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

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Dreaming up Futures. Dream Omens and Magic in Bishkek1

Maria Elisabeth Louw

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 the complex relationship between belief in fate and belief in the free will as expressed in Kyrgyz practices of dream interpretation and sharing and, thus, on the complexity of the imprints of 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 a virtual realm, a subjunctive state, where they can imagine and orient themselves toward various potential future scenarios and test the social and moral resonance of these scenarios; last, but not least: where they can reflect on the question of what they are able to control and change, and what has to be left to chance or fate: one of the existential aporias which might characterize human life as such, but seems to be most urgently felt in contexts and situations where radical social change has challenged previous ideas about which aspects of life 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 virtuous human being have challenged old ones. One such context is that of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan.
etnolouw@hum.au.dk MariaLouw(print)/1477-2612 (online) 000000September 2010 3 21 2010 Originaland 0275-7206 Anthropology History&Article 10.1080/02757206.2010.496780 GHAN_A_496780.sgm Taylor and Francis Francis

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 newspaper 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 people in 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: etnolouw@hum.au.dk ISSN 02757206 print/ISSN 14772612 online/10/03027716 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/02757206.2010.496780

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others, Aygul had come to Bishkek in search of a better life, dreaming of becoming a rich and stylish businesswoman, returning to her village in a big Mercedes and building a two-storied house for her family. After a couple of years, however, she had not made it any further than the newspaper kiosk which provided her with a stable income but nothing of the sort that you need in order to buy a Mercedes and build a house. Her family back in the village were now about to lose their patience with her. Rather than looking forward to being the first family in the village with a two-storied house, she told me, they were persistently trying to persuade her to give up her career dreams and instead return home and get married in order not to bring shame2 on herself and her family: the city was not only the site of opportunities to improve life, but also of moral pitfalls, and it was not only stories about people who had made it in the city that circulated in the village; equally widespread were stories and rumours of those who had been unable to resist the citys temptations 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 that she lived with her aunt helped her to sustain her reputation, her family still worried about 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 their fellow villagers, of whether there would not soon be a toy, wedding party, and their warnings that Aygul, who was now in her mid twenties, might miss her chance if she did not soon marry and settle down. A couple of months ago, Aygul was on the verge of giving up her career dreams and returning to the village, surrendering to the social fate that most people therenow including her familyapparently believed to be hers: in the middle of the street she was forced into a car by four young men and driven to a house in the village where the relatives 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 have challenged the idea that it is a Kyrgyz tradition (cf. Werner 2009), it is widely practised in Kyrgyzstan: a young man who has chosen a bride might ask his friends to help him abduct her by force or deceptionor bothand take her to his home. Here, his female relatives will be waiting, attempting to don her a white headscarf as a sign that she has accepted the marriage, praising the family that she is marrying into andif she resistswarning 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 tablecloth with boorsok, small deep-fried pieces of bread, is sometimes placed on the threshold. There is a strong taboo connected with stepping on or crossing the tablecloth which symbolizes central Kyrgyz virtues such as hospitality and respect for the ancestors.4 Alternatively, her potential mother-in-law might lie down on the threshold, blocking the girls way out of the room. Aygul did not want to move back to the village and liked neither her kidnappera boy she found boorish and uneducatednor the house she had been taken to. She resisted his grandmothers 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 to persuade her that she would disgrace her family if she ignored the wedding feast they had prepared; that she would never become anything but a newsagent anyway; that she would marry into a good family, and that she would never marry if she refused their generous offer. Finally, Aygul fell asleep. Just before dawn her late grandmother came to her. The grandmother asked her to look at herself. Aygul looked at herself and saw that 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 her the 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 grandmothers favourite grandchild, and the sense of her grandmothers presence filled her with a feeling that things would be all right, no matter what happened. And then there were the shoes: according to the Kyrgyz tradition of dream interpretation, shoes are symbols of marriage. When her beloved grandmother drew her attention towards the missing 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 revelations. Talking of the importance of dreams among the Kyrgyz, people will often draw your attention to the fact that dreams play central roles as sources of predictions in the epic Manas, which is considered the Kyrgyz national epic, and which is often referred to as a major source of what Kyrgyzchylyk, Kyrgyzness5 is all about.6 Furthermore, the reciters of the epic, the manaschys, are usually called to their task by the spirits of the deceased in dreams. In these dreams, they meet a character from the epic or a previous prominent manaschy who tells them to become manaschys themselves (cf. Bakchiev and Egemberdieva 2007).7 However, dreams do not only play important roles in the lives of epic characters and specially gifted people, but also in the lives of many ordinary people. This is also the case in Bishkek, although the city has the reputation of being thoroughly secularized, although many Kyrgyz are of the opinion that life there has been fundamentally altered by the russification and modernization that came to characterize it through the twentieth century when Kyrgyzstan became part of the Soviet Union and, thus, part of a massive project of social engineering aimed at radically modernizing and secularizing society. Although, on the break-up of the Soviet Union and Kyrgyzstans independence in 1991, the advent of capitalism and of western consumer culture, in the eyes of many, have been hard blows to Kyrgyz spirituality: the middle-aged and the elderly generation, in particular, tend to see the younger generations as far too focused on pursuing easy money and constructing their identity through consumption instead of gaining a living and becoming someone through honest work, through ones contribution to societys (material or intellectual) production 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 is also rather unaffected by the fact that many people in Bishkekas I will develop, belowhave 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 and world denial and on the other hand a superficial religious lifestyle that does not necessarily imply an intimate relationship with God and lifes more spiritual sides. To be religious 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, there is a strong sense among many Kyrgyz people that their lives are intimately connected with God, with Divine or extrasensory interventions. Many are attentive to, and engage in interpreting the diverse signs, or omens, which surround them during the day and come to them in their dreams at night. It is first and foremost through dreams and visions that the Divine takes place in the lives of the not so religious Kyrgyz. Here, I will concentrate on dream omens. Dreamsor rather, certain dreamsare seen as ayan, omens or signs sent by the ancestors, and ultimately by God, which can help people to make the right decisions and choices in lifeif they know how to interpret the omens. Some people are more receptive to ayan than others. This susceptibility is believed to be hereditary, but it is also an ability which can be cultivated through a spiritually and morally righteous living. Fundamentally, however, ayan are unpredictable 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 futurebetween the here and now and the various imaginary horizons toward which people orient themselves (cf. Crapanzano 2004). Omens are some kind of provisional, or perhaps hyperreal, materializations of that which has not yet materialized: what often distinguishes ayan and makes it possible to distinguish them from ordinary dreams which are seen as meaningless or as stemming from the unconscious in the Freudian understanding (which is known to many Kyrgyz) is that the dreams sense impressionsimages, moods, feelings, sounds and smellsare experienced as extraordinarily real, that is, as real in a more urgent sense than the sense impressions of everyday life: the smells keep hanging in the air even after ones awakening; the fear keeps sitting in ones body; the images 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 her beloved grandmother kept filling her although she woke up to the sight, sounds and smells of a place where she did not want to stay, of people to whom she did not want to be related; of a life she did not want to live. The hope for the future, in short, seemed more real than the discomfort of the present. Omens are experienced at the same time as the invasion of otherness and as the revelation of hidden possibilities in the known. They disturb peoples normal sense of the forthcoming of the world; of the future which is imminent in the present (cf. Bourdieu 2000). They make that which is here and now appear less involving; it is experienced less intensely (cf. Hage 2002). Instead, it is experienced as a relatively unimportant temporary step on the way towards an objectified, though most often blurred, future. They are triggers of subjunctivitya mood or form of being characterized by doubt, hope, fear, will, desire and potentiality (Whyte 2002: 175); by the sense that ones life is changing track; that something new is going to happen for which one can hope, desire or fear, or just be uncertain about. Divine signs become a sort of cognitive and

