THE DEVILS’ DANCE TRANSLATED BY THE DEVILS’ DANCE HAMID ISMAILOV DONALD RAYFIELD TILTED AXIS PRESS The Devils’ Dance رلنج یمزب The jinn (often spelled djinn) are demonic creatures (the word means ‘hidden from the senses’), imagined by the Arabs to exist long before the emergence of Islam, as a supernatural pre-human race which still interferes with, and sometimes destroys human lives, although magicians and fortunate adventurers, such as Aladdin, may be able to control them. Together with angels and humans, the jinn are the sapient creatures of the world. The jinn entered Iranian mythology (they may even stem from Old Iranian jaini, wicked female demons, or Aramaic ginaye, who were degraded pagan gods). In any case, the jinn enthralled Uzbek imagination. In the 1930s, Stalin’s secret police, inveigling, torturing and then executing Uzbekistan’s writers and scholars, seemed to their victims to be the latest incarnation of the jinn. The word bazm, however, has different origins: an old Iranian word, found in pre-Islamic Manichaean texts, and even in what little we know of the language of the Parthians, it originally meant ‘a meal’. Then it expanded to ‘festivities’, and now, in Iran, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, it implies a riotous party with food, drink, song, poetry and, above all, dance, as unfettered and enjoyable as Islam permits. I buried inside me the spark of love, Deep in the canyons of my brain. Yet the spark burned fiercely on And inflicted endless pain. When I heard ‘Be happy’ in calls to prayer It struck me as an evil lure. So I told the angel my personal myths; They seemed to me more pure. But playing with her hair, the angel said: ‘Your legends are needed no more!’ Her words buzzed noisily in my ears: ‘You’re swimming in blood and gore.’ The king of lies told me to swim on: ‘Your fortune’s waiting there.’ But my soul arrayed in funeral black Is already awaiting there. Leave now, Satan; I am afraid. Go! My sword’s smashed, my shield holed. Don’t you see? I am lying underneath A mountain of troubles, crushed and cold? Oh angel, one last breath, the last of all: One last look, then may the skies fall! Cho’lpon THE MAIN CHARACTERS (1) IN THE NKVD PRISON, 1937–8 Abdulla Qodiriy (1893–1938), a prominent Uzbek writer, pioneer of the Uzbek novel, author of Past Days, The Scorpion from the Altar, Kalvak-Maxzum etc. Nurin Trigulov, an NKVD interrogator, in charge of Qodiriy’s case. Vinokurov, chief warder in the NKVD prison Cho’lpon (1893–1938), real name Abdul-Hamid Suleymanov, a friend of Qodiriy’s, the major Uzbek poet and reformer of classic Uzbek ver- sification. Rahbar, wife of Abdulla Qodiriy. Sunnat, an Uzbek guard in the NKVD prison Fitrat (1886–1938), a prominent Uzbek writer, thinker and poet. G’ozi Yunus, Kurban Beregin, Oltay: Uzbek writers, arrested on charges of nationalism and anti-Soviet activity. Muborak, Abdulla’s cell-mate, a Bukhara Jew, one of the main sources of information about Qodiriy’s unwritten novel. Professor Zasypkin, Kosoniy, Shibirg’oniy, Laziz-zoda: Abdulla’s cell-mates, prototypes for the novel he has planned to write. (2) IN THE NOVEL ABDULLA QODIRIY NEVER WROTE, SET BETWEEN 1805 AND 1860 Nasrullo-xon, Emir of Bukhara Umar-xon, Khan of Kokand Oyxon, the main heroine, a woman who was married to three Turkestan khans. Muhammad Hakim-khan, nephew of Umar-khan, author of a history of the times which serves as the main source for the novel Abdulla plans to write Nodira (real name Mohlaroyim), wife of Umar-khan, and a major Uzbek poetess Uvaysiy (real name Johan-otin), Nodira’s friend and adviser, also a major Uzbek poetess Muhammad Sharif Gulxaniy, Umar-xon’s bodyguard, a famous Uzbek poet, author of an allegory about birds, the Zarbulmasal. Qosim, Oyxon’s cousin, whom she is in love with and to whom she was betrothed Muhammad Amin, known as Madali-xon, the son of Umar-xon, who inherits the throne after his father and marries Oyxon, his stepmother. Said G’ozi-xo’ja, Oyxon’s father Captain Conolly and Colonel Stoddart, English spies, sent on a mission to Central Asia during the ‘Great Game’. CHAPTER 1 POLO Autumn was particularly fine that year. Wherever you happened to be – walking home down the empty streets from the new tram stop, casting an eye over the clay walls of Samarkand’s Darvoza district, or going out into your own garden after a long day – every imaginable colour was visible under a bright blue sky. In autumns like this, the yellow and red leaves linger on the branches of trees and shrubs, as if