadaptation Volume 5 – Of Flowing Vicissitudes

January: The Night the Stars Stopped Shining – Sarah-Leah Pimentel (South Africa)

February: Three Sides to Every Story – Krisztina Janosi (Hungary)

March: Rain Trap – Adriana Uribe (Columbia)

April: Priorities – Narantsogt Baatarkhuu (Mongolia)

May: The Night in Heaven – Armine Asryan (Armenia)

June: Witches Don’t Burn – Alejandra Baccino (Uruguay)

July: A Regular Flat – Mateusz Tymoszewski (Poland)

August: Many Happy Returns – Svetlana Molchanova (Russia)

September: And Now, It Will All Go Downhill – Jonay Quintero Hernandez (Spain)

October: Planet Qirim – Anastasiia Leonova (Ukraine)

November: You Are Her, Aren’t You? – Seyit Ali Dastan (Turkey)

December: Culture Shock – Veronika Groke (Austria)

Background – Context

Transadaptation Volume 4: Material Dissent – Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2023)

Transadaptation Volume 3: Evanescent – Young Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2022)

Transadaptation Volume 2: Conceived – Childhood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2021)

Transadaptation Volume 1: In the Middle – Prelude to a Contemporary Transadaptation, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2020)

Peripatetic Alterity: A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being – Romantics and Pragmatists by Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)

La Syncrétion of Polarization and Extremes Transposée, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)

The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2018)

L’anthologie of Global Instability Transpuesta, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2017)

From Wahnsinnig to the Loony Bin: German and Russian Stories Transposed to Modern-day America, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2013)

Emblems and stories on the international community

Perception by country – Transposing emblems, articles, short stories and reports from around the world

Credits

Left column (top to bottom): 1. Balaklava, Crimea – In the evening – Alexey Pavlishak (Shutterstock); Feodosia, Crimea – On the bike – Francisco Rioseco (Unsplash); Evpatoria, Crimea – Swimming – Alexey Pavlishak (Shutterstock)

Middle column (top to bottom): 1. Yalta, Crimea – View from above – Alexey Pavlishak (Shutterstock); Simferopol, Crimea – Feeding pigeons – Alexey Pavlishak (Shutterstock); Evpatoria, Crimea – Chaplin visiting Crimea – Alexey Pavlishak (Shutterstock)

Right column (top to bottom): 1. Sevastopol, Crimea – A scenic view – Konstantin Dyadyun (Unsplash); Bakhchisarai, Crimea – Road to Cave City – Alexey Pavlishak (Shutterstock); Crimea – At the port – Angelika Agibalova (Unsplash)

Source: The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed