Life's good where there's food!

I am sitting in a dark hut full of smoke on a bed made of stone and sheep’s skin. We dropped into Afghan shepherds’ settlement, high in the Pamir mountains on the very end of the Wakhan Corridor - a remote corner of Afghanistan. The only meal we are served is hot tea called sheer choy. I doubt that British tea gourmets would appreciate a drink mixed with salt, yak milk and home-made butter but as it is the only liquid available it is very satisfying. My Wakhi guide, Jam Bek is slurping his drink with dignity right next to me. Our hosts are not supposed to eat anything else this day and so are we.
We’re chatting friendly when suddenly one of the women (who is supposed to sit quietly and serve the meal - I mean, tea) runs into the hut crying “gyrk, gyrk!” Everybody jump out of the house screaming and shouting. It turns out that shepherds preoccupied by the presence of westerners didn’t watch the sheep carefully enough. One of them was killed by the wolf. What a great misfortune for those miserable men!
However, my guide doesn’t seem to be very touched by the loss of his cousins. He insists on staying for the night - he hasn’t tasted meat since the end of the winter and now Allah has blessed him with the opportunity of true feast! Sheep are consumed only during severe frosts when high-caloric meal is crucial for the survival. There is nothing more to eat here – no forest, almost no grass – only rocks, mountains and rivers. No wonder that women need to constantly give births to new babies - more than half of them die during the winter times.
Life cannot be more simple: it’s all about livestock. Sheep are being exchanged for other goods instead of money. Their excrements serve as fuel for fires. They provide food and become food themselves, when it’s indispensable. Our host has just lost a fortune and all he got in return are hungry looks of his relatives (and two foreigners). May it bring you strength – he says and gives us meat raising his eyes to Allah’s direction.