Headline

Dilrom Ergasheva, who is Tajik, was born in 1951 in Uchkurgan, a village in the Batken province of Kyrgyzstan, not far from Tajikistan. She grew up on a collective farm, went to university, and became a teacher. “I never met [my husband] until the wedding. The first time I saw him was on the day of the wedding,” she recalled. Nazarbegim Muzaffarova interviewed her in Uchkurgan on March 13, 2009.

I grew up in a very simple but educated family. I am the youngest child in my family: there were three girls and one boy. My father was in a World War II – he went all the way to Berlin. During the war, my cousin and my grandfather died. The food situation was very difficult and my mother always told me that the women did men’s work. They plastered, hauled stones, and built walls. Then, since my mother had three children, she was given easier work, drying products like potatoes and beets and sending them to the front.

My eldest sister helped my mother while my father was at the front. My other sister was born during the war, in 1943, and it was hard for my mother to do everything herself. My eldest sister used to wake up at 2 a.m. and go to stand in line to get bread; there were some cruel women who pushed her out of the line sometimes. Some immigrants – Poles and Chechens – were brought to our village and they were put in different houses. A Polish family lived in our house.

When my father came home, he worked on the collective farm, growing wheat. Our farm was divided into three parts, but there was only one chairman: Masadyrov. My father was a supply manager. We also grew a tobacco and cotton. Earlier, during the Soviet times, agriculture was much better than it is now, because we worked collectively and everyone was provided with equipment. After the Soviet Union collapsed, all the land was divided up and sold. There was equipment of all sorts, there was fertilizer. And after the collapse, everything changed.

Under collectivization, even though people were not educated, they worked hard and with great pleasure. My mother told me they used to take their children 3-4 kilometers from their homes, since that’s where the farm was. They would put them in a wheelbarrow and take them to work. They never left their children with their mothers-in-law back then. On the farm, they had a nanny and she looked after their babies while they picked cotton.

Under collectivization, people were more interested in their work and there was unity and women had time to work on the farm and at home. We cannot say that some period of life was bad and some was good – people can get used to anything. During the Soviet era, there weren’t any problems – the government helped with everything – but now everyone lives in their own way and nobody cares about others.

When we were young, the most popular kinds of entertainment were sports and dances. I, myself, was very good at sports – I was a basketball player. Our community first got television in 1954-55. Before that, people just worked. My mother and my grandmother sewed different kind of things: tubeteys – the Uzbek national head-dress; special dresses for brides; specially designed belts for men – for old people there was one kind of design, for young people there was other kind of design and the colors of the belts and their designs were important.

My mother was a seamstress and when she went to work, she took me to kindergarten. I remember my teacher, Tamara Nikiforovna, had perfect psychological approach to dealing with children. I loved her very much. I even called her my “second mother.” When my own mother cursed me, I would tell her I wouldn’t come home from kindergarten – I would stay with my second mother.

After I finished kindergarten, I went to the A. S. Pushkin School – it was a Russian-language school. My father always brought me to school in his car, since I was the favorite child in the family. During the Soviet era, it was very good to be a student. There were many Russian teachers My teacher was Valentina Sergeevna Semenova. Her son, Vitya, was my classmate. I hated mathematics; I loved history. I remember Roza Sungatovna, the math teacher, always told me that I had an empty head and understood nothing about math. On the evening of our graduation, she even went to my father and told him: “Your daughter is a good student, but please, do not send her to a university where she will have to study math – she doesn’t understand math.”

I graduated from school in 1969. Then I went to Fergana and entered the Department of Foreign Languages at the university there. I studied English. After graduation, I was assigned to work as an English teacher in my own region, in the Sukhana secondary school in Kyzylkiya.

In my family we spoke Tajik and Russian, but I couldn’t speak literary Tajik. Even within our village there are many dialects of Tajik. When I worked as a teacher in the Sukhana school, there were Kyrgyz students and it was very hard for me to teach them because I didn’t speak Kyrgyz at all, but the assignments in the books were in Kyrgyz.

I remember my first class with Kyrgyz students – they were eleventh graders – I introduced myself and said: “Guys, I don’t know Kyrgyz so I will teach you English and you will teach me Kyrgyz.” I would write the assignment on the blackboard and when the students did the work, I asked how it would be translated into Kyrgyz and they translated it for me and that was the way I learned Kyrgyz. I worked there for three years and, in that time, I learned Kyrgyz.

After three years of working there, I transferred to my own village – Uchkurgan. The situation was similar: here there were Tajik students and, with their help, I learned literary Tajik. For every person, his own language should come first, and, after that, our state languages: Kyrgyz and Russian. Without knowing Russian, it is very hard to go to university. A knowledge of languages opens doors to friendship and unity. Now people are more developed in the language sphere; now they are more civilized. I remember when we were in school, the mountain kids never came down from there mountains. It was the older people who came down, and they just visited our bazaars, bought what they needed, and went back. But now their young people are studying in universities, getting educated and speaking different languages perfectly.

In Uchkurgan, I married and started a family. My husband was Sydyk Yakubov. We were born in the same year, but he was six months older than me. I never met him until the wedding. The first time I saw him was on the day of the wedding. He also studied in Fergana, at the polytechnic institute. I studied in a Russian school as a child and so, when I got married, people called me “Orus kelin” – Russian bride.

When I was young, I was a very fashionable woman. I liked to wear beautiful clothes. Also I liked talking with my relatives and I had many relatives who were living in Uzbekistan and we were always going there. We were very hospitable people. My mother was always saying that she had a three tablecloths and that she new how to welcome every kind of guest. If the guest is European, she welcomes him in European style; if he is a Muslim, she was welcomes him according to Muslim norms; if the guest is Asian, she welcomes him in Asian style. And she always said: “Look, the perspective of every nation is different, that is why you have to adjust.”

During the Soviet era, no one from our family went to the mosque, but they knew about their religion. After the Soviet Union collapsed, strange people came here and forced women to wear the hijab. I didn’t like it at all. Everyone should worship God however he wants. We believe in Islam, but I do not allow my children to go to mosques.

There were moments when parents of some of the children I was teaching came and asked me to dismiss their children from classes because they needed to go to mosque every Friday. But we were not allowed by our management to let the children to go. We taught the children to be atheists; I was always telling my students what is good and what is bad and that, if they were going to a Soviet school, they had to obey its rules. Even in universities, our professors were always telling us that, even though they were teaching us to be godless, they themselves believed in God. Now I read namaz [pray]; when I was younger, I never thought that someday I would read namaz. During the Soviet era, there were mosques, but they were visited only by old people.

The role of women has changed over the years. Now women are at the same level as men. Women do different kinds of work and, at the same time, they have to look after their families. Now there are more women that are supporting their husbands, than husbands supporting their wives.

I have four children: two daughters and two sons. My eldest daughter was born in 1983. She studied economics at an institute in Bishkek. My older son, Masrur, was born in 1987 and studies at the same institute, but in the correspondence school. My daughter Tasanno was a student at the Mountain Technical College. This year she finished that school and was accepted to another school, in the bookkeeping program. My youngest son will finish school this year. We lost our dad in 2000, and I support the family myself. I am not complaining about anything, though, I am trying and everything I do is turning out okay.