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«THE NATION’S DREAM ABOVE ALL DREAMS MUST SOAR…»

125 years of grateful memory

Each and every nation of the world has its national poet who succeeds in truly, magnificently, powerfully and often painfully expressing the beauty of its heart and soul. Such poets are the resounding presence of their respective nations in the Divine silence of the Universe.

It is as if they are saying on behalf of all their native people: «Here we are – this is what we are.»

Amazingly, it is they who, in all their presumed «utter nationalism», will be the most easily and profoundly understood and appreciated by other nations and peoples. One remembers only too well how during the 1989 celebrations of the millennium of the arrival of Islam on the banks of the Volga River, an impressive cultural performance was staged in the Kazan city stadium. There and then, even before the Republic of Tatarstan had attained its limited sovereignty within the borders of the Russian Federation¹, tens of thousands of Kazan Tatars with tears in their eyes joined in singing «Mother Tongue», a folk song and an unofficial national anthem, the simple and beautiful lines of which, composed in 1907 by the greatest Tatar poet Gabdullah Tukai, are dear to every Tatar since childhood:

 
My mother tongue! Fair tongue of mine!
My father’s and my mother’s speech;
Through you so much I bear and learn;
So many people can I reach.
 
 
Beside my cradle in your lilt
My mother sang a lullaby;
My grandmother would tell me tales,
As evening’s dusk came creeping by.
 
 
My mother tongue! Your kind support
Has helped my life to run its course;
And since my childhood you have borne
My hopes, my joys and my remorse.
 
 
My mother tongue! In you I prayed,
Beseeching God to save my soul.
Forgiveness for my parents too
I sought through you. You made me whole².
 

Of course, to truly appreciate the unified message of this massive choir, one has to know something of the painful history of the Kazan (Volga) Tatar people. Also, certain national feelings are impossible to communicate and explain to others, and there is no need to do so. There are depths of national feelings, which a stranger simply cannot register or understand.

Yet, paradoxically, it is equally true that, the deeper we penetrate into the most intimate recesses of the national soul, the more universal it becomes. Thus, the unique attributes of every nation, which, at times, it seems quite impossible to convey to others, are, in fact, what unites it, as kith and kin, with all of humanity.

Only truly great poets are capable of releasing this secret energy of universal brotherhood from the motherly bonds of their national culture, while remaining the most distinct representative voices of their nation for all its past, present and future.

Gabdullah Tukai, the national classical poet of the Kazan Tatar people, was exactly such a poet.

He was born on April 26, 1886 in the small hamlet of Kushlavych in the Kazan province of the Russian Empire. Very early in his life, he became an orphan, unwelcome everywhere, belonging to no one. Little did the people around him know that this poor unloved child was to become the most cherished and enduring figure in the thousand-year-old Kazan Tatar history. It is to his poems, which so beautifully articulate in their mother tongue all the hitherto silent grief and glory of this universally misunderstood and belied history that his native people will always turn for solace and advice. His poetic lines will be embroidered on velvet, framed and put on walls in village log houses and imposing urban flats.

Tukai was a forthright and candid man and a poetic genius, yet he was doomed in his short life to all the bitterness of homelessness and human alienation. But in his tragic fate and his poetry, all the best qualities of the Tatar people are reflected: directness, truthfulness, generosity, selflessness and grandeur of soul. His heartfelt poems written in a living, clear and convincing language, are permeated with the starry solitude of the Tatar people and its lofty sadness. Many of Tukai’s poems have become folk songs; he has also created a new literary language that was close to the people, and in his tragic verses and long satirical poems, as in an honest mirror, he showed his people their true nature and their true destiny.

The life story of Tukai is a tragedy of the solitary genius, as even those who valued him did not understand the universal scope of his talent. He never had any worthwhile material possessions, never owned a home; he was living and writing his poetry, essays, and newspaper and magazine articles in various cheaper Kazan hotels. Having done an immeasurable amount of work in the short span of his life, Tukai died from tuberculosis on April 15, 1913, at the age of barely 27.

