Louw Dream Omens Magic Bishkek

History and Anthropology,Vol. 21, No. 3, September 2010, pp. 277–292

ISSN 0275–7206 print/ISSN 1477–2612 online/10/030277–16 © 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/02757206.2010.496780

Dreaming up Futures. Dream Omens and Magic in Bishkek1

Maria Elisabeth Louw

Taylor and FrancisGHAN_A_496780.sgm10.1080/02757206.2010.496780History and Anthropology0275-7206 (print)/1477-2612 (online)Original Article2010Taylor & Francis213000000September [email protected]

In Kyrgyzstan, dreams are of great significance as sources of omens and divine revelations.This article will explore the meanings of dream omens, focusing more particularly on thecomplex relationship between belief in fate and belief in the free will as expressed in Kyrgyzpractices of dream interpretation and sharing and, thus, on the complexity of the imprintsof dreaming in Kyrgyz society.

Dream omens embody peoples’ fears about, and hopes for, how their lives may develop.Recognizing dream images, feelings, sounds and smells as potential omens, people enter avirtual realm, a subjunctive state, where they can imagine and orient themselves towardvarious potential future scenarios and test the social and moral resonance of these scenar-ios; last, but not least: where they can reflect on the question of what they are able to controland change, and what has to be left to chance or fate: one of the existential aporias whichmight characterize human life as such, but seems to be most urgently felt in contexts andsituations where radical social change has challenged previous ideas about which aspects oflife are matters of interest, choice and skills, and which aspects people have no control of;where new ideas about accountability and about what it takes to be a good or virtuoushuman being have challenged old ones. One such context is that of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan.

Keywords: Dreams; Omens; Kyrgyzstan; Islam; Magic

The Imprints of a Dream

I met Aygul in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, where she worked in a small newspa-per kiosk. Aygul grew up in a village, but left it upon graduating from secondary school,in order to live with her aunt in Bishkek. The lack of future prospects for young peoplein the Kyrgyz countryside has lately let to a massive migration to the city and, like many

Correspondence to: Dr Maria Elisabeth Louw, Aarhus University, Anthropology & Ethnography, Moesgaard,Hoejbjerg, 8270, Denmark. Email: [email protected]

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others, Aygul had come to Bishkek in search of a better life, dreaming of becoming arich and stylish businesswoman, returning to her village in a big Mercedes and buildinga two-storied house for her family.

After a couple of years, however, she had not made it any further than the newspaperkiosk which provided her with a stable income but nothing of the sort that you need inorder to buy a Mercedes and build a house. Her family back in the village were nowabout to lose their patience with her. Rather than looking forward to being the firstfamily in the village with a two-storied house, she told me, they were persistently tryingto persuade her to give up her career dreams and instead return home and get marriedin order not to bring shame2 on herself and her family: the city was not only the site ofopportunities to improve life, but also of moral pitfalls, and it was not only storiesabout people who had made it in the city that circulated in the village; equallywidespread were stories and rumours of those who had been unable to resist the city’stemptations or who had become preys to its dark forces and ended up in prostitution,gambling, drug dealing or other illegal and morally dubious ways of making a living.Although Aygul was not engaging in any of these activities, and although the fact thatshe lived with her aunt helped her to sustain her reputation, her family still worriedabout the bad influence the city might have on her behaviour and her standing.Furthermore, they felt it increasingly hard to cope with the questions, posed by theirfellow villagers, of whether there would not soon be a to’y, wedding party, and theirwarnings that Aygul, who was now in her mid twenties, might miss her chance if shedid not soon marry and settle down.

A couple of months ago, Aygul was on the verge of giving up her career dreams andreturning to the village, surrendering to the social fate that most people there—nowincluding her family—apparently believed to be hers: in the middle of the street she wasforced into a car by four young men and driven to a house in the village where the rela-tives of one of the men were waiting, ready to receive her as their new daughter-in-law.

Even though non-consensual kiz ala kachuu, ‘bride abduction’,3 is forbidden by law,and although it has been widely criticized by local and international activists who havechallenged the idea that it is a Kyrgyz ‘tradition’ (cf. Werner 2009), it is widely practisedin Kyrgyzstan: a young man who has chosen a bride might ask his friends to help himabduct her by force or deception—or both—and take her to his home. Here, his femalerelatives will be waiting, attempting to don her a white headscarf as a sign that she hasaccepted the marriage, praising the family that she is marrying into and—if sheresists—warning her that if she escapes she will never marry (cf. also Werner 2009).They might also shut her up in a room. In order to prevent her from escaping, a table-cloth with boorsok, small deep-fried pieces of bread, is sometimes placed on the thresh-old. There is a strong taboo connected with stepping on or crossing the tablecloth whichsymbolizes central Kyrgyz virtues such as hospitality and respect for the ancestors.4

Alternatively, her potential mother-in-law might lie down on the threshold, blockingthe girl’s way out of the room.

