1.
My name is Gulnara. You can call me Gulia. If you try to type my
name on an English keyboard it will be marked as a mistake, or it will
be changed to “gulag.” This is what the foreign woman who writes
this story told me. I do not use a computer and I do not speak English,
although I had learned couple of English words out of necessity in the
short time when I was forced to work in Dubai as a prostitute.
It was more than six months ago, but I am still very uncomfortable
and embarrassed to talk about this. The women at the IOM shelter
told me that I should be careful of what I say to my family about what
happened to me in Dubai. They also told me that my family would
never be able to understand what happened to me. That is why I would
be much better off if I keep quiet about the whole thing.
“Why challenge their Kyrgyz prejudices and beliefs?” they asked me.
Their lives were already complicated enough. But, I could not stay
quiet. It is just not me. I told everything to them, and I want to tell
everything to the whole world. When it comes to my family, I have to
say that I now pay the price for my honesty. I am an honest person and
I think that in life, people have to be honest and follow their intuition.
I try to follow mine. I want many people to know my story. I want to
show how unpredictable and absurd life can suddenly become. Also,
I hope that my story may help someone else who blindly believes
others, even if they are members of their own family.
For us Kyrgyz, much of our life is about respecting our parents, and
what our family tells us to do. Some people call it tradition, because
you have to behave according to your position in the family. There are
certain ways how a husband should treat his wife, and how parents
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should honor their ancestors and treat their children. The relationships
in a family should be based on trust and respect and never on
humiliation, dishonesty, and neglect. I never questioned this; I took it
for granted. I love history and I think that tradition helps us to preserve
our culture and sense of history. This is the good side of tradition.
***
I am an educated person thanks to my beloved father. I was his little
girl, whom he held as carefully as you hold a precious little pearl in
your palm. I was born after my three older brothers, and they treated
me with love and admiration; always ready to protect me no matter
what. That is why I felt special. Among the four men – my father and
three brothers – I grew up feeling like a little queen. This feeling was
shaken, and I was deeply saddened and incapable of comprehending
what it meant when my dear father and brothers whispered that some
day I was not going to belong to them any more. They said I was going
to be a daughter of somebody else’s parents and a sister of different
brothers when I get married.
Later on, they started telling me openly that daughters do not belong
to their parents; they are raised to belong to their husband’s family.
I cried and always told them that this is not going to be my terrible
destiny. I was not going to marry, because I wanted to stay with them
all my life. “Silly girl,” they laughed at me, “of course you will marry.
All girls should get married!”
Fortunately, this terrible fate of mine, which soon came true, did not
change my father’s attitude toward me. He still loved me, and he
explained that this was how things should be for women. They marry
and leave their parents to live with another family. This marriage
unites two families with strong ties forever, bringing kudanyn jamanyn
suu kechiret (if one family faces hardships, they can always count on
the other family to help).
My father was always the center of my family. If anyone needed
advice or comfort, he was there to talk to and help. If everything in
the family is how it should be, then you do not realize that something
wonderful is going on. When you have everything, you do not know
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what you have. But if you have nothing, then you know that you have
nothing.
Everyone in my family always spoke loudly about their wishes, their
opinions, and their hopes. It was not that we did not have our fights
now and then. Of course we had those too, especially among three
competitive brothers, who each wanted to win all the games or eat
the best piece of meat. But my father was always there to put them in
their place and make peace. My mother was there to make sure that
everything in the house and in the garden was in order so that we all
ate well, slept well, and took good care of each other.
In our society, and in my family, everyone knew their place. The eldest
brother and his wife is supposed to take care of his parents when they
grow old and sick. The youngest and his family is supposed to stay
and take care of the family land. I was to be there only temporarily
until I got married and became someone’s wife and a part of someone
else’s family.
***
My father was a forester in the Chui Province of northern Kyrgyzstan,
where we all come from. The Chui River is clean and beautiful and
surrounded by bare red mountains, behind which are brown mountains
topped with snow. Although bare as a bald man, our mountains change
their colors like leaves on a tree. High mountain peaks, hung like a
decorative curtain, surround the Chui Valley.
Down in the fertile valley is Tokmok, the city where I lived most
of my married life and where I live today. There is nothing special
about Tokmok. While it is not as big and as important as Bishkek, it
is not too small, either. Tokmok is not like some villages where you
immediately know every person, cat, and dog on the street or the
owners of every passing car.
