Abstract
Uzbek writer Hamid Ismailov has been living in exile since 1992
One of Uzbekistan’s most widely published authors,
Ismailov was forced into exile in 1992. He can’t pinpoint which exact work led to this. He believes it was the cumulative effect of various articles, plus a freelance job he did with a BBC film crew that year, when they interviewed a variety of significant figures in Uzbekistan, including all the secular and religious opposition. In his first year after fleeing the country for Europe, Ismailov would receive letters from his 12-year-old daughter: “Dad, if you come to take me, don’t come to Tashkent. The prosecutors are asking about you every day.”
Ismailov thought his exile would be temporary but 23 years on, he still can’t return. After a year in France, he moved to the UK, where he has been ever since. He found work with the BBC World Service and in 2010 was appointed their writer-in-residence for two years. His novels – including the acclaimed The Railway and The Dead Lake, both translated into English – remain banned in Uzbekistan. “My personal library is in Uzbekistan, my early archives are there, my relatives are waiting for me,” he said.
“In the late 80s and the beginning of the 90s, the weak echoes of perestroyka and glasnost were still around,” he recalled. “But since the everlasting President Karimov crushed first the secular opposition, then by imprisoning dozens of thousands of believers, he radicalised local moderate Islam to the extent that the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan became one of the scaremongers of the global jihadism. There is no free expression in Uzbekistan, no dissent is allowed at all.” In September 2012, he published his novel A Poet and Bin-Laden, about a central Asian country suffering under both dictatorship and jihadism.
Ismailov’s new story, Hatcha-bu, or Granny Hadidja, published exclusively here, explores the idea of transformation, with a feisty and foul-mouthed grandmother who experiences flashbacks to her youth. “Why people do harden like a piece of old cheese? In the case of Hatcha-bu, it’s partly because of the local Uzbekistani circumstances, like the general hardship of life, when her children are forced to migrate to Russia, to earn their living. But at the same time it happens because of some universal things like love, human relationships, cheating, betrayal.”
He said he chose the name Hatcha as it sound like sounds like “gotcha”. “The transformation of the tender ‘Hadidja’ into ‘Hatcha’ is also similar to the transformation of the eloquent ‘I have got you’ into the gob-smacking ‘gotcha’. By describing the hardened soul of Hatcha, who is a typical granny in modern Uzbekistan, I was trying to explore whether this phenomenon is reversible, how it affects the youth, those who are searching for their identity, for their place in this hard life.”
Ismailov, meanwhile, has watched from afar as authorities try to erase his own identity. “Nobody can mention my name in any article, review, historic piece. I’m the most widely published Uzbek, yet, nobody can mention any of my books. It’s a total ban of my name, of activity, of books, of existence. It’s as if I’m non-existent.”
Hatcha-bu, or Granny Hadidja
Your sinful soul started to burn like a flame, Your sins grew and grew to the size of the mountain, I don’t understand, O helpless creature, What kind of soul you possess, what kind of body you have, what kind of person you are. You are a monster, you are a beggar, Compared to your sins, a mountain seems a single grain. Are you a worthless wretch? Your face is hard, Your tongue is bitter, your heart is stone.
These bitter poems mixed with her sour dreams; from time to time she would try to interpret these dreams, and her mood grew and her heart grew cloudier still. If only this damned ache would leave her nearly paralysed legs. In the dim light, a number of her grandchildren were sleeping curled under a filthy blanket: the old woman smelt a mixture of fart and the sharp smell of piss. Hatcha-bu guessed that one of the little cheeky bastards – Qozi – had wet the bed. Now she couldn’t bear her incessant ache along with her clouded heart, and shouted: “Oi, you little wastes of space! Wake up! Are you going to carry on lying around in your own filth like boar? The courtyard has a layer of dust forming, would it kill for you to clean it a little?” She carried on: “Hey Zumrad, if you were to marry today, you’d already be able to have kids, and yet you can’t even look after your little brothers! Wake up, you little piglet! Look at your ugly mug, go and give yourself a clean! How could a girl be so lazy? And what about you Oftob, are you deaf?!” She continued shouting: “It’s been a while since I’ve clipped your ear! Look at your little brother, he’s pissed himself again! Put some ash on to it before it starts to smell, and hang the blanket on the clothesline – you’ve made my mattresses rot. Stop lazing about like your father!”
After she’d finished chasing away these little devils, Hatcha-bu, not knowing how to start her day, stood up moaning and groaning, took a pot of water, and waddled outside.
