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. Here are some entries from the blog I tried to keep.
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.
Anybody who knows the history, background, culture, language etc is strongly invited to contribute, to give
the page more legitimacy. Good company of any kind is also warmly welcomed. Do participate.
Be_flummoxed 