Ring of Silence

from the Rukhnama, Section I, verse 278

The silence that arises from the tongue of centuries rings in my ears.

Saparmurat Niyazov, dead in 2006, was a man out of his time. The hypernationalistic president-for-life of Turkmenistan renamed the month of April after his mother. The Rukhnama was a collection of his spiritual ramblings, compulsory reading for all Turkmen students.

Even by the standards of totalitarian balderdash, this excerpt is a whopper. Dictator that he is, Niyazov claims to speak for all his people, even the dead. Assuming this burden actually is his, it is instructive to note that the avowed legacy of the Turkmens is...nothing. The "tongue of centuries" imparts "silence," and the sound of what it doesn't say manages to linger in Niyazov's mind.