‘courtyard-ing’ along the Silk Road
One of my all-time favorite things to do while exploring new places is getting lost through alleys (such an unusual thing to do, you might think! 🙄) and Georgian towns are perfect for that. Georgian courtyards are a Thing exactly like Georgian balconies. Come to Tbilisi in late autumn, go for a walk and get lost. No, no in the old town and touristy areas, no the one with souvenirs shops and wine tasting bars. Go where locals live, where you see tiny bakeries with windows on the footpath and friendly, smiling ladies making the long, fragrant, crunchy Puri (Georgian bread) all day long. Go where the tiny grocery shops are, where you find those bright persimmons and fat chestnuts and fresh cheese and honey from the nearby mountains.
Follow the streets up and the alleys downs and stop to look into those courtyards which are an all world itself.
A world which was still alive in Europe until few decades ago and it still has survived in remote villages in the countryside. But here, here and everywhere in the East life still goes on in these spacious, sometimes messy courtyards where many apartments, houses, windows, and doors look into a common area which is a little family planet.
A safe ‘outside’ to the world which is still ‘in’, private, where you can look into it but not too much and you have a glimpse of the out while still being in your ‘comfort zone’. Families live in the same building, all together in a private apartment but sharing their common space, that courtyard which becomes the perfect venue of warm summer evenings of chats and Supra (Georgian feast) or autumn teas and coffees under a clear blu sky and trees with leaves changing into millions of colors. Grapes plants climb up to the wooden faded balcony railing, hanging laundry is moving by the wind and pots of flowers are resting in the corners, next to the garden tools needed to be stored but they can rest there until next season because this is the courtyard style: a beautifully messy portrait of a living reality, a place that sees life going through day by day and visitors passing by, sticking their heads inside attracted by that beautiful layout of colors and sensations and feelings.
I am that one, all the time, walking through towns in the Caucasus but also in Turkey, checking out courtyards which remind me of my childhood ones, where I used to run around in my underwear, climbing trees and chasing chickens.
Easter we go and more difficult is to have a look at those courtyards. In Iran and in Central Asia the walls become higher, the gates mostly closed to protect from the long, ‘gossiping’ looks of the neighbours. In the past, wealthy women rarely left the houses and that courtyard was their entire world. I still walk around the old part of Bukhara or Osh trying to get a glimpse of those extremely tidy and clean courtyards, so different from the Caucasian ones. Chairs and tables have been replaced by Tapchan, the traditional ‘bed’ used for the afternoon ‘siesta’, daily chai (tea), meetings, summer nights, etc. A living room on for legs with pretty colourful textiles and cushions. They also are the reason why people from the Middle East to China can squat and sit crossed legs until they are 100 years old and we can feel joint pain just by looking at them.
Big cities are losing their courtyards and with them, a big part of that family life lived inside those walls for generations. Is it progress? Is it the way it should be? maybe… Meanwhile, I keep on looking through the open doors of the Hutongs in Beijing to get a glimpse of those tiny two square meters courtyards filled with flowers and anything else and stretch my neck while walking in a town in Rajasthan where courtyards are almost villages and were the family the entire society.
