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- Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
A scintillatingly witty memoir telling the story of a young woman's determined struggle for freedom We all know families that are poor but 'respectable'. Mine, in contrast, was extremely rich but not 'respectable' at all... This is the unforgettable memoir of an 'odd, rich, exotic' childhood, of growing up in Azerbaijan in the turbulent early twentieth century, caught between East and West, tradition and modernity. Banine remembers her luxurious home, with endless feasts of sweets and fruit; her beloved, flaxen-haired German governess; her imperious, swearing, strict Muslim grandmother; her bickering, poker-playing, chain-smoking relatives. She recalls how the Bolsheviks came, and they lost everything. How, amid revolution and bloodshed, she fell passionately in love, only to be forced into marriage with a man she loathed- until the chance of escape arrived. By turns gossipy and romantic, wry and moving, Days in the Caucasus is a coming-of-age story and a portrait of a vanished world. Banine shows us what it means to leave the past behind, and how it haunts us. Banine was born Umm El-Banu Assadullayeva in 1905, into a wealthy family in Baku, then part of the Russian Empire. Following the Russian Revolution and the subsequent fall of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, Banine was forced to flee her home-country - first to Istanbul, and then to Paris. In Paris she formed a wide circle of literary acquaintances including Nicos Kazantzakis, André Malraux, Ivan Bunin and Teffi and eventually began writing herself. Days in the Caucasus is Banine's most famous work. It was published in 1945 to critical acclaim but has never been translated into English, until now.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Contents
6
Foreword by the Translator
The Caucasus—a range of majestic mountains and gentler foothills where Europe meets Asia. The Black Sea laps at the western edge, the Caspian at the east. This natural barrier separates Russia from Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia and, farther south, Iran and Turkey. It was in the Azerbaijani city of Baku that the author of Days in the Caucasus, Banine, was born in 1905.
Ummulbanu Asadullayeva, to give Banine her full name, was the granddaughter of peasants who had become fabulously wealthy through oil. Her maternal grandfather, Musa Naghiyev, struck oil on his patch of land and became one of the richest men in the Russian Empire, while her paternal grandfather, Shamsi Asadullayev, built a flourishing oil business through shrewd investment.
Oil had turned Banine’s Baku from a sleepy port on the Caspian Sea into a bustling, booming city, bursting with ideas. This was an era of enlightenment, of social and political ferment, of growing self-awareness for the Muslim Azerbaijani population and for all workers, regardless of ethnicity. Education made huge strides—in 1901 the first secular school for Muslim girls opened in Baku, where Banine was so unhappy she ‘cried every day for two months’. Newspapers were published in Azerbaijani Turkish. The first opera in the Muslim world, a fusion of traditional mugham and European operatic style, was performed in Baku in 1908.8
This was an era too of unrest and upheaval. The tsar was deposed and the Russian Empire collapsed in 1917. A year later the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was proclaimed, with universal suffrage, including for women, enshrined in its constitution. The Democratic Republic, in which Banine’s father was a government minister, was to be short-lived, however. She describes the arrival of Russian Bolshevik troops in Baku in 1920: ‘In a matter of moments, without a shot being fired, the Azerbaijani army had melted away. The Republic was dead and victorious Russia was reclaiming its subjects. With my own eyes I had seen the end of a world.’
Pogroms, revolutions and the end of empire are the backdrop to Banine’s coming-of-age tale. She dreams of romantic love and burns with idealism, even sporting a badge of Lenin. Banine escapes into the realm of the imagination and these escapes are mirrored in real life when she flees to Persia, Tiflis, Constantinople, Paris.
In Paris Banine worked as a model for several years, before becoming a writer. Her first book, a novel titled Nami, was published in 1942. But it was her second book, Jours caucasiens or Days in the Caucasus, that received critical acclaim. Published in the French capital in 1945, the memoir established Banine in literary and émigré circles. ‘I started to leaf through the book and was soon engrossed,’ the Russian émigré author Teffi wrote in a review in the journal Nouvelles russes. ‘So vividly and wittily does the author reveal to us an utterly unfamiliar world.’
Banine wrote a sequel to Days in the Caucasus, Days in Paris, published in 1947. The most successful of her later works was an account of her conversion to Christianity, I Chose Opium. She translated widely into French, including works by Dostoevsky, Tatyana Tolstaya and the German author Ernst Jünger, who became a good friend.
Banine died in Paris in 1992 at the age of eighty-six.9
She came to public attention in her homeland only in the late 1980s, when the Soviet newspaper Literaturnaya gazeta published an article about her friendship and correspondence with the Nobel Prize-winning Russian author Ivan Bunin. I first heard of Banine in 2000 when I lived in Baku and wondered about the fate of the oil barons who had left behind such remarkable buildings. Hamlet Qoca’s Azerbaijani translation of Days in the Caucasus was published in Baku in 2006, and was itself translated into Russian by Gulshan Tofiq Qizi. A translation from the original French into Russian by Ulviyya Akhundova came out in Baku in 2016.
