Telefon gap zadan (Tajikistan)

Telefon gap zadan 🇹🇯
Location: Tajikistan
Definition: Li. "to talk on the phone", clandestine courtship practice of young people before marriage
Keywords: Tajikistan – Central Asia – FSU – Marriage – Religion – Islam – Youth – Cyberinformality – Online dating – Mobile phones – Internet
Clusters: Resistance – Motivational ambivalence
Author: Swetlana Torno
Affiliation: Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University, Germany

By Swetlana Torno, Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University, Germany

Telefon gap zadan or ishk gap zadan, literally ‘to talk on the phone’ or ‘to [do] love talk’, refers to courtship practices of young people in Tajikistan. The length and emotional intensity of the relationship varies considerably between cases and at times, individuals can have several online dating partners simultaneously. Young men and women that engage in ‘love talk’ defy established societal norms of gender segregation and Islamic morality, and hence, in public discourses mobile phones are often blamed for ‘seducing young people’, and held responsible for their ‘moral decay’. Meanwhile, telefon gap zadan may – but most often does not – culminate in sexual involvement nor marriage.

The spread of mobile technologies has reshaped courtship practices of the youth in Tajikistan and in Central Asian neighbouring countries (Dall’Agnola, J. and Thibault 2021; Kikuta 2019). Similar to other Muslim contexts, it opened up new spaces for intimate dynamics between the sexes and introduced novel challenges such as extended possibilities of surveillance as well as differing conditions to affirm one’s morality (Costa 2016; Menin 2018; Walter 2021).

The number of mobile subscriptions in Tajikistan rose notably since 2005 (3.9 per 100 people) and surpassed a 100 per cent penetration rate by 2015 (100.4 per 100 people) (World Bank 2022a). In January 2022, there were 10.43 million mobile subscriptions, whereas the number of internet users amounted to 3.36 million or 34.9 per cent of the total population (Kemp 2022). There is little statistical data on the distribution of mobile phones among youth in Tajikistan. In my ethnographic research, I observed that only a small number of pupils possessed a mobile phone in 2014, whereas most university students owned one since the onset of their studies (Torno 2020: 112). A survey conducted among young respondents aged 15 to 32 in 2015 found that they used their devices mainly for communication with family and friends (over 36 per cent), followed by accessing the internet (26 per cent), and acquiring new information (11 per cent) (Safar 2015; Aliyev 2020).

Many phone liaisons in Tajikistan start from public spaces in between one’s place of residence and the place of work, study or leisure. Navigating these spaces provides an opportunity for young people to see or to be seen by the opposite sex and receive invitations for online dating. Young men might approach women directly asking their phone number or via one of her friends or acquaintances. At times young men dictate their phone numbers to women they feel attracted to on the street while walking by, which is one reason why easy-to-remember numeric combinations are popular in Tajikistan. Moreover, phone numbers of young women are passed among male acquaintances or friends who are searching for a dating partner.

There is a high degree of variability and openness regarding the emotional intensity of online relationships. Some lovers exchange text messages on a daily basis and spend hours talking on the phone at night or in a discrete place of their house. With time, the liaison might be interrupted by a disagreement or because of an arranged marriage, seldomly leaving one of the partners heartbroken (Taj. dil shikastan). Some romantic calls might spark women’s interest at the onset but become a nuisance when dating partners start becoming overly controlling, for example by calling too often or demanding their whereabouts and justifications for not picking up. In other cases, after getting to know each other and establishing trust, young women might agree to meet their beloved in a public space, often coming along with a friend to uphold social and religious standards of modesty and to showcase their respectability. Young men are expected to pay for visits to restaurants and offer gifts such as headscarves, fabric for dresses, and jewellery as a sign of their sincere intentions and manliness. If the lovers’ parents agree to their children’s choice, some romantic relationships might culminate in a marriage.

How many young people in Tajikistan engage in online dating is difficult to estimate due to the clandestine nature of the practice and its potential to destroy a woman’s reputation (Taj. obru, sharmu hayo). In contrast to men, who do not have to fear serious consequences for their misbehaviour, women are held responsible for maintaining their family’s honour (Taj. nomus) and face higher policing of their daily mobility and sexuality (also Harris 2004). While dating online, they often try to project their image as modest, pious, and respectable actor and carefully select which information they expose to others. Especially at the outset of a phone liaison, many women are weary of sharing their pictures with their lovers to prevent various forms of abuse, from the distribution of synthetically manipulated images up to revenge porn. They often stress that young men are not interested in serious relationships and merely exploit (Taj. istifoda burdan) naïve women to satisfy their sexual desires. Such strategies help them setting boundaries in flirtatious relations.

Over the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, schools, universities, markets, shopping malls, cafés, and parks have created possibilities for young people in Tajikistan to meet and engage in flirtatious romances while at the same time acting within established religious and social norms (Harris 2006). Mobile phones and social media platforms extend the previously existing spaces into the virtual domain and add the possibility to communicate instantaneously with the opposite sex without sharing physical space. Whereas public discourses commonly blame new communication technologies for leading young people towards immoral behaviour, most Tajik youth engage in ‘love-talk’ without necessarily transgressing social norms and Islamically sanctioned boundaries.

References

Aliyev, I. 2020. The digital generation and startups in Tajikistan. CAP Paper 229, January

Costa, E. 2016. The morality of premarital romances: Social media, flirting and love in Southeast Turkey. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 9(2): 199–215 Dall’Agnola, J. and Thibault, H. 2021. Online Temptations: Divorce and Extramarital Affairs in Kazakhstan. Religions, 12: 654. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12080654

Harris, C. 2004. Control and subversion: Gender relations in Tajikistan. London: Pluto.

Harris, C. 2006. Muslim youth: Tensions and transitions in Tajikistan. Oxford: Westview Press.

Menin, L. 2018. Texting romance: mobile phones, intimacy and gendered moralities in Central Morocco, Contemporary Levant, 3(1): 66–78

Kemp, S. 2022. Digital 2022: Tajikistan, 16 February, https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2022-tajikistan

Kikuta, H. 2019): Mobile phones and self-determination among Muslim youth in Uzbekistan, Central Asian Survey, 38(2): 181–196

Safar, T. 2015. ‘Smartfoni tadzhikskoy molodezhi: pomoshnik, istochnik znaniy, ili razvrat?’, Radio Ozodi, 6 May, https://rus.ozodi.org/a/26997924.html

Torno, S. 2020. Lebensläufe und Care/Sorge: Kontingenzen zwischen Aufwachsen und Altwerden in Tadschikistan. [Life-courses and care: Contingencies between growing up and getting old in Tajikistan.] PhD Thesis. Heidelberg University

Walter, A.-M. 2021. The self in a time of constant connectivity: Romantic intimacy and the ambiguous promise of mobile phones for young women in Gilgit, northern Pakistan. American Ethnologist, 48: 446¬¬–461

World Bank. 2022. Mobile cellular subscriptions (per 100 people) - Tajikistan, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.CEL.SETS.P2?locations=TJ