Tajikistan through Language Lessons

As I pack my things and look through all of my papers, I realize the range of themes we covered in my Tajik lessons. I was lucky to have a teacher who prepared interesting lessons for me. Though I must confess I cannot remember all of the vocabulary, I wanted to share another lens for looking at Tajikistan, from stories to culture to news.

In the beginning I read a lot of fables:

• Ганҷи падар - The treasure of father  
• A man tells his two lazy sons that there is treasure buried in their garden. He dies and the sons dig up the garden. They don't find treasure, but they plant seeds. After three months they harvest the fruit and vegetables and realize that they have found the true treasure of their father.
• Лонаи мурғаконро ваирон накунем - Don't destroy birds' nests! 
• A man wants to find partridge eggs to feed his dogs, as well as to give a friend. He goes hunting for them, and a mysterious old man hands him ten from his pocket. The man returns and gives the eggs to his friend, but the next day the friend reports that he accidentally dropped them and they were empty! He tried to find the old man again, but could not, and understood that this was a message to stop hunting.
• Боигарии аз ҳама бузург - The biggest riches  
• An old man says to a boy, 'You are very rich, but you don't know it!' The young boy says, 'You are crazy! You cannot turn my hand into gold!' but the old man tells him that the riches of gold and jewelry are nothing compared to health.
• Гурбаҳоро панд додани маймун - The monkey teaches cats a lesson
• Two cats are fighting over a piece of cheese. They want to divide it, but can't decide how. They take it to the monkey, who divides it unevenly. The cats complain, and the monkey takes a bite out of the bigger piece, then from the other, back and forth until there is none left. This is a lesson to them not to be greedy (and to solve their problems themselves).

Then other short texts with less-obvious moral lessons:

• Офатҳо - disasters
• This was nice because then I knew the words for "earthquake" and "mudslide" when I experienced them.
• Рузи оила - Day of the Family
• Because of rising divorce rates, the government has a "family day" when older couples give advice/counseling to newlyweds. I actually agree with the quoted older couple who say that family starts from love and respect - but our ideas of respect may be different.
• Абуали ибни Сино - Abduali ibn Sino
• The great scientist, mathematician, philosopher known as Avicenna in Latinate Europe. 
• Тоҷмаҳал - Tojmahal
• "But it's in India," you say. Yes, but the Mughal court was part of the Persian-speaking world, and its architects came from the Persian capitals of Samarkand and Bukhara.
• Муқаннаъ - Mukanna' or al-Muqanna
• I had never heard of this man before. Born Hoshim puri Hakim in Merv, he led an uprising against the Arab rulers in Baghdad in the 770s and 780s.
• Тўиҳо - weddings - see separate post.

My teacher was at Indiana University Bloomington, and helped put together their online learning modules, which are really great. If you go to the CeLCAR website, you can see the many themes for the Intermediate modules.

• Рамзҳои рангҳо ва ракамҳо - Symbols of colors and numbers
• White and black have the same good/bad connotation that European culture associates with them; red symbolizes health, and yellow symbolizes sickness/weakness. Odd numbers are associated with mourning and incompleteness, while even numbers are associated with happiness and fulness. 40 is very important for a variety of traditions (sitting at home for 40 nights after a birth, wedding, or death), but 13 is not bad luck here.
• Шугун ва бовариҳои мардуми тоҷик - Superstitions and beliefs of Tajik people.
• Many Tajik superstitions can be traced to Zoroastrian beliefs about the elements, including lots of ideas about nails (if you cut them in a friend's house, he will become your enemy) and hair (if hairs are left in your comb, don't just throw them away - you must put them in a hole). Then we discussed American superstitions, like if you spill salt you must throw it over your shoulder. We put our teeth under the pillow for the tooth fairy - here, they put lost teeth on the roof of the house. Breaking mirrors is bad - but here you don't have 7 years' bad luck, just that you cannot look at the pieces as you gather them up.  

In the spring I struggled through articles from Ozodi, the Tajiki service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. My struggles were not only because I didn't always do my homework, but also because Tajik newspaper writing is very difficult. My teacher has strong feelings about the journalists who "make up words" that no one ever uses. I have had students saying that they struggle to read the newspaper, because it has so many of these new Tajik words. (links go to the articles online in Tajik).

• Никоҳҳои барвақти  фоҷеаидухтарони тоҷик - Early weddings of Tajik girls.
• This article talks about the problems of early marriages, unofficial marriages, and the relationship between religion, religious leaders, religious interpretation and the government.
• Forbes тоҷикистонро дар паҳлуи Нигерияву Камбоҷа ҷо дод - Forbes put Tajikistan between Nigeria and Kambodia.
• Every year Forbes magazine makes a list of the best countries to do business; in 2012 Tajikistan was ranked 111 out of 141. I had to play a local businessman trying to convince Warren Buffett (my teacher) to invest. This is difficult as an honest salesman, given the country's rankings in corruption (128), tax burden (133), monetary freedom (126) and personal freedoms (115). I had to advise Mr. Buffett to check back after a few years.
• Тоҷикистони баъди соли 2015. Назаримардум. - Tajikistan after 2015 - in people's opinion.
• In 2015 the UN's Millenium Development Goals are supposed to be "achieved", so this article is about people's answers to an online survey that the UN created asking what people think are the major problems in Tajikistan and what they think will happen in the future. The major problems people see are corruption, followed by low salaries and the problem of job creation. People want to improve health, education, and conflict prevention. 

Getting married is like moving to a foreign country

"Getting married is like moving to a foreign country," said a Tajik friend of mine, as three of us were having a conversation about marriages and mothers-in-law. "At first you must learn the different laws of the new place." My mind raced ahead to add more facets to the comparison: you must not only figure out the unspoken laws and customs, but where power lies and what people believe; what their prejudices are and what is most important to them. You must live a new reality of the details of day-to-day life, and not waste time missing those you used to live with. The first weeks of a new bride here are like my few months have been: full of a sense that you are missing some things, unsure when you will be embarrassed by revealing this lack, not understanding why the assumptions you had at home are not working, always listening and always learning.

In one moment I thought "Yes!" and then in the next I stopped - this simile does not include me.

I am not marrying Tajikistan. I am, if you will, dating: falling in love a bit, enjoying my time now in the present, playing and laughing, but not promising to be together in sickness and in health until death do us part. It is the beginning, still, of a relationship: I am eager to make a good impression, and so I listen more than I talk and sometimes hold my tongue when I do not want to risk alienating someone.  

Of course, while dating, every so often your mind drifts and you find yourself imagining what life would be like if you did stay together for many years. What would be the things that I could not compromise on? What would be the tension points in our relationship? My friend posed this question to me when I mentioned the idea that perhaps there would be things I would do differently if I were to stay forever instead of only ten months. I have continued to mull over the question.

Mostly I stay in the present, though. There is a special frenetic energy to a relationship when there is a clear end date. That is the frenzy of summer romances. Here, my time will end as summer starts, and my encroaching leaving date makes me frantic to squeeze everything I can out of every last moment we have together before it's too late. 

Formality and Faux Pas; or Manners and Mistakes

Sughd, this northern region of Tajikistan, is known for being more formal. Everyone here always uses шумо (shumo), the formal "you" (think usted in Spanish), whereas in the south, in Khatlon, people use ту (tu) frequently. I knew this before coming, like I knew that Tajikistan is renowned for its guest culture, but I didn't realize the many other ways in which that politeness would manifest itself in daily life, and I certainly didn't anticipate that it would take me months to figure out.

When someone invites you to his or her house, they repeat "хуш омадед" (khush omaded - welcome) many times. I used to put my hand on my chest and repeat "thank you," unable to think of anything else to say. Only six months into my time here did someone tell me that the customary thing to respond - especially to older hosts - is "хушбахт бошед" (khushbakht boshed - be happy). It was both relieving to hear that there is a ritual and frustrating - how did I not know this sooner!