This should be a good day, she thought to herself. Not a single cloud could be seen in the sky and the sun was diffusing like a softening ache. Maybe I should put the warm pot aside, and wash myself in the stream, she thought, having leant towards it. Her stubbornness awoke however, and she said to herself: “Are you going to risk leaning to your own death, stupid old hag!” Within a minute or two, the shrill voice of little Qozi broke her peace: “Granny, granny, look at them! They’re teasing me!” “Bloody hell!” shouted the old lady. A frightened Qozi wailed in response.
She said to herself: “Are you going to risk leaning to your own death, stupid old hag!”
“You evil little things, can’t you leave him in peace – are you stooping low enough to tease your own shit, you ugly little pelican,” she shouted. “And you little pussy, can’t you stand up for yourself!”
While she was walking to the toilet, Hatcha-bu remembered her dream. In her dream, her late husband – In’om Hodja – tied her arms and legs together like a calf for slaughter, and took her to the Zah-arik riverbank, telling her that he would throw her into the water. “You’ll finally lose your leg pains forever,” he said. Instead of throwing her off the steep bank, he would leave her at the edge of the bank and disappear. If she’d have moved, she knew she would have fallen. When she didn’t move however, she would see the reflection of Oftob and Zumrad in the water itself. “What are you staring at?! Why won’t you untie your granny, you pests?” she would ask. Either Zumrad or Oftob would taunt her saying: “You can’t even tell who I am, damn you,” before disappearing into the water. At that point, Hatcha-bu would always wake up in cold sweats, scared to death from the dream.
“…Damn you!” Hatcha-bu repeated to herself in the same voice. “You’re even thinking of your dream while in the loo, you silly cow,” she thought to herself. After leaving the toilet, she looked over at her vegetable garden. In between the tomatoes, she saw a weed growing in the same plot, and shouted to her grandchildren with a face of thunder: “Zumrad, Oftob! You smelly cretins! Can’t you see what’s happened with the garden, weeds are growing everywhere and taking everything!” The girls quickly ran over to the tomatoes and knelt over them, attempting to rid the garden of the weeds. “Pull them out cautiously, if you let any part of them fall off they’ll just grow back,” Hatcha-bu warned, placing a small branch of basil behind her ear and heading over towards the kitchen.
Half an hour later, the plucking weed business was over, and the girls were all baking bread. One of them was warming up the tandir [clay oven], another one rolled balls of dough in her hands, and a third one, along with Hatcha-bu, spread the dough balls in their hands into a naan. Even Qozi was poking holes in the centre of every naan with the chakkich [bread-making tool]. Hatcha-bu, wearing an oven glove, flattened the bread against the inside of the oven, whilst mentoring her grandchildren: “Any person who enters the tandir at least once, shall never go to hell,” she recounted. “Open your eyes and pay attention: when you marry it’ll save you a lot of trouble,” she told one of her granddaughters. “You won’t have to eat junk food in the streets with your husband,” she taught her. She repeated this close to a hundred times whilst trying to teach Zumrad how to bake naan. “Your father and mother went to Russia thinking they’d earn millions there, maybe they’re begging, wandering the streets. They took all my savings for my funeral with them, which I had saved for myself by eating crumbs and fasting.” – “This is for you, that is for you, and there’s shit all left for me,” she mumbled. The girls said nothing; only Qozi, like a granny’s pet asked: “But Granny, you yourself told auntie Zebi that they’re sending you money, didn’t you?” The burning rage of the old lady burst into flames once more: “Hush you little devil, would I tell the stingy Zebi that they haven’t sent me a single penny for the last six months? How would you even shut her up after that?”
Your father and mother went to Russia thinking they’d earn millions there, maybe they’re begging, wandering the streets
At that moment, someone’s voice came from the doorway. Qozi was saved as Zumrad ran towards the door …
Traditional naan bread sellers in Uzbekistan
Credit: Kasia Nowak / Alamy
“Come in my child, are you all right? How are you?” she asked, whilst actually thinking, “Which bloody wind could have blown him here, where on Earth did he come from …?” Hatcha-bu led the neatly dressed young stranger towards the supa in the courtyard. Though the weather, which had been wonderful, was turning foul, a touch of freshness from the glistening stream made the stuffy, hot air bearable. “Come in, darling, what a nice young man you seem! My eyes have warmed to you and you look familiar to me,” probed Hatcha-bu. The young man spread his hands for prayer instead of answering, and the old lady immediately started to pray herself. “Since you’ve come seeking us, let God give you greatness in both worlds …” she uttered, whilst palming her face in order to finish the prayer, and then welcomed him. She carefully selected a naan from those brought by Zumrad, and broke it. “Please help yourself to the naan!” Hatcha-bu said, before turning to Zumrad: “Don’t stand there like a puppy, waggling your tail, go and make tea!”
