"Mangurt"

Chingiz Aitmatov — “Mangurt”
The play “Mangurt”, staged based on a fragment from Chingiz Aitmatov’s novel “The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years”, is performed on the stage of the Abbas Mirza Sharifzade Academic National Drama Theatre.
A mangurt is a mindless slave, a figure from Turkic, Altai, and Kyrgyz legends. To turn someone into a mangurt, their head is shaved, wrapped in fresh camel hide, and they are left under the scorching sun with their hands tied.
As the hide dries, it tightens, causing unbearable pain and slowly driving the victim insane. Losing their memory, the person forgets their past — their mother, language, religion, and nation — ultimately turning into a slave, a human robot.
Such a memoryless mangurt is easily controlled and manipulated. In the novel, this cruel punishment is carried out by the Juan-Juan tribe, who treat captured prisoners in this inhumane way on occupied lands.
The director of the play is Anar Babali.