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emotional scaffold that can be used for reflection. They create a different kind of temporality, a larger time horizon, to peoples existence; they create orientations toward imagined futures in situations where the future seems uncertain, where peoples normal channels for agency might be blocked (cf. Lindquist 2006: 4) or where possible 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 intensely and often seek to interfere with them. They also play a central role in the way Kyrgyz people practise their religion, Islam: many Kyrgyz peoples relationship with the Quran, 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 is believed, visit them in their homes on Thursdays or Fridays in order to see how they are doing. The beliefs and practices related with arbak have increasingly come under attack 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 peoples dreams. Even if the arbak might not show themselves directly, Kyrgyz people often interpret voices, images and feelings experienced in dreams as ayan, signs, from arbaklike Aygul did when she dreamt that her late grandmother 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 is usually interpreted as a sign that this person will soon die or fall seriously ill, whereas when a person receives something from an ancestor, it is usually considered a good omen (cf. Bakchiev and Egemberdieva 2007). Arbak remind people about things they have forgotten; reprove them if they have done something wrong, warn them if they are about to make a wrong decision, but also give courage and moral authority to insecure and morally dubious acts. A central theme in many recent anthropological studies of dreams and dream sharing is the construction, or staging, of self (cf. Heijnen, in press). Also, in the context of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, dreams often seem to play a major role when it comes to constructing and negotiating self-hood. Dreams about ancestors give cause for reflection. For the dreamer they can draw the contours of a new self and become central episodes in his or her life story (cf. Ewing 1990)and they can draw the contours of new relations between people which might become real if the dream is considered as authentic by others. Ambiguity and Magic The ayan sent by her grandmother had confirmed Aygul in her feeling that marrying her abductor would not change her life for the better. However, it would be very difficult for her to escape unless her family accepted her decision to do so. Although most Kyrgyz, when asked about the practice of bride abduction, might deny that it is a Kyrgyz tradition, although they might conceive of it as fundamentally wrong, and although they might pity an abducted womans situation, they might also believe that she 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 been kidnapped, people might question whether she is still a virgin. Furthermore, as Cynthia Werner has pointed out, there is a danger that she will be considered stubborn and belligerent, and therefore less desirable as a marriage partner and daughter-in-law. These cultural beliefs are often effectively invoked in persuasive performances to pressure the bride to accept the marriage (Werner 2009: 323). As the custom is, her abductors family had sent messengers to Ayguls family to apologize for the fact that they had abducted her, and as representatives from her family 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 family matters, and had often done so in Ayguls family more particularly, where there were several people who possessed special gifts in the sense of being more open to ayan than people normally are. However, they were not sure about what to think about, and what to do with, the ayan: omens are never unambiguous, but always open to interpretation. Even symbols which are considered unambiguous and figure in any Kyrgyz dream inventory can sometimes mean the opposite: omens of deathraw meat and the loss of teeth, for examplemight show up to be omens of new life, the birth of a child, just as a dream about missing shoes might be an omen of a long and happy marriage. 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 real dream might be radically different from the dream as narrated. Furthermore, in Kyrgyz practices of dream interpretation, a complex relationship between belief in fate and belief in the free will is unfolded: through magical practices which manipulate dream omens, people sometimes seek to affect what is about to happen, changing the fate that they, in other situations, claim not to have any control of: magical practices which are usually not very spectacular: It can be a short prayer to God, it can be lighting candles for the arbak, ancestor spirits, hoping for their help, or it can be throwing away the omens with water; or it can just be the attempt to practise positive thinking; to forget the omenfollowing the idea that omens might not be realized if they are deleted from memory and never narrated. Last, but not least, many Kyrgyz are not really sure whether or not they believe in dreams. Not So Real Muslims The family of the young kidnapper sought to convince Aygul and her family that they should just forget about the dream; that it was not an ayan but merely something Aygul just made up because she was afraid of getting married, that the belief in dreams was kind of irrational, and that this particular dream, in any case, would not come true if everybody forgot about it. If widely practised, dream interpretation and the magical manipulation of omens are regarded with ambiguity by many. They often surround such practices with ironic remarks and gestures, and talking about them they will often condemn them as irrational, as remnants from the past, and point out that of course they do not believe in them.

