For more information take a look at the Google press release.
As mysterious as the novel Ali and Nino: A Love Story is, the book is only the beginning a trail of mystery. Kurban Said turns out to only be a pen name, but who is the real Kurban Said? Where is he from? What were his politics? To what extent is the book autobiographical? These questions, once you read Ali and Nino, are as compelling as their answers turn out to be surprising.
The real identity of the author has been debated. Though the book was originally published in German, the nationality of the author was really never in doubt – it was generally considered that only an Azeri could have written the book and even today, despite rather conclusive evidence to the contrary, in Azerbaijan the author is considered to be the prominent Azeri writer Yousif Vazir Chamanzaminli (for those not familiar with the Caucasus it might be surprising that an Azeri might have written in German, but the Europeanization of the Caucasus did not occur only through Russia). Still, the Azeri claim notwithstanding Tom Reiss who has researched the question in his book The Orientalist, has conclusively proven that, though the author was from Baku, his nationality was actually Jewish: the author, though more commonly know in his latter years by the name Essad Bey, Kurban Said was Lev Nussimbaum, the son of a Baku oil baron. Nussimbaum’s story reads like fiction; it is larger than life and full of adventure.
A monarchist and an orientalist, Nussimbaum grew up and lived in the world of Ali and Nino. Though Nussimbaum’s Baku was a cosmopolitan, living with Muslims and experiencing their moderate embracing version of Islam as a unifying institution, Nussimbaum changed his name to Essad Bey and converted to Islam. That a Jew by nationality would he embraced Islam was no contradiction at the time. This was long before the creation of Israel and the divide that separates Jews and Muslims today. Indeed even many European Jews saw Islam as a model for Judaism and Zionism. Though Jews in many ways would conform to those around them (not least because of persecution) the belief in need for conformity was by no means accepted as universal. Jewish orientalists saw in Islam a viable alternative to conformity.
There were other reasons too. Jews were very cosmopolitan and rather than the isolationism that Zionism later came to promote, Islam offered a model of integration and pan-culturalism. Not only is Islam itself cross cultural, the model for a pan Islamism at the time was the Ottoman Empire — a mosaic of a cultures and religions. Unlike Russian Slavophiles who only saw Slavophilism as a cultural defense from western influences, Islamists and Orientalists (especially Jewish Orientalists) would promote the idea of a cultural synergy between east and west.
If this sounds a bit far fetched, it's probably because it often was. Nussimbaum's world view was hardly ever consistent and often imaginary. He would describe places and events that were collages of facts and legends; he would claim to have seen things that he could only have heard about. He made things up. In his book “The Twelve Secrets of the Caucasus” he describes a place called “Khevsuria” and compares it to Switzerland. “There a man could at last be safe.”, he claims. But when a reporter from the New Your Herald Tribune asked for its location Nussimbaum only replied:
Khevsuria is quite near Tifilis, and yet the land is free, independent and no policeman dares to follow his victim there. A gigantic wall of rock surrounds Khevsuria and separates it from the rest of the world... From the cliff wall down into the void there hands a long rope. Whoever has the courage can catch hold of the rope and let himself down to the Khevsurs. The police never follow... Only the refugee dares use the rope, to be accepted if he is so inclined into the society of the Khevsurs and protected for ever from all dangers.
In another article Nussimbaum would claim the Khevsurs were Christians but had never heard of Jesus. They kept, he claimed, Kosher, practiced polygamy and worshiped beer. Out of respect for other religions they kept Sabbath on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays but also on Mondays, just to prove they were different.
Though he was a showman and certainly an egoist, there was honesty about him too. He would never deceive in substance but would invent things to make a point. If we must judge Nussimbaum as a liar then let us also judge him by the quality of his lies.
He played with his name. Though Nussimbaum wrote Ali and Nino under the pen name Kurban Said, he would use this name only for fictional works. For his non-fiction writing, and in day to day life he would insist on being called Essad Bey (he tried to officially change his name in Germany but this proved to be impossible). This confusion was bad enough, but Bey was a hereditary Ottoman title — one that he could hardly lay claim too. His justification that the Ottoman Empire existed no more and the Turks had outlawed its use seems suspicious at best. Still, like his writing on the Khevsurs, it was harmless. He was making a point.
Nussimbaum’s childhood is interesting as a contrast to his character Ali. Nussimbaum and Ali both were the children of rich oil barons in Baku. Both were more influenced much more by their fathers than by their mothers (Not only was Lev’s mother was a communist but worse for Nussimbaum, she was a Jew not from the east, but from Pale). Nussimbaum and Ali were both educated by Russians in European traditions, and both, though heavily influenced by Europeanism and would live a double life: they would speak several European languages, move in high society, but espouse eastern values. The main difference between Nussimbaum and Ali is also telling: where Ali’s father was an Azeri, Nussimbaum was Jewish. Where Ali sought refuge in the east and Iran from the communists finally returned to fight and die for the short lived independent Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, Nussimbaum would flee ever westward, finally dieing in Mussolini’s Italy.
