The country of Paraka may be the smallest of them all, but it possesses a certain bigness even the grandest of nations may find endearing, fascinating, and worthwhile.
Located in a nigh-unreachable crater in the midst of the Karakoram mountain range, this miniscule state is a recognized sovereignty, though asking its closest neighbors about it will result in only strange looks. The country totals exactly sixty-four people, nine-hundred and eighteen sheep, eighty-four yaks, and a number of dark-feathered ducks somewhere between one-hundred thirty and one-hundred sixty. It has proved difficult to count the ducks due to their reluctance to sit still, and their general resemblance.
There are a total of thirty-four buildings in the entire nation, including one building which serves as the capitol, town hall, and residence of the country's chieftain--a term we applied to him, though it meant nothing to him. He is simply the oldest person in the country. The previous chieftain was a woman who died at the age of eighty-three four years before we visited.
It took a four-hour helicopter ride before we could spot Paraka, nestled inside a ring of peaks. Instead of tracking the motion of the sun across the sky, the citizens of Paraka tell time by looking at the size and location of the shadows, reaching from the mountains all around them. Indeed, it looks as if the small village making up the world's smallest country sits inside a crown, and the mountains around them are the points.
Our helicopter landed in an empty acre, and our small crew disembarked. There was myself, your intrepid investigator; our photographer and cameraman, Oswald Neers; the helicopter pilot Hussein Zayeed; and our interpreter, a man who was only known as "Wumpo."
Five citizens of Paraka approached us, waving. We had corresponded a few times, and they seemed to be eagerly awaiting our visit. Introductions went around, with Wumpo providing the communicative link between us. The Parakan language is built from common Turkic, though with a few differences. There were a number of confusions, but usually all it took to clear things up was a slow repetition.
Paraka's little-known status as the smallest country in the world is an interesting train of lost paperwork and forgotten messages. In 1959, an explorer in the Karakoram mountains stumbled upon the village. We are lucky there was little communication differences, or the Parakans might have been lost to time and memory. The explorer discovered they had no affiliation with any of the surrounding nations, and none of the nations claimed the section of the mountains they were in--such is the nature of their brutality and harshness. Thus, the explorer (we believe his name was Jimbob) came to understand Paraka was a sovereign state.
The Parakans found Jimbob strange. They knew of others beyond the mountains, but there was no reason for them to try and contact the outside world. There were sheep to herd. Even Jimbob's tough climbing boots amazed the villagers, and they decided in a majority vote--only one villager abstained (he had fallen asleep during the meeting)--to seek nation status. They hired Jimbob to contact those whose job it is to do such things. Jimbob accepted, and then died trying to cross the mountain range a second time.
After ten years of no further contact, the Parakans were not deterred. They elected three of their strongest and bravest to travel in a random direction until they reached another settlement, and from there travel until they discovered who could, officially, make Paraka known.
Miraculously, all three men survived. Some six months after they set out (we think--again, the shadows keep the time in Paraka) they wandered into Islamabad, and, from there, it was an exciting, hilarious, and heartwarming adventure to the United Nations headquarters in New York, full of, I'm sure, a great number of moments they will remember for the rest of their lives.
Unfortunately, the U.N. only had one person on staff who could understand Turkic, and he was sick that day. Nobody had any idea what to do with the resolute travelers (who were now a year out from their homeland), but they could at least understand the three Parakans had a mission, and they would not leave until the mission was complete.
The U.N. guard decided to treat the trio as a group of peaceful and understanding foreign invaders (the irony here being, or course, the three Parakans were not part of any nationality, and thus not recognized as foreign) and detain them in a hotel room. The Parakans, not understanding they were under a conditional arrest, enjoyed the mini bar and slept for the rest of the day.
The next day the Turkic interpreter was present to hear an explanation, and the three Parakans was allowed back into the U.N. building. They set their case forward, everything was recorded, and the recorded notes were swiftly lost when an intern on his first day accidentally shredded them. A year later, the trio, still living in New York and now with a passing ability to speak English, asked after the request. When told there was no such request on file, the trio became understandably upset.
Again filing a report (and making sure it was placed into the correct hands, in an attempt to avoid an international conflict, again ignoring Paraka's lack of nation status), the trio of Parakans began the long journey home. One of them got lost somewhere in Germany, another became a leader of a cult of flower worshipers in Greenland, and a third is living in Detroit. He is happy, and his English seems to have improved.
The second request the trio made was entered into a filing cabinet and forgotten, until May of 1997, when it was found during a cleaning. The U.N. convened to discuss the matter, and when no representatives of the nation could be contacted, found, or otherwise produced, the request was denied.
Two years later a fourth member of Paraka, a son of one of the original trio, made his way to the U.N., having been trying to find his way there for the last eight years. While the request had been denied, it was not forgotten, and this man was made U.N. representative of Paraka on the spot. It is the first time a man without footwear was made representative.
After a few weeks nobody had any objections, thanks to a number of reasons. I'm sure you know how long and complicated the U.N. can make things, but even just a few weeks is a rather short time frame for decisions of this magnitude.
So: Paraka was a country. However, nobody knew where it was, and the representative could not locate it on the map, even a zoomed-in version of the Karakoram range. While the nationhood of Paraka was not in question, border lines must exist to avoid any potential conflicts. However, try as they might, they could not discover the tiny crater lodged inside the mountain range which housed all five-dozen people of the world's newest nation.
While no one foresaw any border disputes due to the nation's location in one of the world's harsher mountain ranges, the U.N. was hesitant to call the matter null.
So, eighteen years later, my expedition was sent to find the nation, mark the borders, and discover everything there is to know about the world's smallest country.
And yes, it is the smallest in the world. It measures at ninety-six acres, more than enough space for all the people and sheep this crater boasts. The next smallest is the Vatican, which has a robust one-hundred and nine acres, a population almost nine times as much, and infinitely more tourists. The Vatican also has more art, though Paraka has it beat on sheep, yak, and chicken numbers.
I, as the first official U.N. visitor to the infant nation, put my best foot forward with a smile, and handshake, and a welcome from the world at large. This almost led to a fight, as a smile seems to be a threatening gesture to the Parakans. Wumpo sorted things out, and the Parakan welcome committee greeted us as guests and visitors.
The capitol of Paraka, also known as Paraka, sits in the center of the crater, surrounded on all sides by long fields of green grass. The buildings of the village are propped up on short stilts, and when asked about them, the chieftain, a man called Lakau, explained rain or snow has a habit of flowing into the center, making the stilts necessary to keep homes dry. Indeed, we spotted a number of rafts or canoes next to entrances, ready for the wet season.
However, we also saw numerous small holes dug deep into the earth. We would learn they holes were for the water to drain away--there must have been hundreds throughout the village. When the rain would come, the water would drain into the holes and soak into the ground at a much faster rate, and much deeper. This not only keeps the ground their homes are built on from getting too soggy, but makes the crater a verdant and healthy place. The grass was bright green, the plants were large and colorful. Even the animals looked healthy.
A question came to me, and I posed it to the chieftain through Wumpo: The homes, stilts, and boats were made of wood, but there were no trees anywhere in the crater--we had been able to see its entirety from the helicopter. The chieftain nodded and explained while there are no trees left in the crater itself, it's possible to travel over one of the near peaks and chop down some of the trees. They send an expedition every few years, bearing rock and bone tools, bringing back several small and large trunks to make repairs and keep stored in case of catastrophe. He pointed out a number of places where flat boards lay in stacks under eaves.
The people of Paraka came out to watch the miniscule procession to the chieftain’s home. Stout women and hardy men watched from the their front doors with down-turned faces (which we knew was not a sign of sadness or displeasure, it was just the way their faces sat--remember, smiling appeared to be aggression). Children wondered at us with wide eyes. A few of them asked the chieftain questions. He responded with terse sentences which seemed to supply the information the villagers were asking for.
It was at this point we determined how Lakau became the head of the village. He was neither monarch nor president, dictator nor prime minister--he was simply the oldest. We settled on "chieftain," not knowing of any other nations where the oldest person was made the leader by virtue of age.
The chieftain’s home was bigger by slim margins compared to those around it. The man explained since he was the oldest he'd had the most time to improve on it, then invited us inside.
The interior of his home--and, we would discover, almost all homes of Paraka--was dark and dingy. When you set your watch on the shadows, and expect your village to flood every year, keeping dirt off the floor is rather a secondary issue. Small windows let in what little light made it into the crater, and there were no doors, just uneven openings in the walls leading to other sections. Like all houses, they were built up--every family member or couple had their own room, smaller groups had their own floor. The buildings all leaned on stilts or supports, or against each other to keep from falling over.
A number of the homes were in disrepair. We saw a few rooms open to the sky or village, walls or ceilings collapsed or torn down to salvage usable wood. We saw a few places were an old room had clearly been, but now sported a boarded-up opening. We could usually see a pair of eyes peering through the boards.
The chieftain lived with his family: his wife, a woman three years younger than him, their children and their spouses, and their grandchildren. The household totaled fifteen in all, not counting sheep or ducks. Lakau rattled off their names to us as they stood in a line, and we greeted each one in turn.
Lakau's wife was named Tucca, and she had the hips of a woman who had balanced babies on them nearly all her life. Her fists rested on them, and her lips were so wrinkled they looked like a dry canal bed. Her eyes laid upon us without a hint of fear or trepidation, and I'm sure if we had made any sort of threatening gestures she would have thrown us right out the window.
Their children were Olipya and Wolta, sisters, married to Narut and Cirnak, brothers. Due to our untrained eyes, we had difficulty telling the siblings apart, but the differences in their personalities, movements, and voices soon made things clearer. Both couples met us eagerly, and added to the discussion of life in the crater when they could.
Their children--a total of nine, including the twins Tucca carried at all times--ranged from newborns to nearly twenty, as far as we can tell. They have no birthday celebrations in Paraka, aside from a yearly gathering and feast the entire village takes part in. The feast features the best the village has to offer, and takes place during the warmest months of the year. The entire village is transformed into a space of great revelry, with games, presentations of creations made from the mountain stone or wood--even of animal bone or fur--and late twilights spent telling stories around stoves.
The oldest of the grandchildren, Eesha, had just entered into a courtship with an eighteen-year-old neighbor. When asked of the details of Parakan courtship, nearly everyone in the home laughed and started talking over one another. Wumpo translated:
"It's all in good fun," Lakau said. "Everybody knows everyone else, and everyone knows we must be kind with one another to survive. We are too small to risk hatred. There is a saying: a burning sheep turns the entire flock to ash.
"First the couple announce their intentions to both families, and then the parents meet to discuss the pairing. Sometimes they decide it might not work out."
Tucca interjected. "Parents know their children. Mothers and fathers ask each other if the man and woman should join. It is very important they are right, or at least not wrong, for each other. Bad relationships can harm the village. Most of the time there is no problem, but if there is there must be a reason given--the man is too lazy, the woman has rage, anything."
"Sometimes it is compatibility," Lakau said. "A woman may be very wrong for one man, but right for another."
Tucca nodded, and went on. "If there is no problem the courtship is announced to the village, and the insults may begin. The household of the woman is allowed to go first." She looked at her husband. "My parents told his parents he smelled like the underside of a yak, and that their house was too small for his big head to fit."
Lakau laughed. "The man's household goes next. My parents told her parents her family's flock had red wool, and that she was so short she would have to take her shirt off to keep it dry during the floods. We laugh, and continue, until both households have run dry."
"That is the first day," Tucca said. "Everyday afterward, for one hundred days-" (the Parakan word for "day" translates directly to "shadow-circle") "-each household sends a representative to the other house to deliver additional insults. The woman's household in the morning and the man's at night. The reason is to make sure no one holds himself too high above the others--everybody must work, everybody is worth the same amount. No family is greater than another because it has more yaks, or finer sheep. Everyone must work hard for the village. If they do not, they are not allowed to marry."
After a hundred days of these good-natured insults (during which the couple will spend time together in standard courtship engagements) the village will gather together, enjoy a small feast, and then allow the new couple to spend a week in the appointed "joining house," which is randomly chosen from the available buildings and made as clean and free of distractions as possible. During this week, the village as a whole will decide which home the couple is to live in, the wife's or the husband's, based on the insults given. If the insults are well-received, or the giver proves a hypocrite in some way, a point is given to the one who received the insult. Otherwise, it is awarded to the insult giver. The more insults given, the better. The family with the most points meets and decides whether the new couple should live with them, or with the other family. As a large household is, perhaps, the only way a Parakan family can exhibit good fortune, the couple is usually accepted, and an upward addition to the home is planned.
Eesha and her partner, named Ulata, had only begun their courtship a month (by our reckoning) before, so we would be able to witness part of this uncommon custom after the evening meal.
Outside again, we sat on the house's porch and asked Lakau about the history of Paraka. He failed to understand, and Wumpo repeated the question in a different manner. Again the man looked at us, confused. Wumpo tried a third time, speaking to Lakau for a longer amount of time. At last he understood.
Wumpo had asked "what are some special things that have happened here?" Lakau took a few moments to nod and think, smoking on a pipe filled with aromatic herbs they, as well as every other family, grew in small plots huddled next to their homes.
"There was the time of the circle of beasts," Lakau said next, after thinking. When asked to tell the story, he nodded. "I was a child. I had not yet married. My family, then, had forty sheep, nine ducks, and just one yak--we were trying to breed her. I was watching the flock at night, and they were making much noise. They were strange sounds, and I thought some of them had gotten hurt or sick, but they seemed healthy. They danced in their pens, and I noticed many of the other animals doing the same. The entire village woke up, confused, and came together to try and figure it out."
They consulted each other, inspected the animals, and traded information. Nothing could be found. Then, a young shepherd failed to fasten a gate properly, and his sheep stormed out. As a solid mass, they began to run rings around the village. They ran endless laps, slowing from a sprint to a meander as time went on. The sheep seemed to be calmer, and they stared ahead or at their hooves as they ran, without making a sound.
Seeing the animals were at peace, others began releasing their flocks as well. All the animals in the village began to circle around the houses, none of them making a sound except for the pounding of their hooves in the dark. Four hours they went around: sheep, yaks, ducks. The ducks made fewer revolutions as they tried to keep up with the bigger animals.
They went until sunrise. When the sun finally began to show itself over the tops of the peaks around the village, the animals slowed, stopped, and fell where they stood.
The village went into an uproar, only quieting down when they determined the animals were not dead, simply asleep--every one of them. It had only happened once, and none of the villagers could ever figure out how it had happened or what had prompted it. The animals woke up a few hours later, still quite tired, and it was a day's work for the whole village to determine which animal belonged to which family.
When Lakau concluded the story, he laughed and shook his head. "It was very strange. We were frightened. We watched the animals very closely for many nights, but they never did anything else of the sort."
But he had another story ready. "A few years after I married, I was part of the group who went beyond the mountains to seek wood. We covered ourselves in furs and wrapped up all our tools in blankets and tied them to our backs. We headed night-ward, as the last two expeditions we had gone in the other direction."
