Syrian village. A village witch or old woman lives on the edge of a village in a small Syrian village

I don’t visit Syrian villages often, and I don’t have many village photographs in my archives,

The habit of carrying a camera began with this blog.
Life in the village is not like life in the city; people in villages live poorer and have a harder time earning their bread. The rhythm of life of rural residents adapts to the life of livestock and the growth of crops in the field. In Syria, peasants are not united in any collective farms, and do not receive any salaries, with the exception of a few government employees, such as teachers (most teachers come to the village from the town every day).

In Syrian villages, clanism is much more pronounced than in cities; often village residents belong to one or several large clans, clans; it is very difficult to find a person living in a village who does not have relatives in it. The villagers simply don’t allow strangers to live with them.

The life of the peasants is very simple, the houses usually have a traditional “Arabic” (folk) interior, there are woolen carpets on the floors, along the walls around the perimeter of the room there are peculiar mattresses made of foam rubber covered with velor, and rectangular pillows in elegant embroidered pillowcases, such furniture looks quite cozy , looks like “sofas without legs”.
In special niches in the walls, hidden behind curtains, mountains of woolen mattresses, blankets and pillows are stored (and housewives do not miss the opportunity to replenish these supplies all the time). With the help of such roll-up beds, any room in the house can easily be turned into bedrooms, even the largest family does not feel cramped, and any number of guests can easily be accommodated for the night. In cities, this type of furniture is also used; it helps save a lot of space (and money).

Syrian villages almost throughout the country have running water and sewerage systems. There may be no expensive plumbing, a simple shower instead of a bathtub, and a simple floor sink instead of a toilet, but even in rural toilets there is always the most important thing - water.

Rural people differ from urban people by much greater openness and simplicity. If you are driving through a Syrian village and see a woman baking bread in a tenor oven, you can simply approach her and ask for bread, and she will definitely give you some flatbreads. The bread in the village is of a special type. It is baked from wholemeal flour, the flatbread is thicker and darker in color, but very tasty and does not go stale for a long time.

I remember one of our walks. We went for a walk with our visiting friends to the ruins of a fortress from the times of the Palmyra queen Zenubia (namely Halabie-Zalabie). My youngest was only a year old, and I forgot to take milk with me for him. Already on the way home, the child began to demand his favorite milk, no distracting maneuvers in the form of cookies and caramels helped. We stopped in a random village, near a random house, explained the situation and asked to sell us some milk. Our whole company was invited into the yard; we had to wait while the hostess milked the cow. They boiled fresh milk for us, then cooled it outside in a shallow bowl, poured it into a cup and handed it to my screamer. The whole company was given milk to drink, and while we were waiting for the milk, we were treated to homemade village bread, kefir and tea. My elders still remember that simple rural bread with kefir as a super tasty meal once in their childhood)

Some village photos.
The Euphrates Valley has very fertile land, a meter-thick layer of black soil, but its color is reddish.
Plantations are always divided by mounds or grooves to retain moisture in the right place. The fields are always watered with water from the Euphrates; they don’t expect or want rain here; rain is treated as a natural disaster.

Shepherds and flock

Rural life

"Modern" tenor stove

rural yard

Fisherman's house, in the suburbs of Deir Azzor

Rural people, their way of dressing is very different from urban ones

PS
Today, for the first time since the unrest, a demonstration took place near our house and went somewhere further into the area. There is a flurry of harsh publications on the Internet from all sides, the worst thing I have read is about the withdrawal from the truce, declared free for today, everything is still quiet, but no longer calm, it is not known what will happen next and when, rumors about the approaching day "X" when every Syrian will have to decide who he is with, we have been going for the last month, exams in the final classes should begin in three days. My friends scare me with the predictions of all sorts of soothsayers, I’m not inclined to believe them, but today an innocent message smelled of something sinister, and made me worry even more utro.ru/news/2012/05/24/1048672.shtml
I want to connect a satellite, it’s difficult to keep up with news on the Internet now, and whether the Internet will work, who knows..

Everyone thought she was the village witch. Or rather, rural. It seems she was an old woman even at thirty. The nose is long, hooked, the look is prickly. The expression on her face is always as if rotten meat had been shoved under her nose. They were afraid of her and avoided her. Behind your back they called you a witch, a sorceress, and even then an old woman.

The old woman got married before anyone else. I graduated from school almost immediately. How she managed to tear off a more or less normal man, no one knew. Not a beauty, gloomy, tough. Close-minded and at the same time simply frightening. The man was envious. Well, there, in the outback. And fell into the clutches of village witch…

The neighbors whispered. Behind your back, as always. AND avoided a cozy little house, lovingly built by a well-chosen husband and his equally well-chosen friends, working under the husband’s direction. Simple, but reliable. No frills. Convenience in the yard, as it should be in Russian villages and hamlets.

I, a city dweller, found myself in such conditions. The recognized village witch was my step-grandmother and a whole delightful year lay ahead. Life together. The neighbors perceived the appearance of new people in much the same way as sharks perceive fresh blood. City dwellers, what are you? From another part of the country. How can one not run away and try to establish contact? We are extremely hospitable...

The old woman, with a broad royal gesture, allocated an entire room for her son and his wife and child. She got three pairs of working hands. For the garden. Three pairs of hands! The room was cold. And filled with flowers. My stepfather loved flowers. Life in the village, which at first seemed like a fairy tale to a six-year-old girl, quickly turned into drabness with the help of a real village witch and crazy neighbors.

Old woman got up very early. And she constantly walked around “her domain” in circles, making sure the people do what they are supposed to do. I slept little. At the time of my stay in the village, she had long been retired. And always at home. Or in the garden.

I remember my own horror when one of my many relatives - an old woman - called me aside and round with horror whispered with her eyes:

Beware of her, she's the village witch, everyone knows about it, everyone! It will cause more damage... it’s better to come to me more often.

Scary. Old woman I didn't love. And she didn't love me. We walked around each other all year, trying not to notice that our personal space was violated. I locked myself in books. She is in the garden. But they felt each other. She smelled, I felt. Something between fear and horror. And hostility. A dark personality, whatever you say.

The village witch guards the safety of... herself?

We almost died then. In the second half of the nineties, an avalanche hit our region - everyone urgently supplied gas to houses. Naturally, the old woman did not stand aside. Having agreed with her husband that firewood was too expensive, they entered into an agreement and joyfully, with anticipation, installed newfangled pipes. They expected that now the house would be warm and cozy. And economically.

The village witch did not take into account one thing: WHO laid these pipes. And, accordingly, HOW. Then, when vodka is a younger brother, friend, father and mother, your eyes cross, it is very problematic to do everything right.

The point is that, naturally, there was a problem. And naturally, there was a leak. I wonder what It was on this day that the old woman, who usually did not crawl out of the house much, went to visit someone. Her husband found us and pulled us out.

Old woman and alcoholic

Grandfather drank. Do you know how they drink in the villages? To the point of white heat, to the point of fever, to the point of madness, to the point where one cannot even crawl. The old woman did not pay much attention to him. He still did his household chores.

And the village witch has something uncontrollable at home? Is your nose not ready for everything? It depends how you look at it. Ten years have passed. I had already entered college and happily did not communicate with either her or her husband. I only heard from my stepfather that my grandfather drinks and the old woman is sick. I didn't care.

A couple of years ago my stepfather called me. Dumbfounded.

Do you know that dad stopped drinking?

I sat down because I was afraid that I would fall. Alcoholics with such experience do not quit so easily. It was coded several times - to no avail. Just money down the drain. And here... well, next to the village witch, something else could happen, but still.

What's happened?

Mom is sick, she doesn’t walk... And he stopped drinking to look after her.