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This was indeed what Aygul did, explaining the practices of dream interpretation and magic to me before she started telling me about her own experiences: Oh yes, we might be kind of superstitious, she said, referring to the Kyrgyz, and giggled. But life is so hard for people nowadays, and many people are unable to take responsibility for their lives they put their lives in the hands of diviners or practice magic and things like that. Ever since the first Russian orientalists started exploring religious beliefs and practices in this remote corner of what was at that time the Russian empireand divided up what they saw into that which could be termed real Islam on the one hand and that which was categorized as pre-Islamic remnants or degenerated or popular forms of Islam (DeWeese 2002: 310) on the otherthe Kyrgyz have had a reputation for 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 as emblems of Islamic orthodoxy: mosques, Islamic educational institutions and clerics. On the other hand, they had room for spirits of various sorts; for clairvoyants and pilgrimages to local sacred places phenomena which have often been interpreted as fundamentally unIslamic (Crews 2006: 192207). Also, in contemporary research on Islam in Central Asia, there has been a stubborn tendency to postulate that Kyrgyz peoples Muslim identity has always been somewhat superficial.8 However, the idea that it makes sense to compare how Islam is understood and practised in Central Asia with some kind of normative real or pure Islam has increasingly come under attack for being essentialist; for ignoring the fact that Islam has always and everywhere been subject to local interpretations, and that there has never been agreement among Muslims about what constitutes real Islam (see, for example, DeWeese 202: 311; Khalid 2007; Light 2007). If the idea that Kyrgyz people are not real Muslims, then, might be flawed from a contemporary anthropological viewpoint, the fact remains that it is compelling, or at least meaningful, to many Kyrgyz. Indeed, it is an idea that one is often presented withsometimes with ironic undertoneswhen 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 engaged with religion as a site of ideas which are potentially dangerouswhich might threaten 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 the resources to a purposeful life and ideas which could be mobilized for the good of society; sources of good morality and ethicsthe pillars upon which society rests. This ambiguous secularism resonates well with how many Kyrgyz perceive religion and the role it should play in their lives as well as in society: since independence, many have been concerned with exploring and fashioning a Muslim identity. However, as previously 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 a way of coping with post-Soviet social change.

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In the period since independence when former restrictions on religious practice were abolished, religion became increasingly visible in public space, as an increasing number of Kyrgyz people started to profess a more scriptural understanding of Islam, to dress and act in ways associated with religiousness, and to condemn popular practices such as visits to mazars, local sacred places, consultations with clairvoyants and the belief in ancestor 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 in Bishkek felt a certain discomfort with this growing religiousness in society, even if many of them had also embraced the new opportunities for exploring their Muslim identity with enthusiasm. They commonly spoke of overly religious people as weakminded persons who had withdrawn from the world because of their inability to face and handle everyday problems and find meaning in the ideological vacuum that the breaking up of the Soviet Union allegedly causedand who were therefore easy prey to foreign religious groups that the state in its present weak state was unable to control. Alternatively, they were seen as hypocrites who embraced Islam as some kind of lifestyle that had nothing to do with sincere faith but was chosen merely because it was fashionable and signalled the right things; as extreme examples of the consumer culture which had come to characterize Bishkek since independence and which by manythe elderly and middle-aged generation, in particularwas experienced as an expression of social fragmentation and moral decay (see also Isci 2008 and Louw, in press). In this context, the idea that Kyrgyz people have never been real Muslims has gained new importance; and the ideas which have made observers describe the Kyrgyz as irrational and superstitious are, in some contexts, accentuated as bulwarks against fanaticism and religious hypocrisy. However, the not so real Muslim practices and ideasthe ancestor veneration, the omens and the magic among other thingsthat help to keep fanaticism and hypocrisy at bay are at the same time what has made observers characterize the Kyrgyz as irrational and backward. Influenced by Soviet and post-Soviet scholarly discourses which have approached them as forms of false consciousness that inhibit people from acting on the real material world, people in Kyrgyzstan might be inclined to call practices of dream interpretation and magical manipulation of omens irrational and point out that of course they do not believe in them. As Aygul did, they might resort to quasi-sociological and psychological explanations that resonate with classical theories of magic10 and explain them 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 unpredictability; that the future seems blurred and that everyday life is experienced as a struggle with forces it is not easy to understand nor control. Many people, it is said, are unable to navigate in an insecure and chaotic world like thisand so they resort to belief in omens 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 phenomenology has taught us, the knowledge one lives by is not necessarily identical with the knowledge through which one reflects on and explains events in retrospect: intellectual