We took night-ward to mean west. "There were fifteen of us, the strongest of the village. It took three days for us to find any trees big enough to take back, and when we found them we set upon them like creatures who could only eat wood. We tore off the leaves and stuffed them into sacks, cut off the bigger branches and trimmed the smaller ones, and wrapped them in cord. There are innumerable uses for the smaller branches, everything from kitchen tools to children's toys.
"We took to sawing down the trunks, the most difficult part of the job. We had selected twelve strong trees, and we knew if we could get all of them back to the village, it would be a good journey."
I asked how fifteen people were to take a dozen trees back to the village; surely, they would be too heavy. Lakau nodded.
"I did not mention. We took yaks with us. They carried the burden for us. They are very strong. We hauled branches and sticks, they pulled the larger logs on smooth, flat pieces of wood.
"We were on our way back to the village with the trunks. We were going up a slope, still a day away from home, when one of the cords we had used to bind the trunks broke. The trunk started rolling back down the slope. A number of us gave chase, running down the mountainside until it came to rest against a few boulders. However, as we approached, we noticed the trunk seemed to be shifting or grinding itself against the boulders. When we got close enough, we spotted a number of small holes in its surface--we hadn't noticed them before. When we got close enough, small, furry creatures emerged from the holes. There must have been a hundred. By the dozens they fled, covering the mountainside in their tiny bodies. We had never seen them before; we didn't know what they were. We ran from them as they ran from us, but in just a few minutes they had all disappeared. Those of us who had chased the log were squatting on boulders, or had climbed up trees. All of us felt silly--they had just been tiny mountain children.
"We returned to the village, unable to retrieve the fallen trunk, but all of us laughing anyway."
His stories concluded, Lakau asked us about the world at large. He especially wanted to know about the cities, and it was difficult for us to explain how large they were compared to Paraka. Even the smallest Midwestern town looked like a bustling metropolis compared to this village in its crater. We told him about cars and planes and explained the helicopter we had arrived in. None of the sheep or shepherds would go near it. He asked us about everything: the clothes we wore, what our families were like, he even wanted to know about our language.
We would come to discover curiosity is a prime trait in the Parakans. With so little to support them, a yearning to know more sustains them. How will a piece of wood, attached like so to another, stand with this much weight? What's down that path? Is it safe or dangerous? Is it faster, or healthier, to cook food this way or another?
His questions went on through the afternoon, and we were able to watch the shadows shift their points across the crater.
When the shadows reached a certain point--we are unsure what it was--Lakau rose from the step and said it was time to prepare for the evening meal. We offered to help, and he accepted.
He led us to the kitchen, where his wife and the other four adults were working.
Would you like to know about Parakan meals? The answer is sheep. Mutton is the main staple. Sheep milk is both drank as-is, and converted into butter and cheese. It would probably be unfair to try and place the resulting materials with other cheeses or butters, as they are in a family of their own, born from the poverty of the crater.
As we were special guests, we also got to try the local delicacy: duck. A healthy, plump duck was selected, killed, and dressed, and we watched the process with a strange fascination. Tucca worked her hands over the duck's body with practiced method. Soon the bare carcass, covered in a sauce of milk and sparse herbs, found its way into the rudimentary oven, which was outside the house, in what one might call a patio. It was surrounded with benches, and had a roof over it, but there were large slits in the covering to allow the smoke to exit. Lakau explained the slits were too narrow to allow rain in unless it was angled just right, something very unlikely.
We brought our own food to share: crackers and peanut butter, beef jerky, packages with rice and sauce, chicken. We even had some bread, and we explained the process of growing wheat, though we also had to tell them they might not have the space for it. We didn't have enough for everyone to feast, but we passed it out as a way to show our appreciation, to offer what we could to the meal. Before long, the stone oven containing the duck and mutton put off a great deal of heat.
While we were waiting, Lakau took us to the small field the village had marked for vegetables--it had been on the other side of the village from us, so we had not seen it. They had onions, cabbages, turnips, and beets. Each family helped tend to it, Lakau explained. The vegetables were big, and heavy, and Lakau said it was because the crater soaks up so much rain, the vegetables never lack for it. The field was not a pretty one, but we had seen some of the vegetables during the dinner preparation, and they looked perfectly acceptable, as far as vegetables go.
In short order the meal was ready, but we had to sit and watch it cool, the tantalizing smell of roast duck and mutton covering us from head to toe. We talked more about the world at large until Tucca announced it was cool enough to eat.
With no plates, or silverware, to speak of, Lakau told us to grab chunks of meat with our hands. We did so, feeling slightly silly about it, but relaxing when the family began to eat their own handfuls. The food might not have been anything to write home about, but it didn't taste half-bad, and left us with pleasant, warm feelings in our stomachs.
After the meal, Lakau took us to the front step of his home for smoking and more chitchat. He offered us some of the herbs he was smoking; Wumpo and Hussein both accepted. Hussein described the taste as bitter and not to his liking, but Wumpo was more appreciative, nodding with a smile on his face as he puffed.
We were relaxed and happy. At a certain point the sunlight disappeared from the crater altogether, a moment Lakau named "edare": old circle. He stood up and looked down the road.
We saw a young man standing in the middle of the street, and when he saw Lakau watching him, he marched up to stand in front of the house. Lakau called inside, and a minute later the entire household stood on the step, the girl Eesha waited as her courtier cleared his throat and began to speak. He would speak a sentence or two, then pause. Sometimes the family would laugh, sometimes they would chuckle, and sometimes they would stay silent. Should the last occur, the young man would continue on, undaunted.
We stood off to the side, quietly excited to get to witness part of the courtship. Wumpo translated a few of the insults: "Your family is so large I fear you would tire me out providing for it," "Your grandparents may yet outlast me," and "Were we to join your family's home, there may not be enough trees to make it big enough." For several of the insults, Wumpo had difficulty translating, stating they relied on wordplay native to the language, and even if he could translate them, we wouldn't find them very funny. We asked him to do his best. He was right.
When the young man ran out, the household all began to knock on the wood of the porch and house--after some confusion we began to understand the action as polite applause. Eesha stepped off the porch and embraced the young man, and they began to talk as lovers do. They announced they were going on a walk around the village, and struck off down the lane.
As they dawdled away they looked up, and our eyes all seemed to catch the sky. It was a cloudless night, and the stars in their full brilliance showed themselves. Lakau and Tucca's daughter Olipya came over to speak to us. She told us about the stars.
"Everybody wonders what they are," Olipya said. She had a wool wrap around her, and her voice was slight. "Father tells us the stories, sometimes, about how someone once climbed to the highest mountain and scooped a handful of sun out of the sky, and then waited until it was dark. He didn't like the dark, and so he threw the handful of sun into the sky to try and make it bright." She spread her hand across the stars above us. "But he didn't have enough.
"He went back to the mountain the next day, taking with him the largest sheepskin he could find. He threw it over the sun but could only scoop up part of it. The sheepskin was dirty, and old, and it stained the part of the sun it carried, so that when he released the sun, it came out discolored. It was bright, but smaller, and nowhere near as bright as the sun was."
She took her eyes to the moon. It was only a thin crescent. "We know these stories aren't true, not really. We tell them anyway. There isn't much here. We don't get to enjoy the world outside the village--some of us thought there wasn't anything outside the village, that we were the only people in the whole world, that this was the only place we could live, that everything else was an endless mountain range, nothing but sharp points and steep slopes."