When I was little we did not live in Tokmok. My father had to travel
from one place to another as part of his job. He managed a wide
territory in the Chui province, where he looked after rare forests,
individual trees, low bushes, and animals. Sometimes, he would bring
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home injured animals and nurse them for days. There were deer that
could not walk and pheasants with broken wings. I remember them all.
My father was a well respected man. He was the first one in the village
to get a Zhiguli, an affordable Soviet-made car, in 1972, before I was
born. My mother boasts even today that the first couple of months
after our father brought this car home from Bishkek crowds of people
always came to see it. When my father drove his car to remote villages,
people used to follow it with their horses. They were interested to see
the car’s engine, door locks, headlights, tires, and tubes. They were
curious to knock on it and hear how it sounded. And they wanted to
find out if it could go faster than a galloping horse. My father thought
it was his obligation to show them the positive direction in which the
Soviet Kyrgyz Republic was heading.
My father was a Soviet man. He taught my three brothers and me
that there was no better country in the world to live in. We did not
have reason to think differently. Most of your life, different people tell
you different things. You listen to them, and you agree. You learn to
believe them because they are older and they want you to do well. I
believed not only what my mother and father said, but also what they
were telling us at school and at the summer camps for communist
youth. I was a good student in school and I was a good daughter to my
parents.
My best childhood memories are of the Soviet summer camps. What
fun we had there! The water of Lake Issyk Kul was warm by the end
of June and perfect for swimming. For us Kyrgyz, Lake Issyk Kul is
the most special place in the world. We go there when we are happy,
we go there when we are sad. Being in nature is good for anybody’s
mood. Our people say that you can sense the power of God’s
mightiness in the mountains, but I think that you can feel his openness
and wisdom standing by this blue salty lake.
So, every summer, together with all three of my brothers, I went
to Lake Issyk Kul, where the international summer camps were
organized. They were crowded with children from all over the country,
and even from China and Cuba. I remember a dark Cuban boy who
spoke funny Russian, and I remember a shy Chinese girl who could
not say anything and only smiled. We all proudly wore the same red
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scarf around our necks and pioneer hats on our heads. We also all sang
the same songs about revolution and the progress of our country, and
together we were moved by their powerful sounding words. There in
the camps, they taught us only good things - how to be better students
and how to help each other to be better people.
***
My mother was a midwife, and it was a good thing that she was.
Thanks to my father’s job, we moved frequently and lived in many
villages all over northern Kyrgyzstan. Our frequent relocation did not
affect my mother’s work. The women in the provinces were delivering
not only in Tokmok Hospital, but also in their houses, and my mother
was there to help. Midwifery is the only joyful job that comes with
bloody hands.
Apart from midwifery, my mother worked the land. She was never
embarrassed to dip her hands into the soil, and thanks to this, we
always had fresh fruits and vegetables. Because we moved so much
my mother planted her carefully saved dried seeds in many different
gardens, and the land returned her trust with a bounty of gifts.
Although my mother was educated in the Soviet time and worked in
hospitals with doctors and nurses, she never told me anything about
the changes that started happening to my body. I did not even expect
them. She did not learn anything about this from her parents, and she
believed that she did not have to explain anything to me either.
In our society parents are like Gods. We admire them and we respect
them, but we do not talk to them about our bodies, a functional and
common vessel. When we do have questions, we are expected to
discuss these private issues with our jenge (sisters, female cousins, or
wives of our brothers). If one of my older brothers would soon marry,
his wife would then belong to our family, and she would become my
jeng e, who would tell me whatever I would want to know.
My mother learned about my first period only after she found all our
kitchen towels hanging outside to dry. She said nothing about it, but
she brought me softer and more comfortable cotton napkins, the same
ones she also used and washed for the same purpose.
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I was fourteen years old and a diligent and popular student in my class
when my teacher suggested that I sign up for an international summer
exchange program. My father was happy about this idea. He explained
that the purpose of this student exchange was to give the children from
one Soviet republic the chance to see how children from other Soviet
republics lived. This helped the different nations of the Soviet Union
understand each other better and appreciate each other’s cultures.
I was flattered and excited, as much as my family was, when an
invitation came to spend a summer with a family in Baku, Azerbaijan.