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rejection of the assumptions underlying beliefs or practices does not necessarily exclude participating engagement in them and the experience of them as effective in some sense (cf. Jackson 1996: 2). Indeed, it is irrelevant whether or not you believe in omensthey just come to you. Sometimes they show up to be true in the sense of pointing towards things that happen later. Indeed, omens get a much stronger aura of authenticity when experienced by people who do not believe in them, who do not seek them out, but who unexpectedly find themselves as passively being held by a superior power they neither understand nor believe in. In the same way you do not have to believe in the magical practices that are used to manipulate omens and, through them, fateyou just practise them. And sometimes they workin the sense of bringing about desired future outcomesmaybe something you hoped for, maybe something 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 in the post-Soviet context. The massive social and economic change that followed the breaking up of the Soviet Union did not merely lead to material deprivation among the main part of the population, but even more profoundly to a feeling among many of being out of sync with society. Many people in Bishkek experience life as a daily battle with 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 of predictability in life. It might not have been perfect: people might not have had that many 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 least people knew more or less what they could expect from life; there was a certain givenness 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 a job or be admitted to university. They knew that they would have a salary that might not 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 and channels, but at least they could afford a television. They did not choose their government, but at least their government was a guarantee for some kind of stability. In other words, ones liberty of action might not have been that big, but it was there, and there was a better sense of the relationship between that which was given and had to be accepted and what which was possible and up to oneselfat least in hindsight. Galina Lindquist has characterized a similar, and related, contextMoscow during the 1990sas it was experienced by many of its inhabitants, by way of a comparison of the metaphors for society the which was prevalent during and after the Soviet period. If people often spoke about Soviet society as a prisonrigid structures which limited peoples 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 metaphor which 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 the first generation for whom the Soviet Union is merely something from history books and their parents dusty memories has come of age, life in Kyrgyzstan is still characterized by insecurity and unpredictability. The rhetoric of state institutions, for example, is permeated by liberalist mantras telling 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 an effort in school is not enough to get good exam papers and access to a good job or a good education. In the educational systemjust like in most of societys 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 into a jungle of hidden fees, traditionaland perhaps to some degree idealized ideals for behaviour among relatives have also been taken up to renewed discussion and negotiation: You often hear the view expressed that peoples loyalty to their relatives, the idea that relatives should help each other and share what they have, has been replaced with egoism and petty-mindedness. Others, on the contrary, express annoyance with their fellow countrymen and women, complaining that they are still stuck in an outdated Soviet mentality: that they do not really make an effort to change things for the better themselves, but instead expect other people to take care of them, and sponge on their relatives 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 conflicts in Almaty, Kazakhstan, a generational split can be identified between on the one hand an elderly and middle-aged generation who believes that a person becomes somebody through honest work; through his or her contribution to societys (material or intellectual) production and the well-being of the family and the communityand on the other hand a younger generation who is disillusioned with the idea of honest work (you cannot really make a living based on honest work in a society where, say, a teacher earns a monthly salary of around fifty dollarsand what is honest work anyway, in a society 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 (who knows what tomorrow will bring anyway?). The younger generation instead perceive their identity as something that needs to be constructed though consumption and life here and now (Rigi 2003; on generational differences in coping with post-Soviet social change, 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 ambiguity, it might seem obvious that the attentiveness to omens and their magical manipulation should be interpreted as means for understanding and creating some semblance of control of the worldand, as mentioned, this is also an interpretation that seems convincing to the Kyrgyz. However, rather than seeing the attention given to omens as a surrender to some kind of fatalism under circumstances that seem outside ones reach and control, and

