In Which We Tuck The Blossom Behind Our Ear

Love in the Mountains

by ARIANA ROBERTS

“Yehpeudah,” I tell her. She thanks me in Korean, and our guide proudly says she’s marrying the richest man in the village. He was married before, and has a daughter the same age as her. There were lots of young boys vying for her hand, but wasn’t she good for making a smart match? The bride whispers to our guide. “She wants to know what color hanbok you had when you marry.”

“I’ve never been married.”

“Why fat boy and brown girl talk about your wedding? Not that fat boy,” Mrs. Yoon says, noticing me scan the tour group. “The one with glasses.”

“I was supposed to be married last year.” Supposedly the bride doesn’t speak English, but she stops hiding behind Mrs. Yoon and takes a step closer to me.

“Why didn’t you?”

“If I’d gotten married, I wouldn’t have been able to come here.”

“Then you right. This is the greatest and most beautiful country on earth. Was he Korean?”

“No, Italian. But he’s from Australia. My family wants me to marry a Korean doctor.”

Mrs. Yoon shakes her head. “No matter if Korean, Italian, Australian. You find the person you can eat with every day. If he doesn’t make you lose your dinner, then he the right one! You have to find person you love. But not an American.” I throw my head down and laugh because I think she’s joking. She is not.

“The last Americans I see, boy and girl, they marry. They say, ‘Tie the knot.’ But knot can be untied! Husband can never be untied! American movies, they untie and retie, no deal big! Wait some. Don’t worry about husband until older. When you get to be 21, 22, we worry.”

“I’m 23,” I tell her, and Mrs. Yoon looks horrified, as if I’ve just plucked her heart out with chopsticks. She throws her hands in the air. “Maybe I find you a husband here. You pretty sometimes. But you need a lot of fixing.” She walks off muttering about the heavy burden I’ve placed on her. The bride is standing so close to me now. Her eyes are wet, but she’s smiling. “You are courageous,” she whispers in perfect English. She squeezes my hand, lifts up her skirts, and runs towards the pebek, straight to the husband she can never untie.

the author in front of a temple in Kaesong

We are outside Kaesong now, and the highway cuts into a steep hill overlooking mountains. This must be the place my grandpa talked about. “What did he say?” General Shin asks. His voice is so sharp, so startling, that my face is red, my chest is heaving, and the hair on my arms stands straight up. My lips didn’t move. I didn’t say that out loud, I’m sure of it.

“He said King Kongmin is buried here. His father came before the Japanese raid — I have a sketch he made from memory — and saw the Mongol treasures, from Persia, Russia, Constantinople, Egypt. My grandfather went after everything was destroyed. The raiders used dynamite on the tomb’s entrance. He said there’s a great love story in these mountains.”

“Tell story.”

“I don’t know it.”

“Why don’t you know?”

“He said he’d tell me when I was older. He died before I was.” I try clenching my jaw to stop my chattering teeth, but they’re beyond control.

“Stop the bus,” General Shin orders the driver. He steps off to make a phone call. A few minutes later, he reappears. “Come now,” he tells me.

the author in chongjin

I obediently follow him around the bend, out of sight from the bus. I can’t pray, and I’m too panicked to run. Eventually stone muninseok and tigers surround me. Yangsok guard two moss-covered granite mounds. General Shin pets the sheep, as tenderly as if they were flesh and wool.

“Americans aren’t allowed here anymore,” General Shin says. “But you are not really American, are you? It’s where you were born, not what you are.” He cups my chin with his hand. “You never say, ‘I’m American’ or ‘I’m Korean.’ Not like the others. First night, they all say what they are. It’s where they’re from. I’m Belgian, Dutch, English! You say only, ‘I’m Ariana.’ Do you know what you are? You don’t, because you’ve never been told. Nobody tells you in America. That’s why Americans are lost.

