Azerbaijani Literature

Bakhtiyar Vahabzade
(born 1925)

Older than My Father

by Bakhtiyar Vahabzade (born 1925)
My granddad died
When he was 80,
My dad - when he was 60.
But I am older
In my forties
Than both my father
And my grandfather.

Telephones
Telegraphs
Radio
Newspapers
They load the days and load the months
And every hour and every minute...
Condense the world, whose day is to the right,
And to the left-the night- Into one tiny room,

With Spring at your head,

and Winter - at your feet...
Continents, poles Are united by my speed.

In the heat and the flame

Of this speed,
Of this audacity,
My love And my very nature Have changed...
The greater the speed,
The shorter the distance.
Yesterday borrows minutes from today
And today -
From tomorrow.
The days are all mixed up,
And so are the months,
We have lost months,
economizing years.

In a single month I live as much

As my granddad did in a single year.
I'm a river flowing down a mountain,
Skirting the mountain peak,
A stream muddy in the mountains
And a clear river in the valley -
A river with hundreds of different moods.

I'm older than my father.

I'm older than my grandfather.
______

Translated by Louis Zellikoff

"Azerbaijanian Poetry,"
Edited by Mirza Ibrahimov,
Progress Publishers: Moscow. 1969

The Earth's Boundaries

From the beginning we daubed colors on the map
To divide the world into many countries.
The earth is one color everywhere-and yet
Why did we break it into a hundred pieces?

Every kind declared: "The world belongs to me."

Over and over again, we split the land;
But the earth was never girdled;
It never shrank nor did it ever expand.

From "Bakhtiyar Vahabzade. Poems, Short Stories and a Play", edited by Hadi Sultan-
Qurraie, and translated by Talat Sait Halman. Indiana University Turkish Studies
Publications: Bloomington, Indiana, 1998.

Complaining of Age
When I was 15 and 20,
I was thinking 40 is an old age.
I am reaching 50 now.
Still I have my childhood wishes
Whirling in my brain.

As if it were yesterday
When I was going to school
Munching on sunflower seeds
And carrying my rucksack on my back.

As if it were yesterday
When I was riding my horse made of reeds.
I cannot feel my age - what can I do?

The heart is the same heart,

The wishes are the same wishes.
My heart flies now to highlands, now to lowlands -

What are these feelings in my heart?

I feel sometimes as if I am yesterday's kid,
I laugh at these strivings...

But I don't blame myself,

Time was so short,
Time has been flying...
As soon as we lose our youth
We grasp life with four hands.

Like trees, our roots go deeper

As we grow older.
Look! There is a rumpus in the courtyard.
The kids are running and climbing the fence.
I would give anything now to be able to play
Hand in hand with them
And escape into my childhood...

I want to play hide-and-seek,

Along these meadows, across these fields.
I want to hide so that
Old age cannot find me ever...

But age manifests itself sometimes,

There are so many hidden beats in the heart,
When I am short of breath in the street,
I blame the stones or the ascents on my way.

When I lag behind my children,

I cannot blame the stones or the ascents, I know
But when I admire beauty,
I feel the same age as my son.

Translated by Jala Garibova

I Love (1979)
Overcast weather I love;
It shall give birth to the sun,
The sun for sure!

Harsh winter I love;

It shall give birth to hot summer,
Hot summer for sure!

Hatred's climax I love;

It shall give birth to love,
Love for sure!

Tyranny's pain I love;

It shall give birth to justice,
Justice for sure!

From "Bakhtiyar Vahabzade. Poems, Short Stories and a Play", edited by Hadi Sultan-
Qurraie, and translated by Talat Sait Halman. Indiana University Turkish Studies
Publications: Bloomington, Indiana, 1998.

Fairy Tale Life (1964)

Though you are my own mother,
I am so upset with you, mom...
You taught me to feel and to think,
But I wish I had been deprived
of feeling and thinking.
You taught your baby to see, to speak,
But I wish I had been born deaf-mute
to this world.

