In Their Own Words: What it Means to Be Kyrgyz

This girl is a university student in Bishkek. I knew from previous conversations that she only used to speak Russian. She is now studying Kyrgyz more and more. I asked why.

If you look at the very beginning, from my childhood, I went to a Russian kindergarten, but I didn’t know Russian. My natural language was Kyrgyz. Everyone in my family, and all of my friends spoke Kyrgyz. I went to kindergarten and everything was in Russian. They sent me to that kindergarten because they were looking after my future, because people who don’t know Russian can’t get a job, or it gets hard for them later on in school. So they wanted me to learn Russian as a child and sent me to a Russian kindergarten. It was hard at first, but after a while I learned it and went to a Russian school. All of my friends spoke Russian. Maybe it was just the cool thing to do. Everyone spoke Russian, and little but little…I just kind of…I know everyday Kyrgyz well and I can speak fine, but I don’t know the grammar. All of my classes were in Russian and my friends all spoke Russian. And I just kind of as a reflex started speaking Russian at home. I made it all the way to the 11^th grade using Russian. At that time, Kyrgyz only existed for me when I went to the villages, talked with my grandparents, and in Kyrgyz classes. But even in classes, if you don’t remember how to say something in Kyrgyz, you just say it in Russian. But then I started to think….I heard someone say that there’s no nation without a language. I’m Kyrgyz, so I ought to know Kyrgyz. Because of that, I started to talk in Kyrgyz more. Even my mom and dad started to say things like, “Don’t you know Kyrgyz?” I said, “If you want, I can talk in Kyrgyz.” I started to talk in Kyrgyz and after two words I changed into Russian. Then I understood that I really needed to work at Kyrgyz. It just seems stupid to me. Even though we have to national languages, it seems to me that we need to know both languages the same—Russian and Kyrgyz. As far as Kyrgyz goes, it’s not fair that I know Russian better. Even more so since I’m Kyrgyz, I ought to know Kyrgyz.

I asked her if it was important to her personally that she is Kyrgyz.

Technically, I’m not entirely Kyrgyz. My mother is part Uzbek, part Kyrgyz, and my father is part Kazakh, part Kyrgyz. The Kyrgyz look at the father’s line. Going just by my father’s line, I’m Kazakh. My great-great grandfathers lives in Kazakhstan. But there was a famine there at one time, and they moved to Kyrgyzstan, and my father was born here. My grandfather say, “My son was born in Kyrgyzstan, is going to live in Kyrgyzstan, he doesn’t know Kazakh, but he knows Kyrgyz.” So when they filled out the documents, they wrote Kyrgyz. So according to the government documents, my father is Kyrgyz, so I am too. But if you don’t look at the documents, I’m a Kazakh. But I still consider myself Kyrgyz. Just like in America—and American of Kyrgyz origin, right? Even though I am of mixed lineage, I was born in Kyrgyzstan, I live here, study here. So I consider myself a Kyrgyz.

She said she never got interested in her Kazakh history. Only in Kyrgyz history. I asked her why.

I don’t know. I know that my great-grandfather was a Kazakh. Besides that, I don’t even know the history of Kazakhstan. I never read it. Kyrgyzstanis closer to me, native. I don’t know. My homeland is Kyrgyzstan. Kazakhstan was just the homeland of my ancestors.

In Their Own Words: Corruption

You can't read about Kyrgyzstan without hearing about corruption. Everyone talks about it. I interviewed an official in one of Kyrgyzstan's many political parties and asked him about it. If his ideas sound a little disjointed, that's because they were.

For a good life…regular people just need to have conditions were they can work, and reasonable distribution of wealth. Everything they earn…and then, as everyone says right now, we’re fighting corruption. So getting rid of corruption and creating normal working conditions. If you look at the history of the Kyrgyz, we are divided into clans. There are larger clans and then…it’s in our blood. For example, I become a director, I pull in my brothers, relatives, my clan. It’s in our blood. I don’t know sometimes it...trying to stop it doesn't seem to work, so...

Researcher: If you were put into such a position, would you do that? Put your own people in places of power?