Reading Banine’s gripping memoir, I was struck by similarities between Baku in the early twentieth century and the city in the early twenty-first. The excitement of the first years of the independent Azerbaijan Republic after the collapse of the Soviet Union mirrored the heady days of the Democratic Republic created in 1918 after the collapse of the Russian Empire. Though the highest hopes have yet to be fulfilled, the Azerbaijan Republic marks its twenty-eighth birthday in 2019.
The cultural tensions so vividly illustrated by Banine continue in Baku to this day, contributing to the city’s energy and verve. Russian language and culture still thrive in the capital, alongside the much more widespread Azerbaijani culture. Religion is regaining ground, though in the early twenty-first century it is more often the young who turn to Islam, their grandparents having grown up under the anti-religious Soviet system. Churches too are growing, and services are held in the Lutheran Church, whose Frauenverein (Women’s Union) the young Banine frequented with enthusiasm.
Banine slightly revised the text of Days in the Caucasus and republished it in France in 1985. It is the 1985 version that has been translated here. Banine wrote in French, though she spoke Russian fluently and grew up speaking Azerbaijani with her grandmother. 10Wherever Banine used an Azerbaijani, German or Russian expression in her memoir, I have preserved those words and added an English translation where needed.
The language of Azerbaijan is known as Azerbaijani, Azeri or Azerbaijani Turkish. Banine used the version Azéri, so in the translation I opted for the closest equivalent in English, Azeri.
Anne Thompson-Ahmadova
PART ONE
12
1
We all know families that are poor but ‘respectable’. Mine, in contrast, was extremely rich but not ‘respectable’ at all. At the time I was born they were outrageously wealthy, but those days are long gone. Sad for us, though quite right in the moral scheme of things. Anyone kind enough to show interest might ask in what way my family wasn’t ‘respectable’. Well, because on the one hand it could not trace its ancestral line further than my great-grandfather, who went by the fine name of Asadullah, meaning ‘loved by Allah’. This proved very apt: born a peasant, he died a millionaire, thanks to the oil gushing from his stony land, where sheep had once grazed on meagre pickings. On the other hand because my family included some extremely shady characters on whose activities it would be better not to dwell. If I get caught up in the story, I might reveal all, though my interest as an author is at odds with my concern to preserve the last shreds of family pride.
So, I was born into this odd, rich, exotic family one winter’s day in a turbulent year; like so many ‘historic’ years, this one was full of strikes, pogroms, massacres and other displays of human genius (especially inventive when it comes to social unrest of all kinds). In Baku, the majority of the population of Armenians and Azerbaijanis were busy massacring one another. In that year, it was the better-organized Armenians who were exterminating the 14Azerbaijanis in revenge for past massacres, while the Azerbaijanis made the best of it by storing up grounds for future slaughter. There was, therefore, something for everyone—except of course for the many who sadly lost their lives.*
No one would have considered me capable of taking part in the work of destruction, but I clearly was, since I killed my mother as I came into the world. To escape the bloodshed, she had chosen to give birth in an oil-producing area in the hope that it would be quieter there; but in the chaos of the time she ended up giving birth in dreadful conditions and contracted puerperal fever. In addition, the house was cut off from outside help by a violent storm, compounding the confusion into which we’d been plunged. Without the complex care that her condition required, my mother fought the illness in vain. She was lucid when she died, full of regret at leaving life so young and of anxiety at the fate of her loved ones.
My memories of conscious awareness begin with toys that my father brought from Berlin. It was through these that life was revealed to me: I first perceived the world through the purring stomach of a plush cat, the beautiful gleam of a maharajah astride a grey buckskin elephant, the bowing and scraping of a multicoloured clown. I perceived it all, felt it, marvelled and began to live.
My early years were the happiest; I was so young compared to my three older sisters that I enjoyed all kinds of privileges and knew how to make the most of them.
But, more than anything, my happiness was the result of my upbringing by a Baltic German governess—she was my governess, my mother and my guardian angel too. This saint (the noun is no exaggeration) gave us her health, and her life; she wore herself out for us, suffered all sorts of trouble because of us, and received little 15joy; she always sacrificed herself and asked for nothing in return. In a nutshell, she was one of those rare beings who are able to give without receiving.
Fräulein Anna had fair skin and flaxen hair, while the four of us had brown skin, black hair and a markedly oriental, hirsute appearance. We made a fine group when we surrounded her in photographs, all hook noses and close-set eyebrows, she completely Nordic. And I should say that in those days—despite the prohibition of the Prophet, enemy of the image—we often had our photograph taken, dressed in our finery and flanked by as many relatives as possible, all against the background of a painted park. A harmless obsession that can be explained by the novelty of the process for the near savages that we were; an obsession to which I owe several hilarious and touching pictures that I preserve with great care.
But back to Fräulein Anna. Surrounded by a fanatically Muslim family, in a city that was still very oriental, she managed to create and maintain an atmosphere of Vergissmeinnicht, of sweet songs for blonde children, of Christmas trees with pink angels, of cakes heavy with cream and sentimentality. All of which proves that she had character despite her sweetness, and willpower despite her gentleness. It’s true that in those days she had yet to be run ragged by us, and was better able to stand up for herself in an atmosphere that must have seemed, or even been, hostile towards her. Her influence was constantly counteracted by that of my paternal grandmother, who lived on the ground floor of our house. Grandmother was a large, fat, authoritarian woman, veiled and excessively fanatical, who preferred to sit on cushions on the floor, as every good Muslim did. She performed her ablutions and prayers with unfailing rigour and exulted in her abhorrence of Christians. If a plate had been touched by non-Muslim hands, my grandmother would refuse to use it, passing it to someone less discerning. If a white-skinned stranger walked by, she would often spit on the ground and shout insults, 16the mildest of which was ‘son of a dog’. In turn, we disgusted her a little too, being brought up by Christians: so many caresses, so much contact from profane hands had impregnated us with a subtle odour of impiety, and her kisses, though affectionate, were often accompanied by a grimace of disgust. It certainly could not have been Grandmother who entrusted us to Fräulein Anna, and I can imagine the painful battles my father must have fought to gain acceptance for this heretical education. But the Russians had long since colonized us; their influence was everywhere and with it the desire for culture, for Europeanization. For the younger generations freedom was gaining precedence over the veil, education over fanaticism.
Having deposited us in the white hands of Fräulein Anna, with a confidence he never regretted, my father no longer had much to do with us. Besides, he was always travelling. As the eldest son he ran our oil firm, visiting its depots and offices along the Caspian Sea and Volga River, its flourishing subsidiary in Moscow, and even its concerns in Warsaw. Having got that far, momentum meant my father could not stop, and as Berlin was close by for someone accustomed to Russian distances, he often popped over to the German capital.
Before the war of 1914 Germany enjoyed enormous prestige among my compatriots, who had barely awoken to civilization: automobiles, Kaiser Wilhelm moustaches, pale governesses, music, pianos—they all came from Germany. My father would return from there, weighed down with all these things, including the martial moustache, which became more vigorous every trip, growing longer and standing up straighter. It should not be forgotten that Kaiser Wilhelm styled himself protector of Islam and the Turks, hence his prestige among us cousins of the Turks.
I think those years before his second marriage must have been the best of my father’s life: young, rich, free, handsome, he excited 17considerable matrimonial interest and other, less honourable, desires. He had numerous affairs, but was in no hurry to get married, though he was encouraged to do so by all the family, who welcomed polygamy and disapproved of celibacy. Still, none of the suggested brides met with his approval: they were mediocre Muslims, barely educated, without elegance or charm, and my father would have none of them—he was firmly in favour of ‘culture’. Other women, whom he met during his travels abroad and might have liked, were, according to my grandmother’s definition, ‘daughters of dogs’, that is, Christians, and therefore not marriage material. The family had good reason to fear such marriages, and Grandmother a non-religious reason to hate them: her husband had rejected her to marry a Russian woman of dubious origin. After his marriage and until his death, when I was six, he lived in Moscow in a house cluttered with icons, mistreated by his wife and cut off from his family because of her. Did this example, so edifying for the faithful, make my father circumspect and prevent him marrying a Christian? In any case, he took a long time to choose a second wife.
We occupied the whole of the second floor in our town house, which compensated for the houses enclosing it on either side by stretching so far back that it reached the parallel street. This allowed for the creation of two identical apartments: twins with their backs to one another; twins separated by a courtyard but united by symmetrical passages running the length of the courtyard.
We girls lived with Fräulein Anna in the south-facing apartment that was always flooded with sunlight, while the other, north-facing, dark and quiet, was occupied by my father between his travels. It included what we proudly called the ‘reception rooms’, more simply the dining room and drawing room. Here was the grand piano on which, on holidays or when some governess too proud of her flock needed to be put in her place, Fräulein Anna would have my older sister Leyla perform a brilliant piece from her repertoire. A 18Negro draped in gold, with a lamp held in his hand, stood upon a structure best described as a hybrid of pillar and pedestal. It was lit only on great occasions so it never ceased to inspire my admiration. It was in fact this statue that gave me my first, pleasurable sensation of wealth.
