Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha
THANKS
Many thanks to all my English language teachers: Mr Jeoffery Bairde, Mr Jonathan Young, Mrs Natalya Konstantinova, Mrs Gulsina Shamilevna, Mrs Solodkova Irina Sergeyevna, Mr Nguni and others who made it possible for me to write this book.
INTRODUCTION
Once the reader gets acquainted with the title of the book he/she may see the English word in brackets which is a translation of a term in Tatar. Further some words in Tatar that occur in the book will be given the English translation in brackets. Normally most Tatar words have an English translation with a small exception of words like моң (mong) which might mean some mood or a melody but doesn’t have an exact translation.
The topic of the book is how the tradition of fortune-telling among Tatar people, the ethnicity that I belong to, luckily continued although just to some extent. Of course I wasn’t given the power to predict the things like oil prices for some reason but I learned how to see the things clearly.
Abdullah Khamidullin
CHAPTER I
Some information about the author and his background
Speaking about the way that I passed I would like to give some information about myself and my background that will probably be useful for comprehension.
Three of my great-grandfathers were heads of villages (kolkhoz) in different parts of modern Tatarstan. Most of my ancestors were Kazan Tatars while some were Astrakhan Tatars (my great-great grandmother was taken as a wife from there). This is the reason why I have some Southern Caucasian features in my appearance.
The family of my grandmother from the father’s side was well-off. They had a store selling clothes in the village near Kazan. They used to send caravans to Central Asia in order to buy goods for their store. They also had one servant. After the Socialist Revolution their property was taken from them and my great-grandfather was sent to dig the Belomorkanal (A channel in the North-West of Russia). My great-grandmother sent a pot of honey to the jail but by the time it arrived my great-grandfather had died already either of hunger or of frost. However his cell-mates took the honey and ate it. After they got freed from the jail later one of them came to the village of my great-grandmother and gave the money for that honey. Later my great-grandfather was rehabilitated posthumously. The property of my great-grandfather’s family was taken then and some of it sold some of it given to