Informant: I probably wouldn’t be able to. There’s a new generation—the goal of our party is to attract the youth. We have a goal to get the youth into this work. Right now everyone in the government, in high positions, they’ve been there for 15-20 years. The people who were working during Akayev’s administration [Akayev was the former president, ousted in 2005] are still working for Bakiev [the new president]. The youth have a very different view. But we [the older generation] have it in our blood.

Researcher: You’re used to it.

Informant: Yes, we’re used to it. If only the youth can fix that.

Researcher: Why do you think the youth have a different opinion, different views?

Informant: First of all young people…there’s so much progress..the have command of such a wealth of information, not like us. We were raised in a very narrow environment. Nowadays even from a young age they know so much. Also, and this is just my opinion, they just aren’t as interested in their relatives. That’s all.

In their Own Words: Islam, Individual Needs, and Getting Past the Standard Answers

This is from an interview with a devout Muslim householder in Talas. He said that Mulsims are obligated to help the less fortunate. I asked him if he would not help the less fortunate if he were not Muslim.

If I weren’t a Muslim, only God knows, maybe a little just, as people do, just to be able to brag, I would do it. Just because I would want other people to see it. We don’t have that kind of attitude. Just the opposite, we want God to see it and God to be pleased. Out hope is to go to paradise. Every person is duty bound to do good deeds. We are all Muslims. God created everyone Muslims. Everyone should worship God. That last book…we argue a lot about religion now, say that this religion is good, or that one. No. All religions are good. Everything comes in it’s own time. There was the Torah during the time of Moses, and during the time of Isaiah, and Jesus. Now the last book is the Qur’an. God sent it to earth. Now we should all obey it. The last prophet is Muhammad. There isn’t a practice of saying, that’s an American, that’s an African, that’s a Russian or a Kyrgyz. Because we should all obey the surahs [chapters in the Qur’an] of the prophet, obey God, should obey the Qur’an, that God sent. Therefore, we’re all Muslims. We should all pray. Our dream is that God would give holiness to America, to the whole world. We ask God that he would give everyone the chance to pray the way we do, so everyone would pray and ask God to help them keep from the wrong paths. God gave us the last book, sent it to us. And we have the word of God that if we will live according to the Qur’an, we will be happy. So whoever prays five times a day—prayer is our duty, that’s what the prophet taught—will go to heaven. If you keep Orozo [a fast during the holy month of Ramadan], live according to the Qur’an, pray five times a day,
don’t miss, then paradise is prepared for you. If you don’t do that, is says that God will not make any promises with you. We are all duty bound. Before God there are no differences—American, Russian, things like that—he doesn’t differentiate. Before God we all need to accept that. What God has commanded, that we must do. Pray five times a day, keep Orozo one month a year.

This is a standard kind of answer that you get when you ask people about Islam. I’ve taught classes on Islam and have studied the history of the religion fairly in-depth. It doesn’t matter if I tell people this. They will usually give the above information anyway. I asked this many why he personally believed these things.

It’s now…this isn’t just a plain book. It’s a holy book. Allah sent it to the Arabs. If he had wanted he could have sent it to the Kyrgyz, the Russians. But by the will of God this book was sent to the Arabs. It was according to the desires of the last prophet. Isaiah the prophet said that a final prophet would come. But no one knew who the last prophet would be. It was all according to the will of God. He said that the last prophet would come, but he did not say who, where, and when he would
come.

Again, standard answer (and not really answering my question). This seems to be very common. He wasn’t being evasive—as far as I could tell, he really felt he was answering my question. I asked him to tell me about the first time he prayed.

The first time, I don’t know. I don’t remember it well, but I seem to remember God gave me a sign. I prayed that God would free me from my bad deeds. I drank vodka at the time. I participated in unholy actions. I prayed that god would save me from those things. There was guy who rode nearby on a bicycle. He suggested that I start to pray. I said that if God granted it, I would start to pray later. But somehow his advice stuck with me. Later I went to him and started to go with him to pray and I started to read. I used to drink, I fought, I sometimes said bad things to others. But then the next day I suddenly had this great fear. I prayed to God to help me stop drinking. I didn’t pray to Allah. I just prayed to Kudai [one of the traditional Kyrgyz words for God]. I prayed that he would help me stop the bad things I was doing.

Better answer. It gave me some insight into what was going on in his life at the time that he decided to take Islam more seriously. I asked him if it was difficult to learn how to pray (the five set prayers that Muslims are supposed to pray have specific wording. They aren’t just plain talking to God—that’s a different kind of prayer).