I asked her if there were more Parakan myths she could tell us. We retreated to around the oven, which began to pull double-duty to warm us up as the night got colder. A few of the other family members joined us. Olipya thought for a few minutes, her entire head tilted up at the sky, then she started talking.
"Far under the holes we have dug in the dirt and grass, too far for any person to see or reach, there is another village like ours. Its people walk on the ceiling, and look down at the sky, which is not like ours. Their village has its own shadows--theirs do not reach us, ours do not reach them. When it rains here, and the water flows into the holes we have dug, it falls for a very long time, and then it comes out of the holes they have dug. Their animals drink it, and it waters their crops and washes them, and it falls into their sky.
"As it is bright here during the day, and dark during the night, so it is dark during the day there, and bright during the night. They sleep in the light and walk in the dark.
"Because it is so dark during the day, they dare not venture away from the village. While they tend their flocks, they see shadows in the darkness moving around the edges of the mountains surrounding their village. They did not want to leave the safety of their fires or homes for fear of whatever creatures waited for them in the dark. The creatures took their sheep during the bright night, and their food dwindled, but still they wouldn't leave the scant safety of the village, no matter what time of the day it was.
"Finally, finally, one family lost all of their sheep, and they cold stand it no longer. 'We will go out during the night to fight these creatures!' they said. 'We will punish them for taking everything we have!'
"Other villagers joined them, and they made sticks and stones into weapons to fight the shadowy creatures, and they went out at night, hunting for the creatures. They carried fire on sticks, eyes darting back and forth as they stumbled up and down the mountains around their village. They heard a strange animal sound and chased it over rocks and past trees, shadows leaping away from the fire they carried.
"They chased the animal for a long time, finally catching it when it was pressed up against a mountain wall with nowhere to go. When they brought the fire close, to burn it, they discovered it was just a sheep. They began to find more sheep, lost on the slopes and chewing on rough mountain grass. They found more than a hundred, almost as many as the creatures had supposedly taken. They hunted all over the mountains for the creatures, but found no evidence of anything other than sheep.
"Then they realized they were lost. They had never left the village, so they didn't know how to find their way back. It took hours for them to discover the trail home. The sun had set over them before they got back to the village--they were tired and could barely keep their eyes open. In the light, they realized shadows grew from everything, and the creatures they had feared so much were just flames making their own shadows look like monsters in the corners of their eyes."
Olipya shifted. "There is nothing to fear in the shadows, other than ourselves," she said. "The story is also how we convince ourselves to look down every path. We investigate all things, because you never know when you will need to know something, and not know it."
While the local time was only about nine o'clock at night, we were tired, and had been traveling, talking, or walking almost all day. Before we retired to the tents we had brought with us, Lakau met with us again. He asked us how long we would be staying at the village. While we would have liked more time to find out everything there was to know, we had a tight schedule, so we would have to leave the next day. He nodded, and said he looked forward to meeting with us in the morning.
We made our way back to the acre with our helicopter, avoiding the sheep and rain-holes in the ground, and set up the tents we had brought. Instead of falling asleep, however, the four of us sat together and took the chance to inspect the night sky, with stars much brighter and closer than they normally were to us.
We slept in the silent mountain air, nothing to hear but the wind blowing through the crater and the tired bleating of nearby flocks. The air, even inside our small tents, was fresh and clear, and we could still pick up the small scent of the roast meat we had eaten for dinner.
Morning--the word is yendare in Parakan, which translates to "new circle"--came late. The high mountains keep the sun from reaching the crater until it was almost nine o'clock in the morning, local time. When we rose and ate our breakfast, the village was already awake and tending to their animals. Villagers big and small watched over their sheep, fed ducks, and brushed the few yak they had. We took pictures, wrote down details, and relaxed for a few minutes before re-entering the village.
Lakau greeted us when we went to his home. He explained Eesha was on her way to Ulata's family home on the other side of the village (which was a leisurely walk of about six minutes). Eesha, her mother Olipya, Lakau, and we joined her. As we saw last night, the insulter usually goes by him or herself, but it was a special occasion.
Eesha went up to Ulata's home, and his family gathered. Their family was much smaller compared to Lakau's, only about six: a grandmother, Ulata's mother and father, and three children, all in their teens. Eesha cleared her throat and began to recite the insults she had prepared since the last morning.
"You're so sharp, I feel if I were to kiss your head I would hurt myself," Wumpo translated. "If we were to marry, we would need to dig additional draining holes by our home. Your jokes would make me laugh tears of joy, and you would cry tears of sadness at every bump and bruise."
Ulata's family roared with delight. It was the first time we saw any of them smile. Like the night before, there were a number of "insults" Wumpo had difficulty translating, as they dealt with some of the finer points of the Parakan language.
However, using those he could translate, we detected something different in the insults Eesha choose to give. While some of them were traditional insults, many of them were the kind of insult you might give a beloved pet, or a child, or a friend: You're so cute I'm worried you'll leave me for someone prettier. You're so loyal I couldn't get you to leave even if I wanted. You're so good at caring for others I'm starting to think you might not be very good at taking care of yourself.
Through all of this, Ulata watched Eesha with ever-widening eyes. If the Parakan culture had a smile as anything other than a threat, we believe one would have overtaken his face. When she ran out of insults to give, the small family wrapped their knuckles against the house in appreciation, and Ulata descended the few steps to embrace Eesha. Their talk was brief, and we didn't even need Wumpo to understand the kind of things they were saying to each other. They way they stood, the way they looked at each other, the kind of voice they used. It made all of us miss our families.
The meeting was brief, and before long we returned to Lakau's home. The village was now quite empty, as most people were in the flat, grassy parts of the crater tending to animals. Even this small place seemed too quiet when no one was walking the single street.
"Our lives are simple," Lakau said, while we walked. "We rise from our sleep, and take care of the animals, and tend the gardens, and tend the houses, and tend our children. There is nothing disturbing us. Your-" here he used a word Wumpo told us meant stone bird- "was the loudest thing we have ever heard. The quiet is very nice. We are happy. I know there are many things you can do in the world, but we do not need all those things. We have enough things here." He looked up at some of the taller buildings in the village. "We can always build up if we need more space, but the sheep cannot stand on top of one another and still eat grass. They must stay on the ground and have room to sleep."
We were silent for a few minutes until we got back to his home. Only Tucca was inside, as the rest of the family was out in the fields. The big house was quiet except for the animal sounds coming through the windows.
Lakau eased himself into a chair and made a sound like a yak. "I'm getting quite old, in case you might not know." He chuckled to himself. "I won't be alive for much longer, but I have lived a long time and I think I have had a good life." He looked at the ceiling for a minute. "I know Olipya told you the story of the man who threw the stars into the sky last night. She always loved that story. Whenever I would tell her that story I would make myself the man who went to capture the sun, and he did it because his daughter didn't want it to be dark. She told you the normal version of the story, but that is our version."
We waited for him to continue. It took a few minutes. "Our stories have a great deal to do with the sun, and the shadows of the mountains around us. Almost all of them, in fact. The stories all have lessons we must learn. The shadows, too. The shadows keep the time in Paraka, but they also keep the knowledge. We venture into the shadows to claim the knowledge for ourselves."
He leaned back, linking his fingers. "We do not fear the dark. We fear the light. The dark contains much, but the light makes all things visible. It does not seem like much of a bad thing, but the shadows contain much for us to discover. We must be curious, or we will not be able to survive."
Our helicopter took us away. Wumpo and I watched the crater shrink. In a few moments the village was too small to see. It was just past noon, local time. Unseen, the villagers went about their days, watching the shadows creep forward, keeping the time. I'm sure they were smiling, waiting for what they could discover in the dark.