Ordinarily we rarely went into the drawing room. We would spend almost the whole day in the large, bright schoolroom. It had a piano too, an instrument of torture that dominated our lives; there was hardly a moment when one of the four of us children was not bashing it with our rough, impatient hands. It rattled out scales or arpeggios, or, even worse, a Mozart sonata mutilated with the best of intentions. To the off-putting sounds of this music we would laugh, cry, rebel and grow up, too quickly for Fräulein Anna’s liking. She endeavoured to fight heredity, struggled against the prevailing atmosphere and had no fear of doing battle with nature itself, seeking to transmit to us her young German girl’s soul, artless and loving. She hoped to see us turn into Gretchens with delicate figures and easy sighs. But our forebears were keeping watch. Under their guidance, our hips fleshed out, our noses grew longer, our breasts swelled beneath the sailor blouses that we wore in accordance with what was proper for ‘young girls of good family’; and down, soft at first but quietly turning into thick hair, covered us in a dark shadow. What could poor Fräulein Anna do but simply observe the inevitable march of progress? All was well, more or less, as long as this progress was evident only in our physical growth. But the heart soon got involved, and the day came when Leyla, having reached the fateful age of thirteen, began to give due appreciation to the charms of a cousin who had sparkling eyes and a nascent beard. Fräulein Anna was dismayed and henceforth lost her peace of mind for good. At the cost of her health, she managed through recriminations and discipline to keep us on something of a leash, but fell martyr to suspicion and 19anxiety. As we grew up, we became resentful and beastly towards her, so unbearable was the brake she put on our instincts. More violent perhaps in oriental girls than Europeans of the same age, those instincts may partly excuse our beastliness towards Fräulein Anna; but she didn’t suffer any the less as a result.
When we were small, we loved her unreservedly, at least I did. I don’t think that love for a mother is any different. I thought her beautiful. In the morning, open-mouthed, I would watch her brush her long, blonde hair: her white skin shone in the morning light; her blue gaze would often rest tenderly on me; I was happy. My aunts were brown, as were my cousins and sisters, my uncles and aunts and I myself, as was everyone and everything. Only Fräulein Anna had come from another world, and to me she shone with a strange, precious exoticism.
Almost all that was lovely in my childhood was connected with her, or, rather, originated with her. Hence that unforgettable Christmas morning when, waking in the half-darkness, I thought I saw something shining next to my bed. I leant over slightly; not only did it continue to shine, but I noticed a subtle scent too. I stretched out my hand—I touched something prickly and realized that it was a Christmas tree, the Christian children’s tree which, along with the frankfurters that Fräulein Anna would secretly buy us, was making a budding renegade out of me. It was perhaps the first time in Islamic history that such a heresy had shone so arrogantly in a Muslim child’s bedroom. This happiness had been denied us for years; but one year my father weakened, or Grandmother did, or they both did at the same time, and the tree came to shine in our house. Captivated, mute with admiration and joy, I walked around the tree, touching and sniffing it. Everything about it was beautiful: the rich sparkle of the silver threads and colourful baubles; the delicate pink and blue candles; the winged angels and the white snow at the base of the trunk. It was a happy day: there 20was no German homework with its Gothic letters, no verbs to conjugate, no Mozart to play; only beauty remained, and ugliness disappeared from the world for a magical moment. To crown it all, Fräulein Anna promised to take us soon to the Frauenverein (Women’s Union), an honourable, devout institution, where, in the company of a hundred German maidens, both young and old, we would devour superb sauerkraut washed down with beer. This would be followed with fitting psalms and hymns in praise of the Lord, songs that we four Muslims joined in with enthusiasm. We were delighted with this fine combination of earthly and spiritual nourishment. Prudently, nothing was said about this at home, as it was all forbidden by the Prophet. The honest Fräulein Anna was cheating; the poor woman didn’t have the strength to deprive us of these pleasures, which she reasonably considered innocent. But if she didn’t have the heart to refuse us some of the outward joys of Christianity, she took care not to influence us in her favour in a more subtle way. It would have been easy, though, as my father and the family, while holding firm to our religion, did nothing, or hardly anything, to explain it to us. I was never taught a single prayer and knew only one short verse from the Koran. I had been inculcated with so little religious feeling that my favourite time to play with my grandmother was when she was praying, sitting on the floor, the Koran open on a chair before her. That was when I would tease her: I would tug at her veil or her nose, jump around the chair shouting or pull terrifying faces; Grandmother would break off to cast a lazy insult in my direction, without a hint of malice, and then resume her mumbling.
Religious observance was often rather mechanical or simply a social affair, like for example the celebrations for New Year or the end of Ramadan. As for me, I enjoyed them very much.
For children, New Year, celebrated on 21st March (to coincide with the first day of spring), was a holiday that yielded great financial 21return. All day we would run from house to house to pay ‘congratulatory’ visits. First we would be force-fed; it was both awful and delicious. Everywhere tables bowed under the weight of all the food; one could judge the degree of civilization of a household by the variety of dishes adorning the table. The primitive families had only local sweets, plates of dried fruit and hard-boiled eggs, while the more evolved families had all sorts of dishes that owed their existence to the civilizing genius of the Russians: eggs were painted, marbled or drawn upon, reminiscent of Easter celebrations; cold turkey was not only a tasty white meat but also a sign of progress; fine chocolates made in Moscow brought us a breath of holy Russia.
Once we’d been force-fed, the head of the household—an uncle or aunt or grandfather or other relative, close or distant—would take from a purse blessed by Allah a gold coin bearing a Slavic profile. After feeling its weight, they would—somewhat regretfully—slip it into our hands, an act usually accompanied by a loud, sloppy kiss. So by evening we would consider ourselves rich, though plagued by indigestion.
