Feel yourself like at home - страница 8

Let me repeat once again that sluggishness with a greeting might cause a sharp remark, emphasizing that someone erred in such an important sphere of a communication as greetings.

How would such an indirect hint work?

For a better understanding of the issue, I am pleased to introduce a favorite of mine, Guldjemal by name, a daughter of my neighbor couple Takhir and Djemile with whom we are long-time friends. Formerly, she often used to forget to say “salam” or even did not notice a somewhat gloomy neighbor while running across nearby due to a girlish absent-mindedness. A teen is a teen, especially a shy girl. Whether she was too much concentrated on her inward thoughts or had been absent-minded, the result was the same: she just missed greeting an old (in both senses, direct and figurative) acquaintance.

That is why one day I stopped her, as she was hurrying by, stretching both hands out for a handshake and firing rapid questions: “Salam aleykum! How are you, how is your father? Are your kids in good health? What’s about cattle?”.

Here I should hasten to shake away some possible bewilderment of a reader: why did I ask such a row of questions? I will explain further about this special greeting style called “Anyrsyny byarisini sorap salam bermek” (“to greet by cross-questioning”).

Good for her, Guldjemal learned the lesson momentarily, at once and forever – over a decade that passed since this brief interaction, she never missed to let me hear her tender voice “Salam, Gochmyrat-aga[8]!” during every next meeting.

Naturally, that is a matter of good breeding by one’s parents and there would be a space for an opposite illustration when the method was not effective at all. When about at the same time I tried the trick on my own nephew, the only reaction that I could get from him was a lopsided smile for a beginning and nothing further.

“Let you not be tired…» (or while working)

A different form of a greeting is used depending on situation.

The following case is kept in the depths of my memory in bright colors since my serene childhood, for a few decades already. Then, I was seriously confused and embarrassed by my own lack of knowledge of the elementary politeness. On the other hand, what else would be expected from a town lad, who has encountered such a form of a greeting for the first time in his life?

In addition, one should know that this greeting could vary according to a real situation.

My father was born in a tiny village Sandy-Kachi of the Mary Velayat, Turkmenistan. He has left the place to study in an agricultural college and did not come back, moving from one job place to another wherever a veterinarian should be sent by the state administration. My uncle, his older and the only brother, continued to live there for a long time, till end of 90s. For me, a teenager, spending vacations there it was like a journey to a wonderland – the Murgab River, surrounding hills, sheep grazing, and the formerly famous fruit gardens.

It was so interesting and romantic to go somewhere very early in the morning far toward the apricot gardens on a squeaking cart drawn by a slim-legged, tireless donkey. We worked for a full day there, busy with chores – every gardener knows how much should be done in time to maintain his fruit trees and to get a good harvest. Besides, it was not less enjoyable to come back when getting dark, stretched on a load of a grass for the cattle kept near my cousins’ home. Usually my cousins had to feed the animals before starting our own dinner.