Located in a nigh-unreachable crater in the midst of the Karakoram mountain range, this miniscule state is a recognized sovereignty, though asking its closest neighbors about it will result in only strange looks. The country totals exactly sixty-four people, nine-hundred and eighteen sheep, eighty-four yaks, and a number of dark-feathered ducks somewhere between one-hundred thirty and one-hundred sixty. It has proved difficult to count the ducks due to their reluctance to sit still, and their general resemblance.
There are a total of thirty-four buildings in the entire nation, including one building which serves as the capitol, town hall, and residence of the country's chieftain--a term we applied to him, though it meant nothing to him. He is simply the oldest person in the country. The previous chieftain was a woman who died at the age of eighty-three four years before we visited.
It took a four-hour helicopter ride before we could spot Paraka, nestled inside a ring of peaks. Instead of tracking the motion of the sun across the sky, the citizens of Paraka tell time by looking at the size and location of the shadows, reaching from the mountains all around them. Indeed, it looks as if the small village making up the world's smallest country sits inside a crown, and the mountains around them are the points.
Our helicopter landed in an empty acre, and our small crew disembarked. There was myself, your intrepid investigator; our photographer and cameraman, Oswald Neers; the helicopter pilot Hussein Zayeed; and our interpreter, a man who was only known as "Wumpo."
Five citizens of Paraka approached us, waving. We had corresponded a few times, and they seemed to be eagerly awaiting our visit. Introductions went around, with Wumpo providing the communicative link between us. The Parakan language is built from common Turkic, though with a few differences. There were a number of confusions, but usually all it took to clear things up was a slow repetition.
Paraka's little-known status as the smallest country in the world is an interesting train of lost paperwork and forgotten messages. In 1959, an explorer in the Karakoram mountains stumbled upon the village. We are lucky there was little communication differences, or the Parakans might have been lost to time and memory. The explorer discovered they had no affiliation with any of the surrounding nations, and none of the nations claimed the section of the mountains they were in--such is the nature of their brutality and harshness. Thus, the explorer (we believe his name was Jimbob) came to understand Paraka was a sovereign state.
The Parakans found Jimbob strange. They knew of others beyond the mountains, but there was no reason for them to try and contact the outside world. There were sheep to herd. Even Jimbob's tough climbing boots amazed the villagers, and they decided in a majority vote--only one villager abstained (he had fallen asleep during the meeting)--to seek nation status. They hired Jimbob to contact those whose job it is to do such things. Jimbob accepted, and then died trying to cross the mountain range a second time.
After ten years of no further contact, the Parakans were not deterred. They elected three of their strongest and bravest to travel in a random direction until they reached another settlement, and from there travel until they discovered who could, officially, make Paraka known.
Miraculously, all three men survived. Some six months after they set out (we think--again, the shadows keep the time in Paraka) they wandered into Islamabad, and, from there, it was an exciting, hilarious, and heartwarming adventure to the United Nations headquarters in New York, full of, I'm sure, a great number of moments they will remember for the rest of their lives.
Unfortunately, the U.N. only had one person on staff who could understand Turkic, and he was sick that day. Nobody had any idea what to do with the resolute travelers (who were now a year out from their homeland), but they could at least understand the three Parakans had a mission, and they would not leave until the mission was complete.
The U.N. guard decided to treat the trio as a group of peaceful and understanding foreign invaders (the irony here being, or course, the three Parakans were not part of any nationality, and thus not recognized as foreign) and detain them in a hotel room. The Parakans, not understanding they were under a conditional arrest, enjoyed the mini bar and slept for the rest of the day.
The next day the Turkic interpreter was present to hear an explanation, and the three Parakans was allowed back into the U.N. building. They set their case forward, everything was recorded, and the recorded notes were swiftly lost when an intern on his first day accidentally shredded them. A year later, the trio, still living in New York and now with a passing ability to speak English, asked after the request. When told there was no such request on file, the trio became understandably upset.
Again filing a report (and making sure it was placed into the correct hands, in an attempt to avoid an international conflict, again ignoring Paraka's lack of nation status), the trio of Parakans began the long journey home. One of them got lost somewhere in Germany, another became a leader of a cult of flower worshipers in Greenland, and a third is living in Detroit. He is happy, and his English seems to have improved.
The second request the trio made was entered into a filing cabinet and forgotten, until May of 1997, when it was found during a cleaning. The U.N. convened to discuss the matter, and when no representatives of the nation could be contacted, found, or otherwise produced, the request was denied.
Two years later a fourth member of Paraka, a son of one of the original trio, made his way to the U.N., having been trying to find his way there for the last eight years. While the request had been denied, it was not forgotten, and this man was made U.N. representative of Paraka on the spot. It is the first time a man without footwear was made representative.
After a few weeks nobody had any objections, thanks to a number of reasons. I'm sure you know how long and complicated the U.N. can make things, but even just a few weeks is a rather short time frame for decisions of this magnitude.
So: Paraka was a country. However, nobody knew where it was, and the representative could not locate it on the map, even a zoomed-in version of the Karakoram range. While the nationhood of Paraka was not in question, border lines must exist to avoid any potential conflicts. However, try as they might, they could not discover the tiny crater lodged inside the mountain range which housed all five-dozen people of the world's newest nation.
While no one foresaw any border disputes due to the nation's location in one of the world's harsher mountain ranges, the U.N. was hesitant to call the matter null.
So, eighteen years later, my expedition was sent to find the nation, mark the borders, and discover everything there is to know about the world's smallest country.
And yes, it is the smallest in the world. It measures at ninety-six acres, more than enough space for all the people and sheep this crater boasts. The next smallest is the Vatican, which has a robust one-hundred and nine acres, a population almost nine times as much, and infinitely more tourists. The Vatican also has more art, though Paraka has it beat on sheep, yak, and chicken numbers.
I, as the first official U.N. visitor to the infant nation, put my best foot forward with a smile, and handshake, and a welcome from the world at large. This almost led to a fight, as a smile seems to be a threatening gesture to the Parakans. Wumpo sorted things out, and the Parakan welcome committee greeted us as guests and visitors.
The capitol of Paraka, also known as Paraka, sits in the center of the crater, surrounded on all sides by long fields of green grass. The buildings of the village are propped up on short stilts, and when asked about them, the chieftain, a man called Lakau, explained rain or snow has a habit of flowing into the center, making the stilts necessary to keep homes dry. Indeed, we spotted a number of rafts or canoes next to entrances, ready for the wet season.
However, we also saw numerous small holes dug deep into the earth. We would learn they holes were for the water to drain away--there must have been hundreds throughout the village. When the rain would come, the water would drain into the holes and soak into the ground at a much faster rate, and much deeper. This not only keeps the ground their homes are built on from getting too soggy, but makes the crater a verdant and healthy place. The grass was bright green, the plants were large and colorful. Even the animals looked healthy.
A question came to me, and I posed it to the chieftain through Wumpo: The homes, stilts, and boats were made of wood, but there were no trees anywhere in the crater--we had been able to see its entirety from the helicopter. The chieftain nodded and explained while there are no trees left in the crater itself, it's possible to travel over one of the near peaks and chop down some of the trees. They send an expedition every few years, bearing rock and bone tools, bringing back several small and large trunks to make repairs and keep stored in case of catastrophe. He pointed out a number of places where flat boards lay in stacks under eaves.