The Ramadan holiday was quite different. In my childhood it always fell in high summer (it’s a movable feast), so was celebrated in the country. We ‘civilized’ people did not keep the fast, except sometimes for the last few days. We did so entirely by choice; no one obliged us to fast. For my part, I didn’t do it to please Allah, but to blackmail him: I made wishes in the hope that, touched by my piety, he would grant them all.
We were not to eat or drink during the day; it was even forbidden to brush one’s teeth lest a drop of water spoil a dry palate. Smokers had to abandon their cigarettes that day. Husbands did not have the right to touch their wives (during the fasting hours, I should make clear). But the appearance of the first star of the evening heralded a gluttonous stampede for food; tremendous quantities disappeared down famished gullets. Then one would 22pause to allow for digestion. Then one would eat again. Then another pause for digestion. This would continue all night until the first light of dawn. Those who went to sleep would make sure they were woken up several times so they could fill themselves with as much food as possible.
At the end of Ramadan, sheep’s throats would be slit and their innards cooked outdoors over a wood fire. We had sweet orgies of tripe—the best food memories of my childhood (though far removed from the sauerkraut of the Frauenverein…). Fat ran everywhere—we would lick our fingers and under our nails so as not to lose a single drop. The aroma hung heavy in the air. Oh, those fatty feasts!
I also loved another religious observance—the annual commemoration of the tragedy at Karbala where in 680 Ali’s son Hossein and all his family were massacred. This was the point of departure of Shiism, enemy of Sunnism,† which my grandmother never failed to celebrate at home. That day the drawing room, furnished in the local fashion with only carpets and cushions, would acquire numerous additional cushions; they would be placed in a line along the wall, then, depending on the number of guests, they would form second, third and fourth rows. On the busiest days the entire floor would disappear beneath the cushions. A single chair, high and severe, like a throne, for ‘Madam Mullah’, rested against the wall in the middle of the room.
Swathed in chadras (called ‘chadors’ in the West), the guests arrived; their slippers clattered; their full silk skirts rustled; their shrill voices and the swirl of conversation were dizzying and the whole combined to create a considerable racket.
National costume, at its finest on holidays, had a stylish look and a richness that was wholly oriental. A low-cut jacket, worn 23over a white blouse, revealed a veritable walking jeweller’s shop: necklaces of pearls, necklaces of gold coins, gold chains, pendants, brooches of every kind. The jewellery was often of poor quality, but it shone, jingled, bobbed up and down and pleased the eye, which was enough for these ladies. The costume’s pièce de résistance, if one can use that expression, was the skirt, or rather skirts, as they were layered, one on top of the other. Their quantity and their fullness were a sign of the wealth of the wearer: ‘Show me your skirts and I will tell you who you are.’
The commemoration of Hossein’s death, however, was a day of mourning: on this occasion ladies wore black and no jewels adorned their chests, which were in theory burdened with sadness. The women arrived and the cushions disappeared under the cascade of skirts. The chatter and shouting did not stop, though, until Madam Mullah, installed on her throne, began to read the Koran. She soon progressed from reading to holding forth in Azeri on the tragic subject of the death of Hossein.
Everything would go well at first as the women listened quietly. But soon one woman would start to cry, then another, then another, until the whole room joined in. There were terrible sighs, sobs, groans, cries of ‘Yah Allah’, and the despair would grow more bitter, the grief become unbearable and the situation seem hopeless. Suddenly the Mullah’s voice would fall silent and just as suddenly, without any transition whatsoever, the women would start to gossip, their eyes still full of tears. Armed with glass bottles, we children would circulate among the cushions, pouring rose water onto outstretched palms; the women would moisten their faces and wash their eyes; this was the interval. Then the reading and commentaries would start again, and with them the full gamut of despair, kept in check until the time came for release. How did the audience cry to order? I do not know. Professional mourners, sort of grief hostesses, would always be invited to these gatherings, 24and to burials too. They would be the first to cry; helped by the eloquence of Madam Mullah, the contagion would soon spread and the other women would follow their lead. These hostesses of a very special kind would ensure that the gatherings were suitably emotional. In truth, the grief was not very sincere, which perhaps explains the disconcerting swings in mood.
Be that as it may, my sisters and I were better attuned to the comic aspect of these brisk changes in mood than to the dubious charms of melancholy. So we had tremendous fun, all the more so since an elderly great-aunt, a veritable artiste of pain, was an inexhaustible source of joy for us. Her gestures, her shamelessly exaggerated cries, the alternation in her moods, in a word her hypocrisy, delighted us. When she would let out a sigh as powerful as a gust of autumn wind or pretend to rip her clothes, while taking care not to do so, rolling her mischievous little eyes to see the effect of her outbursts, we would choke beneath our veils, stifling our laughter. With our heads covered by these veils—obligatory at such gatherings—we were shielded from suspicion; when our shoulders shook with laughter, the women thought we were moved by noble tears. Ungodly though we were, we did not miss an opportunity to simulate devotion, which earned us the fond indulgence and support of our grandmother. So when Fräulein Anna came down to return us to our home and our beds, she would encounter the stern disapproval of the whole family and Grandmother in particular. She usually had to return alone, leaving us laughing beneath our capes, or rather our veils, and on those days we would go to bed deliciously late.
