by Banine
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 and 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 the 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 leaves 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.
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, which 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.
While my father was still a widower, we all lived and ate together, and this communal life must have been most inelegant. At the table—and just imagine its length—there would be constant complaints, disputes, children crying and the clatter of crockery; all the usual goings-on of an ordinary, large family. Grandmother, who held court at the head of the table, ate with her fingers, more cleanly it should be said than did my aunts and uncles with their brand-new cutlery. Fräulein Anna, the only splash of blonde against a background of universally dark hair, eyes and skin, didn’t dare tell us off when we ate messily. How could any reprimand not apply to the entire company? At the time this primitive atmosphere didn’t bother me, but I can imagine now how much it must have troubled our more sophisticated governess.
The conversation flowed freely—a singular mix of scarcely intelligible Russian, children’s German and Azeri. The Azeri spoken, or rather shouted, at this table sounded harsh and staccato; I didn’t like it, which is probably why I’ve never been able to speak it properly.
How many innocent sheep were sacrificed for that table! We did eat other meat too, but not very often, as this entailed calling the butcher and, horror of horrors, watching actual, real, lovely roubles disappear into his pocket, which was more than Grandmother could bear. She controlled the purse strings for all the families staying here, and did so with unyielding strictness. She abhorred all excess, whether it cost money or not, and would even ration the property’s own produce. Actually opening her purse to make a purchase caused her such physical distress that she avoided it with all her considerable might.
Her three daughters, my aunts, were fat brunettes, bearded and mustachioed, and very proud of their recent emancipation. To prove it, they jabbered away in an original blend of Russian and Azeri, smoked furiously and used the services of the most fashionable dressmaker in Baku. They loved jewellery and festooned themselves with it, even going so far as to stick brooches in their hair. They all had violent tempers, chattered non-stop and played poker with an unwavering passion. They couldn’t talk without shouting and even the most peaceable conversation sounded more like a fight. Mudslinging was another passion, and they didn’t have a good word to say about anyone, not even their own mother and father. As soon as one sister left the room, the other two would start to criticize their absent sibling, her children and husband. This didn’t stop them loving one another in their own way, and they would be upset and miss one another when a family rift had separated them. More serious discord had come into their lives on the death of their father, as there was an INHERITANCE to be divided up. This became a source of bitter trouble, and the sisters lived permanently between a rock and a hard place. Their husbands urged them to claim their share from my father, who was head of the family and manager of the family firm. My father, for his part, did not want to share out the inheritance, as this would have robbed him of his importance. So when the unfortunate sisters finally did come to stake their claim, they would get a frosty reception.
‘What do you need money for?’ he would ask the sister who had voiced her grievance.
‘My husband demands it.’
‘Your husband is a worthless scoundrel. He wants to live off your money.’
‘Your brother’s a thief. If you don’t get your share, I’ll disown you,’ her husband would yell when he heard the attempt had failed.
They were forever swinging back and forth between the wrath of their brother and the fury of their husbands.
In solidarity my uncles had no scruples about calling my father the worst of names in my presence. Strange though it may seem, this had no effect on the esteem in which I held him, and even increased his importance in my eyes. Thief, bastard, man without honour, crook—this is what his brothers-in-law thought of him, eaten up as they were by envy and greed at the thought of the unattainable inheritance.
My grandfather’s second wife, the reviled Russian, for her part instituted legal proceedings over the division, which made things even more complicated. So complicated in fact that the situation became intractable: the heirs traded insults, hating one another; no one would give an inch, and jealousy and suspicion were the order of the day. And so the situation lurched from court hearing to court hearing, year to year, until the revolution, which managed quite impartially to bring everyone into accord.
My youngest aunt lived with her husband and three children in the neighbouring property, which was separated from us by a high wall. A gate had been made in the wall, which served not only as an ordinary entrance but, more interestingly, as a barometer of family relations. It remained hospitably open if relations were good, or angrily shut if they were not.
