Tradition and modernity

Un mariage à Och.

The two women could know each other. The one is student and the other teacher in the same Language University. Hilola informs me that it is ok for this evening. She is a free, educated and single young woman. We go to have dinner at Zaytun, a pleasant restaurant with an original indoor tapschan, made with raw tree trunks. Unfortunately, the dinner guests who are sitting there do not want be photographed. I dive in head first.
- What do you think about the tradition, Hilola ?
- The Soviets have tried to impose their idea on place of women in the society by intruding in their personal and family lives. They have left traces without however, as on religious matters, having succeess in elimination of deeply ingrained convictions. It is quite normal that today an adjustment takes place.
- I feel the young women who are studying find themselves a little bit "coincées".
- "Coincées" ?
- Stucked. The women have passed again under the control of elders. The patriarchy did not disappear.
- There is a return to the tradition but things will never be the same as they were before. I travelled in the United States, I met Americans, I am on the web, Facebook, a Russian social network site, I read books, I watch videos. No one will decide for me and I am not the only one thinking like that. Half of the men left to Russia. And who are ruling the roost when they are not there ? When they will come back, they will be surprised.
- And the aksakals ?
- They are old and ever fewer. Their widows replace them, says Hilola with a smile. But I am not sure that the young people gain anything from it.
- Please, tell me a tapshan story, Hilola.
- I remember that one night, I was a child, I felt asleep on the tapshan next to my grandmother and my two younger sisters. My grandmother were lying near the open side, I against the closed back side and my sisters in the middle. At the morning, there was a great anxiety in the household. I was disappeared. I was not on the tapschan, or nowhere else. The din woke me as well the big dog who was sleeping beside me. During the night, I passed under the tapschan. How it was done, that remains a big mystery.
- You had certainly done a big mischief in your dream and have been punished.
- I do not remember having dreamed. You know there is a protocol on the tapshan ? All the places are not equivalent. The guests are always placed in the middle of the closed length. It is the place of honour. If the guest is placed in one of the extremities of the open length, that means he is not welcome.
- Do you have a tapshan at your home ?
- Just a small terrace on my balcony. It is my way of adapting the tradition.

Comforted by my meeting with Hilola, I decide to accept the proposal of Suhrob, cultural attaché at the Iranian center I met in the street, to spend one night in his home. He lives in a big grey village which sprawls out in a plain at one hour from the Khodjent road. In his house, no tapshan. We take place with his father for the dinner in a room provided with carpets, kurpachas and bolishes arranged on the floor. The women are invisible. Suhrob makes me uncomfortable. A kind of resignation in his eyes. Married and father of four young children, he taught at university. Then he left for Siberia where he lived one year in tough conditions. He would return there gladly because it is the only way to make enough money to support the family. But he does not want to leave his children alone with their mother. Practising Muslim, he aspires to go to Mecca as his father did. Has he TV ? Yes, but he does not watch it because only Uzbek channels can be received and he does not want his children are badly influenced.
- Some problems with the Uzbeks ?
- Men in my family married Uzbek girls.
- And conversely ?
- No.

I shall have often heard about tradition during my trip. Among the young women I met, often stemming from the urban middle class, many study at university, do not care about a traditional marriage and want to be independent. For others, tradition is a compulsion that they impose on themselves and which becomes a reality in the look : respect for conventions, clothes. Nevertheless, more and more refuse the assigned husbands and the submission to their in-laws. But Karakalpakstan is not Khorezm and the girls are not necessarily happier in Tashkent than in Samarcande or in Gorno-Badakhshan. In Kyrgyzstan, where Kirghiz is said respectful of women condition, is always practised the kidnapping of the future wife. I shall however meet in Bishkek and in Och the most emancipated girls in Central Asia. There is also the habitual segregation town/country. But, despite appearances, the tradition remains strong once crossed the house's threshold. Then there are some differences linked with influence of aksakals (They have not all died, Hilola) and mollahs who do not want the women work out of home. Hilola spoke about the traces left by Soviets and the impact of economic migrations, two events which have troubled the traditional lifestyle. Soviet chapter by imposing gender equality, economic migrations by changing the traditional power-relationship.