Similarly, I was aware from the moment I arrived that hosts tell you to eat many times. "Гиритон, гиритон, гиритон" they repeat ("take," literally, or "help yourself"). Knowing how important the guest culture is here, I would studiously take food, and figured out to pace my eating and time big bites for when the host returned. What is on the dastarkhan at the beginning is just that, the beginning, and there is always more food coming. I joke that people do not know the meaning of the word "full" - when I say that "ман сеур шудам" (I am full), people bring me more food! People laugh appreciatively, because of course that is the job of the host - to give you more.

But only after living here seven months did I realize the other half of this Tajik courtesy. They say "гиретон" three times - and the guest is not supposed to accept the first few times. There is a dance of offering and demurring until people finally eat. Oops. Luckily, I have probably not offended anyone too badly - I just seem like an impolite pig. Since realizing this, I have heard countless stories from people in Sughd who have traveled to the United States and suffered their own cultural misunderstandings. "Do you want ice cream?" an American hostess asked a teacher friend. "No," the teacher replied, and then, as she told us, "the whole table ate ice cream and I sat there with none! I really wanted some, but I couldn't ask!" Another friend who said it took him a week of being hungry to realize that Americans were not going to ask again, and he would have to say yes the first time.

And I only realized a week ago that one does not talk while eating. Parents here teach their children not to do so. In the United States, parents also tell their children not to talk with their mouths full, but we also expect dinner to be a time for conversation, and people schedule lunch meetings in order to talk. I tried to think back to the many times I have been a guest: have I spent it chattering to fill silence? I think mostly I am quiet and try to let the host take the lead - remembering not to be uncomfortable in the silence (thank you, Sidwell).

Unfortunately I cannot regale you with tales of the hilarious faux pas I have made that people laughed at or judged or ignored and otherwise never pointed out to me. You will have to apply to my friends and acquaintances here for more details.

A table filled for Navruz at the library.

Баҳор омад. Spring comes.

This past week was Tajikistan's most important national holiday, Navruz. It literally means "new day" but is the Persian New Year and marks the spring equinox. When I wrote this to my Grandmother, she replied,

The people over there certainly have the right idea – new year beginning in the spring.  How sensible.  

I have to agree.

It means almost a week off school for concerts and parties. Everyone wears national dress. There is much dancing. There is much poetry, much of which involves the phrase баҳор омад (bahor omad, spring comes).

Here, people are eager to say that it is an International holiday, which someone declared a few years ago, since today people celebrate Navruz in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, parts of China and probably elsewhere I am forgetting. Sarah and I were interviewed to discover our thoughts on Navruz as foreigners, but we didn't see the TV special when it aired. Several of our students and neighbors did, though, and some have approached me since to excitedly, "You speak Tajik!"

At the library, the celebration on the 20th included: a competition of who has the most beautiful table of food (scores could be augmented by poetry recitation), poetry recitation, dancing, a holiday tableau, the arrival of girl in white as "spring", who showed off the haft seen and haft sheen, a poetry contest, a humorous skit, displays of national dress, and speeches. I was encouraged to stand up and congratulate everyone on Navruz in Farsi and English, and later a representative from the Iranian embassy's ministry of culture presented me with a gift. It ended with everyone dancing as the women cleaned and put everything away.

Navruz (21st) in Khujand seemed to be an excuse for kids to run off and play with their friends. Two of the volunteers from the American Corner showed me around the crowded park, where people were selling shashlik every three yards. We went on the Ferris wheel, on a boat ride, and talked as we walked past everyone in their finest clothes.

Sarah and I missed the official Khujand celebration on the 22nd, because we were guest-ing in different parts of Sughd for the rest of the weekend. On the 21st we went to Mangit village in Ghonchi, where one of Sarah's students lives. He took us immediately taken to the village party and we danced. I chose the 11-year-old girls as my partners instead of the teenage boys. 

 

We stayed two nights, and went to many other family members' houses to be guests, which means introducing ourselves and drinking tea and eating food. Both nights included dance parties with all of the neighbor kids outside of the house. Sarah and I apologize for being poor representatives of our country when they put on a J-Lo song and told us to "dance American".