Taking me by the hand you taught me to walk,

I went round mountains, round lowlands.
Instead of teaching your baby to walk and to run,
You should have taught him how not to fall...
Thoughts flow over me layer by layer,
Answers too venturesome, questions forbidden.
Life is strange to those who know it,
But so familiar to those who don't know.
Where are you? My only mom, where are you?
Come! I want to put my head upon your lap again.

Tell me tales again, let the time stop,

Let me see how heroes in those tales
Conquer double-headed ogres,
And how they escape from wizards.

Tell me, where is peace?

Why won't it come to our lands?
Don't tell me anything, don't, mom, keep silent.
I can't understand the legends you tell.
I've seen such real giants in the world
Ogres from those tales are like chicks in comparison.
I've seen such ignorant and stupid persons
Who call hills, slopes and slopes, hills,
just to please others.

I've seen such foxes that call

The steel chains on their arms, bracelets.
I've seen bandits relaxing
After ransacking their own countries.

I've seen merchants who have sold

Their Motherland not for jewels
But for simple applause, "Good for you's."

I've seen old women, atheist, godless,

Who call roses, thorns and thorns, roses.

I've seen leaders, brutal, merciless,

Cursing their fathers, bowing down to others.
Since the time I have felt this world and known it,
Life has fallen into disgrace for me.
The horrible things that appear in fairy-tales,
I have seen in real life in this world, mom.

My Mother (1967)
She is illiterate.
She cannot write her name-my mother.

But she taught me how to count.

She taught me the names
of the months and years,
And most importantly,
She taught me language-my mother.
I tasted joy
And unhappiness
With this language.
And I created every poem
Of mine
And every melody
With this language.

Without it
I am nobody;
I am a lie.
The creator of my work,
In all its volumes and volumes,
Is my mother!

From "Bakhtiyar Vahabzade. Poems, Short Stories and a Play", edited by Hadi Sultan-
Qurraie, and translated by Talat Sait Halman. Indiana University Turkish Studies
Publications: Bloomington, Indiana, 1998.

Two Blind Men

There's a blind man I know: His eyes are sightless,
But he is not blind.
Though he sometimes gets scorched
in the fire of sorrows,
He does not turn a cold shoulder to his passion
And his mind.
He reads and writes day and night,
In his mind's eye he sees, feels, knows.

Butthere is someone else

Although he is not blind,
Nonetheless, he cannot see,
His bosom friend may die
In front of his eyes-
"I saw nothing," he says.
Whatever is good he claims as his;
He fails to see the bad.
He looks at the clock,
But can't tell what time it is.
Nothing noble
Visits his thoughts and feelings;
Often he denies he saw something,
Though he really has.

A sightless man need not be blind;

Blind is he who does not want to see.
To such an ignorant fool,
Life itself is a grave,
If you ask me.

From "Bakhtiyar Vahabzade. Poems, Short Stories and a Play", edited by Hadi Sultan-
Qurraie, and translated by Talat Sait Halman. Indiana University Turkish Studies
Publications: Bloomington, Indiana, 1998.

Two Fears (1988)

Dedicated to the memory of our deceased composer Gambar Huseinli)

He was a friend of mine, Composer Gambar,1

Whose songs ever smelled of the native land.
The sweet songs we two had once composed
Were passed from mouth to mouth.

He had never mentioned it, but I knew that

He had been arrested some years before.
But I did not know what his fault was.
I never asked him, nor did he tell.

Once Gambar was complaining to me

about his life,
I felt heaviness of heart...
I asked him:
But why did they arrest you?

Suddenly he exploded like a bomb:

Don't you know why?
Because I had cursed the world.
I had called "The Father of the Nations," an enemy.

Then he became frightened of what he had said,

And suddenly stopped, not breathing a word.
Evidently, he was afraid of me,
Thinking I might be a spy.

"Sorry, I got excited," he said suddenly,

"Sometimes I don't know what I'm doing."
I felt the humility in Gambar's voice,
But in a way he was right to be suspicious.

