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MankurtThe term mankurt comes from a Turkic myth popularized by Chinghiz Aitmatov in his novel The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years ("И больше века длится день"), a philosophical tale about what can happen to people if they forget their motherland, language, history. The Kirghiz legend mentioned in the novel is about a cruel way of making a mankurt, a man that forgets everything but basic activities and thus becomes an ideal slave. A raw camel hide would be put on the shaven head of a slave. The slave with his hands tied would be left in a desert for several days. The hide would dry and shrink, thus "squeezing" all sanity out of the man. If the man happen to survive, he would be recuperated and become like a dog to his master. What is more, the hair would grow into the camel's hide called "mankurt's cap", thus making it impossible to take it off without much pain. The legend says a mankurt is panically afraid of removing his cap. The latter detail is of symbolic nature with respect to slavery in Aitmatov's novel. Today this word is often used by many nationals of republics of the former Soviet Union of Turkic kinship, with respect to their fellow citizens who don't care about the native language and native culture; e.g., speak only Russian.
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