Arba-Tima Festival in Talysh and Gilan- Part 2/3

 This is part 2 of series of three articles, part 1 here 

4- Arab-kuyi

At home, horses are unloaded and the baskets are straightaway emptied into Lar or Arba-Lar. Lar is a tree trunk whose center is carved out and looks like a gutter.

Lar

Next, Arba is pounded using sledge hammers made of wood till they are completely smashed. Pounding arba is often carried out by women and wooden sledge hammers are called Arba-Kama or Chua kana. 

 

Once Arba is completely smashed, some rice bran- Fel in Talyshi- is burned, sieved and then mix it with the smashed Arba. This ash detoxes the mixture and also reduces the bitterness of extract obtained from Arab. This fruit extract is called Ravah. 

This mixture is left for one night and is kneaded with fingers in the following morning. The kind of Kneading the involves fingers is Axa in Talyshi. 

 

 

5- Ravah-geri

At this point, the sweet liquid that is the juice of the Arba is collected. Ravah is the name for this sweet juice and sometimes is called Deshava Rava. Next, the mashed mixture is removed to a new Lar and add clean water to it and stirred. This process is called Pela-Peshuri /pəlʌ peʃu:ri:/ which means "washing Pilav". Then, the new mixture is put into cone shape baskets - handmade from tree branches- and hanged 1.5 to 2 meters from the ground. This basket works as a large sieve that separates liquid  from the debris of the mixture. Below this baskets, there are Lar or big basins to collect the liquid pouring from the baskets which are juice of Arba. This baskets in Talyshi are called Ravah-Gera Safa /rɒvæ geræ sæfæ / and often are found in Talysh houses. 

Ravah-Gera Safa

There is another method to extract Ravah whereby Lar is lifted and mounted from one end at 45 degrees. Then push the whole content of Lar up in order to create space for Ravah and use rice stems (or any random leaf) to hold the content to slip down, moreover, it serves as a filter.

 

6- Tashta-penayi 

Tasht is cooking pan in English languaes and this stage includes setting up a pan on a fire where the Rava - the liquid obtained so far- is to be boiled. The pan is always made of copper  and the liquid -Rava- must be clean of any debris.

The liquid is poured into pan and put on the oven to boil. In meantime, firewood are constantly added to the fire. This oven in Talyshi is Deshava-Kura /dəʃʌvə ku:ræ/ .

7- Kula-zhani

When deshav liquid reaches the boiling point, it began spilling over . To prevent boiling deshav from spilling over, a plant is used to stir the deshav. This plant in Talyshi is Kul and the act of stirring Deshav with is called Kula-Zhani. In doing so, Kul is tied to the tip of 1 meter long and then began stirring the boiling deshav.

Kul is a 20-25 centirimer tall thorny plant that grows in all four season. This plant somehow looks like boxwood however its leaves are pricky and have sharp edges. Moreover, Talyshan use Kul to feed their animal stock in the winter.

 

8- Zarda-vish

Ravah - the Araba liquid or juice- is boiled until two-third of it evaporated. At this stage, its color tends to be yellowish-redish. This stage is called Zarda-vish /zærdævi:ʃ/ and it literally means "turing into yellow color". Now, Ravah is slowly starts to become Deshav but not yet fully. This stage approximately takes 3 hours.

The yellowish color come from fel - ashes of burned rice bran that used in Arba Kuyi (stage 4). Some Talyshan burn wood and use it ash which cause Rava turned out to be dark opal color and not yellowish.

 

 

9 and 10- marjova gel and Pela gel

Following Zarda-vish where 2/3 of Ravah is evaporated, the remaining is a thick and sticky syrup with yellowish-redish color. This yellowish-redish Ravah is boiled for another two stages known as marjova gel /mærʤɔ:ə gəl/ and Pela gel /pəlʌ gəl/; each takes roughly 5 minutes.

Marjo and Pela in Talyshi is green lentils and Pilav respectively. And, gel means boiling or to boil. Thus, Marjova-gel and Pela-Gel means to boil in the same manner that lentils and rice boils in the water when cooking.

Suppose the pan in which Ravah  - the extract of Arba- is to boile can contains 15 liters, at the end of the Zarda-vish,marjova gel and Pela gel, there should remain roughly 5 liters of the Rava which is infact Deshav. Perhaphs the term Deshav is also derived from this logic where de is two and the term Deshav signifies that 2 out of 3 is evaporated and 1 remained.

 

11- Tashta-ageri 

The pan in which Ravah was boiling is removes from the fire oven following the completion of marjova gel and Pela gel stages. This is called Tashta-ageri which translated as putting down the pan. At this stage Ravah is already become Deshav.

12- Tashta-alisi 

Now that Deshav is ready, it is time to pack and store them in containers. Always some deshav remains on the inner walls of the pan after emptying it to storage containers. Kids and even adults are impatiently waiting for this moment with teeny-tiny wood stick. They surround the pan and start scrubbing the remaining deshav with their tiny wood stick and enjoy it. This is called Tashta-alisi which means eating the remaining of deshav after emptying the pan.

This marks the end of a single process of Deshav making or Arba-Tima. Then the pan is filled with new Ravah (wild persimmon extract) and reiterate Tashta-penayi (stage 6) till they use up all the Ravah.

Deshav is traditionally stored in glass or pottery jars known as Dshav-a- Nughuldun /dəʃʌvæ nu:ku:ldu:n/. The weighing measure for deshav is Chiri /ʧi:ri:/ which is basically a pottery jar that can contains seven kilograms of deshav (1- man). man /mæn/ is a measurement unit in Talysh and equals to 7 Kg.

Chiri - a big pottery jar- has got a few types and named after its physical feature and purpose of use. Mrsa-chiri /mərsæ ʧi:ri:/ is one of several kinds of chiri whose handles are made of copper (/mərs/ in Talyshi) that often used to store and carry water; whether from water-well or water spring. The Chiri that used in milking cows and storing their milk (/ʃət/in Talyshi) in known as Shta-Chiri /ʃətæ ʧi:ri:/ in Talyshi and if the chiri used to store Deshav, it would be called Deshav-a-Chiri /dəʃʌvæ ʧi:ri:/.