ABOUT A PIE - Mariann Ataulina
I am an ethnic minority.
My roots are a colorful mixture of two Asian commonalties that commonly met in the pre-and post-WWII Soviet Union.
My mother comes from Cossacks, those independent southerners that were famous for their emotionality, pride, and seriously big families ( my great-grandfather came from a family of 12, with almost a half of them living up to 85+ years ). Encyclopædia Britannica explains that their name defines their whole character--from Turkic the word kazak meant “adventurer” and “free man.” They were indeed, stubbornly free people, which helped them live as a part of the Russian Empire without reporting or belonging to anyone whatsoever, eventually becoming the Tsar’s own private military force, unable to give in to Bolsheviks during the civil war after the Revolution.
My father is Tatar. A hardcore, 100% Moscow Tatar. A dying breed, that either does not exist anymore or is so extinct that the people themselves forgot who they were, what language their ancestors spoke, and what religion they used to practice.
Cossacks were considered to be better assimilated into the culture because they spoke Russian. They generally identified as Christian and were, overall, Russian in appearance. Cossacks also cooked ethnically Russian food. But Tatar people had it all completely differently.
Tatar people were nomads that spoke their own Turkic language and joined the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan in the early 13th century to become a part of his extended army. They were not, however, invented or created by him, which is so commonly and widely misunderstood these days. They became Sunni Muslim in the 14th century and are still very much born and raised as Muslim, as was my father.
When the Golden Horde met its eventual end, they succeeded in keeping their social organizations, but formed smaller ‘states’, khanates, which remained that way until the 18th century. Tatar society and its classes stayed the same way until the Bolsheviks came into power. Their properties were dissolved, Imams (including two of my great-grandfathers ) were “repressed” and sent to the Gulag. Consequently, as relatives of “enemies of the state” their families lost everything.
Our names were changed too, as Soviet power forbade all anti-Soviet complications. In that way, I am carrying a family name that was in fact the name of my great-grandfather. The existing traces of his family name was wiped out with the help of the Gulag’s well-oiled repressions machinery.
During later Soviet times, my grandparents, my father, his brother and cousins were ridiculed for their distinctive facial features, their use of Tatar language in public places (it was even forbidden to practice it altogether, and it inevitably slowly died out in a matter of 40-50 years), their names, and their religious traditions, including burials, fasting, and celebrations of Ramadan.
Many of them lost their homes over the years due to the ideological power abuse. They were all subject to military service during WWII, and only about 10% of my male ancestors came back from the front. Overall, the Soviet Union majorly defined every single life within it, and the Tartar people did not escape this rule.
The sole exception was food.
The average, simple Soviet Tatar kitchen was a private and secluded place with solely Tatar women dominating it. The cooking rituals were sacred in that they were done following a prayer and meticulous cleaning of anything that was connected to food, the area, the products, and even included the cook.
I can still very vividly recall that sea of white crisp cotton head scarves over the heads of my grandmothers and aunts conquering the kitchen. Not a single hair was out to ever end up in the casserole, a pot, or a pan. It was not a place for makeup, hair sprays, manicures, or any bad smell at all. The feeling of purity reigned over the women and their kitchens. The dishes were always quite simple and yet mouthwatering.
You see, the ingredients were almost never store bought. I was raised with an idea that produce comes from a producer and a producer is a farmer that you can only find at the market in a big city like Moscow. Until I moved out of my family’s house, every Saturday morning of my early years I went to the market with my father where I was trusted with his wallet and paying for everything. We had two baskets among us to carry all the goods and would set on our adventure almost always by ourselves (with my Cossack mother maintaining her manicured nails back at home). That way, I grew up with the butcher’s sons, the dairy lady’s grandchildren, through the good and bad years of the root vegetable lady, an Azeri fruit and vegetable seller, a chicken farmer who sold eggs, and many, many more people that I can no longer recall.