«He was seen off to where ‘the truth is buried’ by a huge crowd, and the Kazan Tatars have never seen such a respectful funeral», wrote one of his contemporaries. And Michael Friedrich, Bamberg University Professor and Tukai’s German biographer, wrote of him: «This Tatar youth from a tiny village… became a poet of world standing and forms part of the cultural history of all mankind.» This book presents, for the first time, the wealth of Tukai’s poetry in the English language. Paying tribute to his contribution to world poetry, it is dedicated to the 125th anniversary of Tukai’s birth.

Its preparation and publishing became possible through the generous support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Tatarstan and the dedicated efforts of the Worldwide Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

All the poems in this collection, with the notable exception of the poetic tales of Shuraleh and The Haymarket, are translated by writer, journalist, and translator Ilya Genn (United States), who has performed the nearly impossible task of capturing the inimitable spirit of Tukai’s poetry in the English language.

Ravil Bukharaev

Poet, writer, historian, 2006 Gabdullah Tukai State Prize winner

Gabdullah Tukai
WHAT I REMEMBER ABOUT MYSELF

It was initially the request from a number of publishers who asked me to send them my autobiography that prompted me to write these notes I called What I Remember About Myself.

I put pen to paper with the intent of providing a brief outline of my life from birth until the present but my story somehow stretched beyond what was anticipated.

My life (readers will see that) was an unappealing and rather bleak affair, but at the same time it was interesting, because once I began writing, I felt like describing everything that remained in my memory.

Therefore, it seemed appropriate to me to have all that I experienced before moving to Uralsk, and all I remember from that time until the present day when I sit and write these lines to be published in two booklets.

G. Tukayev

September 29, 1909

I

My father Muhammedgarif, the son of Muhammedgalim, who was the mullah of Kushlavych village, began to attend a madrassah in the Kyshkar village when he was 14 or 15 years old; after spending as many years there as were necessary to complete his studies he returned to our Kushlavych village when his father, advanced in years, was still alive and became the local mullah.

After becoming a mullah, he got married but he only lived a few years with his wife: his wife passed away, leaving him with two young children on his hands, a son and a daughter.

My father then remarried. Mamduda, his second wife and my mother, was the daughter of Zinatulla, the mullah of the village of Uchila.

I, their first child, was born a year and half into the marriage³.

When I was five months old, my father died after a short illness.

After living for some time with my widowed mother, I was given temporarily away to be cared for by a poor elderly woman from our village by the name of Sharifa. My mother married the local imam in the village of Sasna.

My father’s parents were long gone by that time and I had no other relatives in our village. I was an unwanted child and an extra mouth to feed in the old woman’s family. She did not care after me and gave me no upbringing, and what was worse than anything for such a small child, she was cruel and unkind to me.

I don’t really remember those years. I must have probably been two or two and a half years old at the time.

The women in our village, some of them old, some younger, who remember me from my infancy, told me recently how badly I was treated by the old woman who was my caretaker.

Here is one episode. I walked out into the yard barefoot one winter night to relieve myself, wearing nothing but my night shirt and then went to the door to get back inside. It is difficult even for an adult to open the door of a log house in winter, to say nothing about a child. Naturally, I was unable to open it and stood there until my feet froze to the ground.

My «benefactress» kept me outside in the cold, reasoning to herself: «I bet you, he won’t kick the bucket, the fosterling.» She allowed me back into the house, swearing, whenever she felt like it.

The old woman is now deceased, may Allah bless her soul!

While I lived there, my mother, was apparently doing well at this mullah’s, so one day she sent horses from Sasna to fetch me.

Those horses drove me to Sasna.

I am actually not writing the story down just from other people’s words. During these minutes, as I was driven by these horses, even though I was only a small child, I had an insight, a kind of revelation. I still imagine it as a memory how it felt to be in a vast and beautiful world and to see the bright rays of the sun sparkling with color on the road ahead.

I finally reached the village. I don’t remember how and by whom I was greeted in Sasna, but the kindness of my stepfather and how he gave me white bread with my tea spread with fresh comb honey, and how overjoyed I was – all this is imprinted in my memory as a brief dream.

However, my joy was short-lived. My mother’s life with the mullah lasted for only a year or so, and then she got ill – I don’t know the nature of the disease – and died.