they mean to remain there right until winter, quivering and shining in the pure, translucent air. But this motionless air and the tired sun’s cooling rays already hint at grief and melancholy. Could this bitterness emanate from the smoke of dry leaves, burn- ing some distance away? Perhaps. Abdulla had planned to prune his vines that day and prepare them for the winter. He had already cut and dried a stack of reeds to wrap round the vines; his children, play- ing with fire, had nearly burnt the stack down. But for the grace of God, there would have been a disaster. Walking about with his secateurs, Abdulla noticed that some of the ties holding the vines to the stakes were torn, leaving the vines limp. He couldn’t work out how this had happened: had the harvest been too plentiful, or had the plants not been cared for properly? Probably the latter: this summer 12 The Devils’ Dance and early autumn, he hadn’t managed to give them the attention they needed, and the vines had had a bad time of it. He was uneasy. He had the impression that some dev- ilish tricks had been at play ever since he freed the vines from their wrappings in early spring. Almost daily, you could hear bands playing loud music, and endless cheering in the streets. Enormous portraits hung everywhere from the building on Xadra Square as far as Urda. Every pole stuck into the earth had a bright red banner on its end. As for the nights, his friends were being snatched away: it was like a field being weeded. Not long ago, the mullah’s son G’ozi Yunus turned up – dishevelled and unwashed from constantly having to run and hide – and asked Abdulla to lend him some money, pledging his father’s gold watch as a token of his trust- worthiness. Then Cho’lpon’s wife Katya came, distraught, bursting into tears and begging Abdulla to write a letter of support. ‘They’ll trust you,’ she said. But who would trust anyone these days? These were vicious, unpredictable times; clearly, they hadn’t finished weeding the field. As the great poet Navoi wrote, ‘Fire has broken out in the Mozandaron forests’. And in the conflagration everything is burnt, regardless of whether it is dry or wet. Well, if it were up to him, he would have been like a saddled horse, raring to go. Just say ‘Chuh’ and he’d be off. With these gloomy thoughts in mind, Abdulla bent down to the ground to prune the thin, lower shoots of the vines. He systematically got rid of any crooked branches. If only his children would come running up in a noisy throng to help. Sadly, the eldest had fallen ill some time ago and was still in bed; otherwise he would have joined his father and the job would have been a pleasure. The youngest, Ma’sud, his father’s pampered favourite, might not know the difference between a rake and a bill-hook, Ismailov 13 but he was an amusing chatterbox. The thought made Abdulla smile. The toddler found everything fun: if you put a ladder against a vine stake he would clamber to the top like a monkey, chattering, ‘Dad, Dad, let me prune the top of the vine…’ ‘Of course you can!’ Abdulla would say. Possibly, Abdulla wouldn’t have time to prune, tie back and cover all the vines with reeds today. But there was always tomorrow and, if God was willing, the day after that. Soon after he’d protected his vines, the cold weather would pass, the spring rains would bring forth new shoots from the earth, and the cuttings he had planted in winter would come into bud. It was always like that: first you pack and wrap each vine for the winter; the next thing you know, everything unfurls in the sun and in no time at all it’s green again. Just like literature, Abdulla thought, as he wiped a drop of sweat from the bridge of his nose. The flashes of sunlight coming through the leaves must have dazzled him, for it was only now, when he tugged at a vine shoot bearing an enormous, palm-shaped leaf, that he discovered a small bunch of grapes underneath it: the qirmizka which he’d managed to get hold of and plant last year with great difficulty. The little bunch of fruit hiding under a gigantic leaf had ripened fully and, true to its name, produced round, bright-red berries, as tiny as dewdrops, so that they looked more like a pretty toy than fruit. Abdulla’s heart pounded with excitement. He had been nurturing an idea for a book: the story of a beautiful slave-girl who became the wife of three khans. The autumn discovery of a bunch of berries as red as the maiden’s blushing cheek, hidden among the vine’s bare branches, had brought on a sudden clarity and harmony.