Jewish women visiting the Užupis cemetery in Vilna, Lithuania, 1917
In the 19th century the road from Vilna Old town through Užupis leading to the Jewish cemetery sometimes was called a death road. It received such a macabre name because of long funeral processions that were going through it. The cemetery was destroyed by the Soviet authorities in the 1960s following the destruction of the Great Synagogue of Vilna. Tombstones were used for staircases in various construction works around the city. Currently a memorial constructed of them marks the location of the former entrance to the cemetery.
Dervishes take part in a ceremony marking the spring festival Nowruz in a prayer room. Chanting and swaying to the hypnotic rhythm of prayer until they reach a trance-like state, the group then pierce their cheeks with long needles, seemingly without pain
“Khaltcha and Abdul Muttalib smoke opium several times a day - like approximately 20% of the Kyrgyz [in the Afghan Pamir Mountains]. "We started smoking when we lost our first child,” says Abdul. “Every year, one of our children would die” - often from diseases easily treatable elsewhere. Only one, a son, survived to age five. Then he, too, passed away. “We lost 11 children, we are unlucky.”
In the Pamir, it is not unusual for parents to lose six or seven children. Most Kyrgyz are extremely unsentimental about death and dying and accept it as an unavoidable part of life. In 2007, Alex Duncan, a British doctor, collected data in the Afghan Pamir and established that child-under-five mortality there was 520 deaths per 1,000 live births (52% mortality), the world’s highest rate. Main reasons to this are the intense isolation, the high altitude environment and no access to doctors or health clinics…“
“I first came to Khinaliq to document life in Azerbaijan’s highest inhabited village in 2003. Archeological evidence suggests that Khinaliq was inhabited four millennia ago and dates back to pre-Zoroastrian times. A village of nearly 1,000 shepherd families is built into the side of a mountain, each house made of river stone, one upon the other.
Khinaliq, because of its remoteness, still managed to preserve its ancient way of life. There is no running water but the streams nearby, no gas except the natural fires sprouting from the gas-pocked mountains. The people speak Khinaluq, a unique and endangered dialect attributed to the northeastern group of Caucasus languages. The only source of income is sheep breeding.”