The trip was free. The ticket was given to me by my schoolteacher,
and I flew to Azerbaijan on an airplane. Baku was an old city where
people did not live much differently than we did. I spent three weeks
with a very nice Azeri family. They showed me the city’s parks and
Soviet monuments.
The summer in Baku was hot, even hotter than summer in Kyrgyzstan,
and their markets were full of sweet white grapes, similar to our
grapes from Osh. Every week, the Azeri family gathered around their
kitchen table and made grape jam. At that time of year if you do not
preserve it, it rots quickly. I helped them pick grapes from the vines
and to squeeze out the ripe sticky juice. They cooked the liquid with
sugar for hours, and this made their kitchen hot like a sugary sauna.
The pot was huge, and we all helped mix the boiling liquid. Finally we
all enjoyed the warm grape jam, which was sweeter than honey. When
I came back home, I made the same jam for my family. That was my
summer in Baku when I was fourteen.
I remember this period of my life as a time filled with all kinds of
celebrations. First of all, my older brother got married. Weddings
hold a special place in our culture. We take them very seriously. My
father always used to say that they exist to unite two different families
into one big family, and this is why they are so important. The bride
was brought to my family with a white scarf on her head and she was
introduced to all of us in our home, where she now belonged. She
showed us respect by giving a deep bow to all members of my family,
including myself.
My mother was blissful. She welcomed her by saying that it was an
honor to have a new daughter in our family. To celebrate this union
63
between our families, we threw a big wedding. My father did not want
to skimp. After all, his oldest son was getting married. The bride’s
family prepared the sep (bed covers and other necessities which
daughter normally brings to her new family for her future life in the
new house). My father gave a generous kalyng to her parents as both
families killed sheep and a horse to eat. Now I finally had a jenge in
my family.
After my brother’s wedding, his wife soon became pregnant with her
first child, to everyone’s delight. They decided to move to Bishkek
where my brother got a job, and they rented an apartment. We
celebrated the birth of his first child by giving a toi (a family gathering
with lots of food and invited guests). It is also about exchange. All
relatives come, usually inviting each other freely. No official invitation
is needed. If it is known that a toi will be held, everyone brings money
and presents. Then, we take note of who brought what, and how much
money each person gave.
In my family, it was my mother’s job to keep record of all money and
presents given to us for weddings and funerals in her old notebook.
Her mother taught her this and we call it jardam. It is very important
because if a member from the other family gets into trouble, we have
to give this money back to them. It must be no less than what they had
given to us, or they will be offended. Family is important for Kyrgyz.
We may not be rich, but we will always gather to collect money to
celebrate our special occasions properly.
My father got an apartment in Tokmok, where his last job was.
He was assigned to take care of the land surrounding a government
guesthouse, a place where Bishkek government officials could bring
their guests to hunt. My father needed to make sure that the park was
well maintained, and that the guest hunters would not leave without
an animal trophy. The job was important to him and for us, because it
meant we wouldn’t have to move anymore. So we settled in Tokmok.
***
While the parents of my Kyrgyz girlfriends talked about arranging
marriages for their young daughters, my father thought about sending
me to the University. Of course, he wanted me to get married too,
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but in the first place he wanted me to get an education. Most of
all, he dreamt that one day I would become a technical engineer.
Unfortunately, he passed away when I was twenty, never knowing
that, for good or for bad, I would never become what he wanted me
to be. Instead, I graduated with a degree in Economics. If I had the
opportunity to choose again, I would have studied biology. I love
nature - animals, insects, plants, lakes, and mountains. I love it all as
much as my father did.
I remember the day when I went with my father to Bishkek in his
aging Zhiguli . We were delivering my entrance documents to the
Technological University, where he wanted me to study. It was early
October 1993, the day was beautiful, and I was happy simply for being
a young and pretty girl with an opportunity ahead. My body was like
the stalk of a young tulip, straight and ready to bloom.
I knew that my father had told everyone at the guesthouse that he
was not going to come that day because he was taking his daughter
to the Technological University. I knew how proud he was when he
said this to his colleagues. He gave up of whatever else he needed to
do that day, and he devoted the entire day only to me. I knew how
this trip was important to him, how much attention I was being given,
and I was as excited as a little girl. I wanted to take advantage of his
attention and talk to him, but my father was continuously interrupting
me. He only wanted to listen to the news on the radio.