No. At that time, there weren’t any books that you could use to learn to pray. There are a lot of them now. At that time, books about Shari’a [Islamic law, based on the Qur’an and the words and actions of the prophet Muhammad], about how to pray—there weren’t any. At that time, I went to that guy’s home for about a month—to the Mullah [someone who has studied and knows more about the Qur’an than your average person]. I went at night. He said, “Come at night, come in the morning.” I went to his house early, before sunrise, to pray. We didn’t have mosques then.

I asked him how his life had changed since he started doing these things.

It’s hard for a person to just live a plain life. I used to always think about my plans, wonder what I was going to do tomorrow, how to find things. I always had those kinds of questions—how I am going to live, how can I get more money, how can I feed my children. Flour just got more expensive, and people are fearing about their lives. But we rely on God. God won’t forget us. Whatever we need, we ask God for it in prayer. We don’t have fear. If we fear, we rely on God and the fear goes away. I feel like there is someone who helps me. I don’t ask help of anyone else.

In Their Words: Kyrgyzstanis

The word ‘Kyrgyzstanets” (in English: Kyrgyzstani) describes a person who is a citizen of Kyrgyzstan. Hardly anyone uses the word here. I met a man in Talas who was an exception.

Researcher: A lot of people talk about ethnic divisions in the country—that there are Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Russians, and other groups in this country, and that there a problems that arise form trying to fit so many groups into one country. Do you think that is so?

Informant: I haven’t really seen that problem here. There are all kinds of people
here. Lots of different neighbors—Uzbeks, Russians, Germans. A lot of them have emigrated. But some have stayed all the same. They live their own lives, do their own work. When you interact with them, it’s nice. Each nation has it’s own mores. You see those and take the good ones for yourself. That’s how we’ve lived in Talas, and it was good. We had Uzbeks living here, Germans. Ukrainians too. A lot of Russians. I think it’s good when a lot of different ethnic groups live in one country. There’s a lot of benefit in that. Every nationality has it’s good points, it’s good sides. When you live among only one nationality, you don’t notice that. There have probably been incidents, you can’t answer for everyone. But personally I’ve never…I support the idea of having lots of ethnicities here.

Researcher: So it’s more important to you personally that you consider yourself a citizen of this country, than the fact that you consider yourself a Kyrgyz?

Informant: Yes. Let them also live as Kyrgrzstanis. We’re living in the 21st century. There’s just one land. Whether you’re a Kyrgrz or an Uzbek, you’re a person. Live. The land can feed everyone so far.

Researcher: Maybe you can help me understand this. I’ve talked with a lot of people here, and you are the first person to use the term Kyrgyzstani. That’s a
person who lives in Kygyzstan. A lot of people don’t understand that. They say citizen of Kyrgyzstan, but they don’t know what a Kyrgyzstani is. Why is it, that so many people who thin that being a Kyrgyzstani isn’t important, but you do?

Informant: Let them keep their languages and their traditions. But if they live in Kyrgyzstan they should consider themselves Kyrgyzstanis. And if they openly say “We were born in Kyrgyzstan”--there are Uzbeks, for example, that were born here. They don’t have any understanding of Uzbekistan—they live here and should worry about Kyrgyzstan. There are still those divisions, but the divisions shouldn’t be. Different ethnicities should be Kyrgyzstanis and should live and prosper.

In Their Words: Russians in Kyrgyzstan

Going along with the last post, I thought I’d write a little about the Russian minority in Kyrgyzstan. Russians used to make a large percentage of the population here. As of a few years ago, they made up only about 12%, and that number seems to be dropping. I spoke with a young woman, a ethnically Russian student who grew up in Kyrgyzstan. She repeated what I have heard from a lot of people here—Russians in Kyrgyzstan share more important similarities with the Kyrgyz in Kyrgyzstan than they do with the Russians in Russia.

Researcher: Do you get any benefit from the fact that you are a citizen of this country?

Informant: I like living here. I love my country. So I get benefits in the sense that I like living here, but other benefits…I don’t know.

Researcher: Why do you love your country?

Informant: Because I was born here. My friends are here. This is my home.

Researcher: Did you ever live anywhere else?

