ABSTRACT
The Bartangi would claim that not just the general resource richness of one's environment guarantees a good life, but first and foremost one's being equipped with barakat. People may decide to dwell at barakat-bearing places and benefit of the available fecundity, such as of the pastures. And by burning yob, ordinary humans can attract the ferexta who will ask for barakat on their behalf. If a person has plenty of barakat at his/her dispense, this leads to various forms of success, such as the fulfilment of general needs, plenty of offspring, good health or a safe arrival after a dangerous journey. Driving up the Bartang valley along its first road – whose construction was completed only by the Mid-1990s – one starts to understand why the locals of this area, the Bartangi, with a wink use to call their homeland a khun tar sabo joy: 'a place behind the bottom'.