The oldest of the aunts, Rena, was my favourite. She was highly strung, suffered with numerous nervous tics and had a hot temper but a generous heart, which prompted her to spoil me shockingly on the pretext that I was an orphan. She had no children of her own. The only one of the sisters with cultural aspirations, she had piano lessons, and after considerable effort managed to bash out the tune of the era, the famous waltz ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave’, which became more of a slow march under her clumsy fingers. She read Gyp and Maupassant, not very quickly. My father claimed it had taken her seven years to read War and Peace, but he enjoyed teasing her. Later she had the audacity to hire a French lady’s companion to teach her the language. Her studies didn’t get very far. At most she would say of her husband, ‘Comme il bête’ (‘He very stupid’), using a foreign tongue to highlight the distance between her and her ignorant spouse. He had an admirable capacity to irritate her. I remember my uncle, a gentle giant who was hard of hearing, as someone who always had his hand cupped to his ear to hear better. Deafness and a phlegmatic temperament allowed him to remain on good terms with the most bellicose of his in-laws.
However, he very much irritated my aunt. ‘He thinks I love him, but he really gets on my nerves!’ she shouted at anyone who would listen, even in her husband’s presence. This would be followed by more pleasantries in the same vein, only about a third of which my uncle would hear, allowing him to maintain his serenity. Thanks to his fortunate deafness, depriving him of half of everything that was said, he was the only brother-in-law to remain on excellent terms with my father, who fell out with people very easily. They would quarrel just once a season on average, a very moderate rate in such a disputatious family.
The youngest of the sisters lived with us during the summer; she had five children, the two youngest of whom were too little to interest me, but not so the three older ones! I was devoted to the eldest, Gulnar. Talkative, hypocritical and precocious, at the age of twelve she spoke about men in the tones of a woman of experience, giving me fascinating insights into our future dealings with them. She had already lost any illusions about male psychology: ‘They are all selfish and will give us children if we let them. You have to lead them by the nose or they will take advantage.’
‘You think so?’ I asked, full of respect for her original insights and envious of her experience and subtlety.
‘I don’t think so, I know so!’ Gulnar replied in a peremptory tone.
And she gave a passing gardener a haughty look.
She was entirely taken up with thinking about men, which stopped her getting down to her studies. And her lackadaisical mother, disinclined to be strict, left her in peace; only her father would give her a dressing-down from time to time, but the effect
of his interventions was short-lived.
However, my admiration for Gulnar didn’t come close to my admiration for her twin brothers, Asad and Ali, who were two years younger than her. They were my unrivalled teachers and professors, strict, unfair but magnificent. I eagerly sought them out, despite Fräulein Anna’s protestations, losing a little of my innocence in their vigorous company.
Excessively liberal in morality, they lied, snitched, told tales and even stole whenever the opportunity arose. Their light fingers slipped into their pockets any money that was left lying around. ‘We’re all brothers, we’re all one family. What belongs to one belongs to all,’ they would say, pained to have to explain such an evident truth. They talked enthusiastically about the digestive system and its end product, discussing these things knowledgeably and making erudite comments, while Gulnar and I were thrilled to listen. While some people draw in red chalk, pencil or pastels, Asad and Ali drew with their dirty fingers on the whitewashed walls of the outhouses. They enjoyed spending time in one such retreat in particular, a rather romantic-looking turreted affair, and decorated its white walls with their almost lyrical creations, since they drew flowers just as well as obscene images. The outhouse was set up in Turkish style with the essential accoutrements for ablutions; it smelt of whitewash and humidity, which attracted a vast number of centipedes. Its walls were embellished with a variety of drawings—the genius of my cousins gave the outhouse a unique appearance. Its distinctive smell has stayed in my nostrils, and I cannot see a centipede without remembering it.
Needless to say, they taught me to smoke. Their loathing of the commonplace meant that my initiation did not take place in the outhouses, as convention requires, but beneath the great vines in the vineyard. There I would turn green and nearly expire to the merciless mockery of my teachers. Beforehand, Gulnar and I would empty the tea leaves from teapots, so we could chew them after the crime to get rid of the smell of tobacco that a suspicious adult might detect. After that we would combine business and pleasure by seeing who could spit them the furthest, a game at which the brothers beat us hands down, as usual.