Informant: No, I traveled, but I didn’t live anywhere for a long time.

Researcher: Have you been to Russia?

Informant: I’ve been to Russia. That’s a separate country, also difficult. It’s easier to get along with people here. I was born and raised here so I know people’s interests, mentality better here than in Russia. Russia is a different country and the people are different. Russians who grew up here are totally different.

Researcher: That’s interesting. In what way are they different?

Informant: They’re different in every way. In their understanding, their way of life, their principles.

Researcher: Can you give me an example?

Informant: For example, our people are more open. I can talk about pretty much anything even with people in the university here with whom I’m pretty unfamiliar. There you don’t do that—it’s just you by yourself. And your neighbors there in Russia, if you are from Kyrgyzstan and then you start to earn well, earn more than them, then right away they start punching holes in your tires, things like that. They figure that if you’re from Kyrgyzstan, you’re nobody. That’s how they treat you. I have a friend who lives there. We went to school together. She moved to Russia and has been living there for seven years. She doesn’t tell people that she’s from Kyrgyzstan, because she knows that if she tells people, they’re going to treat her poorly. Now if she tells people she is from Kyrgyzstan, they tell her they figured she was just from a different part of Russia. Basically, if you don’t tell, they can’t tell.

Researcher: What if people come here from other countries? Will people treat them
similarly?

Informant: People here treat newcomers well. Tourists, students. I, at least, treat them well. My parents treat them well too. But that also depends on the person.

Changing My Ideas a Bit

I originally came to Kyrgyzstan with an idea about how people became interested in their country. I figured, not everyone cares about their country on an everyday basis, but everyone cares about some basic things—food, shelter, safety, family—on an everyday basis. Therefore, if people come to see their country as necessary for them to fulfill their everyday needs, then they will become interested in their country.

I also figured that there was a middle-man, in the form of groups. “Groups” is a bad term, because it doesn’t really explain what I am looking at. I spent an hour last night coming up with an alternative name, and I’m afraid it’s even more ambiguous than the term it replaces. Voluntary indirect meaning-based associations. How’s that for academic babble? Let me explain what I mean by it. Take religion, for example. No one forces you to care about your religion. If you care about it, then you get involved it. If you don’t care about it, you don’t get involved in it. It’s voluntary. The interesting thing about religion, though, is that it is an association where you don’t ever meet or know most of the other people who belong to it. On a sports team, a community organization, or even a school, you tend to know who belongs to it and who doesn’t. In a religion, you only know a few of the people who belong to it. So you association with the membership of your association is indirect—you know that other people belong to it, but those people aren’t the reason for your belonging. The reason for your belonging is the personal meaning you attach to your membership. You feel that your religion is an important part of who you are, therefore you belong to it.

If you don’t mind, I’ll just use “groups” instead. Just keep in mind what I mean when I use it. Religion, ethnicity, class, gender—these are all the kinds of groups that I just described. I figured that these would be a little closer to people’s everyday lives than their country, so I envisioned a step-by-step process: if people see their everyday needs as tied up in the well-being of one of these groups, then the group will become important to them. If they see their government as affecting the well being of a group that is important to them, then their country will become important.

Yeah. I think I was pretty much wrong about that.

The fact is, the grand majority of the people here know incredibly little about any of the groups I’ve mentioned. Being a certain ethnicity, gender, religion, class, or anything else is something that everyone is aware of, but very few people actually think about it. It’s just what they do. That doesn’t mean these things don’t affect them. For example, a lot of Muslim women are not able to do many of the things the Muslim men do. They often aren’t allowed in a mosque unless the mosque is big enough to accommodate a women’s section. There are some behavior restrictions on women that don’t apply to men. Most women I have talked to know about these rules, but, even if Islam is very important to them personally, they don’t really think much about them. It’s just what they do.

The only people I have found who have thought about these kinds of groups are people who have had to learn about them quickly—new converts, apostates, students—or people who have had to learn about them for goals not directly associated with their personal lives—clergy, teachers, NGO workers. It seems that the main factor that determines whether your religion, ethnicity, country, or anything else becomes important to you is whether or not you have had to learn how to talk about those things as part of belonging to an organization. Belonging to the group isn’t enough. You have to belong to an organized effort to understand or advance the interests of the group. I used to see that kind of organizational effort as an effect of group belonging. I’m not starting to think of it as a cause.