The people of Paraka came out to watch the miniscule procession to the chieftain’s home. Stout women and hardy men watched from the their front doors with down-turned faces (which we knew was not a sign of sadness or displeasure, it was just the way their faces sat--remember, smiling appeared to be aggression). Children wondered at us with wide eyes. A few of them asked the chieftain questions. He responded with terse sentences which seemed to supply the information the villagers were asking for.
It was at this point we determined how Lakau became the head of the village. He was neither monarch nor president, dictator nor prime minister--he was simply the oldest. We settled on "chieftain," not knowing of any other nations where the oldest person was made the leader by virtue of age.
The chieftain’s home was bigger by slim margins compared to those around it. The man explained since he was the oldest he'd had the most time to improve on it, then invited us inside.
The interior of his home--and, we would discover, almost all homes of Paraka--was dark and dingy. When you set your watch on the shadows, and expect your village to flood every year, keeping dirt off the floor is rather a secondary issue. Small windows let in what little light made it into the crater, and there were no doors, just uneven openings in the walls leading to other sections. Like all houses, they were built up--every family member or couple had their own room, smaller groups had their own floor. The buildings all leaned on stilts or supports, or against each other to keep from falling over.
A number of the homes were in disrepair. We saw a few rooms open to the sky or village, walls or ceilings collapsed or torn down to salvage usable wood. We saw a few places were an old room had clearly been, but now sported a boarded-up opening. We could usually see a pair of eyes peering through the boards.
The chieftain lived with his family: his wife, a woman three years younger than him, their children and their spouses, and their grandchildren. The household totaled fifteen in all, not counting sheep or ducks. Lakau rattled off their names to us as they stood in a line, and we greeted each one in turn.
Lakau's wife was named Tucca, and she had the hips of a woman who had balanced babies on them nearly all her life. Her fists rested on them, and her lips were so wrinkled they looked like a dry canal bed. Her eyes laid upon us without a hint of fear or trepidation, and I'm sure if we had made any sort of threatening gestures she would have thrown us right out the window.
Their children were Olipya and Wolta, sisters, married to Narut and Cirnak, brothers. Due to our untrained eyes, we had difficulty telling the siblings apart, but the differences in their personalities, movements, and voices soon made things clearer. Both couples met us eagerly, and added to the discussion of life in the crater when they could.
Their children--a total of nine, including the twins Tucca carried at all times--ranged from newborns to nearly twenty, as far as we can tell. They have no birthday celebrations in Paraka, aside from a yearly gathering and feast the entire village takes part in. The feast features the best the village has to offer, and takes place during the warmest months of the year. The entire village is transformed into a space of great revelry, with games, presentations of creations made from the mountain stone or wood--even of animal bone or fur--and late twilights spent telling stories around stoves.
The oldest of the grandchildren, Eesha, had just entered into a courtship with an eighteen-year-old neighbor. When asked of the details of Parakan courtship, nearly everyone in the home laughed and started talking over one another. Wumpo translated:
"It's all in good fun," Lakau said. "Everybody knows everyone else, and everyone knows we must be kind with one another to survive. We are too small to risk hatred. There is a saying: a burning sheep turns the entire flock to ash.
"First the couple announce their intentions to both families, and then the parents meet to discuss the pairing. Sometimes they decide it might not work out."
Tucca interjected. "Parents know their children. Mothers and fathers ask each other if the man and woman should join. It is very important they are right, or at least not wrong, for each other. Bad relationships can harm the village. Most of the time there is no problem, but if there is there must be a reason given--the man is too lazy, the woman has rage, anything."
"Sometimes it is compatibility," Lakau said. "A woman may be very wrong for one man, but right for another."
Tucca nodded, and went on. "If there is no problem the courtship is announced to the village, and the insults may begin. The household of the woman is allowed to go first." She looked at her husband. "My parents told his parents he smelled like the underside of a yak, and that their house was too small for his big head to fit."
Lakau laughed. "The man's household goes next. My parents told her parents her family's flock had red wool, and that she was so short she would have to take her shirt off to keep it dry during the floods. We laugh, and continue, until both households have run dry."
"That is the first day," Tucca said. "Everyday afterward, for one hundred days-" (the Parakan word for "day" translates directly to "shadow-circle") "-each household sends a representative to the other house to deliver additional insults. The woman's household in the morning and the man's at night. The reason is to make sure no one holds himself too high above the others--everybody must work, everybody is worth the same amount. No family is greater than another because it has more yaks, or finer sheep. Everyone must work hard for the village. If they do not, they are not allowed to marry."
After a hundred days of these good-natured insults (during which the couple will spend time together in standard courtship engagements) the village will gather together, enjoy a small feast, and then allow the new couple to spend a week in the appointed "joining house," which is randomly chosen from the available buildings and made as clean and free of distractions as possible. During this week, the village as a whole will decide which home the couple is to live in, the wife's or the husband's, based on the insults given. If the insults are well-received, or the giver proves a hypocrite in some way, a point is given to the one who received the insult. Otherwise, it is awarded to the insult giver. The more insults given, the better. The family with the most points meets and decides whether the new couple should live with them, or with the other family. As a large household is, perhaps, the only way a Parakan family can exhibit good fortune, the couple is usually accepted, and an upward addition to the home is planned.
Eesha and her partner, named Ulata, had only begun their courtship a month (by our reckoning) before, so we would be able to witness part of this uncommon custom after the evening meal.
Outside again, we sat on the house's porch and asked Lakau about the history of Paraka. He failed to understand, and Wumpo repeated the question in a different manner. Again the man looked at us, confused. Wumpo tried a third time, speaking to Lakau for a longer amount of time. At last he understood.
Wumpo had asked "what are some special things that have happened here?" Lakau took a few moments to nod and think, smoking on a pipe filled with aromatic herbs they, as well as every other family, grew in small plots huddled next to their homes.
"There was the time of the circle of beasts," Lakau said next, after thinking. When asked to tell the story, he nodded. "I was a child. I had not yet married. My family, then, had forty sheep, nine ducks, and just one yak--we were trying to breed her. I was watching the flock at night, and they were making much noise. They were strange sounds, and I thought some of them had gotten hurt or sick, but they seemed healthy. They danced in their pens, and I noticed many of the other animals doing the same. The entire village woke up, confused, and came together to try and figure it out."
They consulted each other, inspected the animals, and traded information. Nothing could be found. Then, a young shepherd failed to fasten a gate properly, and his sheep stormed out. As a solid mass, they began to run rings around the village. They ran endless laps, slowing from a sprint to a meander as time went on. The sheep seemed to be calmer, and they stared ahead or at their hooves as they ran, without making a sound.
Seeing the animals were at peace, others began releasing their flocks as well. All the animals in the village began to circle around the houses, none of them making a sound except for the pounding of their hooves in the dark. Four hours they went around: sheep, yaks, ducks. The ducks made fewer revolutions as they tried to keep up with the bigger animals.
They went until sunrise. When the sun finally began to show itself over the tops of the peaks around the village, the animals slowed, stopped, and fell where they stood.
The village went into an uproar, only quieting down when they determined the animals were not dead, simply asleep--every one of them. It had only happened once, and none of the villagers could ever figure out how it had happened or what had prompted it. The animals woke up a few hours later, still quite tired, and it was a day's work for the whole village to determine which animal belonged to which family.
When Lakau concluded the story, he laughed and shook his head. "It was very strange. We were frightened. We watched the animals very closely for many nights, but they never did anything else of the sort."
But he had another story ready. "A few years after I married, I was part of the group who went beyond the mountains to seek wood. We covered ourselves in furs and wrapped up all our tools in blankets and tied them to our backs. We headed night-ward, as the last two expeditions we had gone in the other direction."