The young man cut straight to his point, instead of a long introduction.
“I came today to the cemetery, because my granny is buried here. My granny was from the pure hodja caste [descendants of the Caliphs or closest companions of the Prophet Muhammad], and my father started to restore our family tree, but had some problems with the father of my granny. Our great-grandfather – Kamol-hodja – was apparently shot in the 30s, may God bless him.”
At that point, Zumrad brought the kettle, and slammed it on to the table surface in order to quickly make the prayer, but the vigilant old lady caught on to it in an instant, remarking: “Hey clumsy, are you trying to break my china? Go and get some fruit …” whilst Oftob, Nozlijon and Qozi were chuckling to themselves, peeping at her from the kitchen and giggling. The young man was distracted for a second, before taking the cup of tea which is passed to him, and continued his story.
“Therefore, I’m looking for his descendants. According to my father, there is either Usman-hodja or Yunus-hodja, who was a cousin to my granny, who also lived in this neighbourhood. I asked the undertaker, and he sent me to this place. “If you ask In’om Hodja’s family, they would know,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.”
Village life in Uzbekistan
Credit: imageBROKER / Alamy
Hatcha-bu, who was dipping the fresh naan into her tea, said all of a sudden: “Yes, Meli-Kozoq was right. We’re also from the hodjas who ‘go mad every afternoon’ [according to an Uzbek proverb], and there are no other hodjas in this neighbourhood, my dear.”
“So you haven’t heard of anyone called Usman-hodja or Yunus-hodja, right?” asked the young lad, whilst putting the tea cup on to the tablecloth with a touch of irritation.
Everyone knows the difficulty in the life of a new bride: all she ever saw was a brush, broom and a rolling pin
“What was the name of your granny you mentioned?” asked Hatcha-bu humbly, whilst thinking to herself: Should I bear the irritation of this boy who’s too young to be my shit?
“Sharofat, the daughter of Kamol-hodja, was called Sharofat …” he quickly replied.
“Is it the Sharofat who worked in Qoplonbek’s hospital?” Hatcha-bu interrupted.
“Yes, that’s the one! Did you know her?” asked the young lad excitedly.
The old lady pursed her lips, and muttered: “Oh boy, did I know her …” and a heavy silence fell in the room.
That happened at the end of the 1960s. Hadidja-hon had just married In’om-jon. The father of these girls had already been born by that point, and Hadidja was pregnant with a second. Everyone knows the difficulty in the life of a new bride: all she ever saw was a brush, broom and a rolling pin. Would a mother-in-law allow her to continue to study? Certainly not! Her husband, In’om-jon, had made her abandon her medical college course. During the day, her mother-in-law would torment her, while at night her husband would come home from work and expect intercourse, regardless of her pregnancy. The whole night through, either she pleasured her husband, or tended to her newborn baby. No sleep, no peace. Hadidja reached her limit, and that was the point where Hadidja turned into Hatcha. Her face turned expressionless, and her body became a bag of skin and bones. At that very point, Sharofat appeared like Hatcha’s arch-nemesis.
Initially, the simple husband of Hatcha couldn’t keep his mouth shut, and spilt his flowering secret to her. He was the manager of a pharmacy in Qoplonbek at the time, and he told her about the new appointment of a chief nurse at the local hospital, who he described as “one of our hodja ladies”. He would be receiving medicines from her directly, and they would share the benefits and profits from their cooperation.
Hatcha’s naked and thinned heart ached upon hearing this, yet she said nothing and gave a fake smile.
The next night, her husband found an excuse to talk about his work, and said: “Your hodjas are a very strange breed aren’t they; that Sharofat [meaning holiness] – the lady who brings the medicines – is called Sharob [meaning wine] by everyone in her household apparently. Are they mad?” Hatcha simply just shrugged her bony shoulders and said nothing.
Overall, every given night, the conversation ended up with this bloody Sharofat-Sharob. One night near dawn, when her baby son needed breastfeeding, she woke up, turned towards him and heard her husband – who had placed his hand on her shoulder – muttering: “Sharob, Sharob” in his sleep. Hatcha sobbed quietly and cried until the very morning. She swore and cursed in every way that she knew, pouring her anguish on to this evil villain Sharob. That night, Hatcha made a definite plan.
