Sashar Zarif is a dancer, educator and researcher in Canada. He is a research associate at York Centre for Asian Research at York University in Toronto.

Listen to his interview here:

Transcript of the interview

 Sashar Zarif: There are villages in Azerbaijan that have gone through seventy years of Communism and are so far into the mountains that they are hardly accessible. There, they kept their underground Sufi shamanic practices and they have rituals, which we have only heard in the poetry of Hafiz.

Janyl Jusupjan: Did you go there?

SZ: I did and it was amazing. I was doing research on the character of Saghi in poetry, the one that gives you wine. I didn’t find much. This Saghi existed everywhere, in all the Khorezm courts, in all the courts. It existed, but I couldn’t find much about it.

So I was in Azerbaijan and I visited my friend, Ghangiz Ghajar, a scientist, a great historian and a cultural scholar. I went to see him on a hot day and for some reason, I was disappointed because I was looking for something I couldn’t find. I got to his house and he gave me a cold drink and told me that I looked disappointed. I just replied that I was exhausted and that field work was very tiring.

Then he said, “What would you like to see if something can be possible?” You know, when you get into a cool house on a hot summer day and you receive this cold drink of mint, which we call “sharbat”, then you feel great and want to see Saghi.

And he said, “O.K. I’ll make a phone call”. He made the call. I didn’t believe him; I thought he wanted to send me on vacation somewhere.

His friends came and we went to this village in the mountains. The elders there asked some questions. I still did not know what was going on. They said that there were Sufis in that village and they asked questions – a kind of interview: “Are you a journalist? We don’t want journalists,” etc.

After I offered my knowledge of Sufism and shamanism they kind of build that trust and they agreed to do the ritual. The head of the ritual was an old lady, Saghi Fatma. She came to this village on a pilgrimage when she was sixteen and she stayed there. She stayed in the Sufi Dargah and served for all those years. They told me that Saghi Fatma sings very beautiful Gumi couplets, the poetry. I asked her if she could sing so I could record her. She said, “Tomorrow at seven a.m. come on the roof.” In the villages, one’s roof is the neighbor’s backyard. I said, “Why seven o’clock in the morning?” They told me that she only sings to her cows when she milks them. I went at seven in the morning. I was very serious. I sat down. The sun was rising. The pomegranate trees everywhere. She’s sitting there, milking the cow. The milk was hitting the bucket making a kling-kling a sound. She was making a rhythm with that. And then she started singing.

I had the recorder in my hand but I was so amazed, I forgot to press the record button. But I think some things are better left unrecorded. It was one of the most magical experiences. That woman gave me the most glorious concert with her cow on top of a roof. Eighty-four years old.

JJ: The cow was also on the roof?

SZ: Yes, because it’s mountainous terrain, one roof is the other person’s yard. That’s why in Azerbaijan they say: dam uste dir damimiz – my roof is the other’s yard. Magic still exists in those areas. I’d love to go to Kyrgyzstan. I think there exists a lot that outsiders know nothing about.

JJ: Actually, I heard about some specific rituals and I wanted to see those shamanic rituals somewhere in the central region of Kyrgyzstan. There was a shaman woman, who I was told died and that’s when I lost that thread.

SZ: I’m also dying to see Afghanistan. It has all these Afghan, Turkmen, Kyrgyz, Hazaras, the descendants of Mongolians. I’m sure that they have kept some of the very ancient traditions that they have.

They have even kept their costumes, which they are still wearing. I’d like to go there and do some research there. Like Turkmenistan: I found a lot of information on Turkmens in Iran because they kept their traditions.

JJ: You  left Iran and you went to Turkey and then ended up in Canada. You were young and daring. Where did you get the energy to keep going?

SZ: I think what kept me together was the magic that I got from my grandmother. When she was young, she was a dancer. But she came to Iran and couldn’t dance anymore. I was the only one with her at home.

She used to get up and dance for me so I was her only audience after that. She taught me how to dance in the beginning. She was ninety-nine when she passed away. As she got older she couldn’t dance anymore. She could walk with her cane. She’d sit and play the drum and sing some tunes. Sometimes she’d put down the drums and sing the music and dance with her arms and she taught me how to be relaxed. That’s how I learned to dance. That was my grandmother’s legacy. But she also used her dance and music to tell me where she came from – Baku and then Ashkhabad.

JJ: Was she a professional dancer?

SZ: I’m not sure. I think she was in one of those dance groups formed during the Soviet times. She was singing all these songs. The way she coped with life, being in a foreign land, not learning the local language, she was always at home, always crying for her homeland…

She once told me about her sister’s earrings. I asked her why women always wear these big earrings. She said, “We wear heavy earrings so we keep ourselves connected with the ground. To keep ourselves grounded, to remember where we come from, to remember our father’s house, because when you marry you go to the husband’s house.”

She was singing all these songs and dancing to music to deal with the displacement or any situation. So when I was displaced I think all I did was sing.

I remember when I left Iran, once in Turkey we were between camps. We arrived in a town at midnight and we were taken to the police headquarters. They opened the cells in the basement for us to sleep in and that was the first time I actually saw a jail. They locked the doors and my friends said, “You should sing to them, they’ll like your Azeri singing and they will let us go to the washroom to use the water.” So I got up and started singing.

JJ: Did it buy you freedom?

SZ: Yes. I used to sing it all the time and I carried her drum with me from Iran to Turkey, then to Canada. Two years ago when I had a show called Choreographies of Migration, the centerpiece was my grandmother’s drum because it carried a lot of feelings.

She used to play the drum and then put it beside her ear and then sing to the drum. She used to say that the drum was her companion. And I still have it. It’s a deerskin drum; a small one. The frame is delicately done. It’s very old. It has a very special sound. It’s not good for the stage. It’s made for small rooms with cushions and a samovar…

JJ: Thank you very much.

END

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