I’m still working on these ideas, but I just conducted two interviews yesterday that completely conformed to the new predictions I just mentioned. That’s not evidence, but it is encouragement. What I am seeing in this country and the things people are saying here make a lot more sense in light of this new perspective.

Aitysh--Kyrgyz County Fair

I just got back from Issyk Kol. They held Aitysh in Barskon, which is a small town on the southern edge of the lake.

Aitysh is seriously one of the coolest things I’ve done in Kyrgyzstan, at least as far as the arts are concerned. I’ve posted numerous videos in the videos section of the site. The first two show some examples of Kyrgyz sports, which usually involve horses. The last ones show some artistic performances.

The word Aitysh itself, if I’m not mistaken, comes from the very ait, which means “to speak.” Basically, it is a contest between two people. Each person needs to insult the other as much as possible. But there are a few rules to the insults:

1. You have to be polite. In other words, your insult can’t sound like an insult.
2. You have to do it in verse.
3. You have to do it to music.
4. You have to improvise the whole thing as you go along.

Seriously impressive. The younger performers tended to get more laughs and applause. The older performers tended to have a richer language—they were more nuanced in the way they went about the competition.

I also have posted a video of a Manaschy performing part of the Manas epic. The one I recorded was pretty good, but the one who performed after him was incredible. I unfortunately couldn’t get a video of that one—he recited non-stop for 22 minutes. By the end, had sweat streaming down his face. When you watch the video, you’ll get a feel for the pace of a recitation. Twenty-two minutes is quite a feat.

In Their Words: Islamists and Fundamentalists

Americans often hear the word “Islamist” or “Fundamentalist” and get scared. Certainly, there is a reason to be scared of some people who take those titles, but most Americans have a very fuzzy view of what those titles mean. I have asked people in America what it means for someone to be an “Islamic Fundamentalist,” and usually get an answer that basically says, “They want an Islamic world government.” As if that really said anything.

I interviewed a 22-year-old man in Talas who would definitely fit into the Islamist/Fundamentalist category. He became extremely religious about two years ago. He is now a regular everyday at the mosque. In out discussion, I asked him about the relationship between his religious and his government. I found it enlightening. I’ve included the transcript of that part of our conversation.

You will probably notice that this individual has a limited understanding of things like policy, law, and social inequalities. He’s 22. I think we can forgive him for being a bit naïve. It’s his point of view that I found important.

Researcher: What kind of country should this country be?

Informant: Basically, Kyrgyzstan should be Islamic.

Researcher: What does it mean that a country should be Islamic?

Informant: It’s better when a country is Islamic. It should be like Arabia. Not the way of life…

Researcher: The government.

Informant: Yes.

Researcher: How can you do that?

Informant: First of all, government officials need to be conscientious, living according to Shari’a [Islamic law—comprised of the Q’uran, additional commentary and instruction by the prophet Muhammad, as well as later commentary by religious scholars].

Researcher: If they did that, does that mean they have to have laws that correspond to Shari’a as well?

Informant: Shari’a…I can’t say. I mean, even the Arabs don’t live entirely according to the Q’uran.

Researcher: But they need to try as much as they can to make the laws Shari'a? If that happened, what would happen to the people who didn’t want to accept Islam?

Informant: They’d eventually accept it too.

Researcher: What if they didn’t accept it. I mean, say…

Informant: If the government is good, then the few who don’t accept the religion, those are the poor. In the city they get them to accept another religion by paying them money [this is unfortunately often true—many evangelical Christian denominations have been known to build people new houses if they convert]. Therefore, the people who convert to other religions are basically the poor. If the government is good, they won’t need to accept another religion for money.

Researcher: What if they wanted to accept Christianity or Buddhism, or some other religion. What would happen to them? If this country was Islamic, would there be a place for people who wanted to accept another religion?

Informant: Well, every person has to decide for himself.

Researcher: That means that if a person didn’t want to, he could not be a Muslim, even if the laws were all Shari’a?

Informant: Allah doesn’t force people into religion. He gave people freedom: live your religion, follow the path of Muhhammad and you will go to heaven. There’s no compulsion. If the government is rich, then each person will be rich and understand the religion, follow God, and will know what the other religions are and will not convert to them.

