It was not scenery I was after; not viewing points or postcard beauty. I yearned for what I found on days like this, leaving the teacher’s house: a slicing wind across a pass, a dog chewing a cow carcass in a hillside ditch to the sound of a muezzin’s call, a festival of air filling the gap between rocky peaks, a pair of bullocks straining at a wooden plough in a field below the path, the work-cracked hand of a villager holding out a perfect apple — fragrant at arm’s length — as he invited us inside for plates of fatty mutton and boiled sweets.
Parfitt/Caucasus, 2023
THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT 
Leave a comment