Eldar Akhadov was born in Baku in 1960. He lives in Krasnoyarsk. A member of the Union of Writers of Russia and other writers 'organizations of Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan, a member of the Russian Geographical Society, Co-Chairman of the Literary Council of the Assembly of Peoples of Eurasia, a member of the PEN International Writing Club. The author of 63 books of poetry and prose. Laureate of the State Literary Prize of the Governor of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous district, laureate of the National Prize “Silver Feather of Russia”, “For the Good of the World”, “North is a Country Without Borders”, silver medal of the IV All-Russian Literary Festival of Festivals. Silver medal of the IV Eurasia Literary Festival of Festivals. Prize of the Association of Literary Translators of Montenegro for the book "Meaning of Life" in Serbian (2020).
Blessing After Death
In 1978 I became a student of the mining institute in St. Petersburg, I lived and studied on Vasilevsky Island. My student comrade Igor Kopeyko found out somewhere (underground! Illegal!) about what Mr. Umnikov did in his apartment museum Akhmatova in Tsar Village. It was officially banned. Therefore, we, young students, me and Igor - secretly went to the address to pay tribute to the memory of the great Russian poet. I was young and hot then, a member of an underground anarchist group. As a youth, I was an anarchist. Probably like all poets! We found Umnikov 's apartment, where we had to knock and say the password. But we didn 't open the door. The owner wasn’t home. I was very disappointed. But on this story did not end, but only began.
My friend Igor, noticing how upset I was, began to call Umnikov 's neighbors on the floor. An elderly woman opened the door and said that Umnikov was sick and in hospital, but if we really want to see the museum, she will call her friend (also an old woman) and they will open Umnikov 's apartment to us. We agreed and thanked them for such courtesy. Soon two students inspected the exhibition of the secret museum Akhmatova, and our old ladies boiled tea in the kitchen of Umnikov to buy candy and tea to two poor hungry students.
When the water in the kettle boiled, the old ladies invited us to the kitchen (because it was actually an ordinary apartment, not a real museum!) to drink tea with a sweet treat for us. We talked and I confessed to them that I was writing poems. The women immediately asked me to read any of their poems aloud. I read a poem about love, and they really liked it. I loved it so much that they asked me to write down a poem for them for memory. But I had no pencil, no pen, no paper. There was no Internet anywhere at the time either. Women started looking for paper and a pen for me. The pen was found right away, but there was a problem with the paper.
Finally, one of the two women exclaiming "Found Paper!" brought me an old notebook whose last page was empty, unfilled text. I was so pleased that I immediately recorded my poem on a clean page. And only then did we pay attention to the rest of the pages of the notebook. They were all filled with poems written with one hand - Anna Akhmatova 's hand! It was her notebook with poems!
Of course, if the owner of the museum was home, nothing like this happened. If his neighbors hadn 't opened the museum door, nothing like this would have happened. Then, many years later, I was told that such a notebook in Akhmatova 's official archive did not exist. But everyone knows the fact that several manuscripts of Akhmatova were stolen in the year of her death. Perhaps the thief tried to sell these manuscripts to Umnikov and brought them to him secretly, and he fell ill. So happens. It is life.
This case I took as a blessing of the great Russian poet 12 years after his death. And I am grateful to her that fate allowed my self-persuasion to be in the notebook of the genius of Russian poetry.
"Ogly"
I have a name. There is a surname. And there is a middle name. Everyone has them. At everyone the. I have an Azerbaijani middle name, from two words: the first - the name of the father, and the second - "ogly," which means "son." There is no ending "ovich" or "ovna" in Azerbaijani. Only "ogly" or "kizi" (daughter). Everything would be nothing, but I live in Russia for more than a quarter of a century, and here it is not all and is not always adequately perceived this. And there were difficulties at work.
It seems like nothing: well, laughing for me sometimes, well, "black" once in the back was called. Not in the face, no. In a face there were ashamed. After all, I speak Russian and write better than many of them. And I have a higher IQ than a lot of them. So to say it to my face was embarrassing to them.
I always go outside with a passport. In principle, there were no problems anywhere except Moscow. Yes, and in the capital, it was without excesses. Stopped me a couple of times, checked, read the passport, and such cold mistrust in their eyes - because I am "ogly," not "ovich..." It 's like I 've done something bad and I 'm hiding...
And the years were disturbing, gang, nineties. From the reports of newspapers and television we learned about wild cases of massacre of people speaking with an accent or dressed differently from everyone, or praying differently. That could have been the only reason people could have been killed! That 's what my Russian wife once advises me:
"Why do you want it "ogly"? You speak Russian and you think Russian and you live in Russia. Go to the passport table, change your middle name, pay and become Alexandrovitch, as director Ryazanov, or Alekseyevich somehow. Can have been other children will stop teasing our children at school. And? "
I deeply thought. Opened the album with photos of father, mother, sisters... And then the old Baku newspaper fell out of the album. January. The ninetieth year. On it - the city square by the sea shore, all covered with countless human sea. The city has a curfew. There are tanks, armoured personnel carriers, machine guns, thousands of armed soldiers on the streets. More than three people are forbidden to gather. But the people went to the square. The people were not afraid of arrests or deaths. The poet Galić once sang:
"You can go out to the square,
Dare you go to the square
At that designated hour?
Where soldiers stand in square
In expectation for the order…"
And the soldiers really stood waiting for the order. And military helicopters were flying over the square. But people, ordinary unarmed people, bakinians, residents of the city went and went to this square. And they couldn 't be stopped by anyone!
No soldiers, no machine guns, no tanks. They went to bury their children killed by soldiers on the night of January 20th. In these oblong boxes in the photograph - are dead people. I don 't know what their name was: hundreds of dead, young, elderly, young men, girls, children, old people...
They each had a name. There was a surname. Also there was a middle name … The first part of their name - I don 't know, but the second - I can 't forget wherever I am. Because I 'm the ogly, I 'm the son of my father and my mother. Was and will remain. Nazis, skinheads, anyone - no matter, all those who will meet on my way, let's know: I will remain who was born.
Emotions and Feelings
Emotions - ripples on the surface of the water, waves produced by the wind, waves raised by an air squall, a storm that raises salty showers of spray over the ocean. Emotions arise suddenly as if from nowhere and can just as suddenly disappear.
Feelings are deep ocean currents. They may not be visible from the outside, but they never disappear as quickly as emotions. Feelings are deep. They accompany us sometimes until the last hour... And remain after us.
About My Mistake
I realized my mistake. I'm fixing it. For many years I wrote and write in Russian. For many years around the world, I have been looking for and finding good poets writing in Russian, and I rejoice in this. And that's good, but wrong.
The world is multilingual. There are beautiful poets who speak and write in other languages of the world. The world is not one melody of one language, the world is polyphony, it is a symphony of colors and sounds. The language of poetry is the language of images. It is more ancient than ordinary languages. The language of poetry is closest to the language of the universe.
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