By midday, she made an excuse of seeing the doctor and, leaving her breastfed son to her mother-in-law, took a bus and went to Qoplonbek. She planned to arrive there during lunchtime, and went in through the back entrance, which she had discovered while she was a medical student and had appointments with her husband-to-be. She entered the pharmacy, and hid herself in one of the wardrobes.
Hatcha’s naked and thinned heart ached upon hearing this, yet she said nothing and gave a fake smile
As it was a pharmacy, it was incredibly hot and stuffy in the wardrobe, though luckily there was no dust and it was clean. She was sweating, but luckily didn’t sneeze as she spied upon her husband. Within a half-hour, he entered the pharmacy burping after his lunch. Hatcha’s heart started pacing quickly, and as a result she could feel the baby in her womb panicking and kicking her belly. Hatcha didn’t know how much time had passed whilst people came and went, with the sound of bottles clinking becoming familiar. Her time came however, and she saw an ambulance parking in the courtyard, with the chief nurse coming out of it as if to deliver medicine. “Sharofat-hon, is that you?” said In’om-jon, losing his breath with nervous excitement. Throwing tiny little steps, a shadow entered the pharmacy. Hatcha also lost her breath, though not with nervous excitement. “Sharofat-hon, where have you been, I’ve missed you so much!” said In’om, starting to show his lust in the midst of his breaths. “Why? Hello In’om-jon-aka,” said the bitch, as if flirting. “Here are the medicines that you asked for.”
“But we need some different medicine, don’t we, my fair lady,” said her husband, ambiguously. “Leave it, In’om-jon-aka, you’re a family man …” started Sharofat, but was cut short. “For you, my darling, I can even move my family aside,” In’om quickly responded.
As soon as he said that, the door of the cupboard slowly moved of its own accord, and the pregnant Hatcha tumbled out wrapped in all kinds of clothes, like a spirit or jinn.
She didn’t pass out or lose her consciousness however. She didn’t even tear at the hair of this whore, nor did she strangle her husband. On the contrary, she was enchanted seeing the beauty of this hag, standing in the middle of the room in her white nurse gown; playing with the seam of the very same robe that accentuated her beautiful figure. What especially stood out were her angelic or devilish eyes, which only required one glance to remember. “What are you doing here, you ass!” screamed her husband at her. Awakened by his rude voice, Hatcha burst into tears, considering her ugliness, her filthiness and her dim-witted nature. She doesn’t remember how this angel disappeared, or how her husband hired a car to bring her home. All that she remembers is that she told everything to her brother-in-law – Baba – whilst crying.
That night, her brother-in-law preyed upon Sharofat somewhere, caught her unaware and stabbed her. After this, he never returned home as he had been sent to Siberia as punishment.
Did Hatcha know Sharofat? Oh boy, she knew her!
There, Qozi met Zumrad, teasing. “There you go, take that! Didn’t I tell you, if you have narrow shoes, there’s no point to the wideness of the world,” he smirked glumly.
“Please do drink your tea, whilst it’s warm! You were saying something …?” Hatcha-bu reminded him.
“Oh yes, sorry,” said the boy, snapping out of his silence. “All I wanted to ask was, did you know my granny Sharofat?”
“Oh no, where would I have known her from? I just heard of her here and there …”
At that point, Qozi’s voice moaned from the kitchen like a little lamb: “Granny, granny!”
“Oh I hope your granny dies and you’re left granny-less! What do you want? Will you leave me alone!” came Hatcha’s response. “These kids won’t even allow a single word of conversation!”
“Look at that girl of yours! She’s crying, and saying that she’ll kill herself,” piped up Qozi.
“Who’s this silly suicidal girl? Those who eat a lot – shit a lot too; what trick is she up to?” said Hatcha, before hastily putting on her shoes and hobbling hurriedly towards the kitchen through the freshly rained upon courtyard, mumbling, “A cow’s not clever enough to know who cares for it.”
The young stranger didn’t know what to do – whether to leave or stay, and sat in his confusion.
The old lady thought to herself: “Should I engage my little cow Zumrad to that neat young lad? It’s a shame his granny’s blood is disastrous. Though that being said, is our blood any better?” she thought, whilst wiping droplets off her face which had fallen on her from the grapevine. The sun’s toothless smile shone through the vine leaves. Hatcha smiled to herself: “Curse you, all of us are hodjas who go mad by the afternoon anyway …”
© Hamid Ismailov
Translated by Dani Ismailov