I know practically all of this from other people because only rare, special moments could be preserved in the memory of a child that young.

I’m writing this from my memory now: how, realizing that my deceased mother was being carried out the house, I rushed out of the gates in tears, barefoot and skimpily dressed, and shouted, «Don’t take my mom away, give me my mom!» Then I kept running after the funeral procession for a long time.

After my mother’s death, I became an orphan. Living in the mullah’s house didn’t work out and he sent me to Uchile, to stay with my maternal grandfather. My grandmother on my mother’s side passed away when my mother was still a young girl, and grandfather chose as his wife the widow of another mullah who had six children.

The village of Uchile⁴ was a very small and poor one, as confirmed by its name. To make things even worse, in the years when I was orphaned there was a severe famine in this area and my grandfather had a hard time making ends meet.

So I was placed in this impoverished family with too many mouths to feed…

For my step grandmother I was like a strange jackdaw among her six doves, and there was no one to comfort me, when I was crying, or hug me, when I wanted to snuggle up, or feel sorry for me and give me something to eat or drink when I was hungry or thirsty. The only things I received were rebukes and punches.

The family had grown so destitute that I still remember how my grandfather would bring chunks of bread from wealthier neighboring villages.

This was how my childhood days unfolded. I was also down with chickenpox during that time, and suffered many other injuries, which had bad consequences.

Everyone in the family (except for one of the daughters, Sazhida, who was a little older) responded the same way to any illness I had: «If he passes, there’ll be one mouth less to feed!»

I still remember, how Sazhida apa⁵, whom I just mentioned, comforted me and how affectionate she was secretly from her mother. But the moment she approached, Sazhida would start acting as a totally indifferent person who doesn’t have any relation to me.

Since those days, I preserve her memory in my soul like an angel. As soon as I start thinking about her, I see in my mind’s eye a pure, snow-white angel.

But whatever I may have experienced in this house, I was clearly a burden to the family. One day my grandfather, perhaps at his wife’s suggestion, placed me in a carriage, next to the driver from our village, and sent me to Kazan.

After we arrived in Kazan (our village was only sixty miles away), the driver took me to Hay Market where he walked around, shouting: «Who will agree to care after this child? Who will take this child?» A man came out from the crowd and took me from the driver. He promised to look after me for an indefinite amount of time and brought me to his home.

I now see my life in his house, as though looking at it through half-open eyes.

For instance, I remember how once, when my eyes were hurting during some illness, I was taken to an old woman, and she dripped sugary water in my eyes. I resisted and tried to fend her off.

Let me write something now about the life of my new parents. The name of the man who became my adopted father was Muhammedvali, and my adopted mother’s name was Gaziza. They lived in Kazan’s New Quarter. My father either sold stuff at the flea market or was a tanner – I don’t remember it all that well. My mother spent the whole day sewing embroidered skullcaps for wealthy men.

When mother took the skullcaps to the Hay Market or visited the homes of some rich people on business she sometimes took me with her.

I looked at the fancy decor of the rich houses, the large mirrors covering the walls from the floor to ceiling, the clocks with chimes that sounded like church bells, the huge organs the size of large chests, and I thought that people here lived in paradise. During one such visit to a wealthy bai⁶, I saw a peacock strutting in front of the house. His tail, adorned with jewels and gold, sparkled in the sun. I was stunned with admiration.

Since both my father and mother had work, I didn’t go hungry while living with them.

Sometimes I went to the bazaar in Tashayak⁷ with my mother and I looked hungrily at various toys lying on the counters. I was jealous of the boys who were having fun riding on scooters or rocking on wooden horses.

I also wanted to mount a wooden horse, but I didn’t have any money. I was afraid to ask mother to give me some, and she didn’t guess.

Then I would return home, getting my fill of other people’s joy.

I will also never forget how I chased clumps of goose down with the other boys on the green meadow between the two quarters, and how, exhausted, I relaxed on the grass, facing the Khan Mosque⁸.

After about two years of living with my adopted parents, they both suddenly fell ill. Concerned that they might not survive and thinking: «What will happen to the poor child if we should die? We should at least have someone take him back to his native village», they sought out the driver who brought me to Kazan and asked him to take me to Uchile.