He still doesn't drink. Both are alive. They get sick, of course. But alive. For a long time I didn’t understand what happened.

Village witch on the edge of the village - nose in service

After the training in system-vector psychology, I understood. I didn’t expect the realization to hit me in the head, but that’s what happened. Against my will. The old woman is the same olfactory grandmother on the edge of the village. Witch. Baba Yaga. What visual, emotional, fearful people call “evil.” They are afraid of her.

Skin-olfactory women get married early. Too early. They are always like gray mice. Inconspicuous and frightening at the same time. Moreover, not everyone is scared. The olfactory vector strives to preserve its own integrity through the preservation of the “flock”. In the old woman's case, the pack was her family. She understands (or rather, her unconscious) that she cannot exist without the pack. And it “adds up” the behavior of family and society members in such a way that they fulfill their specific role.

The grandmother adds pheromones (unconsciously), hence the large number of weddings around and the phenomenon of long marriages in villages. It is in villages that marriages are mostly natural. Not without the help of the village witch.

Sounds esoteric? But how does a grandfather who has been drinking for the last twenty years not drink for two years? A man without upper vectors, calm, balanced, too “simple” for me, who has read only one book in his entire life, a skin-muscular grandfather who doesn’t care about anyone at all, quits drinking. Although nothing helped before the old woman’s illness. Conscience? In principle, leather workers have no such concept.

The neighbors decided that she had bewitched him. She created an anti-corruption or is simply being played by him like a puppet. Who knows? The unconscious processes that guide the olfactory observer and the people around him through him cannot be “understood.” They can only be felt by completing training in system-vector psychology.

For some reason I'm glad I'm not there. Otherwise, the village witch would have created pheromones, I would have married out of natural attraction... and then what would be the development of my sound?

Anna Tomenchuk. Based on materials from the training on system-vector psychology by Yuri Burlan.

As a child, my mother lived in a village where they had not even heard of television, let alone cellular communications, in the wilderness, in a word. The people there were believers, but superstitious.

There were a lot of dark rumors going around the village: a girl in a white dress appears by the road, leading to an accident, they say; then a short old man who led lost people out of the forest, and many other creepy stories.

And here is one of them, the veracity of which my mother was “lucky” to verify and even participate in.

There lived an old woman in their village; you could rarely see her on the street. She almost never left her dilapidated house. They said she was a witch. But you know how rumors spread in the village...

Everyone avoided her and did not allow their children to walk near her house. But my mother was always terribly interested, and she and her brother often played near her house. The old woman did not like the fact that they were sitting on her bench, she constantly grumbled, but did not leave the house, only looked menacingly out of the window and stomped around as if she could not get out. My grandfather, my mother's father, knew this woman; she was an old friend of his family when he was little. Therefore, the old lady was invited to family gatherings.

At one of these meetings, my mother and her sister decided to play a prank on the old woman, since they had heard stories about a witch, and stuck a needle in the door frame. According to ancient beliefs, if you stick a needle into a door frame, a real witch will not be able to get out and will mark time in agony.

And after a long feast, the old woman hobbled to the door and began to leave, when, remembering something, she started talking to one of the guests. It was clear from the expression on her face that she was not delighted with the dialogue, even though she started it herself. But she couldn’t leave, she couldn’t sneak away. And when it seemed that the conversation was over, turning to face the door, she seemed to remember something and with a dissatisfied face turned back and reluctantly started a conversation. So the old woman fidgeted and poked at the door for about forty minutes. An exhausted look, black eyes, like an abyss, bloodshot, looked as if through them with their sister. It became so creepy. And then the father came up and whispered in their ears to pull out the needle and not mock the guest. They were taken aback. How did the father find out? And if he knew why he brought this witch to our house! After all, everyone, absolutely everyone, heard that this old woman goes into the forest at night. With a wicker basket, in a long dark red dress. And in the morning, as it began to get light, a large pig came out with a torn dress wrapped around her and a basket, which she dragged behind her, scraping her hoof on the ground. The old woman lit large fires, threw some herbs and objects into them, and either danced a strange dance, or simply walked with her eyes closed, trembling and whispering something...