I remember my thoughts about how lucky I was to be moving to
Bishkek. Most of my friends from secondary school did not continue
their education, but ended up married instead. Some of them chose
their husband and married happily, but for others, their parents
arranged the marriages. The unluckier ones were stolen, and agreed to
stay with a man they did not like at all. I knew how privileged I was to
continue my education in the country’s capital.
Before we went on this trip to Bishkek, my father did everything to
ensure my admission to the university. Although this was not the most
prestigious university, especially for young women mainly because
it was technical, my father wanted to be sure that I would not have
any problems getting in. Maybe it was just to show off, but he wanted
to give a healthy cow as a present to someone at the university, who
65
may be helpful if anything went wrong. But the cow needed to be
transported from another village, so the talks about my admission to
the Technological University turned into talks about how to transport
my grandmother’s cow.
It was not an easy time for those who lived in the villages, but it was
even harder for people who lived in the cities. The store shelves were
empty like neat army beds. Food coupons appeared and we had to
wait in line for basic items. The university staff needed to eat too. You
cannot teach science and technology and think about planting beetroot.
My mother had time for that on our village farm, but university
professors did not.
It was perfect in the car, not too hot and not too cold. And it was a
perfect October’s day, which I remember like it was yesterday. There
are days we remember all our lives, and for me, this was it. My
father washed his car for this trip, and he wore a clean, well-ironed
shirt. Most of the time, however, he looked worried. While my father
listened to the news on the radio, I watched the last remaining melon
sellers standing on both sides of the road. The green and yellow
melons were stacked in heaps. The merchants’ stands were going to
be packed up soon, and they would move back to Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan, where they all came from.
I wanted to buy a few melons for our relatives in Bishkek; we were
going to stay with them for two days, and the melons by the road were
cheaper than the ones in the city. Suddenly, my father said, “Listen
to the news.” So I listened. They talked about the Russian military
forces that supported Yeltsin, and they talked about tanks around the
White House. They mentioned a fire in downtown Moscow and some
important buildings burning. The voice on the radio was much more
excited than it usually was. I could not understand what was really
going on. I was not familiar with most of the names they talked about.
But, I felt that it might had been something serious and important
again, something more important than our trip to Bishkek for my
admission at the Technological University.
But was it? The excited voice from the car radio, and the facial
expression of my father, reminded me of another event which
happened two years ago - the breakup of the Soviet Union.
66
That was in 1991 and my father listened to the news with even stronger
seriousness and anxiety. He repeated many times: “No, such a country
cannot disappear simply like that! The communist party will never
allow it to happen”. At that time too, I tried to guess the importance
of the event, but I was not able to understand why my father took it
so emotionally. After all, countries are not people – who cares if they
disappear? But, my father did not think like that. The country in which
he grew up and lived all his life was his motherland, the values of that
country were his own values, and my father was upset as if his real
mother was about to die.
This time, however, the news was talking about the riots in Russia.
“Parliamentarian crisis”, my father explained. Although Russia was
now a foreign country to us, my father was still taking the news from
Moscow wholeheartedly.
***
Unlike before, perhaps because we had our own country – the Kyrgyz
Republic – I noticed that people around me started to discuss politics.
The president told us on television that we should all be proud to have
our own nation. Gradually, we all started to be more proud of it. We all
liked the national flag featuring a red background with a tunduk, the
crowning frame of a yurt, in the middle. We all liked our new national
anthem. We also increasingly found that we loved our national games,
from Chuko to Er’Kese, and our national instruments like the komuz,
the legends of the hunter Kambar
the legends of the hunter
and musician Muratali Kurenkeye v.
Personally, I did not care too much for these new national passions. I
was busy with my studies and with my new life in Bishkek. I lived in
an apartment with my relatives. I helped them with the housework, and
I studied as hard as I could. I took my first exams at the Technological
University, but I did not enjoy preparing for them. Every morning, I
was going to lectures in the cold university rooms, heated only with
our breath and young bodies.
Most of the students were mainly Russian men, who spoke about
nothing else but leaving Kyrgyzstan, or more precisely, leaving
Kyrgyzstan as soon as they could. My father called this trend a
catastrophe with an unknown outcome. But who could think about
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catastrophes if you were young and beautiful? And, I was both at that
time. I loved Bishkek movie theaters and Erkindik Park, where you
could have an ice-cream and walk with your friends a