While staying for a year in Ashgabat, fascinated by this inscrutable country, its wealth of ancient sites, its recent Soviet past and its current foibles. Trying to keep a blog in a secretive country with precarious internet was maybe not a great idea. It’s a bit dated now, the approach and the writing, though it gives a few mildly interesting, gentle insights into the country in the late Niyazov period. Whatever, here are half a dozen entries.
THE ASHGABAT DRAGOMAN
There must be a place, under the sun,
Where hearts of olden glory grow young
(Runrig song)
I’ll show you a place, high on a desert plain,
Where the streets have no name
(U2)
Welcome to these pages. ‘Dragoman’ is an Ottoman Turkish word that meant an interpreter – one who translates orally from one language to another, a skill highly prized in empires of all kinds.
This is a personal diary of a stay in Turkmenistan. It will be contrained by the limits of what an individual can (or is allowed) to see or know, and what can be written without getting anybody into trouble. That apart, it should provide some interesting, hopefully unexpected encounters with this little-known region of Central Asia.
Blog entries – ‘The Ashgabat Dragoman’
3. A Turkmen sculptor’s studio: Jumadurdy Juma
Be_flummoxed 