And so we pulled out the needle, she immediately rushed away. She hasn't been heard from since then. The children burned down that house long ago. And my mother moved from that village a long time ago. And many years later, distant relatives asked in a letter to come and gather with all their relatives and all their acquaintances. Since many had already died, and those who remained wanted to see their relatives at the end of their lives.

Mom simply could not help but come. After all, there might not be a next time.

She arrived, all the relatives gathered, all the same people who had been many years ago, sat at the table and had a heart-to-heart talk. Everyone had changed so much, grown old, only one face seemed so familiar to her that she spent the whole evening racking her brains wondering who it was. It was awkward to ask openly. When it got completely dark and people began to leave, she didn’t know where to go. Other relatives stayed overnight with relatives, and the following with friends... And only this grandmother was going home alone. Then she approached her mother and looked at her with a grin and some kind of mocking and sly look: “Let’s go to my place and spend the night?” She agreed, because she had nowhere else to go... The old woman took her hand and rushed into the distance along a country road, then turned through the forest... She, one might say, was running, which doesn’t really look like an old woman... And then panic seized my mother. She remembered that this was the same old woman! But it was already too late to do anything. The old woman’s hand squeezed my mother’s hand so tightly that it cracked. The old woman made a strange sound, laughing and wheezing, as if she was coughing. And then a house appeared! She slowed down, looked into her eyes and said: “Don’t be afraid of me.” The old woman brought the guest into the house. Oddly enough, there was nothing scary or gloomy inside; on the contrary, it was quite nice. They were greeted by a pale, short boy with disheveled hair and a barely noticeable, somehow lifeless smile. She pointed to the bedroom at the far corner of the corridor, and the boy accompanied her. And, looking into his eyes, he said: “Don’t worry, everything will be fine. She’s kind.”

She couldn't sleep all night... It was wildly uncomfortable. It's hot and cold... The bed creaked...

And suddenly the door opened slightly with a characteristic creak, and a black lump ran inside.

It was a kitten. He jumped onto the bed and, poking at the blanket from his feet, climbed inside and, scratching all his legs, crawled up, his mother took him off and put him on the floor. After all, it was wildly painful. But the black spot again jumped into her legs and began to tear towards her throat... It felt like he was trying to strangle her, plunging his claws, like blades, under the skin, tearing it, making his way higher and higher... She threw him off again!

But this creature was not going to stop, it tore the blanket and climbed again! His mother could no longer stand it and threw him on the floor. This kitten was like possessed! Crazy black lump...

No matter how much and with what force she threw him on the floor, he still continued! When he suddenly disappeared somewhere...

She fell asleep, but had nightmares all night. In the morning the old woman called her to tea.

All morning she was silent, running from corner to corner in a bustle. Suddenly she asked sarcastically: “How did you sleep?” And she immediately went out somewhere, as if she didn’t want to hear the answer. The mother, with a tortured look, told about the incident with the kitten, but the boy objected that there had never been any living creatures in the house! And it couldn’t be, since the old woman can’t stand animals. And then she was truly seized by panic, she rushed out of the house and ran as fast as she could! And she never returned to this village again. And now she sits over a cup of hot tea and tells me this truly terrible and frightening story.

In accordance with Google's requirements, we cannot post publicly available articles for people over 18+. Therefore, we have organized a closed section for users in which we write articles of this kind. The section is called - The sexiest stars, and is located in the Beauty and Style section.