As a teenager, having escaped Baku through the dying Ottoman Empire, after a brief stay in Paris, Nussimbaum ended up in Germany. After completing his schooling in the north (where he secretly simultaneously attended a German grade school and university) he moved to Berlin with his father.
The Wiemar Republic’s Berlin with it's unique Wiemar Culture was the perfect place for Essad Bey. Often dressed in outlandish eastern dress, publishing Biographies of Stalin, Lenin and articles promoting easternism and decrying communism, Essad Bey became a celebrity author. He was quoted even American magazines and newspapers and was often photographed in Caucasian dress complete with fur hat and dagger. He moved with equally ease in Berlin’s Russian Émigré, Islamist and German circles, but because of his politics (and probably also because of his obstinacies and outlandishness) was never completely accepted in any group.
When questioned about his Jewishness he wouldn’t hide it, but would concoct complex theories about it. Never denouncing Jews or his Jewishness, he would however insist simultaneously that everyone from the Caucasus had Jewish blood and that the Jews of the east were somehow different. He turned the question of his Jewishness around: he maintained that the Jewish question for Europe would disappear if only the West would accept the east as its model.
Seeing his native Baku destroyed (as he saw it anyway) by the communists made Nussimbaum so fervently anti-communist that he became blind to all other faults. Like many of his day, Nussimbaum would see fascism only in terms of the defense it might provide against communism. Though unyielding in his multiculturalism and easternism, believing that racism and anti-semitism were not core fascist values, he supported the Nazis while opposing what Nazism stood for.
Everything considered, it is astounding how much he got away with. Even though he had made many enemies (which included some highly placed German military officers, after he wrote about German complicity in the Armenian genocide) he had friends too. He was allowed to continue publishing even as the Nazis consolidated their power.
Finally events got the better of him and his world collapsed. His German wife renounced him and the Nazis revoked his right to publish. Though America was open to him (his father had fled to America) Essad Bey could not overcome his Europeanism, easternism and Islamism (not to mention his obsession against communism) so moving to America was not an option. Never abandoning the notion that only fascism could save the world from communism he moved to Italy, lobbying Mussolini to write his official biography. But although Mussolini at first had distanced himself from Hitler’s Antisemitism he increasingly made concessions to Hitler and Jews began to be rounded up in Italy as well. Thought at first his offer of Mussolini biography was considered it was never accepted. Living in Positano on the Amalfi Coast of Italy, penniless, his typewriter was confiscated by the Italian fascists. He borrowed and finally began begging money for writing materials, and since he was by now seriously ill, medicine. He continued to write in support of Mussolini.
Lev Nussenboum, or by now perhaps more properly Essad Bey, died of Raynaud's disease in 1942, at age 36. He left behind a dense notebook filled with reflections on his life and an outline for a new novel.
For more information you can read more about Lev Nussimbaum on Wikipedia or you can purchase The Orientalist by Tom Reiss through Froogle.
It is not without good reason that Prospero’s Bookstore on Tbilisi’s Rustaveli Avenue keeps a good stock of the novel Ali and Nino: A Love Story. It may have been written long ago but the issues that it raises — multi-ethnicism, Islam, Christianity, Easternism and Westernism, both in the Caucasus and elsewhere, are as relevant today as they have been for a very long time. For foreigners who are interested in this region it is required reading.
At the very surface Ali and Nino is a simple love story between a young Azeri boy and a young Georgian girl. However, at a deeper level, the novel is much more than this. The plot, used only as a skeleton, draws readers into the complex and contradictory world of the Caucasus during the last days of empires and the birth and death of new states. It’s a intriguing history that not many in the west know that much about, but at still another even deeper level it would be a mistake to consider the story merely in historical terms. The issues that are raised are more cultural and geographic than temporal, and the author gives his perspective on the culture of the region and uses his novel to put present his personal cultural philosophy.
Ali and Nino at the start of the book are teenagers about to finish school. In love and with their future full of hope, their only obstacles seem their differing religions and nationalities – problems, considering their cosmopolitan city Baku, that hardly seem insurmountable. Indeed their families, after some initial reservation, support them, but quite unexpectedly events take a different course. World War I begins, the Russian Empire collapses to the North, the Persians face a colonial cultural crisis to the south, and the Ottoman Empire collapses to the west. Even in Baku itself ethnic tensions and finally conflicts break out between the Azeris and Armenians.
