Feel yourself like at home. Gochmyrat Gutlyyev

to a woman? How and did I pay a close attention to the differences? Shame on me, again in mature age…

      For a few years of my life, I have worked as a private taxi driver at some period in my life. I have to clarify here that my main goal in this occupation was to be inside the turbulent life of the surrounding people and to get an opportunity to talk with them freely than for mere making money. Besides, the latter was rather difficult to do in our town, with one of lowest fees for transportation in Turkmenistan. A reader might not believe thus but until recently (before the fuel price increased), a passenger had to apply some effort to persuade a driver to take money at arrival! When everyone knows everyone well or when people are connected by family ties, this attitude is quite common in Turkmen communities (most of them are quite tightly knit). Life in a small provincial town could have its own specific advantages.

      On the other hand, you never know to whom you would talk over the day, what you would be able to watch on a street, and how many hints to this or that side of life you would catch directly from your occasional fellow customers. At that period, I had no any idea and did not suspect that in some years I would get to compose an outline of Turkmen greetings, for example. However, many pictures “from the reality”, verified over and over again during a whole series of unceasing meetings and observations, were stored in my trained memory.

      Naturally, these observations were supplemented by the facts which came from other sources. Now they all have been interlaced so much that it would be impossible to separate, and I myself might not recognize their source anymore.

      One of those observations, a quite curious situation which happened during a trip across our small town, nearly ideally fits into my narrative to demonstrate the difference in greetings; style depending on who is being greeted: a man or a woman.