 

We also visited some women making сумалак (sumalak), the traditional Navruz dish. I was only told the story of sumalak the next day, but it is beautiful and goes something like this: Once, long ago, a widow had nothing to feed her children. The children cried to their mother that they were hungry, but she had nothing to give them. One night, the mother threw seven stones into a pot with wheat and some flour and fell asleep with despair. While she slept, thirty angels (see malak) came and stirred the pot. When she woke up in the morning, the woman tried the dish and found that it was delicious.

  

Now people make sumalak in the spring, when the shoots of wheat are young. It must be cooked from 12-24 hours, and women stay up all night, adding wood to the fire and water to the cauldron as they stir and sing to keep themselves awake. If you make a wish while stirring sumalak, it will come true. Sarah and I did not stay so long, but we visited for a little while.

Later that night, I got my hair braided in the traditional style: many little braids finished by cotton tassels at the end of each braid. It took less than two hours, and it is usual for everyone to ask how many braids you have. I ended up with 24 - traditionally one should have 40 braids.

The next day I went to Shahristan. The first night, instead of staying with an English teacher we know, I ended up being the excuse for five 16-year-old girls to have a sleepover. They giggled and talked all night and in the morning we all beautified ourselves with усма (usma). Now, to most Westerners, this is not beautiful. I have plucked my eyebrows at least since I was thirteen. But with usma, you draw your eyebrows thicker, darker, longer, and they are supposed to meet in the middle. It is a green plant that they make into a juice. You paint it on three times, letting it dry some between each application, and then you wash it off - gently! the girls told me, alarmed as I splashed my face.

There is also a story behind usma, which again I learned only after the fact: people believe that on judgment day, all of your body parts will be forced to tell their sins from your life. Your hands, for example, will say that you stole, and your eyes will say that you looked on something covetously. But if you put usma on your eyebrows, they will be so grateful for your care of them that they will lie for you, saying that they are above all and can see everything and that you did good deeds. In conservative villages where fathers will not allow their daughters cosmetics, usma is still encouraged (and some girls sneakily put it on their eyelids as well to simulate the makeup they're not allowed to wear).

My makeover was made complete with либоси мелли (lebosi melli), which literally translates as "national dress." When I mentioned that Sarah had an adras dress (made of this particular fabric and pattern) and I did not, they secretly went to the bazaar, bought some fabric, and brought one student's sister over to measure me "for no reason." In the morning, she arrived with the dress she had worked on all night and took no money for. It might be the most thoughtful gift I have ever received.

This was all for the Navruz celebration that the students had prepared in Shahristan, which involved everyone in national dress, poetry, songs, a skit, and more dancing. Sarah and I were forced to have a dance competition. We walked, played a game, and the reward when I won was that I had to dance for all of them.

 

Photo credit to Sarah and her iPhone.

When we stayed with the teacher that night many more people came to see us, but more exciting was that I finally learned how to make osh-e plov, the national dish of Tajikistan. In the morning we helped bake the bread in the tandur (outdoor oven).

Then we came home and still had a day and a half to sleep before the library opened again.  I tried to answer some emails. I showed my colleague how to make chocolate chip cookies. I welcomed spring.

Buzkashi and Links

Buzkashi literally means "goat (buz) - pulling (from kashidan)".  It is the Central Asian horseman's game, similar to polo but with the headless body of a sheep. There aren't many rules; the goal is to  get the goat in the pit at one end of the field. Only there are no field boundaries - spectators periodically must run out of the way of the galloping horses.

When I was in the Pamirs in 2011, I went to a sort of Buzkashi exhibition/practice in Murgab, the Kyrgyz area, with some other expats. A friend took some photos, and then later I was introduced to a professional photographer who has won international awards for his Buzkashi photos (he also happens to be a Yale grad). Check out his amazing photos at www.theodorekaye.com. (Going to his website again informs me that he has published a book with his photos and an essay.)

