Barxana (Written on Tuesday August 20th)

Sunday was Barxana Day, meaning the day that we brought all of Ramina’s cehiz (dowry) to what will be her new house and set up her room.  There is a lot of ceremony and tradition to this process and, having never been this close to someone who is getting married, this is the first time that I got to experience all of it!

Sunday morning started with some last minute preparations.  I was involved in the task of decorating the gate.  When someone in your house is getting married, you decorate the front gate with a huge bow, etc and it stays up basically until it falls off on its own it seems (I’ve seen some pretty depressing looking gate decorations that have seen a few too many storms and a lot of village dust and I kind of wonder why they are still up there).  One side of our gate we did in a very typical Azerbaijani style, but the second half, since it has a smaller door that we use all the time, Gülnar and I decided to do a smaller decoration on that door that I am told is quite unique.

At a little bit past twelve, Raminə’s fiancé’s brother arrived with a truck (it is the groom’s family’s responsibility to provide the truck).  We had that thing loaded up and were hitting the road in less than half an hour – and that includes the first 10 minutes of standing around waiting for my mom to get back from the store so that she could tell us what to put down on the bed of the truck to protect all the mattresses and bedding!  I should also mention that the furniture for the dowry was sent directly to the new house so it was already there.  Once everything was loaded, we set off across town to the house.  There was a whole group of us who went – family friends, married women from both sides of the family, neighbors, Gülnar, and me.  The bride-to-be doesn’t go (traditionally she doesn’t even get to go see her fiancé’s house until she goes there on her wedding day, a lot of girls go over before now, but the old women judge them and my sister hasn’t gone there at all) and apparently neither does her mom.

We also had to send one kid to ride on the truck, so we sent Fərid, our aunt’s son who is going into 3^rd grade and can be super obnoxious (although on Barxana Day he and I became good friends).  Before the kid will get down from the truck, the future mother-in-law must give him some money.  Raminə’s future mother-in-law came with only 10 manat (which I have been told is quite low) and Fərid refused to get down for less than 20 manat (which is about $25).  He got it.

Fərid getting his 20 manat

We had the truck unloaded as fast as it was loaded (these women are machines!) and then set about unpacking and arranging everything – which was the more difficult part!  We had everything so well packed that of course we couldn’t find the first things that we needed.  But really I am using the term “we” loosely here as I generally spent Barxana Day standing around taking photos and playing with Fərid (which I considered being quite helpful because I kept him out of trouble).  Whenever I tried to help I felt more in the way because these women definitely had set ideas of where everything could go and it would take time/energy to explain to me exactly what they wanted.  I did help put some stuff on top of her wardrobe (on the orders of an aunt)...but then another woman came and took it all down again :(

Raminə’s future room

After everything was done, it is the groom’s family’s responsibility to serve us lunch, and apparently what they serve is a fairly big deal because I have been asked to account for the menu at various gatherings subsequently (in case you care, they served us 3 sisters dolma – which means ground meat in eggplant, tomatoes, and green peppers, chicken in a sort of butter sauce thing, and plov – rice).  We sat inside to eat and drink tea while his family was outside.  Then, before we left, they gave us gifts (it felt kind of like party favors) of slippers and tank tops.

All of this was finished within 3-4 hours.  Phew!  But that wasn’t the end of our day!  We came home, and, after reporting back in detail about the room and showing the pictures, began to help with a huge bread-making operation which was underway at our house.  They were using like 50kg of flour to make yuxa (flat bread, kind of like a tortilla but really big).  It was litereally like a factory in our yard and they worked all day.  These women are amazing.  Our job wasn’t really to help, more to bring tea to keep the production underway and the workers refreshed!