Family dearest

An anthropological moment…

I don’t know many people who *enjoy* their families. I know many who can tolerate, survive, get through the day, and even like and love their families. But ask someone, “so, do you love your family?” they’ll usually say the automatic “yes,” then pause, and begin a long list of clarifications beginning with “but…” Sure, I’ve got some addendums myself, but it’s a short list. Most of the time being around my family tends to brighten rather than darken my mood and I’m flying back from T-stan this July to not miss out on the fun at the family reunion. Even living in the states I recognized that I’d won the family lottery, at least in terms of ending up with amazingly supportive and accepting people, even if only branch of the extended family has any money. Living here, however, reminds me that not only did I won the lottery, but most of the people I know who complain constantly about their families ended up pretty well off as well.

If the Greeks are right and you get to choose your next life before taking a drink to forget all about your last one, don’t choose to be a Turkmen. Or -- let me clarify for those familiar with Turkmen regional cultural differences -- don’t choose to be born into a mega-conservative traditional Ahal Teke Turkmen family. I have now lived in three and can tell you with a certain authority that as much as you might dislike, feel harassed by, be embarrassed by, and try to avoid your own family, you could have it SO much worse. You could have grown up in Baharly.

As Americans, we take pride in saying – with various amounts of sincerity – that we don’t care what other people think. This is an utter lie in almost every instance even when (perhaps especially when) we act in opposition to expectations. But here, where police are more hypothetical threats than real powers, gossip is the actual force keeping anarchy (and individual expression) at bay. What other people think of you is the single most important thing in your life. I mention this now because the following family rules and guidelines may sound ridiculous and you may start thinking to yourself “well, I wouldn’t do that.” Well, yes, you would. You would do it and never step a toe out of line because if you break a rule, and someone sees you, then you can ruin your family’s honor (which in term means they’ll never be able to get a financial loan or be hired for local jobs) or your family will be forced to disown you (which, if you’re a woman, means you’ve got one option left: prostitution). Keeping in mind that these are the consequences of misbehavior or trying to be different than everyone else…

Girls, when you get married, you won’t be able to leave your husband’s house until you read middle age – you might or might not be allowed to use the phone to call your mother. You must wear a head scarf (so does everyone else), and cover your mouth when in the presence of your mother-in-law or her adult female relatives. You may only speak to your father-in-law in an absolute emergency, but under no circumstances may you talk to, or look at, your brother-in-law (if he comes into the room, you stare at the floor). You will be expected to cook, clean, make tea, and do all labor-intensive chores in the house – other unmarried women in the house should also help. If you never marry, your fate will be exactly the same as a newly-married woman, except that with no children, you will never have the chance to rule over them and their spouses and will be a live-in servant. If your husband becomes a drug addict or an abusive alcoholic, your in-laws will blame you solely for their son’s behavior. If you work outside of the house, half of your salary will go to your in-laws, who are free to give the money elsewhere as your portion of the salary is the one expected to pay for food, clothing for yourself and your children, and any house renovations or improvements.

Young adults, if you have problems, under no circumstances do you go to your parents. Any boyfriends or girlfriends (who you can only talk to over the phone or by complicated webs of lies orchestrated through your peers) must be kept utterly secret, or you’ll be severely beaten and never married. School may not be challenging (staying awake is probably the hardest part), but it’s 5 hours when your behavior is being carefully evaluated and judged by all around you and your future prospects entirely pivot on their opinions of you. Being popular might literally be a life or death, eat or starve, proposition.

Boys, once you reach puberty the only girl you will ever see are close family members (who will be too busy to talk to you) and prostitutes. You will have no work at home so you will be shut away in a back room with a TV and other smoking, half-drunk men, away from the working women who you can see if you scream out into the hallway for more food, tea, or vodka. Or you can squat in groups of 2 or 2 in the street chewing seeds and staring at the traffic in utter silence. Pedestrians will walk around you as if you’re just another shrub or cow cake on the sidewalk. For those with jobs, this vegetative state is limited to the evenings and the lunch break, but for the many unemployed with nothing else to do during the day, the brain and body slowly wither until your large-bosomed wife with 7-14 children to coordinate is serving meals to a patriarch skeleton who everyone forgets to mention.

Unfortunately, this is a realistic worst-case scenario rather than an exaggeration. My former host mom, my new host mom, as well as my new host dad are all from families of 10 siblings. Actually, there are worse-fates: I’ve known of two girls since arriving here last December who lost hope, poured gasoline over their naked bodies, and set themselves on fire in their bathrooms.

