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Akram Aylisli: Farewell, Aylis

Akram Aylisli was a successful Azerbaijani author and had been given the title People’s Writer. Then he published his novel Daş yuxular (Stone Dreams in Russian (it has never been published in Azeri). At this time – as the Soviet Union was breaking up – there were serious disputes between Armenia and Azerbaijan over territory and particularly over two enclaves – the well known one of Nagorno-Karabakh and rhe less well-known one of Nakhchivan which is where Aylisli is from and appears in this book as Aylis. In his book Stone Dreams he dared to suggest that maybe the Armenians were not entirely to blame and referred to earlier massacres of Armenians by the Ottomans and Azerbaijanis. This was a terrible crime on the eyes of Azerbaijan and Aylisi and his family suffered for it. Full details of the various issues are given in this book and make for interesting reading.

This book contains three of Aylisi’s novellas, including Daş yuxular (Stone Dreams and a fourth part – Farewell, Aylis about what happened to Aylisi.

Yəmən (Yemen)

An Azerbaijani novel referencing William Faulkner, Margaret Thatcher and Charles de Gaulle and in which Neil Armstrong plays a key role and which is set partially in Yemen shows that our author has a vivid imagination.
Our hero is Safaly muallim (muallim is an honorific applied to a teacher). We first meet him at home on a very hot day when he looks up to the bookshelf and sees the cover of a book with a photo of the author on it. The author is William Faulkner , the book a gift from his daughter who lives in Leningrad. (The book opens in the Gorachev era). However he thinks not just of Faulkner but also of his uncle Khyzyr kishi. Khyzyr kishi is ninety-six and lives in the village of Buzbulag. He had helped bring up Safaly muallim when Safaly’s father had died though Safaly had not seen him since 1938! Safaly had lost both his mother and wife so lives alone. Safaly feels that after fifty-three years, he should visit his uncle.

The uncle has a grandson Tariel, and Safaly does not like him as he feels that Tariel has his eye on Safaly’s flat.

And then there is Yemen . The distinguished author Ali Ziya offers to take Safaly to Mecca via Yemen, Ali Ziya has an ulterior motive . He wants his daughter to attend the educational institute of which Safaly is head. In short, this is straightforward bribery. They go, together with Polina Viktorovna, coming from Kyiv and are met by officials from the Soviet Embassy. It is agrees that they will have a rest and then meet later but Safaly, instead, goes for a walk and comes across a beautiful garden, which reminds him of his uncle’s garden. he stays there a while. Meanwhile the other two have met up before the scheduled time and wonder where Safaly is. The ambassador says not to worry and that he will turn up but Ali starts a rumour that he has gone to the US Embassy to defect . Safaya arrives before the scheduled time. When they get back to Baku, the rumour is spread further and Safaly has to resign and Ali profits from his foul deed.

We follow Safaly in later life, including his visit to his uncle which does not go particularly well and his meeting with Tariel, which goes better.More interesting is Safaly’s chat with Neil Armstrong. As a child his mother told him magical stories about the Moon so when he sees where Armstrong had been walking was just black dust he is bitterly disappointed but when Armstrong reassures him that the rest of the Moon is much nicer, he is happy.

They also chat about politics.

This is a very enjoyable tale as though told in the third person, our author frequently intervenes with laconic or illuminating comments and Safaly comes out as a decent man caught up in a corrupt system.

Daş yuxular (Stone Dreams)

This was the book that got hm into trouble for daring to suggest that Armenians were not inhuman monsters and that the two peoples could and should live together in harmony, a view not shared by most of his compatriots.

A man is taken to the main hospital in Baku, clearly having been badly beaten up. He is Sadai Sadygly the pride of Azerbaijani theatre. He has seen an Armenian man brutally attacked and though himself an Azerbaijani, he had intervened and had been badly beaten by the thugs.He had been found by a fellow actor, Nuvarish Karabakhly, who had taken him to the hospital. f The surgeon vows to make him as good as new.

We learn from Nuvarish how corruption is rife. He has a nice quiet flat next to a quiet old lady. She is hounded out of her flat by an influential man and later dies in an unexplained fall from an upper floor. The flat turns into a brothel and Nuvarish gets no peace but dare not complain in case he has an unexplained fall. We also learn that Sadai had met the First Person, presumably the president, and is critical of him for his corruption.

He is later proposed for the title of Peoples’ Artist (as was Akram Aylisli) but when the announcement appeared in the papers the next day, his name was not on the list. Apparently the previous night he had been overheard saying I don’t need any rank of the kind that your generous Master gives out left and right—let me earn my rank in the eyes of the people. This is by no means the only time he shoots his mouth off and offends others in doing so.

We follow the stories of the surgeon, Dr Farzant, also an Azerbaijani Muslim. He had married a Russian woman and they had a son. When the boy was twelve, when his wife is out, he circumcises the boy. When the wife returns the boy has a high temperature and the wife is furious. The boy soon recovers but the wife never forgives him and divorces him. The doctor returns to Baku, which he soon regrets.

