Hello! This week we’re excited to host Maya Gulieva on the Fortified Gazette. Maya is a writer, artist and educator living in London. She was born in Moscow. You can find her on instagram here.
We hope you enjoy,
Best,
Kate and Sinae
12:46, FORTIFIED FIELD: DAY 1
Like blossoming potatoes, winter isn’t about what’s above ground. I eat from mud-gladden earth. Dig into my Slavic roots. Prize open my pogreb.
I take out the beet-juice-soaked pickles I set aside to season over autumn in rosemary. (I have a bone to pick with London supermarkets and their meagre, plastic-wrapped hairline they call dill.) The turnips are sharp and sweet. Then, I find the inner babushka with robust forearms and put her to use, chopping, kneading and punching the cabbage. Slaw’s in season, with carrots and parsley too.
Russian root: root cellar (usually wooden, usually underground)
Pogreb was always the corner of their village dwelling most shrouded in mystery. Peering behind the door and it’s all darkness. You tug on the string above head, and a little filament light goes on, barely illuminating anything. I can make out a staircase, down. Mice scuttle, but babushka knows better than to keep grain in chewable sacks. A deep, earthy smell wafts up, a cold burp from the belly of the earth. My childhood nightmare was getting accidentally locked in this tomb.
Serbian root: buried (usually in a coffin, so it is also a funeral)
For my grandparents pogreb is where root veg and crops go to sustain them over winter. From root to root. You reap what you sow, mama used to tell me. Eating seasonally isn’t a lifestyle choice — pogreb is a piece of the ecosystem.
Mama calls to report, and I ask how babushka and dedushka are doing this winter. They are all getting lazy over there, she tells me. Nobody’s milking, deda didn't hunt this summer. Soon, they’ll stop digging too!
They can buy milk now, potatoes and pickles too — there is a supermarket. The pogreb’s empty.
Here, too, everywhere supermarkets. Packaged milk, avocados from Mexico, Thai dragon fruit. Seasons and ecosystems laid out neatly on the shelves.
Here I am, picking at Japanese turnips, and cabbage from Spain, my winter habits rooted in nostalgia.