But there are also good stories. In my new host families, my host mom and dad seem to be friends. Not equal partners, each has their own domain and my host dad has the unquestioned authority over her movements outside the house (they’ve been married 20+ years and he still occasionally forbids her to visit her mother, as a matter of whim). But they talk together in the evening, share tea and discuss the family. They even express their thoughts and feelings on rare special occasions. The only shouting I hear is her at him. He said “hello” to his wife while walking through the room and my host sister-in-law smiled broadly at me and said “look! See how much he loves her?”

I’m asked on an almost daily basis why I don’t marry a Turkmen boy and settle in Baharly forever. After trying to explain concepts like free will and gender equality and getting blank stares, I’ve finally settled for saying that I don’t like Turkmen weather.

Rocking Out

I find it a curious fact that I only get drunk, go clubbing, and “party” in the conventional sense when in foreign countries. I’ve been to clubs in Kenya, Mali, and Turkmenistan, but none in America, despite living my life outside Washington DC and attending school outside New York City. And here in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan I attended my first “death metal” concert. According to my fellow American concert-goers, this doesn’t count. They’ve been to massive Slipknot and Mattalica concerts (just to name the bands I recognized, collectively they’ve been to dozens) and have survival stories of mosh-pits full of thousands of people and the scars along their arms to prove it. One girl told with pride the story of how she was really trashed in a mosh-pit and got a cut so bad it needed stitches, and yet she didn’t notice until the concert was over. They complained that if the concert isn’t loud enough to make you slightly dizzy, it’s not loud enough.

I think I liked our little death metal concert better: loud enough to be heard over the screaming of Russian teenagers, soft enough we could have a conversation by yelling. It was in the basement of an apartment building, a white room about the size of a garage with red plastic wrapped around a few bare light bulbs to add ambiance and a raised stage on one side about 4 feet deep and an empty space on the other for the audience to stand, scream, and try to not slip on the gray linoleum. It was originally the storeroom for the café and bar you need to walk through to get to the concert and the acoustics reflected its original purpose rather than its newest incarnation: from ten feet away the band was completely garbled, but that might have been intentional. As I said, I don’t know much about how death metal is supposed to sound.

I’d like to say that we showed up and were great cultural examples for how death metal concerts are in America and the world (some of my cohorts have been to death metal concerts in Europe as well), but I’m afraid to say we looked and acted like tools. We were dressed completely wrong: in whatever clothes we’d shown up to the Peace Corps office in that day. The rest of the audience (Russian high schoolers, for the most part) were decked out in black, leather, chains, eye-shadow, piercings, gelled colored hair, and whatever American rock punk paraphernalia they could find. I caught a few with “Nightmare Before Christmas” backpacks, although I can’t imagine where they found them. We looked like a trio of old squares in comparison in sweater vests, dress shirts, Chaco pants, running shoes, and surfing T-shirts.

We hung to the back and I listened to the others’ running commentary on how cute everything was: their “little mosh pit,” their American-imitation outfits, their Red Hot Chili Peppers punk covers (it helped that they just screamed the tunes instead of trying to make the lyrics sound hard core), and how everything was not quite as good as the concerts they’d gone to in America. After awhile they realized just how patronizing and condescending they were sounding, and then decided to out-compete each other for who could sound the MOST patronizing and condescending. I drank my beer and tried to enjoy the music (the second band wasn’t bad, they had a decent lead guitarist and drummer). But standing and staring is not the way to experience a death metal concert, you need to get in there and risk personal injury banging into as many people as possible, scream so loud you can’t hear the music over your own voice, and paint yourself up so spectacularly you’re unrecognizable.

I don’t have the experience to make an educated comparison, but I think I liked the Russian “imitation” better than my American cohorts’ infamous metal concerts where the audience outnumbers most Turkmen towns. Although they couldn’t get over how little and poser everything was, my impression is that huge rock concerts are the posers, they’re trying to create (on a large, lucrative scale) what used to be an expression of raw teenage angst. Kids used to rock out in their garage, invite their friends, and just scream their heads off in apartment lofts and back yards because no one could understand their pain except for themselves and the music. These Russian kids live in Turkmenistan, they watch Russian and American music videos and movies and these are their guides for how to live a Western lifestyle different than their Turkmen neighbors, neighbors who mostly judge them as shameless animals. These kids responded to that Turkmen stereotype, accepted it, and made it their own. With only the barebones necessary – a band, an audience, and a bar with cheap drinks (the only concert I’ve ever attended where they didn’t scalp you on the drinks), they stood in the basement and screamed F-you to the establishment and the world. It’s easy for my American compatriots to be condescending about how “little” everything is, but it has to be because it is noncommercial and pure, the way death metal began (in my nostalgic idealistic world history). I doubt I will ever have the opportunity again to say I went to a death metal concert that was innocent in its purity.

I don’t think I’ll go again.