Researcher: And if people don’t live well?

Informant: That’s the situation we’re in now.

Researcher: But if they made the laws all Shari’a, everyone would live well?

Informant: I’m not thinking about the laws. Each person…

Researcher: If each individual person lived according to Shari’a, life would become better?

Informant: Better, yes.

In Their Words: "Folk" Islam

A lot of religious scholars like to talk about so-called “folk Islam.” Folk Islam is basically a term for people saying they are Muslims but doing a lot of things that aren’t in the Q’uran. I don’t really like the term, because it makes it sound like it is the exception. If you look at all of the Muslims in the world, folk Islam is the rule, not the exception. Actually, that’s true of pretty much any religion. The holy books give a justification for the existence of the religion, but a huge amount of religious practices—and an even larger amount of individual’s religious ideas—come from other sources. I know of no religion that doesn’t follow this pattern. The following quote is from the Dungan woman from Talas (see previous post). I asked her if she studied her religion.

No, I don’t study it. I mean, in my youth, maybe I didn’t recognize it, but I just now see that in my youth my grandmother read the Q’uran and taught us, when we were little. And my grandmother’s brother…he lived across from us and was a very important Mullah. They called him a great wise man. He healed people. They came from all over with all kinds of illnesses, came to his house. He healed a lot of people…they came…he killed a chicken and used the blood to [find out what was wrong]…but now there’s a lot of people like that. At that time he was…he died last year though…but at that time all of Kyrgyzstan, he was adored all over Kyrgyzstan. They even took him to Kazakhstan to heal children. There were always people at his place. He never took money for his services. Not once did he ever take money. But now everyone does it for money. He did it just because that’s what he did. He lived very
well. Very well. I don’t know how. I can’t even describe how he lived. He lived well and healed people…he was a very handsome person—even in his old age he was still handsome. We could explain everything so well, he spoke very well. He was always with us…always teaching us the Q’uran, prayers, Orozo, Ait. “You need to do this with your hands. You need to make this kind of food. You don’t have to do that…” Now everyone buys everything. I still have that habit from those times. They always came to him…they were always there, and imagine, he never once healed people for money. He just stayed home and helped people. He didn’t work. But he always had money. I’m amazed at that, that, first of all, he had that gift from God, and second, that he had that money...God probably helped him. Small children with tooth-aches, and he’d write something in Arabic on them and their teeth would stop hurting. It was amazing.

In Their Words: Converting from Islam

This is an excerpt from an interview with a Dungan woman in Talas. Dungans are a group with historical roots in what is now western China. They are traditionally Muslim, and this woman is no exception. I asked her what she thought about people who converted from Islam to another religion.

I don’t know. I can’t judge them of course. I can only speak concerning myself, that I wouldn’t—not for anything—be able to change my religion. I understand that all religions have to try to convert people, but you have to love your own. I think that way personally and so does my family. I mean, I’m a Dungan…I don’t emphasize that I’m a Dungan, but my people…they’ve been believers since olden times. We don’t have any of those…well…one married a Russian and her parents almost killed her. Now she lives…they’ve given up on her entirely. Her parents recently passed
away. She lives with her husband.

Notice this didn’t really answer the question. Marrying a Russian was enough to mean leaving the faith. Actually, before this point in the interview, she had said that the real issue was the faith of the parents. Even if the boy didn’t consider himself Muslim, if his parent’s were Muslim the brides parents might agree to the marriage. I asked if that woman still considered herself a Muslim, or if she had left the religion.

She left. Even in the village where she grew up, where her parents were, she understood that they would never accept her, even if they are her parents. She didn’t even come to her parent’s funeral. At the same time…they wouldn’t have allowed her to come if she had traveled to the funeral. They would have figured she was a Christian and just not allowed her to come to the funeral. As I understand it, she’s already entirely gone over to the Russian faith; she goes to church with her
husband. I don’t condemn her, but the fact that she already goes somewhere else, worships somewhere else...that mean’s she’s accepted a different religion. She
holds to that. I found out that all her children are baptized in that church. Her husband, as I understand it, even though he’s Russian isn’t really religious.

This is the first part of a series of posts on conversion. I’m currently translating an interview with a Russian girl who converted to Islam. I’ll put that up hopefully by next week.