The key theme here however is Aylis. Sadai is from there as is Dr. Abasaliev, Sadai’s father-in-law. Aylis, as mentioned above is real life Nakhchivan. Much of the rest of the book is about Aylis. In some respects it is seen as a paradise and we get stories about this and about some of the colourful characters who lived there , especially those he calls prominent and colourful Armenian women. We learn about the culture, history, religion, landscape, and of course ghosts and spirits.

But there is a dark side, the theme of the novel. In the days of the Ottoman Empire the Turks had come and, with the connivance of the Muslim leader, murdered all the Armenians they could find. One girl hid in a tandoori oven for three days and others were absent but the ditches were full of blood for some time. A visiting merchant later commented Leave this place before it’s too late, .A person can’t live in a place where there are so many cemeteries without knowing woe.

Sadai is very much an Azerbaijani but sympathetic towards the Armenians. The author comments And with every Armenian beaten, offended, and killed in that giant city [i.e. Baku], it was as if he himself had been beaten, offended, and killed.

But Sadai is still in hospital, unconscious but thinking of his beloved Aylis. Sadai Sadygly saw Aylis every night in his dreams. Because Aylis was the unhealed wound of his heart.

I can see why the Azerbaijanis did not like this book as it is sympathetic to the Armenians. However for those of us not invested in the Azerbaijan- Armenia struggle, it is an excellent novella telling of the love for the homeland and the struggles the two peoples have. But. as one character says People have changed to the point of being unrecognisable. It’s so terrible that there didn’t turn out to be a single spiritual authority in the whole country who was able tell people the truth, who was unafraid for his own skin. Where is our humane nation? Where is our celebrated intelligentsia? ”

A Fantastical Traffic Jam

In the last of the three novellas we get into Kafka territory.Elbey returns to work after a two hour absence. He works on the seventh floor of a six storey building in a country called l Allahabad. He works for the Operations Headquarters for the Restoration of Fountains and Waterfalls in the Name of Progress and Pluralism. When he tries to enter his office, the key will not open the lock. He tries many times without success. Now he realises why was sent on a trivial task – the locks have been changed in his absence.
While he is waiting, perhaps to be arrested, he thinks of his life. He has a terrible marriage – he and his wife had never got on. His two sons have left the country though his daughter has stayed and has had three children. Her husband has been driven out and her mother is raising the children and plans on making them famous. Why does Elbey put up with his wife? She is a close relation of the Master, his boss and the apparent dictator of the country.

We soon learn what is to happen to Elbey. The previous day he had been summoned by the Master. The Master wanted to know about the nickname DIV which is apparently being used for him. Elvey denies all knowledge though he has only recently heard it. It has two meanings, one more flattering than the other. More worrying for Elbey is that the Mster asks him about the money and gold Elbey has hidden away and he feels he has to tell all.
Back to his key problem a man suddenly appears, asks for his keys and tells him that he is his new chauffeur – he does not know what has happened to his previous one – and tells him that he is to drive Elbey. to one of his dachas, the other one apparently having been given to someone else.While being driven to the dacha, Elbey reminisces about the rise of the Master, due in part to the Master’s father, who had been a barber and circumciser but became a good communist under the Soviets. When he arrives at the dacha he finds that his very clever hiding place for his gold has been discovered.

While alone in the dacha, he reminisces a lot more about both his early life and about the Master’s story and where they coincided. He started working for the Master as a spy, going round shops, bars and so on listening out for anyone criticising the Master and progresses, helped by marrying a relative of the Master, who was foisted on him. As we know he did very well financially but one of the accusations against him is that he created a state within a state. As the title tells us, it all ends with a fantastical traffic jam.

Farewell Aylis

The last part is (more or less) non fiction. It involves the author commenting on the situation in Azerbaijan and the Armenia-Azerbaijan dispute. It includes an imaginary conversation with President Ilham Aliev, a totally corrupt Putinesque leader.

Aylisi is highly critical of his own people but also of the United States as the Azeri programmes on Radio Liberty are full of anti-Armenia vitriol. He also points out that the two peoples lived peacefully side by side when both were in the Soviet Union. He makes the valid comment It suddenly turned out that over the long centuries of its development, the world hadn’t changed one iota—the cruel, merciless world that crucified Jesus, burned Giordano Bruno at the stake, confined Galileo under house arrest for life, and in the course of a single century caused the massacre of two peoples, “Armenians in Ottoman Turkey and Jews in Auschwitz—it remained exactly the same, that world!. He tells his story and what he suffered, including the mass burning of his books, in his village – he watched the video and recognised many of the people involved. But he also tells of the suffering of the Armenians, such as Tamara Atabekyan, the last Armenian in his village, an old woman who had harmed no-one and did not even speak Armenian, murdered and her body dumped in the Armenian cemetery.

We must admire his courage for standing up for what is right, even though we know, as he says, things are not getting better but worse.

Publishing history

Consists of Yəmən (Yemen), first published 1992; Daş yuxular (Stone Dreams, first published 2012; Möhtəşəm tıxac (A Fantastical Traffic Jam first published in 2011)
First published in English by Academic Studies Press in 2018
Translated by Katherine E Young