As a child I loved my grandmother very much; the things that were to separate us later did not yet matter to me. When they did become important, I cut myself off from her completely: she seemed to me to be from another world; indeed, she was from another world. Is blood thicker than water? I must confess that 25I’ve never felt that about anyone. Is it an optimistic invention of humanity or am I a monster? Impartial observation seems to show that in families where interests diverge, hatred between relatives is constant and widespread; where interests are not divisive, affection sometimes exists. But most often there is only indifference mingled occasionally with a sense of duty towards the clan, which one could, with a little imagination, take to be love. To be honest, indifference appears to me to be the natural state between the members of a family. When one thinks of the number of people one must know in order to find some friends, to discover an affinity in the small group that is the family would be something of a surprise.
Over time, the differences between us and Grandmother grew ever more marked. The gap separating her, whose life was a continuation of that of the first Muslim women of the Hegira, from us was not one of a few dozen years but of fourteen centuries. She wanted to know nothing of the ‘civilizing force’ of the Russians, and did not even know the language, because it was not compulsory when she was young. She saw Russians only as colonizers, secular troublemakers, men of another race and another religion—in a word, infidels—for whom she felt hatred tinged with contempt. Her hatred is easy to understand: the life she loved was slowly disintegrating around her; her husband had abandoned her for a Russian woman; her daughters, whom she had brought up to lead a life similar to her own, gave up the veil as soon as they were married, dressed in European style and began to chatter in an astonishing mixture of Russian and Azeri.‡ Though this is as far as their innocent initiation into civilization went, it was too much for Grandmother and a cause of considerable distress. It was even worse with her sons: after a brief sojourn in a Russian school, where their father had enrolled 26them, and especially after several tours that he made them take, they began to reject the tiresome constraints of religion, maintaining only the least restrictive. The discovery of oil wells in Baku greatly accelerated the liberation of the Muslims of the Caucasus: fortune suddenly put vast resources into their hands, allowing them to enjoy all the pleasures of civilization and taking away their taste for the strict, simple life of their forebears.
But if Grandmother wanted to monitor the effects of all these changes, she needed to look no further than us, her granddaughters. She had brought up her children herself; they had lived more or less in the Islamic style until their majority and this had left a clear mark. But we who were growing up in an atmosphere totally alien to hers embodied denial of the past. We scarcely spoke Azeri—though while lacking basic vocabulary, we did have an admirably rich repertoire of insults, thanks to her. I remember her most of all swearing, cursing and fulminating. Sometimes it was just for show and on those occasions Grandmother would merely mutter some half-hearted insults to maintain her prestige. At other times her ire was real and her imprecations would reverberate throughout the house.
Her enormous size, both in terms of girth and height, made it extremely difficult for her to move, which added to her majesty. The habit, already engrained, of commanding a whole army of children and servants combined with this extravagant corpulence to give her an air of grandeur which she never lost, not even when a torrent of foul insults escaped her mouth. She was a strange mixture of the imperious and the vulgar…
Although my relationship with her was fundamentally good, it was rather ambivalent and was easily drowned in a flood of insults and bad language. I would often try to tease her in a myriad ways or to beg something from her; she took teasing better than requests for material gain, as she was astonishingly mean.27
We would go downstairs to see her almost every day, but she rarely came up to us. When she took it into her head to come, she would climb the stairs one by one, pausing for long rests after two or three consecutive steps. It was hard to watch as she clung on to the banister, puffing and panting. She would arrive in our rooms exhausted, struggle to squeeze herself into the largest armchair, put her chubby hands, palms and fingers painted with henna on her knees and watch our lives. She saw us busy doing things in which she saw neither purpose nor pleasure, listened to us speaking a barbaric tongue that she did not understand, nor wish to; instead she pitied us. Without analysing her impressions, she must have felt that her life and those of her peers, primitive and narrowly confined, left less scope for disappointment, while ours, rich in various possibilities, was thereby full of potential pitfalls too. She would have been right: liberty often comes at a heavy price.
Veiled women did not seem unhappy on the whole. I’ve never encountered so much merriment and laughter, so many dances and jokes (often dirty), as they enjoyed. Their life was simple and so were their desires. As for the oft-criticized polygamy, it was not a burden for a Muslim woman, to whom her husband was not a lover or even a companion, but a master who gave her children. She did not see much of him, and the fellow wives were her friends, home helps and childminders. I can tell an amusing story on this subject about something that happened in our own family.
My grandmother’s brother, a man of around sixty, had only one wife, who was infertile to boot. She was troubled by the thought of dying in her solitary home, without a fellow wife or children. One day she decided she could bear it no longer and decreed that her husband would have to marry again.