All rights reserved Theodore Kaye. From http://www.theodorekaye.com/buzkashi/#2

I went to my first real game a few weeks ago. It was in Aperlevka, near a gold mine where some Americans we know work. Men kept crowding around to talk to the foreigners. I acquired a bouncer who would field questions to me as we talked in Tajik, and then periodically remind the crowd, "The goat is that way! Watch the game, not these people!" Mostly, I think, so that he could talk to me himself, about how we should come next weekend to Adressman, his town, which is much more beautiful and less dusty. He also informed me that almost everyone at this game was Uzbek. Buzkashi is is mostly/traditionally played in southern Tajikistan, but Kyrgyz and Uzbek (countries to the north) also play, so there are games in Sughd, but few of the players are Tajik. (I apologize if that is confusing, but that is life in these squiggly border areas where nationalities and ethnicities are thoroughly mixed.)

Below is a less-professional but more local video that one of the geologists made of his photos from Aperlevka (comments and discussion near the end are not necessarily condoned by me). The video was from the weekend before I went.

A short film made in Kabul was nominated for an Oscar this year (the two young stars were flown to Hollywood and went to Disneyland - what an impression of America!). I have not seen it but want to.

A documentary made about Buzkashi players in southern Tajikistan:

The other week for a movie night we watched the 1971 movie The Horsemen, starring Omar Sharif, set  and filmed in Afghanistan, and featuring an extended Buzkashi segment near the beginning. Apparently it can be viewed in full on YouTube.

Mice

Mice are usually good at hiding, and yet recently they have been scurrying their way into my life. Not live ones, luckily; though I do think they can be cute, I had most of my sympathy driven out of my vegetarian heart when part of my job at summer camp was to be "Mousketeer" and set traps to catch the rodents that ate holes in our clothes and threatened the kitchen. I do not welcome them inside, and our apartment here has proven rodent-proof. That does not mean that my heart is hardened to fictional mice.

I have started a new "Reading Club" at the American Corner: I inherited one when I first arrived that became frustrating, since I had to figure out what to read and how much to print since new people would come every time and I wouldn't know how many and what level they would be. So I canceled it, since that is the wonderful prerogative of my position. But at the conference in Nepal, our main presenter emphasized that she believes that reading aloud helps students at all levels. New research supports reading aloud to ESL/EFL students because they can listen to correct pronunciation, not worry about comprehending every word, and understand more than when they try to read aloud themselves (I know I experience this: when I read aloud in a foreign language, I focus on words and my brain cannot also focus on meaning; I have to either read it quietly before or after). I seized upon this suggestion, and decided it could stand on its own. Read-aloud story time in libraries is a time-honored American Library Tradition. And the American Corner is in a Library. And we are all about teaching American Traditions. Most importantly, I really enjoy reading aloud.

I looked through our collection of lower-level books, and considered something like Old Yeller or Sarah Plain and Tall, but settled on The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo. It is a recent children's classic and winner of the Newbery Medal in 2004. I was a little older than its target demographic when it was published, but my mother bought it for my younger brother, and I was taken by the hardcover's soft-pastel drawing and the pages' deckled edges, and quickly swallowed the story of the mouse who falls in love with a human princess. I didn't really remember the plot when I picked it off the shelf at the American Corner for consideration, but its fate was sealed when I found a PDF teachers' guide that advertised using it in a class for ESL students, as well as parents' reviews that said it seemed to be written as a read-aloud novel. Participants at the American Corner have now learned the words "scurry" and "despair." [If you would like to learn a new word, mouse in Tajiki is муш (mush), which is comfortingly close to English, but a bit cuter-sounding.] They are still figuring out the graphic organizers I have given them (they didn't seem to want to draw). But I am excited to reach the second section next week, when we learn that the king has banished soup from the kingdom due to a series of events involving a rat. There is true despair in the kingdom over this - and there would be here, too, because soup is an important staple of the Tajik diet (I know a Tajik girl who went to the U.S. for university and wrote home asking for soup recipes to make in the dorm kitchen because she was homesick for soup and couldn't find any).

I took several books from the shelves of the American Corner; one night I read The Tale of Desperaux in bed, and the next I read Maus, Art Spiegelman's graphic novel about the Holocaust. Both have careful illustrations, but the latter took my breath away from darkness rather than light. I had always wanted to read it and was recently reminded of its existence when the ELF in Almaty told me she is using it in her university English classes. So it caught my eye when I saw it here. We have a fairly random collection of books that are mostly too advanced or too specialized for most of the people who come to the American Corner, like 400-page biographies of Benjamin Franklin, or to a book by Julia Alvarez co-written with her husband Bill Eichner. 