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rather than seeing the magical manipulation of omens as a means of reducing insecurity, of makingas people in Bishkek often do, when they seek to explain their lives from a distanceI am rather inclined to see the attentiveness to omens and magic as practices through which they imagine and experiment with possible lives; practices which help them to live with, rather than reduce, social complexity, existential insecurity and moral ambiguity. When the Kyrgyz cast doubt on the serious and rational in what they are doing while doing it, you never really know what they mean. In the end it is impossible to know what they mean, and perhaps they do not always know themselves. In the end that may be the whole point: casting doubt on whether you trust, or believe in, the dream omens and the forces which are manipulated though the magic, you take back part of the agency you have renounced with the magic; you leave open the possibility that your own 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 understood as means for reducing insecurity, unpredictability and ambiguity, of making the unmanageable manageable, but more fundamentally as sites for the reflection on and the experimentation with one of the key questions of human existence as such: what is manageable, and what is not? Which aspects of my life am I accountable for? What is it possible for me to influence and control? What should I leave to fate, or to the impenetrable forces that control my life? This is one of the existential aporias (cf. Jackson 2007), which might characterize human life as such, but seems to be most urgently felt in contexts like post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan where radical social change has challenged previous ideas about which aspects of life 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 virtuous human being have challenged old ones. The uncertainty about what was a matter of individual choice and agency and what was not; about where it made sense to make an effort, and where ones efforts would be in 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 honest work, then through networking and through being constantly on the lookout for new possibilitiesand the idea that her social fate, whether she liked it or not, was to become a respectable married woman leading a more secure, if without prospects, existence in the village; between the idea that marriage was something you chose and the idea that marriage was, rather, something that chose you and which you could not escape without bringing shame over your family. Omens as Social Riddles Ayguls potential mother-in-laws unambiguous rejection of Ayguls dream as irrelevant and the belief in dreams as irrational showed up to be an unwise strategy: Ayguls mother perceived it as an insult to her late mothers authority (and probably, like her daughter, 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 recited the Quran in honour of the grandmother, thanking her for the signs she had sent them.

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Soon after, Aygul was able to go back to Bishkek where she resumed her work in the newspaper kiosk, and where I met her a couple of months after. Through the practice of dream interpretation, ones fate and the question of ones own part in the way it develops becomes a social riddle that several people often take part in solving. As already mentioned, the meaning of omens is never absolutely clear; omens are always ambiguous and open to different interpretations. A person should always be cautious when it comes to telling other people about omensand bad omens in particularas other peoples intentions can influence ones fate when it materializes in omens, and as the mere act of telling other people about omens might make them come true. Nonetheless, people often discuss omens with persons they trust and whose opinions they respect and take into consideration. Doing this, they conjure up various possible future scenarios and test their social and moral resonance; laying out trajectories which often, indeed, become true. When a person confesses his or her dreams to another, they involve that other person in their interpretation. It is, thus, a declaration of trust as well as an invitation to involve, to play a role, in his or her life. The narration of dream omens, thus, confirms and creates the social networks which are, or which a person wishes to be, most directly and 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 balanced on the verge of, her familys norms and values, she would not under any circumstances defy her familys will, denying their central role in the shaping of her fate. Like many young people of her age, she strove to strike a balance between individualism and freedom on the one hand and traditional communitarian values on the other; between expressing her individuality though consumption and the efforts at being a cool businesswoman on the one hand, and being a good girl on the other (c.f. also Kuehnast 1998). 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 which allowed her to pursue a life and a career in the city in spite of the moral challenges that life in the city posed; which made her family back her up in spite of all their doubts and all the pressure from their neighbours, and which made her aunt open her home to her. Later, however, Ayguls family started to doubt that they had taken the right decision. Gossip in the village would have it that Aygul had become spoiled by life in the citythe moral decay and lack of respect for traditions perceived to characterize life thereand that she, due to her arrogance and stubbornness, would be stuck in her newspaper kiosk and never have a family. However, Aygul had not lost hope: the other night, she told me as she recounted her story to me, she dreamt that her grandmother showed her a big house and told her that it belonged to her. Then Aygul laughed, a little embarrassed perhaps, or unsure about her story and the meaning of it. And I smiled back at her and nodded, not really sure what to say, but confirming her in her idea that this was indeed an important ayan. Also I, a foreigner and urban stranger whom Aygul had never seen before and, as it transpired, would probably never see again, was also involved in the social riddles that formed around Ayguls ayanin a peripheral way, perhaps, but a way which also made sense to her. If not, she would never have told me

