Tajik Times #18
Old Wive's Tales and conspiracies
Dear new readers and treasured old ones. This is another installment of my series on my studies in Tajikistan, now almost 15 years ago, but fresh in my mind. The themes remain the same, as history echoes and rhymes, while not quite repeating directly.
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My first semester of Persian studies in the fall of 2010, I lived with a host family of Uzbek heritage. I was sick so often that I decided I needed to switch families, and after the winter break I moved in with a new family. They were better off economically, but that also meant that they spoke more Russian than Tajik, and watched Russian TV. So my Persian did not improve, but my stomach health did. Here’s a post I wrote that Spring.
April 2011
The other night, the extended family came over for dinner (aunts and uncles). There was Osh Polov and my favorite bright green tarragon-flavored Georgian soda. The children (up to my 21-year-old host brother) sat in the other room on the floor, and us “grown-ups” sat at the dining room table. The brother-in-law brought up the topic of BabaVanga. I had not heard of her before, so later, I caught up on Google about “Europe’s Prophet” and her many predictions, including a nuclear world war that was to start in 2010.
At dinner, the conversation continued, focusing on how she predicted the earthquake in Japan a few weeks prior, and many other events. Then they started talking about how America actually caused these earthquakes. At first, I wasn’t sure I understood correctly, so I asked for clarification. My host sister said yes, America has some sort of huge radio-wave dish that they are using to cause all these massive earthquakes, why do you think none of them ever happen in the US? I was astounded, and the blood began to rise to my cheeks. Despite receiving guidelines from our American Councils on what appropriate topics of conversation we should stick to with our host families (no sex, religion, money, or politics), I couldn’t let this one pass.
“I don’t believe that for a minute, that’s total insanity, America has its share of earthquakes, floods, fires, and other calamities.” I said. Awkward pause. The conversation quickly shifted to other matters.
I later looked up this particular conspiracy theory, though I had heard something similar before about America causing earthquakes, I didn't think my host family was on that crazy-bandwagon. I found more about it on an end-of-days-in-2012-anti-Christ-is-coming-fear-the-muslims-and-the-government type of website, which quoted the Russian government as saying that the US had caused the latest earthquake in Afghanistan and that the US government’s attempt to control the weather and atmosphere included earthquakes as weapons against Muslim terrorists. From what I’ve heard about Russian media (and I don't know since I don’t know Russian) they probably did run some piece about this, which was where my Russian-speaking host sister and her husband heard this.
An Armenian-American friend of mine later wrote to me that some close friends of hers still believe that the Soviet government caused the devastating earthquake in Armenia in 1988 (which she barely survived) through the means of underground detonations as punishment for the Armenian secession movement.
Everyone loves to find fault with the big 800 Pound Gorilla America, especially in this case, where the regular people of Tajikistan seem to be losing out in the transition from Communism to Capitalism—which they associate with America and the West. Though these conspiracies seem to originate in the corners of crazy-land America, I would say most followers exist elsewhere—in places which are not known for having democratic or transparent governments, and where there is a lack of reliable news sources.
Reading that paragraph above now in 2025 during Trump 2.0, it sounds a bit naive and one-sided of me. To think that America had a transparent government, even so recently, shows my captured US-focused view.
Everyone here knows that the electricity rationing that has been going on in the capital is not due to whatever alleged reason the government announced in the news, but that there is something more nefarious going on behind the scenes. This experience of not trusting their government means people have no way of knowing or assessing information—such as that the US government is conducting the war on terror via a secret earthquake program against the Muslims (how Japan fits into this is something else, though another student heard from her host brother that God was punishing the Japanese for developing artificial intelligence and robotics, which He disapproves of...).
We have also discovered lately that Tajiks believe that sitting on cold stones/pavement/floor will make women sterile and cause “women's problems.” On the same topic, we recently learned more about why our host moms are always telling us to blow-dry our hair and admonishing us for leaving the house with wet hair or without covering our heads after showering. It turns out that because Tajiks always shower after sex, being seen with wet hair outside, it will be assumed that you just had sex. So our host mom’s perhaps had more in mind than our health, but also our reputation when they were giving us this guidance.
If you like this post, you may be interested in prior articles in this series on Tajikistan.
Tajikistan #4
This is post #4 in a series of edited versions of my blog from 2010/11 when I studied Persian in Tajikistan. The first post is here, and more are to come!