But this week Christmas came in the form of hundreds of new books - from Scholastic! It was like book orders in middle school, only many times better - and many times heavier. Several people waited for the truck on Monday, but by the time it arrived there were only five of us left, and it took over two hours to carry all of the them up to the fourth floor of the library in the dark. I carried books, and the boys paired off to carry the new shelves and tables. We still don't exactly know what's in all of the boxes, since the embassy ordered them, but we understand that they are easy books more appropriate for people just learning English, and I cannot wait to find out (maybe Stuart Little is there?). We have managed to investigate the one large box of DVDs, which included many good movies, but I was most excited about An American Tail.

Sarah and I have been talking about showing this movie since September, when we realized that it would be a great way to discuss what it means to be an immigrant and temper the mania for visa requests. It is about the trials of a Jewish-Russian immigrant family to New York in 1885, from getting separated from family to being swindled by rats who take advantage of recent arrivals. And, yes, these characters are also mice. (Wikipedia informed me that Art Spiegelman thought director Stephen Spielberg plagiarized his idea, but decided not to sue.) Before arriving, the family is certain that "There are no cats in America/ and the streets are paved with cheese!", but, of course, there are cats in America. Spielberg makes our hero Fievel Mousekewitz heart-breakingly cute, especially when he and his sister sing "Somewhere Out There." Previewing the movie at home, I was surprised to realize what a little kid Fievel is; I remembered him as my age - which shows that I last watched it when I was about 8. When I showed it yesterday people weren't ready to talk about it, but they did say they enjoyed it - and they stayed until the end, which often doesn't happen when we show movies. 

I went home with another one of the new DVDs, since I have a cold and needed something to curl up with alongside my honey-and-lemon 'tea'. It shockingly doesn't feature mice: You've Got Mail instead has everything comforting that doesn't require thought: bookstores, Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks, and a happy ending.

Mouse update 26 Jan: To keep the theme going, during our Burns Night I read his "To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785." I love the image of the him stooping to talk to the mouse - though we also speculated that perhaps his tendency to stop and write a poem instead of continuing to plough his field might have contributed to his failure as a farmer.

Abraham's Stars; or Many Holiday Thoughts

Friday was Eid-i Qurbon (Иди Қурбон), known elsewhere in the Muslim world as Eid al-Adha (adha and qurbon are both Arabic words for sacrifice, the later used in the Persian world). Somehow amongst all of the times I have heard and read about Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr, the second great festival of Islam escaped my notice. Tajikistan has helped me rectify that omission, by hearing about Eid-i Qurbon from Tajik friends, and reading about it, and experiencing it. Like the holiday, this blog post encompasses too much: celebration, language, giving, religion, contradictions, traditions, vacation and family.

I asked the American Corner Coordinator, Madina, to explain it to me. She explained that it is the "Feast of Sacrifice," celebrating Abraham's near sacrifice of his son, and thus passing his test of faith. It is the end of the Muslim year, and the time when people go on Hajj to Mecca. The festival always two months after Ramadan, and so cycles about eleven days earlier each year. Some people fast for ten days before Eid-i Qurbon. During the holiday, people spend time with their families, and visit older relatives. Those who are able should sacrifice a sheep, and share the meat with family, friends, and those less fortunate.

When a thirteen-year-old on student said "Congratulations on our holiday!" Thursday morning, I explained that though "Eid-e mubarak" does translate "congratulations," that's not usually what we say in English. We like to say "Happy [insert holiday]," or "Have a good holiday." Imagine my delight when I learned later in the day that many people say "Иди нагз гозарид (Eid-i nagz gozareed)," which translates almost exactly to "Have a good holiday."

