Ak Ishan

So here’s a moment for the anthropologists (and the culturally-interested at heart).

Last Sunday my host family and the eighth grade class took me to Ak Ishan, arguably the most popular shrine pilgrimage site in Turkmenistan. One of the most spiritual places I have ever encountered, it is (within in a nominally Islamic country) distinctly non-Islamic. There is a mosque and a stumpy minaret expensively and carefully decorated with Arabic Quran verses, but the most important part of the site is the path that leads away from the mosque, a path which takes pilgrims on a sort of religious obstacle course that is part of a much older tradition than Islam. Directly behind the mosque, and the first stop on the path, is the grave of Ak Ishan, a 19th century holy man whose strength and power to grant wishes continues after death. He is buried in a twenty-foot wide circular enclosure of unmarked golden sand surrounded by a four-foot tall tiled wall. Pilgrims begin by walking around the enclosure, touching the wall with both hands and then the top of their head, asking Ak Istan for help with their troubles. Pilgrims then stop at a long covered booth where a religious leader sits reading the Quran and praying. After waiting for the prayer to end and saying their own thanks to God (in Turkmen, not Arabic), it’s time to walk along the path – two columns of one-foot square tiles that lay on top of a much older walkway. The path is only about 75 yards long through the desert dunes and passes some 20 or so rock alters: some unadorned carved flat stones, others ancient fossils imbedded with Prehistoric oceanic life forms, and a few rocks which would be unnoticeable boulders except for the offerings of money, toys, and handkerchiefs all around them held down with smaller rocks. I was separated from Altyn (my cultural translator of the day) at about this point so I have no idea what all the different alters symbolize, but the only one with any distinctive carvings (an unmistakable phallus) was the specific stop of my single female companions so I think I can accurately guess the meaning of that one. Smaller paths led away from the main path toward a second walled grave enclosure (Ak Ishan’s wife), several sacrificial sites where older women gathered grieving and keening (no idea why), and small hollows where pilgrims could perform different tasks to earn their wish’s fulfillment (crawl three times through or under specific rocks and brambles, give additional offerings at different bushes and rocks). The path circled back to the main buildings where holy men and fortune tellers sat in the shade granting wishes for a small price and selling bags of sweets and fried dough to take to family members unable to make the trip (one bag meant one wish or favor from God). Unlike American historical and spiritual sites where brass plaques, hand-outs, introduction booklets, and photo books (not to mention t-shirts, posters, paper weights, and key-chains) are available at the inevitable gift-shop, Turkmen children learn what to do by going on a yearly field trip and learning by mimicry and oral tradition what they should do to experience the magic.

The order of the day followed a sort of deeply Turkmen ritual. Altyn told me to show up at school at 6:00am so the bus would leave at 6:30. She told the students to show up at 6:30 so the bus would leave at 7:00. She told the bus driver to show up at 7:00 so we could leave by 7:30. She showed up at 7:15 with all the food and we left around 8:00 when the last stragglers had been fetched and brought from their homes. The shrine is about 45 minutes away toward the Balkan Sea and when we arrived the 8th grade girls quickly went to work cooking our lunch of boiled sheep fat soup (that’s the ingredients: sheep fat and a little meat boiled in water with a side of white bread, it’s a very popular dish). The teachers, other guests, and myself sat in one of the long guest houses (rule of Turkmen culture – don’t do anything if you can find a younger unmarried girl to do it for you), a large warehouse-like room with piles of rugs on the floor where other pilgrim groups sat sitting or preparing the food they brought with them. The soup took about four hours to prepare (read, we sat in that room for four hours), ate the soup (or just the bread after pushing around the soup for awhile), cleaned up the dishes (read, we sat in that room for another hour and a half), and then walked the path (see above). I walked through this most holy of holy places basically deaf and blind to the meaning and history of what I was seeing (and with my head uncovered because I forgot my head scarf – a blunder no one reminded me of before we left because needing to remind someone to bring a head scarf on a pilgrimage is like needing to remind someone not to show up to church topless). Even so, I’m grateful for being included and having an opportunity to see an example of ancient pre-communist, pre-Islamic Turkmen worship at a holy place few (if any) of the other volunteers or American tourists will have a chance to see.

But here’s when the day got fun (the path and holy stuff was interesting, but when you’re inappropriately dressed and don’t know what’s going on, it’s interesting without being particularly “fun”). With the religious part of the day complete, the 8th grade class with me and Mahri (my older host sister, age 21) went running out into the dunes to play tug of war, a Turkmen version of Red Rover, Capture the Flag (fewer rules, more wrestling in the sand, no jail, and no one ever admits being tagged), and simply racing up and down the dunes.

Seeing those kids playing in the sand was the true wonder of the day for me. Turkmen children are forced to grow up much faster than American children - as soon as they can walk they are trusted to get around the house by themselves and starting with coherent speech they are allowed to play in the street with other older children and no adult supervision. Almost every Turkmen child I’ve met has minor or major scarring on their arms and faces, legacies of lessons about knives and fire learned the hard way in their youth. They graduate in 10th grade (rather than 12th) and they have to be ready by then to become mothers, breadwinners, and homeowners. Children start working full-time in the family business at age 6 or 7. By 8th grade both girls and boys have learned their life trade (usually driving, selling in the bazaar, weaving, or sewing) and have responsibility for their younger siblings. Girls in particular must be very careful of their behavior and reputation because what they do now will affect how much boys will pay for their hand in marriage two or three years down the line. As a general rule, Turkmen children look about 2 or 3 years older than they actually are (a gap of appearance and actual age that lengthens as they get older: when they’re 20, they’ll look 30, at 30 they’ll look 50). In English class both boys and girls are stoic and unimaginative, terrified to say the wrong thing or appear foolish or young in any way. They hate games and would rather be lectured on grammatical constructs than be asked to create new sentences or dialogues that could potentially have embarrassing mistakes. After three months of teaching them, I thought I had their personalities pretty much pegged. But seeing them whooping and screaming and laughing and pushing each other in the sand, slamming their bodies into each other and rolling around with sand in their hair and in their clothes, I remember they’re only 15 and 16 years old. For one brief afternoon on one sunny, windy cool spring day, they got to be teenagers.