Having fresh, clean, and locally-grown food made for an easier cooking life. The festive tables always held plane-sized plates filled with homemade noodles in a golden chicken broth, heavily decorated with a scrambled egg and a mixture of freshly chopped chives and parsley. The broth was solely chicken and the chicken itself was deboned, chopped, and later served in even bigger plates, covered with a pan fried, finely grated mixture of onions and carrots. We have never eaten rice, as boiled potatoes were the only starch at the table. We also had two giant plates of smoked or salted salmon at opposite ends of the table. I would always combine the salmon with the carrots and onion mixture, then re-serve myself at least three times.
And, most importantly, Tatar people baked.
There is an ultimate name for Tatar tarts. It is called belyash. The pastry is a strengthened version of a shortcrust, with the richness added through heavy cream and a tiny bit of baking powder. The result was the softest, cutest ( if a dough can be described with such words at all ) dough of all time. When kneading belyash dough, you must treat it delicately, as though you were bathing a baby. It can then be filled with anything. Traditionally, the large ones are sweet and filled with dried fruits or lemon curd.
Dried fruits were a popular part of our day-to-day life. I remember one of my aunts and my father both putting dried apricots and prunes directly into their black tea together with pieces of lemon and eating them upon finishing the cup. Similarly to the rest of the products, buying dried fruits in bulk from the market was a weekly norm. We stored a few types of apricots and raisins together with dates, figs, and prunes in the bottom drawers of the fridge, and eventually I learned how to make those into a homogenous paste that would be placed between two layers of the softest pastry. After baking and cooling it down, my aunts would cut it into cubes and carefully serve, once again on two big plates at opposite ends of the table. Each and every family member could reach.
“Tatars love tea very much!” my grandfather said every morning, sipping his brew with delight.
Tea was always in abundance in the house. Even in our darkest and lowest moments, there would always be tea.
I learned to keep my teas in ancient metal boxes because of my father. He asked me to help him store teas in the mezzanine. “This is the only way to keep the tea fresh and free of other smells,” he explained while sorting.
Brewing the tea was also a meticulous matter. The teapot was first thoroughly bathed in boiled water, then drained and filled with an appropriate amount of tea leaves. Once the hot water was poured all over them, the closed teapot would be put on the stove and slowly and carefully boiled over the smallest fire. This was a real Russian roulette--it only took a few seconds of inattention to bring the brew all the way up and spilling over into the fire.
“Eeeeh, missed the bugger!” my father would say, then laugh as if it was a fair play lottery loss. My grandfather would never miss a thing, curling over the teapot, with his nose and glasses as close to the thing as was humanly possible, always turning the fire off right on time. We only used loose leaf tea and tiny strainers were as common to see at the dinner table as little plates of dried fruits.
There was magic in all those rituals, a magic that runs in my blood like some sort of internal secret code by which I recognize soulmates wherever I go. It is not easy to be nomadic people. The only permanent settling we have is the one that is inside ourselves – our traditions, our stories, our history. Nomadic people are generous by definition, as we share ourselves and all we know with everyone we come across along the way. It is a peculiar thing, to share your love without asking for love in return. But love is almost always welcomed anyway, with gratitude for whatever shape or size it comes.
A human being without a family history is powerless. That is why even orphaned children invent some sort of a family story, or a legend, that would explain their roots and help them grow wings in a big, scary, wild-open world.
Just recently, I moved to my seventeenth apartment in 11 years, in the sixth country I’ve lived in for a rather long period of time. I see how easy it is for me to nest wherever I must, but how difficult it is when I can’t embrace my roots in a new setting.
So, I baked a pie my grandmothers used to make. I worked those dried apricots manually with a knife into a smooth paste and the dough into a pastry full of love and tenderness. The smell of my new, temporary home was that of my childhood Moscow. I could almost see them, my heroes, taking over the places around the table, bickering, laughing over each other’s linguistic mistakes, teaching kids how to pronounce the prayer correctly, spreading the plates around.
They were alive again, back in my life, with their smiling, sly Tatar eyes that I am so lucky to have grace my face as well. They are still alive inside me, and for as long as my story continues, they will not disappear.
Having followed in her ancestors’ nomadic roots, Mariann Ataulina has been moving across Europe for a large part of her adult life. She has found her voice as a storyteller interested in trying to piece together her cultural heritage and colorful, interdisciplinary identity. Mariann is currently residing in the Polish city of Kraków, embracing yet another culture on her journey.