On Thursday afternoon, I spent time with some American Corner volunteers taking food to families in need. One of the volunteers had been inspired to put out a donation box earlier in the week, and on Thursday the money was collected and taken to the grocery. They came back with flour, rice, buckwheat (grechka), sugar, oil, black tea, soap and shampoo. We grabbed at the items hastily to put together fourteen bags in the road behind the taxi so we wouldn't have to lug the food to the Corner on the fourth floor. Five of us piled into the taxi to look for the homes on the list that the mosque had provided. The others joined us later via mashrutkeh and walking. As we walked to a house, we played the "What is this in English/Tajik?" game ("Sunflower" is офтобпараст - oftobparast - lit. sun-worshipper, which is delightfully similar. We spent ages as they tried to explain to me a small bird is in the hopes I would know the English name.). The experience was entirely similar to Thanksgiving and Christmas volunteering run by schools and churches at home.

I first heard Abraham's story at church when I was young: God tested Abraham's faith, asking him to sacrifice his son. Abraham was ready to cut Isaac's neck when an angel appeared to stop him and he sacrificed a ram instead. Since he has passed the test, God made a covenant with Abraham: he would have as many descendents as stars in the sky.

When I heard the story in church it was mostly upsetting ("Mom, would you kill me if God asked you to?" The answer better be 'no'). Of course that is exactly why it is a powerful illustration of faith.

But I got a very different reading junior year in a seminar entitled "Bible as Literature" with an inscrutable old professor named Leslie Brisman. It was a secular class based in the English department, and involved comparing different translations and discussing the text in relation to the documentary hypothesis of the Pentateuch (four different authors). Brisman delighted in surprising us with literary analysis, and I particularly remember his explication of Genesis 22. If there are different authors, one intends the story's moral much as I first understood it: God sends his angel to stay Abraham's hand. Another reading - if verses 11 and 12 are excluded - is that an angel did not appear, but the ram did, and Abraham took advantage of its presence to sacrificed it instead of his son. The moral of this story is not blind obedience but ingenuity and problem-solving in the face of a difficult task; can he obey to the extent that is reasonable, and figure out when not to obey.

I was interested to read (a translation of) the passage in the Koran. I had heard that it is Ishmael who is nearly killed, not Isaac, but figured the message is the same. There is an interesting twist, though: Abraham actually asks his son whether he is willing to die. Ishmael agrees, which is seen as a sign of his own faith and maturity. The faith of both father and son is important. This is in contrast to Genesis' Isaac, who seems to be ignorant of what is going on, though smart enough to catch on to the fact that something is not quite right since he notices that there is no sheep as they are headed to the sacrifice. Abraham basically lies and tells him not to worry about it. Both versions of Abraham show him as a father to one boy - in one personal and emotional moment. This is more relatable than Abraham, Father of Three Religions. The scripture gives a story which is then layered and refracted through the rituals of Hajj and Abraham's vast legacy; this is a time to celebrate.

I experienced the celebration on Friday mostly as a holiday in the British sense; no work or school. The streets were quiet without the gangs of black-and-white-uniformed children. Somon bazaar was closed. It rained for the first time in the months I have been here, which led to Sarah and I sleeping in and then making a luxurious breakfast of crepes (banana and nutella) and American coffee. The afternoon was clear and chilly, but not cold. So we went out on a walk, and realized that fall has come as we walked over fallen leaves and past yellow trees. We walked over the river and through the mosaics to Ismoil Somoni's statue.

I was obligated to take photos for my parents and my local coffee shop. My parents sent me the coffee via a coworker's husband's visit to Dushanbe and then an Embassy delivery north. The coffee is from Misha's, the Alexandria coffee shop  that my dad and I visited every Saturday morning from when I was three years old through high school.  On their fridges, Misha's posts photos of people holding their coffee cups in far away places. I would like to think I have made some sort of record.

I held a cup from home and it felt like a fall holiday, so Sarah and I started talking about our Thanksgiving traditions at home. For our Thanksgiving holiday here, we plan pumpkin pie and a bird and some cranberry sauce via Bishkek if we are lucky. Perhaps even some American Football - we have a ball at the American Corner. I can practice being thankful for what I have learned and had time to think about, and plan for how to explain our own holiday in its own glory of story and history and contradictions and tradition all wrapped in language.