It is not hard to imagine the greeting I received from the family which believed that they had gotten rid of me for good.

Sometime later, losing hope that they might find someone in the city, my grandparents began to consider how they could give me away to someone in another village.

They told everyone who would come from other villages about the orphan whom they must give away to be cared after.

As the result of all their inquiries, a man named Sagdi, who didn’t have a son, came from the village of Kyrlai, only seven miles away from us, and took me along with him.

From this point in my narrative I will relate the story of my life not from the words of other people but as I myself recall what happened.

II

We walked out of my grandfather’s house and I climbed into uncle Sagdi’s cart. Apparently feeling somewhat embarrassed in front of uncle Sagdi, grandfather and grandmother came out to see me off. Barefoot little boys were running to and fro by the cart, curious to watch my departure.

The cart took off. Uncle Sagdi and I sat side by side. While we were on the road he tried to comfort me: «We’ll soon get to Kyrlai. Your mom there probably went out to meet you already. Allah willing, we have milk, katyk⁹ and lots of bread, you can eat your fill.» He consoled me with these words, promising that happiness awaits me in another two, or three miles.

Such kind words I hadn’t heard in a very long time and they made me very happy.

It was the best time of summer, with forests and green grass all around. The sun wasn’t yet too hot and its caressing rays also delighted me.

We finally arrived in Kyrlai. Uncle Sagdi’s yard turned out to be near the gates leading into the field. A little while later we stopped at a low house with a thatched roof and wattle fence. Just as uncle Sagdi promised, my new mother came out to meet me and opened the gate. With an expression of welcome on her face she lifted me from the cart and took me inside the house.

After he finished whatever had to be done in the yard and unharnessed the horse, my new father entered the house. Immediately upon entering, he turned to my mother. «Hurry up, wife! Bring the kid some katyk and bread», – he requested.

Mother quickly pullet a jar of katyk from the under-floor cellar and gave me half of a rather large chunk of bread.

I hadn’t eaten practically anything since we began our journey from Kazan, so I instantly and with relish consumed both the bread and sour milk.

Once I was through, I went outside with my mother’s permission. Afraid I might get lost, I walked, looking back all the while, when I was suddenly surrounded by a bunch of boys who appeared out of nowhere.

The local boys stared at me with undisguised amazement. They were used to running every day from one end of the village to the other but they had never seen me before; besides, I was wearing a cotton shirt with a border, the kind worn in Kazan, and an embroidered skullcap on my head, inlaid with colored velvet, which my Kazan mother made for me as a farewell gift.

After gaping at me like that, they ran away. Today, I still couldn’t join them, so I went home.

I went inside and found two grown-up girls there (for some reason I hadn’t noticed them before while I was eating the yogurt).

One of them was plump, rosy-cheeked and blue-eyed, and the other was a lame girl, a thin, pale creature with crutches under her arms.

When my mother said to me: «These are your older sisters: one is Sazhida apa the other Sabira apa, go and say hello to them», – I went over cautiously and shook their hands. It turned out that these were uncle Sagdi’s daughters and the name of the lame one was Sazhida. Thus began my life here which was quite good. I also got acquainted with the village boys.

Just as my uncle told me along the way, there was no shortage in the house of milk, katyk and potatoes.

A month or a bit more after my arrival, it was harvest time. Father, mother and my two sisters began to go to work in the field.

I didn’t have to go to harvest. I would run around the village with the boys and spend days wallowing in the meadows. If sometimes I felt hungry during our games, I would climb into the house through a side window and eat the potatoes and chunk of bread my mother left for me.

They locked the doors after dinner but they would leave the side window unhinged for me from the inside.

During harvest time all the village people were at work in the fields, and since there was nobody left around except for old women not suitable for work, we attacked the plantings of green onions in the plots, harming them worse than any goats. When the old women, who stayed to watch after the houses, noticed us, we would jump over the fence and run away. The poor old women had no other choice but yell themselves hoarse and then bite the bullet.

The games made us feel hot, so we went down to the small creek behind the threshing floor and splashed in it for hours or tried to catch fish with our pants and shirts. It was a jolly time!

