Tavara

A woman in a village above the middle Black Sea wakes at some black hour with a weight sitting square across her ribs. She can hear the stove ticking as it cools. Her arms will not move, and when she reaches for the words that ought to drive the thing off her tongue will not shape them. In the morning she does not say she had a bad dream. She says the tavara came.

The name travels in company. Along that coast the same visitor is called cingiloz, agirbasan, subat karisi, sivat, karakura, kusbogmasi, pispatik, and a good deal else besides, the list shifting from one valley to the next while the behaviour stays exactly where it is. Folklorists working the region write these names down in rows, and the rows run long. Tavara sits in them, sometimes spelled davara, recorded along the central Black Sea and among the Turkmen of the Bekdik and Beydili.

What exactly it is has never been agreed. One reading files tavara among the Anatolian by-names of the Al Karisi, the red-dressed birth demon that comes for women in childbed, presses the breath out of them and carries their livers off to wash in running water. Another, working from the same regional surveys, states plainly that the Black Sea creatures are not the alkarisi at all and are described quite differently. Both readings are in print, by serious people, unreconciled. The sources have not settled it.

The Al that the first reading points to is a vivid thing: half human and half monster, fire in its eyes, hooked iron teeth like a boar’s, claws of brass, hair standing out in a bush, a pair of scissors carried at its side. It does the opposite of whatever it is told, so that saying go brings it closer. Set that beside the tavara of the Black Sea surveys, which has no colour, no scissors and no appetite for livers, and the disagreement stops looking like a quibble.

The fullest account comes from the Bekdik and Beydili Turkmen, and it is oddly precise about whom the tavara chooses. It troubles young married women who cannot get along with their husbands. The affliction it brings carries its own name, enkebit basmasi, and in the telling the creature and the affliction fold into each other until it is hard to say where the visitor ends and the visitation begins.

The body given to it is a catalogue of wrongness. Twenty fingers on each hand. Seven toes on each foot. A hole punched clean through the palm, a detail told also of the karabasan, whose left hand is said to carry three of them, and through which a lucky sleeper is supposed to draw just enough breath to last the night. It walks in the dark with its eyes closed, so that nobody who meets it after nightfall can look into them. It comes in without ceremony, crossing a room it does not need to see, and settles.

A young woman lies with her face turned to the wall, the plaster cold against her forehead. The weight arrives across her chest, ordinary as a cat stepping up onto a quilt, and her mouth opens on the besmele and produces nothing at all. Her tongue is tied. She stays like that until the thing has finished, and in the morning her arms ache as though she had been carrying something heavy uphill.

Where it comes from depends on which account is followed. In the Bekdik and Beydili telling it is not quite a devil. It is sent, deliberately, by God, to warn people, which makes the pressing less an assault than a summons nobody asked for. Under the al karisi reading the origin is water: the creature rises out of the river to do its business among people and goes back down into the river when it is done, and a needle driven into its hem will turn it to water where it stands.

Its powers are few and they are enough. It immobilises. It binds the tongue so thoroughly that even the short formula every child in the region knows by heart cannot be got past the teeth. It arrives without sound and without warning, and it plainly needs no light to find the right house or the right bed.

Its limits are stranger than its powers. It has no use for old women and passes them over. It fears drunkards and madmen, and apparently nothing else that people would normally reach for. That is a peculiar vulnerability in a creature that specialises in the sober and the sane, and it leaves a village’s two least dependable men as the only ones it will not touch. Where tavara is read as a face of the al karisi the older defences apply: iron under the pillow, a knife or a pair of scissors, a Qur’an at the bedside, and above all the cuvaldiz, the heavy sacking needle, driven into the creature’s skirt so that it cannot get home and must stay on as an unwilling servant of the household.

What survives of the tavara is a name in a list and a handful of lines in a folklorist’s survey, which is most of what survives of a great many things people were once afraid of. No long collected narrative came down with it. What did come down is the shape of the fear: the weight, the shut eyes, the prayer that will not come, and the belief that of all the sleepers under one roof the thing went straight to the young wife who was unhappy.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Tavara?

Tavara is a night-pressing spirit of Anatolian Turkish folk belief, blamed for the crushing weight and paralysis that fall on a sleeper. It is recorded along the central Black Sea coast and among the Bekdik and Beydili Turkmen, where it is also written davara. Sources disagree on whether it is a regional by-name of the Al Karisi birth demon or a separate creature of the karabasan family.

What does the Tavara do to people?

The Tavara settles its weight on a sleeper and holds them motionless, binding the tongue so that the victim cannot speak, not even the short prayer they would normally use to drive it off. In the Bekdik and Beydili accounts it singles out young married women who are not getting along with their husbands. The affliction it causes has its own name, enkebit basmasi.

What does the Tavara look like?

Descriptions are sparse, but the surviving ones give it twenty fingers on each hand, seven toes on each foot, and a hole punched through its palm, the same feature attributed to the karabasan’s left hand. It moves at night with its eyes closed, so anyone who encounters it cannot see into its eyes. Beyond that the sources record almost nothing about its appearance.

How do you get rid of a Tavara?

The Tavara is said to fear only drunkards and madmen, and it ignores old women entirely. Where the name is treated as a face of the Al Karisi, the standard Anatolian protections apply: iron kept close to the bed, a knife or scissors, a Qur’an at the bedside, and a heavy sacking needle driven into the creature’s clothing, which traps it and forces it to serve the household.

Is the Tavara the same as the Karakura?

Not necessarily. Both names appear in the same regional lists of night-pressing creatures from the Black Sea region, and one scholarly reading treats them as alternative names for a single being alongside al karisi and albasti. Another treats the Black Sea creatures as distinct from the alkarisi and describes them differently, and the Bekdik and Beydili material gives the tavara details, such as the twenty fingers and the enkebit affliction, that are not told of the karakura.

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