“Gongmin was captured many years, forced to serve Empress Ki. When he a boy, he vow to marry Noguk. The Yuan laughed! She was princess, he was hostage! But he painted her, and she loved him. She called him kunmang, because his painting more perfect than nature. Gongmin grew strong, crossed the Yalu, freed the Goryeo. He married the princess. For thirteen years, one never left the other’s side. Noguk became pregnant and died with child. Gongmin’s tears were as blood. He could not bury her seven years. He could not rule.”

the tomb outside Kaesong

“Gongmin called all mathematics and stargazers in the land to find his love a resting place. As each failed to please, he killed each. One of the Jung Kam Lok promised good pung su. Gongmin would give him all he desired if succeed, but if fail, certain death. Gongmin climbed this hill alone. He told the muninseok that if he waved his scarf, they should kill Jung Kam Lok.”

“It’s perfect,” I say breathlessly. Mongnan and mokran bloom in these hills. The first apricot trees sprouted here. “The geomancer must have been so relieved.”

“No interrupt,” General Shin scolds, wresting a magnolia blossom from my hand. He tries to put it back in the tree, and, failing that, flings it at me. “Climbing the mountain made Gongmin weary. He wiped his head with the scarf and looked over the land. It was delight. Gongmin descended the mountain to congratulate Jung Kam Lok. He dead. The muninseok saw the scarf and killed without hesitation. That how the mountain get name.”

One mound for Noguk, one for Kongmin. They fought the Turbans together. Rain soaked their garments, which froze to their bodies in the cold; they burned the queen’s carriage to warm themselves and traveled on skeletal horses instead of steeds. Koryo writers say the sound of wailing moved heaven and earth as Yi’s forces advanced towards the capital. All around them, children and mothers abandoned one another, but nothing separated these two, not flood or fire or one million warriors camping around Kaegyong. Scrawled on Noguk’s tomb is calligraphy, the most delicate and feminine script I’ve ever seen. Later I’ll learn that this was probably the work of Kongmin, along with various rock paintings and murals scattered throughout the countryside. It says:

“Throughout the land, wind-blown dusts exceed years past. What quarter was not in tumult? If our dynasty stands firm like a rock, protecting our livelihoods, heaven will allow these people, to sleep in peace. Death has come upon everyone unaware, haggard from laboring, a touch of frustration. They change with times, the affairs of men. Could they worry that there is nowhere they can sleep in peace?”

I tuck the blossom behind my ear. Over a hundred years ago, Japanese soldiers blasted open the tomb chamber. It is believed they carried everything off to Japan — relics Temujin himself held — but nothing like it has surfaced anywhere since. “Why aren’t Americans allowed here anymore?” General Shin has been fiddling with a shrub, but now he swings around with such suddenness that I’m mentally slapping myself on the forehead for asking. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful. It’s just so beautiful. Don’t you want the world to know how wonderful this all is?”

General Shin smiles for the first time all week. “Ariana,” he says, pronouncing the ‘r’ as ‘l,’ “Americans not allowed because Americans don’t understand love.”

Ariana Roberts is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Cleveland. She last wrote in these pages about the matchmaker.

Photographs by the author.

"Don't Leave" - Seven Lions ft. Ellie Goulding (mp3)

"Keep It Close" - Seven Lions ft. Kerli (mp3)

In Which The Arrow Landed In A House

The Matchmaker

by ARIANA ROBERTS

If we are going to be married I think it's only fair you know a little bit about the marriage customs of my people. They involve pigs and beer. And by my people I don't mean Koreans and I don't mean Americans, I mean the Bhutanese, because I'm the David Hasselhoff of their country.

In Bhutan, in every village the matchmaker comes to the girls' houses unannounced so they don't have time to escape. And if they tell the parents, the parents lock the girl up.

Matchmaker is an elected position, and the title is derived from when the Tibetan minister Gar Tongtsen traveled to China to find a bride for the king. Many ministers represented their countries, rulers who the sought the princess’s hand, so the Emperor devised a test to determine she should marry. These included threading spiral turquoise, identifying the root end of a tree cut into a hundred logs, and drinking 100 hundred pitchers of distilled whiskey before identifying the princess among 100 beautiful maidens. Gar Tongsten won, and the princess, terrified at the idea of leaving her home country, composed a song, Lyonpo-garwa-tongthrab, from which the title is derived.

