Book 108: Tajikistan (English) – Hurramabad = Хуррамабад (Andrei VOLOS)

What was the thing called exile?
Where had he met the word before? Only in novels he had read in his youth. There it had had a fine, noble overtone of fortitude and courage. Now it seemed clear enough that neither courage nor fortitude were involved, only fear. One day something had broken in his heart under the sheer weight of fear, and everything that had been dear and familiar to him became foreign and threatening. He suddenly found himself in exile without even having to move anywhere, because that is where you are when everything around is foreign and dangerous. He had become a foreigner. He had sensed that the change was irreversible, and that as a foreigner there was nothing to be ashamed of in being afraid.

When the Soviet Union suddenly disintegrated, a huge number of Soviet citizens who were Russians, or Ukrainians, or Armenians etc. living in other ‘Soviet Socialist Republics’ like Tajikistan, found themselves overnight treated as foreigners in newly independent countries. They were no longer at home in these countries, if not actively discriminated against, and a large number of them felt compelled to go ‘back’ to their home republics like Russia (even though some had never been there). And in their new ‘homelands’ they were also not at home.
After Tajikistan, the poorest of the SSRs, found itself in an independence for which it was totally unprepared, it fell into a long civil war (at the same time as the far better known one in neighbouring Afghanistan) between fundamentalist Muslims and supporters of the secular leftist dictatorship.
Hurramabad is called a novel, so I’ve included it here, although for me it had more of the feel of a collection of short stories (or ‘facets’ as the author called them).
Volos himself was born in Dushanbe to a family that came to live there along with Soviet rule in the 1920s, and had to leave in the 1990s when life in the new land became intolerable for them. Great as this book (and no doubt its translation) was, I finished it feeling the need to read something written by an ethnic Tajik writer, in the hope of some balance or seeing the situation from the other side, or merely hearing a Tajik voice. (Let’s not forget that what is now Tajikistan was conquered and colonised by the Russians, and suffered what any colony suffered). In any case Hurramabad is excellent writing and totally recommendable reading, and gave me a stunning view of injustice from a different perspective.

Volos, Andrei (1955 – ), Hurramabad: a novel in facets, translated from Russian (?) by Arch Tait, Moscow, GLAS New Russian Writing, 2001, ISBN 5-7172-0056-0