One morning when Grandmother was colouring my hair with henna, Begum arrived in a fury and began to air her grievances.28
‘I said to Abbas: “Hey, Abbas, you have to take another wife.” And do you know what he said to me?
‘“I don’t want to,” he said.
‘I could have killed him.
‘“So that’s it—you don’t want to!”
‘“That’s it—I don’t want to! One wife is enough for me. More than enough.”
‘“Now look here!” I said to him. “The Prophet (peace and prayers be upon him) had several wives, and you can’t even have two?”
‘“The Prophet does not oblige anyone to have several wives,” he replied, proud of his wit.
‘“Yes,” I said, “but I do—I’m making you take at least a second wife. First of all, so she will give you a child. Second, I’ve had enough of always being on my own. You think it’s fun having to run from house to house to find company? I am the only one of my friends who is condemned to solitude and boredom. I want you to get married, Abbas.”
‘He tried to make me pity him.
‘“You know my declining powers…”
‘“There’ll be enough for the wedding night and to produce one child.”
‘Then Abbas got angry. “Leave me in peace, unbearable woman. I’m sixty years of age and master in my own home. I don’t want to get married.”
‘Then he insulted me. I shouted: “You shall get married! You shall get married!”
‘“Never.”
‘“You’re a heartless eunuch, an apology for a man. He calls himself a man and can’t manage two wives.”
‘I told him some home truths. Then Abbas marched out of the room. He tried to look proud, but that doesn’t work with me. And now?’29
Begum was close to tears.
‘What can I do?’ she asked Grandmother.
My grandmother continued her majestic application of walnut leaves to my head, which was already covered with a thick layer of henna. Then she said, ‘Look for a girl that you like. When you’ve found her, I’ll think of a way to force Abbas’s hand. The stubborn fool! Perhaps he wants to imitate the Russians (may leprosy eat away their flesh). No children and just one wife! That’s a fine state of affairs! Go and find yourself a companion, then we’ll see. Wait a minute—you know Aslan the hunchback, whose sister married my cousin Mohammed? Well, he has a granddaughter who’s just reached puberty. She’s pretty and they say she’s sweet; go and see her, I think you’ll like her. She’ll make an agreeable companion.’
Begum followed her advice; she liked the young girl. Grandmother summoned Abbas. At first he categorically refused to get married. There were endless talks, entreaties, discussions. Then scenes, lots of scenes, a huge number of scenes, and finally, his resistance exhausted, the poor man had to give in. He never had children, but his Begum had a companion and no longer pined away in an empty house.
So, polygamy sometimes had its benefits.
In the country where we spent half the year I could see Islamic life, still unaltered, close up every day. While in Baku the population was a rich mixture of Russians, Armenians, Georgians and some Europeans, in the country it remained more or less pure.
I loved this blessed countryside unreservedly. There we had less homework and more freedom; the weather was suited to games and a variety of amusements; but especially because there I lived with my cousins, extraordinary creatures about whom I will talk at length later.
So when spring came, I would be champing at the bit to leave the city life that disgusted me. Already by May Baku was hot, dusty 30and unbearable. Preparations for departure took an age, as our rural life was to last six months.
At that time we had yet to discover automobiles and we travelled halfway by train, then completed the journey by carriage. One sunny morning in May a rickety local train would take us to the places I had dreamt of all winter. Since this was the only train I knew in the universe’s vast rail network, it seemed imposing and beautiful. It would give an expert whistle on departure, travel at a majestic pace through the stony landscape, duly stopping where it was supposed to and arriving habitually late at the terminus amid clouds of flies and dust. We were in the heart of the oil district, surrounded by derricks and cisterns, bathed in a pleasing smell of oil. I breathed in the air, enraptured. Born in one of these districts, I was a true child of oil and its smell delighted my nostrils.
At the exit from the little station, two carriages, gleaming in the sunshine, driven by two coachmen with near-identical names, Zeynal and Zeyni, would be waiting for us. There would be great salaams on both sides; Zeynal and Zeyni would look us up and down like the old fathers that they were, admiring how we had grown since the autumn. They would settle us and our hand luggage in the carriages as comfortably as they could. Then they would set off at a brisk pace, the walls around the oil wells echoing to the clatter of our gallop. Zeynal and Zeyni would clack their tongues and crack their whips and we would soon be hurtling down a rocky slope that led to desert land. We would immediately start to sigh ‘It’s so hot’, ‘It’s so dusty’, and this would go on for two hours, during which we were shaken and jolted on a road full of bumps and potholes. Everything changed after these two hours; well, not quite everything, as the road remained the same—a masterpiece of discomfort—but the view did. A green sea rose up on the horizon, a soughing, fragrant sea, a miraculous sea seen from the desert we were still galloping across. The sea would be cut off from view by 31the high walls that surrounded every property, while outside these enclosures the desert remained. But when the gate to our property opened at last, we were greeted by the stunning sight of a garden in bloom; it was stunning for us because on the other side of the wall we were still in the sad, grey desert. The carriages drove down a long avenue of poplars, around the stables and the small generator that provided us with electricity, and around the sheep’s apartments (as I called them); then after trotting for a minute or two they would stop before the beautiful stone staircase leading up to the house.
