A turkmen story

Dis moi pourquoi j’existerais ? – A Turkmen story This title comes from Joe dassin’s famous song « Et si tu n’existais pas ? » (« And what if you did not exist? »).

Dis moi pourquoi j’existerais ? – A Turkmen story

This title comes from Joe dassin’s famous song « Et si tu n’existais pas ? » (« And what if you did not exist? »).

It defines what I witnessed during my 2 years journey across Turkmenistan.

In this almost unseen world, people fancy Bollywood movies and face dictatorship.

While you listen to Joe Dassin all day, you forget where you are, as you never see two times a similar face. Asian, Turks, Turkmens, Russians…people are so mixed; you hardy can tell where was the country you landed in initially.

And while people still play an « as if everything was normal » life, threw traces of communism, and identity loss of the new generations, this is the country you never thought you would be so prone to like.

The land of contradictions. The land where people have to hide in parks to express their love and students have to parade threw any type of season and time. The land where the word « existence » often rimes with « resistance ».