After graduating from university back in 1981, I was sent to work at a run-down state farm in the Novgorod region for poor studies. They settled on a kind of farm in a wooden house, three kilometers from the main village and half a kilometer from the road, separated from the world by small forests. Nearby is the foreman’s house (there is a family there: a blind old woman, a mother, a wife, a daughter, and the foreman himself). There was no stove in the house, but there was no frost either: October was warm, there were plenty of mushrooms...
The director of the state farm sent the stove makers to me to install the stove. I go to work in the morning, they come later and build. I didn't even see them. I had a dog - a seven-month-old shepherd.

We moved into a new large house with an area of ​​94 square meters. The street ends and immediately there is a lake. A neighbor's boy was bought a bicycle for his birthday, he turned three years old, and just as he was riding, he rode into the lake. It’s not clear how, but it was as if some force had pushed him out of the water. He sat and cried, he was afraid that they would scold him for the bicycle, and the men dived for the bicycle three times. The child was stressed, and since we lived in a village, the parents found a grandmother who cast his fear in wax.

I remembered all this when something happened that I needed the help of such a grandmother. My husband constantly went on business trips and said: “If I don’t return before 12 at night, then go to bed, then I’ll come the next day.”

It happened a long time ago in a small Siberian village. This story is passed down by the relatives of that family from generation to generation. Being on good terms with them, I also found out what happened then.

There lived a woman in a village who dreamed of having a child. The woman's name was Lydia. She was a believer and always went to church services. She spent a lot of time among the icons, calling out her desire to all the saints. Months and years passed, but God did not hear her prayer.

Lydia had a friend who lived in a neighboring house with her husband and son. She and Lydia often met, and her friend complained to her about her difficult fate. Her husband systematically beat her so much that she then did not leave the house for weeks, she was so ashamed of her bruises and bruises.

Time and place - near Moscow, 1957, the name of the village is fictitious. The names of the remaining participants have been changed.

The village of Pakhnutino rose heavily after the war. It was difficult for the whole country, but here, near the capital, it was more so. All the youth are in the city; there are almost no people left on earth. Anyone who wanted to settle was welcome. The collective farm allocated land and built a house at its own expense. Therefore, Varvara did not have to wait long at the threshold of the village council. The difficulty was caused, and even then at first, by her demand to be closer to the forest. The chairman was perplexed:

Everyone is trying to get closer to the center. Here we have a club and shops. School, finally. Your daughter is learning how to walk.

These incidents are observed in the village in which I live. I have lived in this village since birth and have had the opportunity to observe all this since I was a child. I must say that our village is quite old. It is the same age as Chelyabinsk, and we celebrate village day a little earlier than Chelyabinsk residents. Once upon a time, my village was a Cossack fortress like Chelyabinsk, but that was a very long time ago.

We have a place that has had a bad reputation since ancient times. The place is near the rural museum, or rather, it is a former park part, which was once an old church cemetery. But during the Soviet attacks on faith in God, the church was destroyed and the cemetery was razed to the ground.

What should I start with? My friend told me this story, and her mother told her. In the village to which I moved not so long ago, one incident happened about 20 years ago. Nobody wants to talk about it, but still many people know. My village where I live is called Troitskoye, and about 8-9 km away there used to be the village of Podchernoye, but now no one lives there. It's abandoned.

Here is how it was. Two guys came from the city to visit their grandmother in Troitskoye and decided to take a walk around the village. After wandering around all day, we didn’t find anything interesting, but we heard about the village of Podchernoye and decided to ride there on a bike. There were few people there even in those days.

One day in the village I was walking with the guys, and one of my friends suggested playing hide and seek in the forest, everyone agreed with delight and we ran to choose a driver. After everyone ran away in different directions, Petya and I ran to the spring.

Suddenly a man appeared to me in the distance, and I felt a little scared. I have heard about Slenderman before: he is long and very thin, he always wears a strict black suit, a white shirt and a red tie, and the most amazing thing is that he has no face. He also has the ability to stretch and lengthen his limbs or torso.

I always thought that this was just a fiction to scare people with another horror story, but after that day I began to pronounce this name with goosebumps - Slenderman.