Those first moments upon arriving in the country delighted me: the flowers never again appeared so large and fresh or their fragrance so penetrating; even when the air was still, the poplars seemed to rustle more than usual with pleasure, and the water in the pools was never so clear, nor the sky so blue.
I had plenty of hellos to say on my arrival—not only to the animal world, but also the vegetable and even mineral: like most children I was an animist and generously ascribed souls to objects and plants. What were inanimate objects to others, to me were full of feelings, and I would run to greet them. They did not play dead with me; they replied in a simple language, sufficient for those who knew how to hear. But not many people understood it, and when Fräulein Anna caught me in conversation with a tree or bench, she would take exception and threaten me with punishment. ‘What for?’ I would ask in surprise. Adults’ blindness towards my world seemed to me a fundamental injustice. Half of my universe escaped them, while the other half remained mostly veiled. I pitied them, and their blindness filled me with contempt.
Almost all the poplars were my brothers, with the exception of the youngest. My relationship with them was constrained, mainly by their extreme youth, an age of intolerance and aggression. But the elders lavished their friendship and protection on me, and the games my cousins and I played depended on their assistance. Their 32leaves were our train tickets; when we straddled their branches, we had a horse; the smallest branches became whips used by our redoubtable cousins to frighten us; and we twisted the very smallest twigs into crowns for our coronation as king or queen.
One of the oldest poplars in the garden was my grandfather—I secretly wished that the grandfather life had given me was more like that poplar. He lavished me with loving names in his poplar language, caressed me with the rustle of his foliage, and when I told him my troubles he listened with all his leaves. The sympathy that I felt from him was all the more trustworthy in comparison with the human kind, as it was not expressed in gestures or articulated in words.
In the huge vineyard large rocks stuck their grey backs out of the sandy soil. One of them belonged solely to me, a fact acknowledged even by my cousins, who were usually none too particular where other people’s property was concerned. The sun turned it into a radiator on which I loved to lie; I would imagine myself on a lost peninsula in Oceania, surrounded by sea rather than sand.
In the same vineyard at the edge of the property lived an old vine that was so large I could lie down entirely beneath her and feel as though I were in a hut of leaves. Resting my head on what I saw as the shoulders of the vine, I would tell her my most shameful secrets; but as an old philosopher who had seen it all, she was never shocked. Later, it was beneath her branches that I made my first attempts at smoking.
There was an abandoned well in the vineyard which I often visited. Humiliated at his comedown, he would complain and sigh. Though I could not see them, I knew that he had small, tearful eyes and red eyelids. His hot sides were a meeting place for lizards, the only friends left from his glory days. I would count them with satisfaction and be glad at their number—the old man had company and I did not have to worry about leaving him.33
So, I had my favourites in every corner and avenue: here a pear tree, there a flight of steps, a box tree, a rose bush, a pool. I was happy with the friends I had chosen; unlike humans, I got back from them only what I gave them, and what I gave them was always to my benefit.
* A brief summary of the history of Azerbaijan in the early twentieth century can be found at the end of this book.
† The Shia support the family of the Prophet.
‡ A language of Turkish origin with a large contribution from Persian.
2
It was a large house, made up of two symmetrical wings with a dozen rooms in each. The two sides were separated by a large open passageway—the dolan—which remained cool and breezy even during the intense heat of summer. We had none of the comical fear of draughts suffered by those in temperate countries—on the contrary, a draught was to be sought out and harnessed as a free source of air conditioning. For this reason, almost every country house had a dolan.
Despite its size, the house struggled in springtime to accommodate the invading horde: my grandmother with her countless servants; her elder daughter with her husband; her younger daughter without her husband, not because she was widowed but because he was forever falling out with my father and scorned the enemy’s country domain. To make up for this loss, his five children—liars, thieves, sneaks and the bane of Fräulein Anna’s life—would come to spice up our blameless days. Then there was Grandmother’s youngest son, the cheerful, childlike Uncle Ibrahim, who was still a bachelor; and to round off the list, the four of us and Fräulein Anna. Add to that each family’s domestic staff, plus fifteen or so gardeners, coachmen and shepherds and we amounted to the population of a small village.
The property had extensive outbuildings, including henhouses, an enormous laundry and even a bakery, presided over by Grandmother, 35which produced the entire week’s supply of bread. But the estate’s finest feature, one that made us the envy of all our poor relations and covered us in well-deserved glory, was a large, magnificent hammam. Housed in a separate building at the bottom of the garden, it was more pleasure dome than utilitarian bathhouse for Grandmother and her guests.
We bought hardly anything: everything grew, so to speak, on the estate itself—bread, fruit and vegetables, and meat provided by the poor sheep.