We took night-ward to mean west. "There were fifteen of us, the strongest of the village. It took three days for us to find any trees big enough to take back, and when we found them we set upon them like creatures who could only eat wood. We tore off the leaves and stuffed them into sacks, cut off the bigger branches and trimmed the smaller ones, and wrapped them in cord. There are innumerable uses for the smaller branches, everything from kitchen tools to children's toys.
"We took to sawing down the trunks, the most difficult part of the job. We had selected twelve strong trees, and we knew if we could get all of them back to the village, it would be a good journey."
I asked how fifteen people were to take a dozen trees back to the village; surely, they would be too heavy. Lakau nodded.
"I did not mention. We took yaks with us. They carried the burden for us. They are very strong. We hauled branches and sticks, they pulled the larger logs on smooth, flat pieces of wood.
"We were on our way back to the village with the trunks. We were going up a slope, still a day away from home, when one of the cords we had used to bind the trunks broke. The trunk started rolling back down the slope. A number of us gave chase, running down the mountainside until it came to rest against a few boulders. However, as we approached, we noticed the trunk seemed to be shifting or grinding itself against the boulders. When we got close enough, we spotted a number of small holes in its surface--we hadn't noticed them before. When we got close enough, small, furry creatures emerged from the holes. There must have been a hundred. By the dozens they fled, covering the mountainside in their tiny bodies. We had never seen them before; we didn't know what they were. We ran from them as they ran from us, but in just a few minutes they had all disappeared. Those of us who had chased the log were squatting on boulders, or had climbed up trees. All of us felt silly--they had just been tiny mountain children.
"We returned to the village, unable to retrieve the fallen trunk, but all of us laughing anyway."
His stories concluded, Lakau asked us about the world at large. He especially wanted to know about the cities, and it was difficult for us to explain how large they were compared to Paraka. Even the smallest Midwestern town looked like a bustling metropolis compared to this village in its crater. We told him about cars and planes and explained the helicopter we had arrived in. None of the sheep or shepherds would go near it. He asked us about everything: the clothes we wore, what our families were like, he even wanted to know about our language.
We would come to discover curiosity is a prime trait in the Parakans. With so little to support them, a yearning to know more sustains them. How will a piece of wood, attached like so to another, stand with this much weight? What's down that path? Is it safe or dangerous? Is it faster, or healthier, to cook food this way or another?
His questions went on through the afternoon, and we were able to watch the shadows shift their points across the crater.
When the shadows reached a certain point--we are unsure what it was--Lakau rose from the step and said it was time to prepare for the evening meal. We offered to help, and he accepted.
He led us to the kitchen, where his wife and the other four adults were working.
Would you like to know about Parakan meals? The answer is sheep. Mutton is the main staple. Sheep milk is both drank as-is, and converted into butter and cheese. It would probably be unfair to try and place the resulting materials with other cheeses or butters, as they are in a family of their own, born from the poverty of the crater.
As we were special guests, we also got to try the local delicacy: duck. A healthy, plump duck was selected, killed, and dressed, and we watched the process with a strange fascination. Tucca worked her hands over the duck's body with practiced method. Soon the bare carcass, covered in a sauce of milk and sparse herbs, found its way into the rudimentary oven, which was outside the house, in what one might call a patio. It was surrounded with benches, and had a roof over it, but there were large slits in the covering to allow the smoke to exit. Lakau explained the slits were too narrow to allow rain in unless it was angled just right, something very unlikely.
We brought our own food to share: crackers and peanut butter, beef jerky, packages with rice and sauce, chicken. We even had some bread, and we explained the process of growing wheat, though we also had to tell them they might not have the space for it. We didn't have enough for everyone to feast, but we passed it out as a way to show our appreciation, to offer what we could to the meal. Before long, the stone oven containing the duck and mutton put off a great deal of heat.
While we were waiting, Lakau took us to the small field the village had marked for vegetables--it had been on the other side of the village from us, so we had not seen it. They had onions, cabbages, turnips, and beets. Each family helped tend to it, Lakau explained. The vegetables were big, and heavy, and Lakau said it was because the crater soaks up so much rain, the vegetables never lack for it. The field was not a pretty one, but we had seen some of the vegetables during the dinner preparation, and they looked perfectly acceptable, as far as vegetables go.
In short order the meal was ready, but we had to sit and watch it cool, the tantalizing smell of roast duck and mutton covering us from head to toe. We talked more about the world at large until Tucca announced it was cool enough to eat.
With no plates, or silverware, to speak of, Lakau told us to grab chunks of meat with our hands. We did so, feeling slightly silly about it, but relaxing when the family began to eat their own handfuls. The food might not have been anything to write home about, but it didn't taste half-bad, and left us with pleasant, warm feelings in our stomachs.
After the meal, Lakau took us to the front step of his home for smoking and more chitchat. He offered us some of the herbs he was smoking; Wumpo and Hussein both accepted. Hussein described the taste as bitter and not to his liking, but Wumpo was more appreciative, nodding with a smile on his face as he puffed.
We were relaxed and happy. At a certain point the sunlight disappeared from the crater altogether, a moment Lakau named "edare": old circle. He stood up and looked down the road.
We saw a young man standing in the middle of the street, and when he saw Lakau watching him, he marched up to stand in front of the house. Lakau called inside, and a minute later the entire household stood on the step, the girl Eesha waited as her courtier cleared his throat and began to speak. He would speak a sentence or two, then pause. Sometimes the family would laugh, sometimes they would chuckle, and sometimes they would stay silent. Should the last occur, the young man would continue on, undaunted.
We stood off to the side, quietly excited to get to witness part of the courtship. Wumpo translated a few of the insults: "Your family is so large I fear you would tire me out providing for it," "Your grandparents may yet outlast me," and "Were we to join your family's home, there may not be enough trees to make it big enough." For several of the insults, Wumpo had difficulty translating, stating they relied on wordplay native to the language, and even if he could translate them, we wouldn't find them very funny. We asked him to do his best. He was right.
When the young man ran out, the household all began to knock on the wood of the porch and house--after some confusion we began to understand the action as polite applause. Eesha stepped off the porch and embraced the young man, and they began to talk as lovers do. They announced they were going on a walk around the village, and struck off down the lane.
As they dawdled away they looked up, and our eyes all seemed to catch the sky. It was a cloudless night, and the stars in their full brilliance showed themselves. Lakau and Tucca's daughter Olipya came over to speak to us. She told us about the stars.
"Everybody wonders what they are," Olipya said. She had a wool wrap around her, and her voice was slight. "Father tells us the stories, sometimes, about how someone once climbed to the highest mountain and scooped a handful of sun out of the sky, and then waited until it was dark. He didn't like the dark, and so he threw the handful of sun into the sky to try and make it bright." She spread her hand across the stars above us. "But he didn't have enough.
"He went back to the mountain the next day, taking with him the largest sheepskin he could find. He threw it over the sun but could only scoop up part of it. The sheepskin was dirty, and old, and it stained the part of the sun it carried, so that when he released the sun, it came out discolored. It was bright, but smaller, and nowhere near as bright as the sun was."
She took her eyes to the moon. It was only a thin crescent. "We know these stories aren't true, not really. We tell them anyway. There isn't much here. We don't get to enjoy the world outside the village--some of us thought there wasn't anything outside the village, that we were the only people in the whole world, that this was the only place we could live, that everything else was an endless mountain range, nothing but sharp points and steep slopes."
I asked her if there were more Parakan myths she could tell us. We retreated to around the oven, which began to pull double-duty to warm us up as the night got colder. A few of the other family members joined us. Olipya thought for a few minutes, her entire head tilted up at the sky, then she started talking.