Incidentally, when he was 16 years old, the king of Bhutan (her groom) saw two rays of light beam from his heart towards Nepal and China. The light shone on two prospective brides, the daughter of the Nepalese King and the daughter of the Chinese Emperor.

It's an interesting country, glued together by Buddhism, the purest form of that religion you'll ever find in the world, not pacifistic or ascetic in the least. In fact, the national sport is practiced in tandem with phallocentric festivals. According to legend, the 15th century Buddhist saint Drukpa Kunley shot an arrow from Tibet, praying that his progeny would prosper where it landed. That arrow landed in a house in Bhutan, where he entered and seduced the owner's wife. Now all over Bhutan, giant phalluses (phalli?) are painted on buildings, houses, and trees, purporting to ward off evil spirits. Archery teams even employ tsips, or astrologers believed to possess mystical powers, to engage in black magic, constructing effigies of competitors and smearing them with menstrual blood before festivals.

The triratna, the prayer beads, the ritual chanting and hellfire woodcuts...I wonder if Buddhists and Catholics realize they are the same religion. The Dalai Lama knows he is the same as the pope, the order of monks know they're the clergy, but I doubt the reverse is true.

Anyway, in Bhutan the Buddhist women are happy when their husbands beat them. They don't complain about anything!  And therein lies the key difference between Buddhist women and me, because I would tie any man who ever laid a hand on me to a dzong and set him on fire with a butter lamp.

Ariana Roberts is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Cleveland. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here.

"Dinner for Two" - Love This Giant (mp3)

"Weekend In The Dust" - Love This Giant (mp3)

In Which Faith Is Ours To Keep Lit

To Swim Across The World

by ARIANA ROBERTS

1

It’s Jeanne d’Arc day. Outside there is singing and marching; people flank the Rue di Rivoli bearing crosses, flowers, and a banner that says, “France is Christian and will always stay that way.”

The girl next to us is alone, has a French-Russian dictionary and looks tiny in the big pink velvet seat. You can tell she’s been crying. “I wish I could help her,” Sara says. When the waiter comes, she asks for chocolat au chaud in the smallest voice possible. There is a tan line on her finger where a ring used to be. I look at my own hand – a year later, that line is still there, like a scar. “I wonder what her story is,” Sara says. I know, but I can’t explain it to my friend.

I cover my hand with a napkin and order a Serendipity. “Good choice. I can tell you make good choices,” Colin says. A few minutes later, he hands me a drink that is not at all what I ordered. It looks innocent in the glass, but feels like a punch in the face. I’m in love.

“Let’s call this Petit Cendrillon,” he says. “Cinderella left the prince, and she lived happily ever after.”

He tells me how, centuries ago, French women in deep mourning were required to shun all public promenades. There was one street, leading away from the farther extremity of the Champs-Élysées to the Seine, where life went on for widows of the capital. Called “Allée des Veuves,” the avenue became a haven for the husbandless; there, they could drive carriages without reprisal and forget their sorrows without violating the code of Parisian society. Walking down Avenue Montaigne today, I can almost see them in the Jardin Mabille, admiring Chinese lanterns on boughs, lapping up spray from the fountains, practicing quadrilles amidst lilacs in full blossom.

Now the only lilacs are the silk ones in the windows of Dior. Inside, a little ring says “Oui” in gold script with a diamond dotting the “I.” “Toutes les filles en rêvent,” the salesgirl says.

“Non would be more fitting, for me at least. Qui trop embrasse, manqué le train.”

She laughs, picks the ring up, and slides it on my left ring finger, over a glaringly bright stripe of pale skin, brighter than the ring that covered it in the first place. It happens to fit perfectly.

2

According to Hindu theology, there are five sacred lakes collectively called Panch-Sarovar. One of those lakes, Pushkar, is where I heard this story.

Shakuntala is abandoned at birth, rescued by the sage Kanva, and raised in a hermitage. One day, the elders go on a pilgrimage, leaving her alone in the forest. The king is out hunting when he stumbles upon Shakuntala, falls in love, and marries her. He invites her to the capital, but she wants to say goodbye to Kanva first. Before leaving, he gives her a signet ring as proof of their union.

