Mavi Boncuk |
Ali and Nino A Love Story by Kurban Said
IBN 0-385-72040-8
FIRST published in Vienna in 1937, and now back in print after nearly six decades, "Ali and Nino" is a timeless classic of love in the face of war. Kurban Said"s masterpiece is a captivating novel as evocative of the exotic desert landscape as it is of the passion between its two central characters, Ali and Nino. This relatively short book with an epic sweep has been hailed as one of the enduring romantic novels of the century. Often compared to Romeo and Juliet, "Gone with the Wind", "Dr Zhivago" and the story of Laila and Majnu "” it is as much a story of love as it is a portrait of two exotic cultures.
Needless to say it is a book that quite like all great literature has a timeless appeal.Set in the years of the Russian Revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union, Said"s tale of an Azerbaijani Muslim boy in love with a Georgian Christian girl is both tender and disturbing.
The novel, begins as Ali Khan Shirvanshir is finishing his last year of high school: "We were a very mixed lot, we forty schoolboys who were having a geography lesson one hot afternoon in the Imperial Russian Humanistic High School of Baku, Transcaucasia: thirty Mohammedans, four Armenians, two Poles, three Sectarians, and one Russian." His beloved Nino, however, is "a Christian, who eats with knife and fork, has laughing eyes and wears filmy silk stockings" "” in short she epitomises the best of the West.
But in the far away West, there are rumblings of war. When the Russian Revolution begins, Ali Khan chooses not to fight. The Czar"s fate is of little interest to a Muslim living in far away Transcaucasia. But the young man senses that another, greater danger is gathering on his country"s borders. It is that of an "invisible hand" trying to force his world into new ways "” the ways of the West. He assures his worried father that, like his ancestors, he is willing to die in battle, but at a time of his own choosing. In the meantime, he courts Nino and eventually marries despite the growing scandal and opposition to the match.
There are cautionary moments in this little chronicle of cultures colliding and a way of life brutally destroyed. But in the end, however, it is not historical accuracy, rather the charm and passion of the title characters that lifts Said"s only novel into literature"s highest ranks.
Standing at the crossroads of Asia and Europe, Baku brings together the East and the West, Muslim and Christian, tradition and modernity "” Ali and Nino. Forces more destructive than harsh conventions are gathering on the horizon, and when World War I breaks out, the tranquil oasis of Baku is drawn into a series of events it cannot predict or control. Ali decides not to join his friends in fighting against the Germans for the Czar nor in fighting with the Turks against the Czar. When the Red Army marches into Baku, Ali is forced to choose between his love for his country and his love for Nino, a choice that sets the stage for the novel"s heroic and heartrending conclusion.
In this city where Orient and Occident collide, they are inevitably caught up in the events of World War I and the Russian Revolution. And both must confront the divided world that surrounds them as well as their own deepest needs. With the funamentalist backdrop of recent years and the ethnic and social complexities that have accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union, "Ali and Nino" has gained an unexpected and echoing topicality, making its remarkable story especially vivid today.
At once an unforgettable tale of love, adventure and personal heroism, "Ali and Nino" has persisted in readers" memories just as the strange background of its author"s life has continued to perplex all who look into it. While Ali and Nino"s passionate love is at the centre of the book"s events, this novel is more than just a love story. The story takes the readers on a fascinating and remarkably insightful journey to Baku, Tbilisi, the Karabakh, Tehran and the mountains of Dagestan.
The union of Ali and Nino is not just a union of Europe and Asia, as an outsider may rush to conclude, but a union of two of the many distinct and yet related cultures of the Caucasus.
It gives its reader a full picture: of love and passion, of war and revolution, of honour and disgrace and of mountains and deserts. There is the cosmopolitan Baku, the bustling streets of Tbilisi and ailing Tehran; Islam, Christianity, and newly born Bahaism.
Most strikingly, describing Ali"s thoughts, Said speaks of his love for his land "” even if that happens to be the dry land around Baku. The attention to detail is stunning and remarkable.
Said reminds his reader about this time and again. Nino is horrified in Tehran, whereas Ali feels out-of-place at a party for the British at his new Baku home and refuses to go to Paris. He tells Nino: "I"d be just as unhappy in Paris as you were in Persia. Let us stay in Baku where Europe and Asia meet."
Laden with symbolism, it talks of tolerance for people, their beliefs and their cultures. It raises questions that we raise as we attempt to define our ever-evolving identity. It is also about the choices we all make as we build our new countries. The events described in this book strangely resemble our own day. The ending is hauntingly tragic, but one that lasts forever: Ali, dies on a bridge in Ganja, a city in northern Azerbaijan, just as his ancestors from the House of Shirvanshir did defending this land. Unlike them, though, Ali dies not fighting in an army of someone else"s empire "” but in the ranks of his new country, the first Republic of Azerbaijan.
The book ends with a note written by Ali"s friend Iljas Begh: "Ali Khan Shirvanshir fell at quarter past five on the bridge of Ganja behind his machine gun... The life of our Republic has come to an end, as has the life of Ali Khan Shirvanshir."
About Kurban Said
The life of Kurban Said is surrounded by mystery and is by all accounts a story as exotic as "his" novel. The authorship of "Ali and Nino" has been the subject of speculation and controversy. What little evidence exists is ambiguous and partially obscured by the Nazi repression surrounding the book"s publication in 1937.
Its mysterious author was recently the subject of a feature in The New Yorker, which has inspired a forthcoming biography. Some believe Kurban Said was the pen name of Essad Bey, which is actually the assumed name of Lev Nussimbaum. Still others argue the book was written by Bey and the Baroness Elfriede Ehrenfels.
Elfriede Ehrenfels was born in 1894 into an illustrious Austrian family. She published one other novel, "The Girl from the Golden Horn," as well as articles, short stories and philosophic works on Plato. Lev Nussimbaum was born in Baku in 1905, the son of a Jewish businessman. He later converted to Islam, reinventing himself as a man of the desert and changing his name to Essad Bey.
Its not clear if the mystery of Said"s true identity will ever be proven. But this amazing book truly belongs to a man named Said "” a man who truly knew about love. And whatever Said"s antecedents, "Ali & Nino" will live on in the annals of literature.
Above: From the movie "Golden Precipice" (Gizil Uchurum) by Fikrat Aliyev (1980), a love story set at the same time as the novel, "Ali and Nino".