Once, when I got home in the evening after being out playing with the boys, I found everyone very upset. «What’s wrong?» – 1 wondered. Then I saw that Sabira apa was thrashing about like crazy, from the floor to the bunk, with scary, bulging eyes, hurting herself on anything in her way. That is how I found out that she returned sick from the harvest, «stark raving mad.»

Everyone in the house didn’t have a wink of sleep that night. Only I, when I felt awfully sleepy, went out and lay down in the cart.

Next morning, at dawn, I heard: «Your sister Sabira apa died and you’re sleeping, get up, get up!» I opened my eyes and saw my mother in front of me.

This was horrible news for me, too, and although sleep is sweet, I jumped up at once.

Sabira was buried that same day. A few days after the funeral, I heard my mother saying to dad: «When you take someone else’s child, your nose and mouth will be smeared in blood; when you take someone else’s calf, your nose and mouth will be smeared in butter. It’s true, what people say. That’s why it all happened to us!»

I often heard her say such things to him. Since that time, whenever I misbehaved or did something my mother didn’t like, she would repeat these words to me.

As for father and I, we were good friends. He never said a single harsh word to me.

For instance, when the clothes I brought with me from Kazan – my shirts, pants, ichigi and kyavushy boots, and my knee-length coat with pleats – became worn out, my father decided to give me the blue linen shirt and the tunic which used to belong to his son, who died a year before my arrival.

Mother resented this plan of his for a long time: «I can’t give away to a stranger the clothes that belonged to my son, which I keep as a memory!»

Father finally flared up: «Come on, don’t be so spiteful! Do you want the kid to walk around naked because it wasn’t you who gave birth to him?» – With these words, he grabbed the clothes almost by force and told me to put them on.

III

The harvest was over and autumn came. When the wheat was reaped, it was time to dig potatoes.

This time around, when potatoes were being gathered, I didn’t have a chance to run and play as I did during harvest time: I had to put the dug potatoes into sacks. I coped with the work quite well.

Although it was already getting cold in the autumn, I was barefoot. So to keep my feet a little warmer, I stuck them into the ground.

Once, when I was sitting with my feet in the ground and sorting the potatoes, lame Sazhida apa accidentally thrust the iron shovel right in this place.

The wound was deep, so I jumped up and cried a little where no one could see me. Then I sprinkled the wound with earth and went on working, but no matter how frozen my feet were, I didn’t stick them into the ground again.

(They will ask: «Why did you write that?» What for? I did because the wound was very painful and I still have a scar from it on my leg, that’s why I decided to write about it.)

In the meantime, the work in the field came to an end.

One evening my mother and father told me that early the next morning they would take me to the school of the mullah’s wife, abystai.

We got up at dawn, before sunrise, and had some tea. After clearing the table, mother took me by the hand and brought me to the house of the revered Fatkherakhman, which was only five-six steps away from us.

When we entered the house, we found abystai, who was to be my teacher, sitting there with a rod in her hand. Around her were little girls my age, these made the majority, but there were older girls as well. Scattered among them, like a few peas in a bowl of wheat, were little boys like me.

My mother handed the teacher two whole loaves of bread and one or two small coins, after which both of them and all of us, students, prayed for a long time.

When my mother went away, leaving me at the school, I, along with the girls, began to read in a loud voice without a moment’s hesitation: «Elep, pi, ti, si, zhomykyi.»

After a few days of reciting «elep, pi, ti, si», I was given the «Fundamentals of Faith».

The syllables and verses of this book kept me busy the whole winter. That winter, I circled around these short «Fundamentals of Faith» and didn’t progress any further. Right after the «Fundamentals of Faith», I heard these naughty verses from some mischievous girls when abystai was not at home: «Kalimaten tayibaten, our mistress is rich, money she’s got a lot, and her nose is full of sn…»

Since anything you hear or see for the first time already constitutes knowledge, I memorized this ditty at once, naturally, and liked to amuse with it those boys who were less «enlightened» than me.

IV

My first winter in Kyrlai was gone. Spring arrived and the snow began to melt. The fields and meadows around the village looked black once they had freed themselves of the snow.