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about them. It might be that I in some ways embodied the kind of life she wanted to liveat least in terms of economic independence and the freedom to pursue a life one chooses oneselfand thus added new perspectives to her fate; some sort of interpretational counterweight to the life trajectories her family envisioned for her. Maybe she hoped that I could confirm that she had made the right decision when she chose to stay in Bishkek, although it had given her a bad reputation in her village and put her family there under stress; that her choice of life, by so many others deemed unrealistic or morally dubious, could be a good life anyway and allow her to be a good person. In the end I never found out whether Ayguls dream about her grandmother who showed her a house became part of her self-construction, or whether it fell into oblivion; whether it came to confirm her in her visions about a life and career in the city, or whether it came to mean something differentand which role, if any, my interview with 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 order to talk with her again, another woman was sitting there who said that she did not know any woman by the name Aygul, but that she would ask around and let me know if she heard anything that revealed her whereabouts. I never heard from her. In a big city like Bishkek we step in and out of each others livessometimes, like Simmel wrote about more 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 sometimes influencing each others lives in surprisingly profound ways. Conclusion With this excursion into the social dramas experienced by a young Kyrgyz woman and narrated 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 magical manipulation of omens in the Kyrgyz context, ones fate becomes a social riddle in which several people are usually involved in solving: a social riddle which not only concerns the question of which life trajectories one should pursuethe question of which trajectories are possible, desirable and morally righteousbut also the question of 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 ones fate. Paying attention to omens and manipulatingor playing withthem through little magical acts is not a question of reducing insecurity and anxiety. It is, rather, a question of going with insecurity, accepting it, acknowledging that there are several paths a life can take. The ambiguous relationship between accentuation of the certainty of fate and of the freedom to choose the course of ones life which is unfolded in Kyrgyz practices of 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 resides in practice. The relative accentuation of fate and free will, then, might be seen as an improvisational navigation between possible futures. Indeed, peoples handling of dream omens highlights the improvisational character of social and cultural lifethat is, the fact that there is no script for social and cultural life, as Elizabeth Hallam and Tim

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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 or adjusting to social others and other aspects of their environment. Notes
[1] This article is based on around eight months of fieldwork conducted in Kyrgyzstanand mainly Bishkekin the period 20062008. [2] I use the term shame as an approximate translation of the Kyrgyz term uyat. [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 a way of avoiding, or postponing, the payment of kalym, bride price. [4] Boorsok are usually fried in honour and memory of the ancestors. [5] On the concept of Kyrgyzchylyk, see Aitpaeva 2008. [6] In 1995, the 1000th anniversary of Manas was celebrated in Kyrgyzstan. [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 this world and the otherworld, and that their health and well-being are directly affected by their acceptance or rejection of this spiritual mission (Aitpaeva 2008). [8] See, for example, Ashymov 2003 and Garrone 2000. [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 that prevailed in the Soviet Union was of an aggressive kind which involved the dismantling of religious institutions and placing those which remained under strict control. The struggle against religion took many forms, ranging from outright destruction of religious institutions and the liquidation or arrest of religious authorities to anti-religious propaganda and the more subtle mimicking of religious forms in the creation of secular rituals that were to substitute for religious ones (cf. Anderson 1994; Binns 1979, 1980; Ramet 1987). [10] See, for example, Malinowski 1948 and Sartre 2001
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

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