Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

Konrad in China
1911-1912
In October Konrad set out for China. The entire family gave him a send-off. Alexandra
was looking forward to the months alone.
Niko and Claudia arrived at the same day as Konrad’s first letter. Over dinner that night
Alexandra gave it to Otto to read it aloud, a glowing description of Samarkand.
Samarkand, 16 October, 1911
Dearest Alexandra, dear Otto, Claudia, and Niko!
Imagine I am standing in a large square framed on three sides by arched Medresses,
Islamic schools. Their colossal walls and gates are covered with tile mosaics in green,
blue, yellow, ocher, and deep red. Monumental, they rival the imperial palaces of Rome.
The Medressa to my right is flanked by two minarets, a gateway at its center. The wall
above, a pointed arch, is covered with the mosaics of two of lions, mirror images of each
other. Behind each rises a sun with a human face! When you walk closer you see that the
background is a carpet of most intricately interwoven flowers.
This Registran square is a Babylonian confusion of animals and men. Horses, camels,
lying, braying, wagons, trade-stands, mountains of stacked watermelons, men in turbans
of various colors and shapes, long, ragged greatcoats with colorful trim, the womenfolk in
dizzying silk blouses and shawls.
And all this stinking squalor, heated by a fierce sun, is covered by clouds of fine brown
dust which gets into everything… From here the bazaar of Tiflis appears to lie in a farwestern
country.
I met George and his tea master in Baku. George suffered the rigors of this journey with
a great calm and his special kind of humor, a good travel companion. The poor Chinese,
however is beset by a mortal fear of the emptiness of the desert. He is hiding in his room
behind drawn curtains.
The journey from Baku to Samarkand took four days—sixteen hours of which we spent
on a rusty ferry reeking of oil on the Caspian Sea and two days crossing the forbidding
Karakum desert. Small, dark brown scree, no black sand dunes as I had always imagined.
A thin, abrasive veil of sand blows a foot high over this scorched earth. The railroad tracks
get buried often. At noon the temperature was more than 30 degrees Celsius, in
November!, and breathtakingly dry. And in this land live people! Occasionally we saw a
caravan of camels, single file on the horizon.
Love and greetings to all—but especially to you my love
from your newly excited husband
Konrad
"Mummy," asked Otto, "may I keep daddy’s letter? I want to go there one day."
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