Papa Luna, Samarquand, and Ciracassians
Over lunch, Lachko and I watched part of a movie called Papa Luna, which is a very charming movie set in middle-80’s (still Soviet) Uzbekistan. Lachko got a kick seeing some of the Soviet culture that he remembered as a kid in Bulgaria, such as the Militzia (police) and the compulsary Russian language. Noting the reference to Samarquand in the subtitles, I decided to do a little web research on the area. Samarquand was once the “pearl of the Eastern Moslem world,” the Land of Scientists, and is the second largest city of Uzbekistan. Next I took a detour and checked out the Circassians who once occupied a large territory mainly between the Black and the Caspian Seas at the foot of the Caucasus but were subject to a long-term genocide. Apparently some Christians (of the Crazy-American variety) posit that the Antichrist will spring from their genetic code, which does seem to engender pretty amazing fighting abilities. Speaking of the Jesus, there may be a connection between the family of Joseph of Arimathea (featuring the first guards of the Holy Grain) and the Kazars, a Turkic tribe that settled in Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages.