"Far under the holes we have dug in the dirt and grass, too far for any person to see or reach, there is another village like ours. Its people walk on the ceiling, and look down at the sky, which is not like ours. Their village has its own shadows--theirs do not reach us, ours do not reach them. When it rains here, and the water flows into the holes we have dug, it falls for a very long time, and then it comes out of the holes they have dug. Their animals drink it, and it waters their crops and washes them, and it falls into their sky.
"As it is bright here during the day, and dark during the night, so it is dark during the day there, and bright during the night. They sleep in the light and walk in the dark.
"Because it is so dark during the day, they dare not venture away from the village. While they tend their flocks, they see shadows in the darkness moving around the edges of the mountains surrounding their village. They did not want to leave the safety of their fires or homes for fear of whatever creatures waited for them in the dark. The creatures took their sheep during the bright night, and their food dwindled, but still they wouldn't leave the scant safety of the village, no matter what time of the day it was.
"Finally, finally, one family lost all of their sheep, and they cold stand it no longer. 'We will go out during the night to fight these creatures!' they said. 'We will punish them for taking everything we have!'
"Other villagers joined them, and they made sticks and stones into weapons to fight the shadowy creatures, and they went out at night, hunting for the creatures. They carried fire on sticks, eyes darting back and forth as they stumbled up and down the mountains around their village. They heard a strange animal sound and chased it over rocks and past trees, shadows leaping away from the fire they carried.
"They chased the animal for a long time, finally catching it when it was pressed up against a mountain wall with nowhere to go. When they brought the fire close, to burn it, they discovered it was just a sheep. They began to find more sheep, lost on the slopes and chewing on rough mountain grass. They found more than a hundred, almost as many as the creatures had supposedly taken. They hunted all over the mountains for the creatures, but found no evidence of anything other than sheep.
"Then they realized they were lost. They had never left the village, so they didn't know how to find their way back. It took hours for them to discover the trail home. The sun had set over them before they got back to the village--they were tired and could barely keep their eyes open. In the light, they realized shadows grew from everything, and the creatures they had feared so much were just flames making their own shadows look like monsters in the corners of their eyes."
Olipya shifted. "There is nothing to fear in the shadows, other than ourselves," she said. "The story is also how we convince ourselves to look down every path. We investigate all things, because you never know when you will need to know something, and not know it."
While the local time was only about nine o'clock at night, we were tired, and had been traveling, talking, or walking almost all day. Before we retired to the tents we had brought with us, Lakau met with us again. He asked us how long we would be staying at the village. While we would have liked more time to find out everything there was to know, we had a tight schedule, so we would have to leave the next day. He nodded, and said he looked forward to meeting with us in the morning.
We made our way back to the acre with our helicopter, avoiding the sheep and rain-holes in the ground, and set up the tents we had brought. Instead of falling asleep, however, the four of us sat together and took the chance to inspect the night sky, with stars much brighter and closer than they normally were to us.
We slept in the silent mountain air, nothing to hear but the wind blowing through the crater and the tired bleating of nearby flocks. The air, even inside our small tents, was fresh and clear, and we could still pick up the small scent of the roast meat we had eaten for dinner.
Morning--the word is yendare in Parakan, which translates to "new circle"--came late. The high mountains keep the sun from reaching the crater until it was almost nine o'clock in the morning, local time. When we rose and ate our breakfast, the village was already awake and tending to their animals. Villagers big and small watched over their sheep, fed ducks, and brushed the few yak they had. We took pictures, wrote down details, and relaxed for a few minutes before re-entering the village.
Lakau greeted us when we went to his home. He explained Eesha was on her way to Ulata's family home on the other side of the village (which was a leisurely walk of about six minutes). Eesha, her mother Olipya, Lakau, and we joined her. As we saw last night, the insulter usually goes by him or herself, but it was a special occasion.
Eesha went up to Ulata's home, and his family gathered. Their family was much smaller compared to Lakau's, only about six: a grandmother, Ulata's mother and father, and three children, all in their teens. Eesha cleared her throat and began to recite the insults she had prepared since the last morning.
"You're so sharp, I feel if I were to kiss your head I would hurt myself," Wumpo translated. "If we were to marry, we would need to dig additional draining holes by our home. Your jokes would make me laugh tears of joy, and you would cry tears of sadness at every bump and bruise."
Ulata's family roared with delight. It was the first time we saw any of them smile. Like the night before, there were a number of "insults" Wumpo had difficulty translating, as they dealt with some of the finer points of the Parakan language.
However, using those he could translate, we detected something different in the insults Eesha choose to give. While some of them were traditional insults, many of them were the kind of insult you might give a beloved pet, or a child, or a friend: You're so cute I'm worried you'll leave me for someone prettier. You're so loyal I couldn't get you to leave even if I wanted. You're so good at caring for others I'm starting to think you might not be very good at taking care of yourself.
Through all of this, Ulata watched Eesha with ever-widening eyes. If the Parakan culture had a smile as anything other than a threat, we believe one would have overtaken his face. When she ran out of insults to give, the small family wrapped their knuckles against the house in appreciation, and Ulata descended the few steps to embrace Eesha. Their talk was brief, and we didn't even need Wumpo to understand the kind of things they were saying to each other. They way they stood, the way they looked at each other, the kind of voice they used. It made all of us miss our families.
The meeting was brief, and before long we returned to Lakau's home. The village was now quite empty, as most people were in the flat, grassy parts of the crater tending to animals. Even this small place seemed too quiet when no one was walking the single street.
"Our lives are simple," Lakau said, while we walked. "We rise from our sleep, and take care of the animals, and tend the gardens, and tend the houses, and tend our children. There is nothing disturbing us. Your-" here he used a word Wumpo told us meant stone bird- "was the loudest thing we have ever heard. The quiet is very nice. We are happy. I know there are many things you can do in the world, but we do not need all those things. We have enough things here." He looked up at some of the taller buildings in the village. "We can always build up if we need more space, but the sheep cannot stand on top of one another and still eat grass. They must stay on the ground and have room to sleep."
We were silent for a few minutes until we got back to his home. Only Tucca was inside, as the rest of the family was out in the fields. The big house was quiet except for the animal sounds coming through the windows.
Lakau eased himself into a chair and made a sound like a yak. "I'm getting quite old, in case you might not know." He chuckled to himself. "I won't be alive for much longer, but I have lived a long time and I think I have had a good life." He looked at the ceiling for a minute. "I know Olipya told you the story of the man who threw the stars into the sky last night. She always loved that story. Whenever I would tell her that story I would make myself the man who went to capture the sun, and he did it because his daughter didn't want it to be dark. She told you the normal version of the story, but that is our version."
We waited for him to continue. It took a few minutes. "Our stories have a great deal to do with the sun, and the shadows of the mountains around us. Almost all of them, in fact. The stories all have lessons we must learn. The shadows, too. The shadows keep the time in Paraka, but they also keep the knowledge. We venture into the shadows to claim the knowledge for ourselves."
He leaned back, linking his fingers. "We do not fear the dark. We fear the light. The dark contains much, but the light makes all things visible. It does not seem like much of a bad thing, but the shadows contain much for us to discover. We must be curious, or we will not be able to survive."
Our helicopter took us away. Wumpo and I watched the crater shrink. In a few moments the village was too small to see. It was just past noon, local time. Unseen, the villagers went about their days, watching the shadows creep forward, keeping the time. I'm sure they were smiling, waiting for what they could discover in the dark.