I supported everything that he said

In order to dispel his doubts...
After arriving home from Gambar's place
I started thinking,
Fear and agitation gave me no peace.
I remembered our talk...
I said to myself, you fool,
Why did you get yourself into trouble?
Why did you confirm his words after all?
How do you know that Gambar was not saying
Those words against that despot deliberately?

When thousands of innocent people

have been executed,
And thousands exiled,
Will they set someone free
Who has called the government leader "enemy"?
Where was the logic in this, after all?

I couldn't believe his curses were honest.

What if he were complaining deliberately
about his life, about the times,
What if he were trying to get my opinion.
And what did I do? Me, fool that I am,
Told him what I thought.

That night I couldn't sleep,

With thoughts I fought...
What thoughts did I have:
When they come to imprison me,
They will search my archives,
And then my writings, dear me.
I thought what I had, white or black!
Like a stranger I looked inside myself,
Then got out of bed at midnight,
And began scrutinizing my poems.
Like an inspector, I looked at the poems
Still unpublished
And a shudder came over me.
"If they find these," I said to myself,
"That despot will kill me,"
Maybe to burn them? What else could I do?
After all, who is indifferent to the life he leads?

Such trouble to burn the poems

That demand truth and justice from this world!
I have to sacrifice my thoughts and feelings
Just to live out the rest of my life!

My body became cold, my heart trembled

With the fire and flame of the burning poems.

But I spared some of them

Saying, "It is enough,"
Saying, "That'll do."
I spared some of my poems that day,
Crumpled papers still remain.
I hid them for the future,
I hid them in my mother's artificial leg.
I turned over my thoughts and judgments
page by page:

"As soon as the dawn breaks

I'll go to him.
I'll ask him not to betray me,
I'll tell him I was lying yesterday,
'Let's keep it between ourselves.
I was agreeing just to support what you had said.
In fact, I love that genius leader very much.
He has bestowed these happy days upon us.
He is our only support in this world,
He is our thinking brain, our seeing eye.'"
"What a mistake I've made,"
Thinking so till morning, I blamed myself.

As soon as the dawn broke, I got up and dressed.

At the same time, someone began knocking
at the door...
Who might it be so early in the morning?
I stood before the mirror
My body trembling.

I had no strength even to open the door.

"He must have already betrayed me last night.
They're coming to arrest me, where shall I flee?"
And knocks continued-
Knock, knock and knock.

The knocking wouldn't cease

Without achieving its aim...
"Who's there?"
"It's me, brother."
It was Gambar's voice.
That was enough for me.
Perhaps he had come as a witness,
Or come to make me be silent.
I opened the door with trembling hands,
He fell on my neck and embraced me,
And began crying bitterly.
He cast a sorrowful glance
To the left, then to the right.
Began hastily interpreting
The talk we had had a day before.
"I was just joking yesterday;
In truth, I love that genius leader.
He is our only support in this world.
He is our thinking brain, our seeing eye."
I understood him,
But kept silent... Realizing the falsehood
Of all those interpretations.

Time had made hypocrites of us all,

Making us deny all we had said a day after our talk,
It turned out he also had not slept that night.
________

Footnotes:
1 Gambar Huseinli is perhaps most fondly remembered for his children's
song, "Jujalarim" - My Little Chicks

Subjugation – Freedom
Our nation was burned in the fires of slavery,
We were wounded and scorched for the sake of freedom.
But having reached freedom in this temple,
We made our thanksgiving prayer without the Qibilah.*

Now we are free, but free from the honor we had

That once protected us from evil.
Now that we are free from the fury and anger of the enemy,
Our nation has become the target of its own hatred.

Having freed ourselves from others' subjugation,

We have succumbed to our own slavery.
We are free from benevolence and mercy,
We must reject the nation's right.
We became the brutal plunderers
Of our own Motherland.

No other nation can replace us in deception,

This one blames that one, and that one accuses this one.
While we plunder and pillage our Motherland,
We are free from the fear of Allah.

My freedom is my enemy;
Fate itself cannot make heads or tails of this secret game.
The rope that pulled me out of the deep, dry well
Is now wrapped around my neck like a noose.

* Muslims face Mecca when they pray.

Translated by Aynur Hajiyeva