In this context the very definition of the Azerbaijani nation is created. Czarist, Islamists, Shia Azeris and Sunni Turks, Communists, pan-Turkists, Europhiles, monarchists, all unify and divide the Ali and Nino's world along previously unimaginable dimensions. Baku, what was an oil-rich cosmopolitan city with no nationality, sees not just ethnic, religious and ideological clashes, but also in the end the previously inconceivable victory of the communists.
The book is informative captivating, even poetic, but for those interested in post Soviet culture and ethnicity, there is also another good reason to be familiar with the novel: it has, not surprisingly, become the defining literature for the modern Azerbaijani state. Set during the definition of the Azeri nation and creation of the first Azeri State (which was, as an aside, the first democracy the Islamic world knew) the book is very well suited for its role as a national defining literature (to be fair, it perhaps also helps that the only Armenians in the book are portrayed as treacherous).
For more information see the Wikipedia article about Ali and Nino: A Love Story or, if you want to buy the book right away, search Froogle for Ali and Nino: A Love Story.
This is the Tbilisi's Russian Orthodox Church on Mardjanashvili.
Let's look a bit closer...
What's that sign taped to the wall?
Here's the translation: Attention! Do not bring cats into the church.
Well, after months of looking I finally bought an apartment in Tbilisi.
The standard non slanted building on the right between the two slanted buildings is mine. I have a small 47 square meter one bedroom apartment on the seventh floor.
The whole complex will take two more years to complete, but my building will be ready to move into by the summer.
If you want to read more about the complex, take a look Axis Palace Saburtalo web page.
Those who know me will be a little surprised by my decision. My style would have been to buy something in Sololaki, Vera, Mtatsminda, or some other old historic neighbourhood. I'm a little surprised myself actually, but all considered I think this was the best choice.
One thing that may surprise you is that in Georgia, when you buy a new apartment you get only bare concrete walls, floors and ceilings. I will have to do the walls, floor, bathroom and kitchen from scratch. The building has central heating and hot water, but I'll have to provide my own radiators.
The plans for my house are almost finished and soon the construction will begin. I'm hoping that I'll be able to live in this apartment while my house is being built, but the way the time lines are working out, I may have to rent something for a few months.
If you understood the title of this post, take a look at this article in Russian.
If not, then here is the a translation for you (the title of this post translates to "Russia is not be be understood with logic").
Komsomol’skaya Pravda
March 3, 2007
Ekaterina Lebedeva
MOSCOW MAYER WRITES A BOOK ABOUT LOVE
More Precisely, about Love for Georgia, and Sheds Tears at the Presentation
Yesterday, the Mayor of Moscow presented his latest book in Gostiny Dvor. This time it is a book with the romantic title “On Love,” and turns out to be about relations between Russia and Georgia. Seven essays are published here in both languages. The stories were first published in the Russian and Georgian press, and they have now been published together in a special gift edition with a velvet cover, in a print run of only 5,000 copies so it will be difficult to find for sale.
“I regret that we’ve stopped drinking Georgian wine and have limited the delivery of Borjomi,” said Yuri Luzhkov to open the presentation. “It’s difficult to imagine any other people who have given our country so much – a wealth that we will not allow anybody to squander.”
The Mayor’s words caused the Georgians in the front row to glow with pride.
As the curtain fell, Yuri Mikhailovich recalled how while on a business trip half a century earlier, when he was young and broke, a Georgian cleaning woman in Tbilisi airport fed him black bread and gave him Borjomi to drink.
“That taste of water with bread has stayed with me my whole life,” said the Mayor in a trembling voice, as tears appeared in his eyes.
As some of you might know, Viktor Yushchenko, the President of Ukraine, is in Tbilisi meeting with his counterpart, Mikhail Saakashvili (if you didn't know look here).
As evidence of the growing Georgian-Ukrainian relationship, Ukrainian vodka, chocolates and beer have always been everywhere in Tbilisi, but today everybody is carrying Ukrainian flags on the streets and there are flowers on the new statue of Taras Shevchenko.
But, as usual, hats off to Saakashvili! When commenting on relations between the two counties he apparently said the following:
I could not even count the number of Georgian Ukrainian families have been created during my presidency. One of the biggest exports of of Ukraine should become unmarried women*. We've created all the prerequisite conditions for this: there are now flights, the quality of Georgian wine is much better, and the everything else is also in place: beaches, mountains. In every way we welcome these relationships.
Saakshivili probably knows what he is talking about too. He has studied in Ukraine (there's more, but you can read about it other places).
Here is the news report by ua.com (in Russian) on what he said.
* The original Russian, "незамужние члены общества", is interesting here. It seems to me that he's making an honest effort to be non sexist by saying "члены общества" - "members of society". The only problem is that the Russian word for married differs depending on the sex of the person: men are женатые woman are замужние. By saying незамужние, it's clear he means women.