Shakuntala waits for Kanva, fantasizing about her future life as queen. She’s so busy dreaming she doesn’t realize a sage has come to the hermitage. Offended, he bewitches the king into forgetting her existence.

Eventually the elders take Shakuntala to the palace. While crossing a river en route, she carelessly loses the ring. When they reach the palace, the king doesn’t recognize Shakuntala. The elders think she is a crazy liar; feeling betrayed, they abandon her. Alone in the desert, Shakuntala nearly dies giving birth to the king’s child.

Later, a fisherman finds the ring in the belly of a fish. Upon seeing it, the king remembers his wife. He sets out to find her and encounters an army of Asuras. After defeating them, he is taken to Hindu heaven. It is years before he returns to Earth, where he meets Shakuntala and their child by chance. But Shakuntala is no longer the sheltered girl from the hermitage — she’s a legit female Ibn Battuta. Raising a child and traveling the world has made her wise and strong.

Since she won’t go back to the palace, the king asks to accompany the little family on their journey. Though she never stopped loving him, Shakuntala refuses. “Where I am going, no man can follow,” she explains sadly. When people ask how I lost my wedding ring, this is the story I tell instead.

Pushkar Lake is surrounded by ghats, a series of steps leading to the water. Thousands flock there every year, believing a dip in the lake will cleanse them of sin. It will not. I was there a month and swam every day. Every day, I came out feeling just as bad as when I went in.


3

Nearly opposite the island of Samos, Ephesus lay among the slopes of Mount Pion and Mount Koressos, on the Aegean Turkish Coast. The port was strategically located near the mouth of the Cayster, along the main trade route from Rome to the Orient. If you start a tour from the upper entrance, you are immediately rewarded with a magnificent view of the Street of the Curetes down to the Library of Celsus.

The theater where the Ephesians rioted at the instigation of Demetrius is situated within a hollow of Mt. Pion. It was decorated with pillars, niches, and fine statuary. The marble seats for the spectators were arranged in a half circle of 66 rows; these, it has been estimated, afforded room for about 25,000 persons. The acoustic properties of the theater were excellent. Even today, a word spoken in a low voice at the location of the stage can be heard throughout the theater. I know, because once Paul said, “Stay here,” and ran down to the stage. From the top seats I could hear him say, “I love Ari.”

Fragments of the temple of Artemis indicate that brilliant color and sculpture adorned the building. Large white marble tiles covered its roof. Instead of mortar, gold is reputed to have been used between the joints of marble blocks. Never had such large blocks of marble been used to create this kind of building at this magnitude. Though Heracleitus decried the temple’s dark approach to the altar, for the rest of the ancient world, it seemed as if it would never fall into decline. 

In the 3rd century C.E., an earthquake effectively rent the great temple in half. Almost immediately, seafaring Goths from the Black Sea pounced, plundering the temple riches before setting it on fire. Eventually, silting sealed off the harbor, and Ephesus ceased to function as a port. No modern settlement stands on the same site today.

“One of the greatest human achievements in the world, and it barely lasted a century,” Paul said.

“I wonder why they didn’t try to rebuild it.”

“Probably embarrassed. They all put their faith in something they shouldn’t have. Nothing humans can create is lasting.” It was dusk, and we’d come without a tour group, surrounded only by columns that line the street from the theater to the city harbor. He took my hand and led me to the bottom of the street, through the arch that was the gateway to the world.

4

Follow the Theodesian Walls past Topkapi-Ulubatli and you’ll reach Sulukule, the Harlem of Istanbul. We’d gotten off at the wrong metro stop and found it accidentally, a once-vibrant center of Romani culture turned Dudley Street. The entire area was leveled by demolition crews, save a few colorful buildings — relics of the Byzantine era — in shambles. Assuming the area abandoned, we fell asleep in a purple house, the casualty of an urban redevelopment project long forgotten. When Paul woke me up in the morning, there were little kids standing over us, poking him. “People live here,” he said incredulously.

We played hide-and-seek in the ruins a few hours; then, one boy led us up to a mosque overlooking Sulukule. He spoke, and Paul translated.