A little later came the Sabantui festival¹⁰. On the day of the holiday I was awakened very early and given a small bag, slightly larger than a pouch.

I went around the village, carrying this bag. Village folk always rise early, but today on the occasion of the Sabantui everyone got up particularly early. Kind words were spoken in every home, and there was a smile on every face.

Whatever house I went into, I was given not only sweets and a couple of honey-cakes, like the other boys, but each owner gave me – an orphan and the son of a mullah – several colored eggs.

That’s why my bag quickly filled with colored eggs, and I had to return home. I think the rest of the kids were still out collecting their treats.

My father and mother were surprised and delighted that my bag was filled so quickly.

I don’t remember whether I drank tea that day or not. I gave the bag to my mother and taking with me a few eggs, I ran outside.

When I ran out into the street the sun was already high up in the sky and the entire village was bathed in golden sunlight. The village lads and girls, perhaps pulling on their white stockings more smoothly and wrapping their puttees around their feet more diligently under their bast shoes, were already out on the street.

From the opposite end, the head of the Sabantui with a flag in his hands (a stick with cloth tied to it) went from house to house collecting headscarves, cotton cloth and other similar items. We, barefoot boys, ran after him, not lagging behind.

After the scarves and fabrics were collected, all the local folk – women, girls and kids – gathered on the meadow. A wrestling and racing competition followed. There were dozens of carts with nuts, sunflower seeds and gingerbread, white with red stripes, standing across the meadow.

Of all those things, the favorite gift a girl could get from a lad was, of course, the white gingerbread with red stripes, because there’s even a song about this gingerbread:

 
An eagle landed on the meadow
He’ll scare away the geese.
A striped white gingerbread from a fellow
For the girl would never go amiss.
 

There were also horse races and races in sacks. The headscarves were given away and the Sabantui festivities came to an end.

I can’t recall now how many days that holiday lasted. I only described one. Even if it lasted three or four days it seemed like one day to me.

I also have to add that I couldn’t run around and play that summer like I did the one before, because right before the beginning of spring a boy was born in uncle Sagdi’s family, and when mother was at work I always had to babysit the infant.

Yet another harvest season was here. The previous summer, when the whole village was at work, I played with the kids without a care in the world, but now they made me go out into the field with them to ride Sadri in the carriage (the baby’s full name was Sadretdin). This explains why I spent this entire summer doing strenuous chores – and for someone who loved playing as much as I did this was a true ordeal.

After the birth of this child, my adopted father continued to be affectionate with me, but my mom seldom spoke to me now except when she instructed me do some chores or work. This was how I lost the little love that has fallen to my lot.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the lame one caressed Sadri all the time, repeating deliberately to upset me: «My own brother! My real brother!»

V

Autumn arrived. When I finished my usual work on the potato harvest, I was sent to a madrassah (not the one I attended together with the girls at the abystai’s house). After I learned the lines and verses of the «Haftiak» very fast in school, I turned to the ayats of «Badavam» and «Kisekbash». And since I coped with this assignment quickly as well and I sat around for a long time doing nothing, they began to ask me to tutor boys who had fallen behind.

One of these boys was the son of a rich man from our village, and he invited me to his house sometimes as his tutor for some tea and cake with spelt flour.

On the one hand, I was a good student, on the other hand, I wasn’t so bad with house chores either. In the morning I opened the valve of the stove and I shut it later; I made bundles of straw to get the fire going; I took the cow out to join the herd and went out to meet her in the evening. I was quite good at all these things.

My father and I would sometimes go to the bazaar in Etna during the summer. I watched the horses while he made the rounds of the marketplace on his business.

The esteemed Fatkherakhman, our village mullah, was probably my late father’s friend or studied at the madrassah with him, I don’t know the real story, but for some reason he would give me five kopecks every week.

I spent the money buying white bread at the bazaar in Etna and would eat the bread along our return trip home.

As I sat behind him on the wagon, eating the bread, my father would turn to me occasionally and say: «Leave some of your bread for mother!» «All right», – I said. But even though I pinched off and ate it in tiny pieces, I can’t remember it there was anything left to give to my mother.