Tradition is coming back, will I often heard. I agree with you Hilola, this is not surprising within a configuration of states in quest for identity. But the tradition, that means that the girl old enough to get married, when she reaches 20, even less in countrysides, has to accept a more or less arranged marriage. That means that, from her wedding night, the young bride has to leave the family home and settle in the in-laws home where she is placed under the authority of her mother-in-law and becomes in charge of houseworks, that she will have a baby within one year, and that she will never have access to a paid employment or an independent economic activity. If she is overqualified, if a divorce occurs, if she is still single at 25, it will be hard to her to find her role in the society. Is this why the bride is so sad during the wedding ceremony ? I was allowed to attend a wedding where the bride was sorrowful and silent, looking stubbornly at the ground during all the ceremony. No, it was told me, a ladylike girl must never shows its feelings, especially in front of a foreigner. "Women's liberation, more or less formerly gained by the communism, is yielding to the Afghanization of Central Asia", notices René Cagnat (in La Rumeur des Steppes, Payot 2012).

The Islam is not the only question. It is not the rules promulgated by the religion which oblige the women to wear the burqa, it is the conduct rules imposed by men. The veil has more to do with cave age than with any religion. The woman has to stay in the shade. As Jean Hannoyer notes (Guerres civiles. Économies de la violence, dimension de la civilité), the question is also related to the virility syndrome : "The woman is desired and kept under surveillance more than ever. Especially desired while she is always more visible, more attractive, more liberated, without becoming more approachable. Especially under surveillance while her reputation stays under the male principle, when it comes to the close family, and this for the many, even in the city."

Tradition is coming back. Nevertheless, I could quote dozens names. They are following the way opened by Hilola and others before her, they are studying and intend to travel, they refuse the forced marriage, show character, personality and courage and are generally less timorous than the boys. It is not always simple for them, because the family is still a significant unit and the opinion of the parents still dominant. Since Gengis Khan until Stalin, peoples of Central Asia have been subjected to the most deeply entrenched tyrannies. The land, the people, their productions were cyclically ravaged. Is this why they "are retiring into their small well enclosed houses, safeguarding laboriously their values" as is presuming René Cagnat ? Tradition and modernity, two terms which are considered opposites, which seem to want to exclude each other and which peoples are however claiming for their self-fulfillment. But is not the tradition another demonstration of heredity ? If it is being refused any useful purpose in an evolutionary strategy, it becomes, to paraphrase Chesterton, a "dictatorship of deaths". Chesterton spoke about "democracy of the deaths" in terms of inviting the deaths in our Councils. Like all forms of heredity, the tradition is condemned to mix with the modernity at the risk of repeating ad nauseam always the same stupidities.

Women of Central Asia do not reject the tradition. As Hilola, they try to adapt it, to make that their heritage fits into a form of modernity which belongs to them. The rejection of pants under the tunic for a skirt, and the size of it, are not priority issues but they contribute to reflect a non-conformist image through the fashion. Baudelaire himself considered the fashion as a modernity criterion. At the end of my trip, in my return flight, I will see on my single screen the Uzbek movie Telba, directed in 2008 by Ayub Shahobidinov. This movie tells the overused story of a young girl from a well-to-do family in love with a poor young man. The rich family, as wants the tradition, is opposed to this relationship and the story finishes tragically. The young man is murdered by henchmen sent by the brother of the girl and this one commits suicide. This movie seems at first illustrating the stupidity of tradition and bourgeoisie which leads to the loss of the beloved daughter. Not so simple. Advocates of tradition can always use the movie as an argument to threaten the young people with the risks they take by defying this one. Tchinghiz Aïmatov was more explicit with the destinity of Djamilia. Not only the young woman breaks with the tradition in leaving her husband for the man she loves and taking off with him, but the young brother of her husband, naive and secretly in love, discovers through her the strength and the beauty of the freedom which will allow him to become emancipated in turn and to become an artist.

To conclude, Omar Khayyam, honoured in all Central Asia and Persia and universally celebrated, is he not often described as a man free of any a priori, a particular person who goes against all the common preconception of his era, which was clearly profoundly stamped by tradition ?

Thanks to Anne Ducloux, Anthropologist and university lecturer, specialist in Central Asia, for her help in writing this article.