Aygul did not want to move back to the village and liked neither her kidnapper—aboy she found boorish and uneducated—nor the house she had been taken to. Sheresisted his grandmother’s attempt to don her the headscarf, but doubt crept up on her

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as it grew darker and as the female relatives of her kidnapper persistently tried topersuade her that she would disgrace her family if she ignored the wedding feast theyhad prepared; that she would never become anything but a newsagent anyway; that shewould marry into a good family, and that she would never marry if she refused theirgenerous offer. Finally, Aygul fell asleep. Just before dawn her late grandmother cameto her. The grandmother asked her to look at herself. Aygul looked at herself and sawthat she was wearing a wedding dress, but that she was not wearing any shoes.

When Aygul woke up, she told me, the sense of confusion that had overwhelmed herthe night before had given way to a renewed faith in her own sense of judgement.Though independent-minded and rebellious, Aygul had always been her grand-mother’s favourite grandchild, and the sense of her grandmother’s presence filled herwith a feeling that things would be all right, no matter what happened. And then therewere the shoes: according to the Kyrgyz tradition of dream interpretation, shoes aresymbols of marriage. When her beloved grandmother drew her attention towards themissing shoes, it might be a sign that it was not her fate to marry the abductor.

Signs from the Ancestors

In Kyrgyzstan, dreams are of great significance as sources of omens and divine revela-tions. Talking of the importance of dreams among the Kyrgyz, people will often drawyour attention to the fact that dreams play central roles as sources of predictions in theepic “Manas”, which is considered the Kyrgyz national epic, and which is often referredto as a major source of what Kyrgyzchylyk, “Kyrgyzness”5 is all about.6 Furthermore,the reciters of the epic, the manaschys, are usually called to their task by the spirits ofthe deceased in dreams. In these dreams, they meet a character from the epic or a previ-ous prominent manaschy who tells them to become manaschys themselves (cf.Bakchiev and Egemberdieva 2007).7 However, dreams do not only play important rolesin the lives of epic characters and specially gifted people, but also in the lives of manyordinary people. This is also the case in Bishkek, although the city has the reputation ofbeing thoroughly secularized, although many Kyrgyz are of the opinion that life therehas been fundamentally altered by the “russification” and “modernization” that cameto characterize it through the twentieth century when Kyrgyzstan became part of theSoviet Union and, thus, part of a massive project of social engineering aimed at radi-cally modernizing and secularizing society. Although, on the break-up of the SovietUnion and Kyrgyzstan’s independence in 1991, the advent of capitalism and of westernconsumer culture, in the eyes of many, have been hard blows to Kyrgyz spirituality: themiddle-aged and the elderly generation, in particular, tend to see the younger genera-tions as far too focused on pursuing easy money and constructing their identitythrough consumption instead of gaining a living and becoming someone throughhonest work, through one’s contribution to society’s (material or intellectual) produc-tion and the well-being of the family and the community (cf. also Rigi 2003).

The significance attributed to dreams as sources of omens and divine revelations isalso rather unaffected by the fact that many people in Bishkek—as I will develop,below—have a strained relationship with “religion” that has negative associations with

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on the one hand excessive aspects of post-Soviet social change such as fanaticism andworld denial and on the other hand a superficial religious lifestyle that does not neces-sarily imply an intimate relationship with God and life’s more spiritual sides. To be reli-gious or not has nothing to do with what God, or the Divine dimensions of existence,does in peoples’ lives. Although they might not define themselves as “religious”, thereis a strong sense among many Kyrgyz people that their lives are intimately connectedwith God, with Divine or “extrasensory” interventions. Many are attentive to, andengage in interpreting the diverse signs, or omens, which surround them during theday and come to them in their dreams at night. It is first and foremost through dreamsand visions that the Divine takes place in the lives of the “not so religious” Kyrgyz.

Here, I will concentrate on dream omens. Dreams—or rather, certain dreams—areseen as ayan, omens or signs sent by the ancestors, and ultimately by God, which canhelp people to make the right decisions and choices in life—if they know how to inter-pret the omens. Some people are more receptive to ayan than others. This susceptibilityis believed to be hereditary, but it is also an ability which can be cultivated through aspiritually and morally righteous living. Fundamentally, however, ayan are unpredict-able and often come to a person when they are least expected.

Dreams are borderlands between the manifest and the hidden dimensions of reality,between the living and the dead, and between past, present and future—between thehere and now and the various imaginary horizons toward which people orient them-selves (cf. Crapanzano 2004). Omens are some kind of provisional, or perhaps hyper-real, materializations of that which has not yet materialized: what often distinguishesayan and makes it possible to distinguish them from “ordinary” dreams which are seenas meaningless or as stemming from the unconscious in the Freudian understanding(which is known to many Kyrgyz) is that the dream’s sense impressions—images,moods, feelings, sounds and smells—are experienced as extraordinarily real, that is, asreal in a more urgent sense than the sense impressions of everyday life: the smells keephanging in the air even after one’s awakening; the fear keeps sitting in one’s body; theimages seem like something one has seen before, even if they are images of the future.For Aygul, for example, the well-known and comforting feeling of being near herbeloved grandmother kept filling her although she woke up to the sight, sounds andsmells of a place where she did not want to stay, of people to whom she did not want tobe related; of a life she did not want to live. The hope for the future, in short, seemedmore real than the discomfort of the present.

Omens are experienced at the same time as the invasion of otherness and as the reve-lation of hidden possibilities in the known. They disturb peoples’ normal sense of theforthcoming of the world; of the future which is imminent in the present (cf. Bourdieu2000). They make that which is here and now appear less involving; it is experiencedless intensely (cf. Hage 2002). Instead, it is experienced as a relatively unimportanttemporary step on the way towards an objectified, though most often blurred, future.They are triggers of subjunctivity—a mood or form of being characterized by doubt,hope, fear, will, desire and potentiality (Whyte 2002: 175); by the sense that one’s life ischanging track; that something new is going to happen for which one can hope, desireor fear, or just be uncertain about. Divine signs become a sort of cognitive and


emotional scaffold that can be used for reflection. They create a different kind oftemporality, a larger time horizon, to peoples’ existence; they create orientationstoward imagined futures in situations where the future seems uncertain, wherepeoples’ normal channels for agency might be blocked (cf. Lindquist 2006: 4) or wherepossible channels for agency seem morally ambiguous.

Of particular significance in Kyrgyzstan are dreams where the arbak (“ghost”,“spirit”) of ancestors manifest themselves. Arbak follow the lives of the living intenselyand often seek to interfere with them. They also play a central role in the way Kyrgyzpeople practise their religion, Islam: many Kyrgyz peoples’ relationship with theQur’an, for example, is limited to the verses which are recited on their ancestors’memorial days, or which they might recite themselves when their ancestors, as it isbelieved, visit them in their homes on Thursdays or Fridays in order to see how theyare doing. The beliefs and practices related with arbak have increasingly come underattack from people who have adopted a more scripturalist version of Islam (Isci 2008;Louw in press), but nevertheless continue to be of major importance to most Kyrgyz.

Ancestors also show up in people’s dreams. Even if the arbak might not show them-selves directly, Kyrgyz people often interpret voices, images and feelings experienced indreams as ayan, signs, from arbak—like Aygul did when she dreamt that her late grand-mother asked her to look at herself and felt her presence. Arbak often bring omens: if,for example, a person dreams that an ancestor walks away with a living person, it isusually interpreted as a sign that this person will soon die or fall seriously ill, whereaswhen a person receives something from an ancestor, it is usually considered a goodomen (cf. Bakchiev and Egemberdieva 2007). Arbak remind people about things theyhave forgotten; reprove them if they have done something wrong, warn them if they areabout to make a wrong decision, but also give courage and moral authority to insecureand morally dubious acts.

A central theme in many recent anthropological studies of dreams and dream shar-ing is the construction, or staging, of self (cf. Heijnen, in press). Also, in the context ofpost-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, dreams often seem to play a major role when it comes toconstructing and negotiating self-hood. Dreams about ancestors give cause for reflec-tion. For the dreamer they can draw the contours of a new self and become centralepisodes in his or her life story (cf. Ewing 1990)—and they can draw the contours ofnew relations between people which might become real if the dream is considered asauthentic by others.

Ambiguity and Magic

The ayan sent by her grandmother had confirmed Aygul in her feeling that marryingher abductor would not change her life for the better. However, it would be very diffi-cult for her to escape unless her family accepted her decision to do so. Although mostKyrgyz, when asked about the practice of bride abduction, might deny that it is aKyrgyz tradition, although they might conceive of it as fundamentally wrong, andalthough they might pity an abducted woman’s situation, they might also believe thatshe is better off accepting the marriage than provoking the shame that would befall her

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and her family if she came home. When a girl “returns home” after having beenkidnapped, people might question whether she is still a virgin. Furthermore, as CynthiaWerner has pointed out, there is a danger that she will be considered stubborn andbelligerent, and therefore less desirable as a marriage partner and daughter-in-law.These cultural beliefs are often effectively invoked in persuasive performances topressure the bride to accept the marriage (Werner 2009: 323).

As the custom is, her abductor’s family had sent messengers to Aygul’s family toapologize for the fact that they had abducted her, and as representatives from herfamily came to confer with the prospective in-laws, she told them about her dream.They were moved but not surprised. Dreams about ancestors often play a role in familymatters, and had often done so in Aygul’s family more particularly, where there wereseveral people who possessed special “gifts” in the sense of being more open to ayanthan people normally are. However, they were not sure about what to think about, andwhat to do with, the ayan: omens are never unambiguous, but always open to interpre-tation. Even symbols which are considered unambiguous and figure in any Kyrgyzdream inventory can sometimes mean the opposite: omens of death—raw meat andthe loss of teeth, for example—might show up to be omens of new life, the birth of achild, just as a dream about missing shoes might be an omen of a long and happymarriage. Moreover, there is a strong sense that ayan fundamentally defy expression;that the mere act of telling about such dreams betrays the dreams, and that the realdream might be radically different from the dream as narrated.

Furthermore, in Kyrgyz practices of dream interpretation, a complex relationshipbetween belief in fate and belief in the free will is unfolded: through magical practiceswhich manipulate dream omens, people sometimes seek to affect what is about tohappen, changing the fate that they, in other situations, claim not to have any controlof: magical practices which are usually not very spectacular: It can be a short prayer toGod, it can be lighting candles for the arbak, ancestor spirits, hoping for their help, orit can be throwing away the omens with water; or it can just be the attempt to practise“positive thinking”; to forget the omen—following the idea that omens might not berealized if they are deleted from memory and never narrated.

Last, but not least, many Kyrgyz are not really sure whether or not they believe indreams.

Not So Real Muslims

The family of the young kidnapper sought to convince Aygul and her family that theyshould just forget about the dream; that it was not an ayan but merely something Ayguljust made up because she was afraid of getting married, that the belief in dreams waskind of irrational, and that this particular dream, in any case, would not come true ifeverybody forgot about it.

If widely practised, dream interpretation and the magical manipulation of omens areregarded with ambiguity by many. They often surround such practices with ironicremarks and gestures, and talking about them they will often condemn them as irratio-nal, as remnants from the past, and point out that of course they do not believe in them.


This was indeed what Aygul did, explaining the practices of dream interpretation andmagic to me before she started telling me about her own experiences: “Oh yes, wemight be kind of superstitious”, she said, referring to the Kyrgyz, and giggled. “But lifeis so hard for people nowadays, and many people are unable to take responsibility fortheir lives … they put their lives in the hands of diviners or practice magic and thingslike that.”

Ever since the first Russian orientalists started exploring religious beliefs and prac-tices in this remote corner of what was at that time the Russian empire—and dividedup what they saw into that which could be termed “real Islam” on the one hand andthat which was categorized as “pre-Islamic remnants” or “degenerated” or “popular”forms of Islam (DeWeese 2002: 310) on the other—the Kyrgyz have had a reputationfor not being “real” Muslims; for being merely “superficially” Islamized and of“mixing” pre-Islamic shamanistic or animistic practices into their practice of Islam.Kyrgyz people seemed to lack everything that the Russian orientalists regarded asemblems of Islamic orthodoxy: mosques, Islamic educational institutions and clerics.On the other hand, they had room for “spirits” of various sorts; for “clairvoyants” andpilgrimages to local sacred places – phenomena which have often been interpreted asfundamentally unIslamic (Crews 2006: 192–207).

Also, in contemporary research on Islam in Central Asia, there has been a stubborntendency to postulate that Kyrgyz peoples’ Muslim identity has always been somewhatsuperficial.8 However, the idea that it makes sense to compare how Islam is understoodand practised in Central Asia with some kind of normative “real” or “pure” Islam hasincreasingly come under attack for being essentialist; for ignoring the fact that Islamhas always and everywhere been subject to local interpretations, and that there hasnever been agreement among Muslims about what constitutes “real” Islam (see, forexample, DeWeese 202: 311; Khalid 2007; Light 2007). If the idea that Kyrgyz peopleare not “real” Muslims, then, might be flawed from a contemporary anthropologicalviewpoint, the fact remains that it is compelling, or at least meaningful, to manyKyrgyz. Indeed, it is an idea that one is often presented with—sometimes with ironicundertones—when asking them about what it means to them to be Muslims.

Since independence, the aggressive secularism that characterized the Soviet years9

has in Kyrgyzstan been replaced with a more ambiguous approach that has engagedwith “religion” as a site of ideas which are potentially dangerous—which mightthreaten the integrity of the state and deprive the individual of will and autonomy—and need to be controlled; but also of ideas through which people might find theresources to a purposeful life and ideas which could be mobilized for the good ofsociety; sources of good morality and ethics—the pillars upon which society rests. Thisambiguous secularism resonates well with how many Kyrgyz perceive “religion” andthe role it should play in their lives as well as in society: since independence, many havebeen concerned with exploring and fashioning a Muslim identity. However, aspreviously mentioned, they might also associate what is perceived as an increasing“religiousness” in society with all sorts of post-Soviet excesses, or, more precisely:excessive strategies for survival to which some people, it is believed, have resorted as away of coping with post-Soviet social change.

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In the period since independence when former restrictions on religious practice wereabolished, religion became increasingly visible in public space, as an increasing numberof Kyrgyz people started to profess a more scriptural understanding of Islam, to dressand act in ways associated with “religiousness”, and to condemn popular practices suchas visits to mazars, local sacred places, consultations with clairvoyants and the belief inancestor spirits as being wrong according to Islam (see also Isci 2008; McBrien 2006;McBrien and Pelkmans 2008). Most of the people I met during my fieldwork inBishkek felt a certain discomfort with this growing “religiousness” in society, even ifmany of them had also embraced the new opportunities for exploring their Muslimidentity with enthusiasm. They commonly spoke of overly “religious” people as weak-minded persons who had withdrawn from the world because of their inability to faceand handle everyday problems and find meaning in the “ideological vacuum” that thebreaking up of the Soviet Union allegedly caused—and who were therefore easy preyto foreign “religious” groups that the state in its present weak state was unable tocontrol. Alternatively, they were seen as hypocrites who embraced Islam as some kindof lifestyle that had nothing to do with sincere faith but was chosen merely because itwas fashionable and signalled the right things; as extreme examples of the consumerculture which had come to characterize Bishkek since independence and which bymany—the elderly and middle-aged generation, in particular—was experienced as anexpression of social fragmentation and moral decay (see also Isci 2008 and Louw, inpress).

In this context, the idea that Kyrgyz people have never been “real” Muslims hasgained new importance; and the ideas which have made observers describe the Kyrgyzas irrational and superstitious are, in some contexts, accentuated as bulwarks againstfanaticism and religious hypocrisy. However, the not so “real” Muslim practices andideas—the ancestor veneration, the omens and the magic among other things—thathelp to keep fanaticism and hypocrisy at bay are at the same time what has madeobservers characterize the Kyrgyz as irrational and backward.

Influenced by Soviet and post-Soviet scholarly discourses which have approachedthem as forms of false consciousness that inhibit people from acting on the real mate-rial world, people in Kyrgyzstan might be inclined to call practices of dream interpre-tation and magical manipulation of omens irrational and point out that of course theydo not believe in them. As Aygul did, they might resort to quasi-sociological andpsychological explanations that resonate with classical theories of magic10 and explainthem as functions of radical social change following the break-up of the Soviet Union;as a result of the fact that life in present-day Bishkek is characterized by unpredictabil-ity; that the future seems blurred and that everyday life is experienced as a struggle withforces it is not easy to understand nor control. Many people, it is said, are unable tonavigate in an insecure and chaotic world like this—and so they resort to belief inomens and magic in order to create some semblance of control over their lives.

This casting of doubt on the meaning of dreams and the efficacy of magic, however,does not preclude engagement in dream interpretation and magic. As phenomenologyhas taught us, the knowledge one lives by is not necessarily identical with theknowledge through which one reflects on and explains events in retrospect: intellectual


rejection of the assumptions underlying beliefs or practices does not necessarilyexclude participating engagement in them and the experience of them as effective insome sense (cf. Jackson 1996: 2). Indeed, it is irrelevant whether or not you “believe”in omens—they just come to you. Sometimes they show up to be “true” in the sense ofpointing towards things that happen later. Indeed, omens get a much stronger aura ofauthenticity when experienced by people who do not “believe” in them, who do notseek them out, but who unexpectedly find themselves as passively being held by a supe-rior power they neither understand nor “believe” in. In the same way you do not haveto believe in the magical practices that are used to manipulate omens and, throughthem, fate—you just practise them. And sometimes they “work”—in the sense ofbringing about desired future outcomes—maybe something you hoped for, maybesomething you did not know you hoped for until it came about.

Dreaming up Futures

It is easy to indulge in functionalist explanations when it comes to magical practices inthe post-Soviet context. The massive social and economic change that followed thebreaking up of the Soviet Union did not merely lead to material deprivation among themain part of the population, but even more profoundly to a feeling among many ofbeing out of sync with society. Many people in Bishkek experience life as a daily battlewith more or less unpredictable forces, and among elderly and middle-aged people,notably, nostalgic memories of the Soviet days to a great extent centre on the theme ofpredictability in life. It might not have been perfect: people might not have had thatmany opportunities as people have now to live out their dreams, create something,become somebody, and they might have lived under a repressive regime, but at leastpeople knew more or less what they could expect from life; there was a certain given-ness to the future; a givenness which was guaranteed by an omnipresent “nanny state”(cf. McMann 2007). People knew that upon graduating from school they would get ajob or be admitted to university. They knew that they would have a salary that mightnot have been princely but which would make them able to provide for their family.They might not have had the choice between hundreds of, say, television brands andchannels, but at least they could afford a television. They did not choose their govern-ment, but at least their government was a guarantee for some kind of stability. In otherwords, one’s liberty of action might not have been that big, but it was there, and therewas a better sense of the relationship between that which was given and had to beaccepted and what which was possible and up to oneself—at least in hindsight.

Galina Lindquist has characterized a similar, and related, context—Moscow duringthe 1990s—as it was experienced by many of its inhabitants, by way of a comparison ofthe metaphors for society the which was prevalent during and after the Soviet period.If people often spoke about Soviet society as a “prison”—rigid structures which limitedpeoples’ agency, but which at least made it possible for people to act within limits—towards the end of the 1990s, society was most often referred to as a “jungle”: a metaphorwhich connoted the absence of structures to an extent which also limited peoples’agency; which made people helpless and vulnerable (Lindquist 2006: 8).

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Although many years have passed since the breaking-up of the Soviet Union, and thefirst generation for whom the Soviet Union is merely something from history booksand their parents’ dusty memories has come of age, life in Kyrgyzstan is still character-ized by insecurity and unpredictability.

The rhetoric of state institutions, for example, is permeated by liberalist mantrastelling people that they can make it in society if they are willing to make an effort.Nonetheless, the experience of many young people, for example, is that making aneffort in school is not enough to get good exam papers and access to a good job or agood education. In the educational system—just like in most of society’s sectors—people encounter hidden fees, at least if they do not have the right connections.

If many people have thus experienced the nanny state having been transformed intoa jungle of hidden fees, traditional—and perhaps to some degree idealized – ideals forbehaviour among relatives have also been taken up to renewed discussion and negoti-ation: You often hear the view expressed that peoples’ loyalty to their relatives, the ideathat relatives should help each other and share what they have, has been replaced withegoism and petty-mindedness. Others, on the contrary, express annoyance with theirfellow countrymen and women, complaining that they are still stuck in an outdatedSoviet mentality: that they do not really make an effort to change things for the betterthemselves, but instead expect other people to take care of them, and sponge on theirrelatives in particular; abuse the fact that they are under the obligation to help them.

To some extent, and as Jakob Rigi has pointed out in a study of generational conflictsin Almaty, Kazakhstan, a generational split can be identified between on the one handan elderly and middle-aged generation who believes that a person becomes somebodythrough honest work; through his or her contribution to society’s (material or intellec-tual) production and the well-being of the family and the community—and on theother hand a younger generation who is disillusioned with the idea of honest work (youcannot really make a living based on “honest work” in a society where, say, a teacherearns a monthly salary of around fifty dollars—and what is honest work anyway, in asociety where teachers, along with doctors and other state employees, are dependent on“gifts” in order to make a living?) as well as with the idea of saving up for a living (whoknows what tomorrow will bring anyway?). The younger generation instead perceivetheir identity as something that needs to be constructed though consumption and lifehere and now (Rigi 2003; on generational differences in coping with post-Soviet socialchange, see also Frederiksen in press and Markowitz 2000).

The Manageable and That Which Has to be Left to Fate

In a context like this, characterized by insecurity, unpredictability and moral ambigu-ity, it might seem obvious that the attentiveness to omens and their magical manipula-tion should be interpreted as means for understanding and creating some semblance ofcontrol of the world—and, as mentioned, this is also an interpretation that seemsconvincing to the Kyrgyz.

However, rather than seeing the attention given to omens as a surrender to somekind of fatalism under circumstances that seem outside one’s reach and control, and


rather than seeing the magical manipulation of omens as a means of reducing insecu-rity, of making—as people in Bishkek often do, when they seek to explain their livesfrom a distance—I am rather inclined to see the attentiveness to omens and magic aspractices through which they imagine and experiment with possible lives; practiceswhich help them to live with, rather than reduce, social complexity, existentialinsecurity and moral ambiguity.

When the Kyrgyz cast doubt on the serious and rational in what they are doing whiledoing it, you never really know what they mean. In the end it is impossible to knowwhat they mean, and perhaps they do not always know themselves. In the end that maybe the whole point: casting doubt on whether you trust, or “believe” in, the dreamomens and the forces which are manipulated though the magic, you take back part ofthe agency you have renounced with the magic; you leave open the possibility that yourown agency is more significant than your recourse to omens and magic seems to show.

The attentiveness to omens and the magic, then, should not merely be understoodas means for reducing insecurity, unpredictability and ambiguity, of making theunmanageable manageable, but more fundamentally as sites for the reflection on andthe experimentation with one of the key questions of human existence as such: what ismanageable, and what is not? Which aspects of my life am I accountable for? What is itpossible for me to influence and control? What should I leave to fate, or to the impen-etrable forces that control my life? This is one of the existential aporias (cf. Jackson2007), which might characterize human life as such, but seems to be most urgently feltin contexts like post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan where radical social change has challengedprevious ideas about which aspects of life are matters of interest, choice and skills, andwhich aspects people have no control of; where new ideas about accountability andabout what it takes to be a good or virtuous human being have challenged old ones.

The uncertainty about what was a matter of individual choice and agency and whatwas not; about where it made sense to make an effort, and where one’s efforts would bein vain, was one that Aygul experienced in an urgent manner, caught, as she was,between the idea that it was possible to “make it” in the city, if not through honestwork, then through networking and through being constantly on the lookout for newpossibilities—and the idea that her social fate, whether she liked it or not, was tobecome a respectable married woman leading a more secure, if without prospects,existence in the village; between the idea that marriage was something you chose andthe idea that marriage was, rather, something that chose you and which you could notescape without bringing shame over your family.

Omens as Social Riddles

Aygul’s potential mother-in-law’s unambiguous rejection of Aygul’s dream as irrele-vant and the belief in dreams as irrational showed up to be an unwise strategy: Aygul’smother perceived it as an insult to her late mother’s authority (and probably, like herdaughter, was not entirely satisfied with the social standing of the family). In any case,the marriage was cancelled for good, and Aygul and her family went home and recitedthe Qur’an in honour of the grandmother, thanking her for the signs she had sent them.

288 M. E. Louw

Soon after, Aygul was able to go back to Bishkek where she resumed her work in thenewspaper kiosk, and where I met her a couple of months after.

Through the practice of dream interpretation, one’s fate and the question of one’sown part in the way it develops becomes a social riddle that several people often takepart in solving. As already mentioned, the meaning of omens is never absolutely clear;omens are always ambiguous and open to different interpretations. A person shouldalways be cautious when it comes to telling other people about omens—and bad omensin particular—as other peoples’ intentions can influence one’s fate when it materializesin omens, and as the mere act of telling other people about omens might make themcome true. Nonetheless, people often discuss omens with persons they trust and whoseopinions they respect and take into consideration. Doing this, they conjure up variouspossible future scenarios and test their social and moral resonance; laying out trajecto-ries which often, indeed, become true.

When a person confesses his or her dreams to another, they involve that other personin their interpretation. It is, thus, a declaration of trust as well as an invitation toinvolve, to play a role, in his or her life. The narration of dream omens, thus, confirmsand creates the social networks which are, or which a person wishes to be, most directlyand profoundly implicated in his or her life and influence his or her life (cf. Heijnen,this volume). Although Aygul had acted in a way that challenged, or at least balancedon the verge of, her family’s norms and values, she would not under any circumstancesdefy her family’s will, denying their central role in the shaping of her fate. Like manyyoung people of her age, she strove to strike a balance between individualism and free-dom on the one hand and traditional communitarian values on the other; betweenexpressing her individuality though consumption and the efforts at being a cool busi-nesswoman on the one hand, and being a “good girl” on the other (c.f. also Kuehnast1998). Instead of merely running away, acting directly on the impulse the ayan gave her,she involved her family in the difficult decision about whether she should stay or leave,leaving the last word about the ayan to them. Ultimately, this was an attitude whichallowed her to pursue a life and a career in the city in spite of the moral challenges thatlife in the city posed; which made her family back her up in spite of all their doubts andall the pressure from their neighbours, and which made her aunt open her home to her.

Later, however, Aygul’s family started to doubt that they had taken the right deci-sion. Gossip in the village would have it that Aygul had become spoiled by life in thecity—the moral decay and lack of respect for traditions perceived to characterize lifethere—and that she, due to her arrogance and stubbornness, would be stuck in hernewspaper kiosk and never have a family. However, Aygul had not lost hope: the othernight, she told me as she recounted her story to me, she dreamt that her grandmothershowed her a big house and told her that it belonged to her. Then Aygul laughed, a littleembarrassed perhaps, or unsure about her story and the meaning of it. And I smiledback at her and nodded, not really sure what to say, but confirming her in her idea thatthis was indeed an important ayan. Also I, a foreigner and urban stranger whom Aygulhad never seen before and, as it transpired, would probably never see again, was alsoinvolved in the social riddles that formed around Aygul’s ayan—in a peripheral way,perhaps, but a way which also made sense to her. If not, she would never have told me


about them. It might be that I in some ways embodied the kind of life she wanted tolive—at least in terms of economic independence and the freedom to pursue a life onechooses oneself—and thus added new perspectives to her fate; some sort of interpreta-tional counterweight to the life trajectories her family envisioned for her. Maybe shehoped that I could confirm that she had made the right decision when she chose to stayin Bishkek, although it had given her a bad reputation in her village and put her familythere under stress; that her choice of life, by so many others deemed unrealistic ormorally dubious, could be a good life anyway and allow her to be a good person.

In the end I never found out whether Aygul’s dream about her grandmother whoshowed her a house became part of her self-construction, or whether it fell into obliv-ion; whether it came to confirm her in her visions about a life and career in the city, orwhether it came to mean something different—and which role, if any, my interviewwith her and my reactions to her dream narratives came to play in the course of her life.When, around a week after our meeting, I went back to the newspaper kiosk in orderto talk with her again, another woman was sitting there who said that she did not knowany woman by the name Aygul, but that she would ask around and let me know if sheheard anything that revealed her whereabouts. I never heard from her. In a big city likeBishkek we step in and out of each others’ lives—sometimes, like Simmel wrote aboutmore than 100 years ago in his classical essay on “The Metropolis and Mental Life”,treating each other with indifference and aversion (Simmel 1976)—but also sometimesinfluencing each other’s lives in surprisingly profound ways.

Conclusion

With this excursion into the social dramas experienced by a young Kyrgyz woman andnarrated to me a couple of months after, in a small newspaper kiosk in central Bishkek,I have tried to make the argument that through dream interpretation and the magicalmanipulation of omens in the Kyrgyz context, one’s fate becomes a social riddle inwhich several people are usually involved in solving: a social riddle which not onlyconcerns the question of which life trajectories one should pursue—the question ofwhich trajectories are possible, desirable and morally righteous—but also the questionof what one can do, oneself, to steer in a certain direction and what has to be left to fate,as well as the question of which people should influence one’s fate.

Paying attention to omens and manipulating—or playing with—them through littlemagical acts is not a question of reducing insecurity and anxiety. It is, rather, a questionof going with insecurity, accepting it, acknowledging that there are several paths a lifecan take. The ambiguous relationship between accentuation of the certainty of fate andof the freedom to choose the course of one’s life which is unfolded in Kyrgyz practicesof dream interpretation should not be interpreted as a logical inconsistency in peoples’world views, but rather, as related to the fact that knowledge is related to doing, it residesin practice. The relative accentuation of fate and free will, then, might be seen as animprovisational navigation between possible futures. Indeed, peoples’ handling ofdream omens highlights the improvisational character of social and cultural life—thatis, the fact that there is no script for social and cultural life, as Elizabeth Hallam and Tim

290 M. E. Louw

Ingold have formulated it (Ingold and Hallam 2007): that people have to work it out,improvise, as they go along, adjusting to changing circumstances, and responding oradjusting to social others and other aspects of their environment.

Notes1 [1] This article is based on around eight months of fieldwork conducted in Kyrgyzstan—and

mainly Bishkek—in the period 2006–2008.2 [2] I use the term ‘shame’ as an approximate translation of the Kyrgyz term uyat.3 [3] The practice of kiz ala kachuu may also be consensual: it can be a way for a young couple

whose parents are against their relationship to marry against the parents’ wish, and it can be away of avoiding, or postponing, the payment of kalym, bride price.

4 [4] Boorsok are usually fried in honour and memory of the ancestors.5 [5] On the concept of Kyrgyzchylyk, see Aitpaeva 2008.6 [6] In 1995, the 1000th anniversary of Manas was celebrated in Kyrgyzstan.7 [7] Widespread among the Kyrgyz is the belief that certain people are chosen for a life mission

such as healing, reciting epics, guarding sacred sites, mediating in different ways between thisworld and the otherworld, and that their health and well-being are directly affected by theiracceptance or rejection of this spiritual mission (Aitpaeva 2008).

8 [8] See, for example, Ashymov 2003 and Garrone 2000.9 [9] Religion being seen in Marxist terms, as a form of false consciousness which inhibited people

from acting on the real material world and realizing their true humanity, the secularism thatprevailed in the Soviet Union was of an aggressive kind which involved the dismantling ofreligious institutions and placing those which remained under strict control. The struggleagainst religion took many forms, ranging from outright destruction of religious institutionsand the liquidation or arrest of religious authorities to anti-religious propaganda and themore subtle mimicking of ‘religious’ forms in the creation of ‘secular’ rituals that were tosubstitute for religious ones (cf. Anderson 1994; Binns 1979, 1980; Ramet 1987).

10[10] See, for example, Malinowski 1948 and Sartre 2001

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