“Mimar Sinan built it for Princess Mihrimah. She was in love with Sinan, but forced to marry a grand vizier. Mihrimah stayed in an unhappy marriage more than twenty years, until her husband died. Then Sinan built the mosque, to prove he still loved her. Nothing else like it would exist for centuries. It has hundreds of windows, but only one minaret. Mihrimah ordered Sinan to stop, even though she was entitled to two.”

“Why?”

“The mosque is a symbol. Of her loneliness.”

“I don’t understand. She was free, and Sinan loved her. What was the problem?"

“Mihrimah was 17 when she got married. Before that, she lived with her parents. She never had the chance to live her own life.”

“So instead of sharing her life with someone who loved her…”

“She died alone. Because that was her choice.”

“I don’t think I like this story,” I said. “It makes no sense.”

A few years later, I went back to the rubble. Sirens blared throughout Istanbul to call people to prayer. When the chanting stopped, there was a sound like rushing water coming from a small pit nearby. “Cisterns,” an old woman said. “From Constantinople.”

“Underneath us?"

“Hundreds of them.”

I stood at the edge of the dirt, gauging the cavity’s size. I could fit down there.

“You’ll ruin your dress,” she warned.

The mosque, situated on the highest hill in Istanbul, cast its shadow over us, an emblem of Sulukule’s former radiance and present decay. I thought of the wedding that was supposed to take place there. What I didn’t understand before made perfect sense now.

I smoothed some wrinkles out of my white gown and slid down the dirt hole. “Doesn’t matter,” I told her. “I’m not going to need this anyway.”

 
5

“Where will you go?” Paul asked.

“I don’t know. People have been asking me that all year. I never know.”

“How did you pick where you went before?”

“I sit in the airport, looking at departures. If there’s a place I’ve never heard of before, I go. If there’s a place someone told me to avoid, I go there, too.”

It was March, the first time we’d spent together since breaking up. I was too tired to drive; he was sleeping in the backseat, so I pulled over and stretched out on the roof of the car, looking up at the stars over Lake Baikal. When he got out and sat next to me, there was more light in the sky than night.

“Have you ever seen so many stars?”

“No.”

“Not even in Thimphu?”

“The clouds made them hard to see,” I said.

“You know what’s funny? You’re seeing these stars for the first time, but they’re not even there anymore. They ran out of fuel and died ages ago.” Paul turned his back to me and laid on the car, propping his head up on one elbow. “We drove all the way here to stare at a ghost.”

 
When a star dies, eventually, if the supernova is large enough, it triggers the formation of new stars, but not all the time. Sometimes, pressure from outside forces causes the remnants to collapse into a black hole from which nothing can escape, not even light.

A week later, we left Russia, parting ways. Paul went to Zurich, and I went to Rason, a little seaside village in the DPRK.

7

Everything I write about my experiences represents a loss. I can tell you about the Kremlin diamond vaults and being tasered by a KGB agent and camping in a puffin colony and dinner with Leila Bekhti and partying with Stella McCartney and ziplining over Shan foothills and playing tag in a minefield and bragging about my pain tolerance to a man at the airport — perhaps you’ve heard of him — John McCain. I can tell you about eating an apple off the tree in Almaty — the riotous, visceral colors and scent of the orchard; the juice that dripped everywhere no matter how neat my bites were — but you're never going to get it unless you go there yourself.

There's a disconnect. You have to walk the beaches of Goa barefoot, then climb the steps of Sacré-Coeur in 5-inch heels to know how conflicted I am, to see how I love two worlds and waffle between them. I can describe Paul on paper, that's easy. But you can't understand how I felt when he ran after me at The Standard and kissed me outside my room and spent almost a decade with me — at our age, an eternity — who I left and lost and spent the last year trying to forget. All I can say is this: He's the reason I flit from hotel to hotel, living everywhere and nowhere, and right before I put my key in the door I always look down the hall, hoping he'll come running around the corner. He never does.

Ariana Roberts is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Cleveland. She last wrote in these pages about the brightest star of the north. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here.

"The Swan" - Camille Saint-Saëns (mp3)

"The Cuckoo In The Heart of the Woods" - Camille Saint-Saëns (mp3)