BISHKEK, KYRGYZSTAN: A MUSLIM CEMETERY

We made a rather unconventional stop as we returned from a drive in the mountains--a cemetery.  I really enjoy visiting cemeteries. They say a lot about a country's culture, and each one is unique. We've seen some pretty interesting cemeteries over the years. (See here, here, here, and here for a few.)

This one was in the middle of nowhere:

. . . and in the distance we could see another cemetery, even more in the middle of nowhere:

Engraved on one of the crosspieces of the dome in the photo above are the dates 1947-2014.

My dad died when I was young, and I grew up visiting the cemetery, wandering (rather happily, actually) among the graves and wondering who the people were and what they were like when they were alive. Some of the same emotions I had as a child flood my heart every time I visit a cemetery, including this one outside Bishkek. If anything, this cemetery triggered those feelings on a grander than usual scale because of the style of the memorials.

Don't you wish you knew a little about this man? If someone out there reads Russian, please tell me what the words engraved on the stone say:

What about this carving on the top of a square column? Was this perhaps a mother who cared lovingly for her children?

Who built this mini-mausoleum and who is interred in it?

Was the person buried in front of these three snow-covered peaks a mountaineer? A nature lover? A geologist?

And what about this memorial, which includes the face of a woman who looks a little like my Oma but who was born a year after my mother and died the same year she did? Did she and my mother have anything in common?

This stern-looking man was born in 1981. He was only in his 30s when he died. What is his story?

And what about this beautiful woman? She was just 47 when she died. That looks like a poem on the bottom of her stone. What does it say?

I'm also intrigued by the fact that all the writing is in Russian, and yet every stone has the Muslim crescent on it. The Russian influence was strong during the "Soviet period," but most of the Stans are abandoning the Cyrillic alphabet these days. Maybe that's just the last few years, and this cemetery pre-dates that.

Anyway, I wish I knew more of the stories behind these faces.

I love the architecture of these brick-and-dome structures:

. . . but some of my favorite things at the cemetery are the birdcage-like structures that protect many of the plots. They have the feel of mausoleums, but are lighter and airier. The breeze can blow right through them, and it's almost like their doors will open and the spirits of the dead will fly away like birds on the wind: