Ali and Nino

by Kurban Said

  I laughed. ‘Iljas Beg, you’re judging my wife, my house and myself as if we were horses about to start for the race of international understanding. You seem to believe that I am only rebuilding my house in the national interests.’

  ‘That’s how it should be,’ said Iljas Beg in a hard voice, and it came as a revelation to me that he was quite right, that everything and everybody had to serve this new state we wanted to grow from the poor sunglazed soil of Azerbeidshan. I went home, and when Nino saw that I had no objection to parquet floors and oil-paintings she laughed happily and her eyes shone as they had on that night in the woods at the spring of Pechapür.

  During this time I often rode out into the desert, and lay there for hours, covered by the soft sand, while the sun sank into the west as if into a river of blood. Turkish troops passed me. But now the officers’ faces were troubled and tense. For us the noise of our new state had deadened the far-away thunder of the guns and the world war. But somewhere, far, far away, the Bulgarian troops, the Turks’ allies, retreated from the enemies’ onslaught. ‘Breakthrough,’ said the Turks, ‘impossible to repair the front again,’ and they stopped drinking champagne. News came but rarely, and when it did it was like strokes of lightning. In the far-away port of Mudros a man whose back was bent and whose eyes looked down, came aboard the British battleship Agamemnon. This was Hussein Reuf Bey, Sealord of the High Ottoman Empire, Plenipotentiary of the Khalif for the cease-fire. He bent over a table, signed his name on a piece of paper, and the eyes of the Pasha, who was still Lord of our town, filled with tears. Once more the song of the Realm of Turan was played in the streets of Baku, but this time it sounded like a dirge. The Pasha, very upright in his saddle, in full-dress uniform, with white kid gloves, rode once more along the lines of his soldiers. The Turkish faces were numb and expressionless. The flag of the Holy House of Osman was rolled up, the drum sounded and the Pasha saluted with his white-gloved hand. Then the column of soldiers marched out of town, leaving behind them the dream pictures of Stamboul’s mosques, the graceful palaces on the Bosphorus, and the lean man, who was the Khalif and wore the Prophet’s mantle on his shoulders.

  A few days later I was standing on the Esplanade when the first ships carrying English occupation troops appeared from beyond the Island of Nargin. The General had blue eyes, a clipped moustache and strong broad hands. New Zealanders, Canadians and Australians flooded our town. The Union Jack fluttered over our country next to our flag, and Feth Ali Khan telephoned, asking me to come and see him in his Ministry. When I came into his room he was sitting in a deep armchair, his fiery eyes looking at me. ‘Ali Khan, why are you not serving your country yet?’ I really did not know myself. I looked at the thick files on his desk and answered guiltily:

  ‘I belong wholeheartedly to our country, Feth Ali Khan. I am at your service.’

  ‘I hear you have a monkey-like ability to pick up foreign languages. How long will it take you to learn English?’

  My smile was a bit embarrassed: ‘Feth Ali, I haven’t got to learn English, I speak it already.’ At first he was silent, leaning his large head on the back of his easy chair. Then he asked suddenly: ‘How is Nino?’ I was shocked. Our Prime Minister asking about my wife, disregarding all rules of decent behaviour!

  ‘Thank you, your Excellency, my wife is very well.’

  ‘And does she speak English too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Again he was silent, caressing his big moustache.

  ‘Feth Ali Khan,’ I said quietly, ‘I know what you want. In two weeks’ time my house will be ready, Nino’s wardrobe is full of evening dresses. We speak English, and I’ll pay for the champagne myself.’

  A quick smile under the moustache. ‘I beg your pardon, Ali Khan,’ his smile grew soft, ‘I did not intend to hurt your feelings. We do need people like you. There are not too many who have a European wife, an old name, and a presentable house. Take me for instance: I have never had the money to learn to speak English, let alone own a house or a European wife.’ He seemed to be tired and took up his pen: ‘As from today you are attaché in the Department for Western Europe. Present yourself to the Foreign Minister Assadullah. He’ll explain the work to you. And … but please don’t be annoyed … do you think your house could possibly be ready in five days’ time? I’m really ashamed to have to ask you this.’

  ‘Yes, Excellency,’ I said firmly, and felt as if I had just betrayed and forsaken an old and trusted friend. I went home. Nino’s fingers were covered with clay and paint. She was standing high on a ladder, hammering at a nail that was to hold an oil-painting. She would have been very surprised to hear that she was serving the country. So I did not tell her, but kissed her dirty fingers and allowed her to buy a Frigidaire to keep the foreign wines cool.

  28

  Have you got an aunt? No, I have not got an aunt, but my servant has broken his right leg. Do you like travelling? Yes, I do like travelling, but in the evening I prefer to eat just fruit. These sentences in our Teach yourself English book were of a vicious idiocy. Nino closed the book: ‘I think our English is good enough to win the battle, but have you ever tried to drink whisky?’

  ‘Nino,’ I cried aghast, ‘you talk just like the book.’

  ‘That would mean easily understandable mental deterioration, Ali Khan, caused by a misunderstood desire to serve the homeland. Who is coming tonight?’ She tried to sound as if she did not care, but she could not quite bring it off. I told her all the names of the English Civil Servants and officers who would honour us with their presence tonight. Nino looked down, quietly proud. She knew—no Minister and no General in Azerbeidshan had what her husband had: a sophisticated wife, with a Western upbringing, royal parents and a knowledge of English. She plucked at her evening dress and looked into the mirror. ‘I have tried to drink whisky,’ she said darkly, ‘it tastes horrible, really disgusting. That’s probably why they mix it with soda water.’ I put my arm round her shoulder, and she looked at me gratefully: ‘We do lead a strange life. Ali Khan. Either you shut me up in a harem or else I’m the proof of our country’s cultural progress.’

  We went down to the reception rooms. Servants were standing around, their expressions carefully controlled, pictures of landscapes and animals hung on the walls. Soft easy-chairs stood in the corners, and vases with flowers on the tables. Nino buried her face in fragrant rose petals: ‘Do you remember, Ali Khan? How I served you, carrying water from the valley to the âoul?’

  ‘Which service do you like better?’

  Nino’s eyes became soft and dreamy and she did not answer. The bell rang, and her lips trembled with excitement. But the first ones to come were only her illustrious parents, and Iljas Beg in full gala uniform. He went round the hall, examining everything and nodded enthusiastically: ‘I really think I should get married too, Ali Khan,’ he said weightily, ‘has Nino got any cousins?’

  We stood at the door, Nino and I, shaking strong English hands. The officers were tall and red-faced. The ladies wore gloves, had blue eyes, and smiled graciously but full of curiosity. Maybe they had expected to be served by eunuchs and entertained by belly-dancers—but instead well-trained servants appeared, the dishes were served from the left, and pictures of racehorses and green meadows hung on the walls. Nino caught her breath when she saw a young lieutenant drink down a whole glass of whisky in one go, without taking any notice of the offered soda water. Scraps of conversations were floating round the room, and they sounded just as idiotic as the sentences in our Teach Yourself English book:

  ‘Have you been married very long, Mrs. Shirvanshir?’

  ‘Nearly two years.’

  ‘Yes, we went to Persia for our honeymoon.’ ‘My husband likes riding.’ ‘No, he does not play polo.’

  ‘Do you like our town?’ ‘I’m so glad.’ ‘Oh, but please! We are not savages! To have many wives has been forbidden long ago in Azerbeidshan. And of eunuchs I have only read in novels.’ Nino looked at me across the table, and her rosy nostri
ls were trembling with suppressed laughter. A major’s wife had even asked her whether she had ever been to the opera. ‘Yes I have,’ she had answered gently, ‘and I can read and write too.’ First round to Nino, as she offered the lady a plate with biscuits.

  Young Englishmen, Civil Servants and officers, bowed before Nino, their hands touched her tender fingers, and their eyes looked at Nino’s naked back. I looked away. Assadullah was standing in a corner, smoking a cigarette, as if nothing was wrong. He would never have exposed his own wife to the eyes of all these strangers, but Nino was a Georgian and a Christian, and so it did not matter if her hands, her eyes, her back were a prey to all other men’s glances. I was overcome with shame and fury. Bits of conversations brushed past my ears and sounded shameless and vulgar. I dropped my eyes. Nino was standing at the other end of the hall, surrounded by strangers. ‘Thank you,’ she said suddenly, her voice hoarse, ‘thank you, you are very kind.’ I looked up and saw her blushing deeply, looking frightened. She crossed the hall and came to me. Her hand touched my sleeve, as if asking for help. ‘Ali Khan,’ she said softly, ‘you feel now the way I felt when I went to see your aunts and cousins in Teheran. What are all these men to me? I don’t want them to look at me like that.’ Then she turned away and took the major’s wife’s hand. I heard her say: ‘You should really see our National Theatre. Just now Shakespeare is being translated into our Tartar language. Next week will be the first night of “Hamlet”’. I wiped the sweat off my brow and thought of the severe laws of hospitality: There is an old saying: ‘If a guest enters your house holding the severed head of your only son in his hand, you must still receive him, offer him food and drink and honour him as a guest.’ That is a wise law. But sometimes it is very difficult to keep.

  I poured whisky and cognac into many glasses. The officers smoked cigars, but no one put his feet on the table, though that was the one thing we had expected them to do. ‘You have a charming wife and a charming home, Ali Khan,’ a young officer prolonged my torture. It would probably have surprised him very much to learn that political considerations only saved him from having his ears boxed. A dog of an unbeliever dared to praise openly my wife’s beauty! My hand shook as I poured him a glass of cognac, and some drops spilled over. An elderly Civil Servant with a white moustache, wearing a white shirt under his dinner jacket, was sitting in a corner. I offered him some biscuits. His teeth were long and yellow and his fingers short. He looked at me searchingly: ‘There seems to be an immense cultural difference between Persia and Azerbeidshan.’

  ‘Oh yes. We are centuries ahead. You must remember that we have an enormous amount of industry here, and a railway. Unfortunately the Russian administration has suppressed our cultural evolution. We have not enough doctors and teachers. But I hear the Government plans to send gifted young people to Europe, to learn there what they have missed under the Russian yoke.’ I went on like that for some time, and was about to pour him some more whisky, but he refused.

  ‘I was a Consul in Persia for twenty years,’ he said, ‘and I feel it is a great pity to see the old solid forms of oriental culture crumble, and the orientals of today trying to imitate us, and despising their ancestors’ customs. But they may be right. After all, it is their affair to choose how they want to live. In any case I’ll admit that your country is just as ripe for independence as, shall we say, the Republics of Central America. I think our Government will soon recognise your state.’ I was an idiot, but the object of the evening had been achieved. Foreign Minister Assadullah was standing at the other end of the hall, with Nino’s illustrious parents and Iljas Beg. I joined them.

  ‘What did the old one say?’ Assadullah asked quickly.

  ‘He says I am an idiot, but that England will soon recognise us.’

  Mirza Assadullah sighed with relief: ‘You are not an idiot, Ali Khan, far from it.’

  ‘Thank you, sir, but I believe I am.’

  He shook my hand and took his leave. When he kissed Nino’s hand at the door I heard her whisper something to him, smiling mysteriously. He nodded—he had understood. The guests left at midnight, and the big hall smelt of tobacco and alcohol. … Tired and content we went upstairs to our bedroom, and suddenly a strange exhuberance came over us. Nino threw her evening shoes into the corner, jumped on the bed and standing on the mattress, let the springs throw her up into the air again and again. She crinkled her nose, pushed her lower lip out and looked like a playful little monkey. She puffed her cheeks out, then pushed her forefinger against them, so her lips opened with a ‘plop!’ ‘How do you like me in my role as saviour of the country?’ she cried. Then she jumped down, ran to the mirror and looked at herself admiringly: ‘Nino Hanum Shirvanshir, Azerbeidshan’s Jeanne d’Arc! Fascinates majors’ wives and pretends never to have seen a eunuch!’ She clapped her little hands, laughing. She wore a light-coloured evening dress, very low cut at the back. Long earrings hung from her delicate ears. The rope of pearls round her neck shimmered in the lamplight. Her arms were slender and girlish, and her dark hair fell on her neck. Standing in front of the mirror she was ravishing in her new beauty. I stepped close to her and looked into the happy eyes of a European Princess. I embraced her, feeling as if this was the very first time. Her skin was soft and fragrant, and her teeth glistened behind her lips like little white stones. For the first time we sat down on a bed, and I held a European woman in my arms. She blinked quickly—the intimate caress of her long curved lashes against my cheek—and it had never been so wonderful before. I took her chin into my hand and raised her head. I saw the soft oval of her face, moist thirsty lips and dreaming eyes behind half closed Georgian lashes. I caressed her neck, and her little head fell weakly into my hand. She was all longing and submission. Her evening dress, and the European bed with its turned-down covers and cool linen disappeared before my eyes—there she was, in the âoul, in Daghestan, half-undressed on the narrow mat, covering the clay floor. My hands gripped her shoulders and then we were lying fully dressed on the pale carpet from Kerman, at the foot of the proud European bed of state. I looked into Nino’s face over the soft carpet, her eyebrows contracting in painful joy. I heard her breathe, felt the hard roundness of her slender thighs, and forgot the old Englishman, the young officers and the future of our republic.

  Later on we were lying quietly side by side, looking into the big mirror over our heads. ‘That dress is ruined,’ said Nino, and it sounded as if she were confessing great happiness. She cradled her head in my lap and thought aloud: ‘What would Madam Major say if she saw us now? She would say: “Doesn’t Ali Khan know what beds are for?” She got up and kicked my knee with her little foot: ‘Would the honourable attaché be so good as to decide to undress and take his place in the marital bed, following the general customs of the diplomatic world? Whoever heard of attachés rolling about on the carpet?’ I got up, grumbling and sleepy, threw off my clothes and lay down between the sheets with Nino.

  Days passed, weeks passed, guests came, drank whisky and praised our home. Nino’s Georgian hospitality unfolded like a flower. She danced with the young lieutenants and talked about gout to older majors. She told the English ladies stories from the days of Queen Tamar, and left them in their belief that the great Queen had ruled over Azerbeidshan as well as over Georgia. I sat in the Ministry, alone in the big room, wrote reports for diplomats, read the reports of our foreign representatives and looked at the sea. Nino came to meet me in the evening, and was wifely and gay, full of careless charm. She began a rather surprising friendship with the Foreign Minister Assadullah. She served him food and drink when he came to visit us, gave him advice about how to behave in European society, and sometimes I came across the two of them whispering mysteriously in some secluded corner of our house. ‘What’s going on between you and Mirza?’ I asked, but she just smiled and said she wanted to be the first female Chief of Protocol. More and more letters, reports and memoranda piled up on my desk. The new state was being built up as quickly as possible, and I liked to
unfold letters and forms headed with our coat of arms.

  One day, shortly before lunch the courier brought me the newspapers. I opened our Government’s official paper and saw on the third page my name in bold print: ‘Ali Khan Shirvanshir, attaché in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs has been posted to our Consulate in Paris.’ Followed a long paragraph, obviously written by Arslan Aga, praising my outstanding abilities. I jumped up, rushed through the communicating rooms to the Minister’s office, and crashed the door open: ‘Mirza Assadullah,’ I cried, ‘What is this?’

  ‘Ah,’ he smiled, ‘a surprise for you, my friend. I promised your wife. Nino and you will be the right people for Paris.’ I threw the paper on the floor, overcome by a wild rage.

  ‘Mirza,’ I shouted, ‘there’s no law in this country that can force me to leave my homeland for years on end!’

  He looked at me dumbfounded. ‘What on earth is the matter, Ali Khan? Most people in our service would be only too happy to get a foreign posting. And you’re just the right man for it.’

  ‘But I don’t want to go to Paris, and if you force me I’ll resign. I hate this Western world, these strange roads, peoples and customs. But I don’t suppose you’ll ever understand that.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ he said politely, ‘but if you insist you can stay here.’

  I ran home, up the stairs, and arrived out of breath. ‘Nino,’ I said, ‘I can’t do it, I just can’t.’ All colour drained from her face, and her hands trembled.

  ‘But why not, Ali Khan?’

  ‘Nino, please try to understand. It’s just that I love this flat roof over my head, the desert and the sea. I love this town, the old wall and the mosques in the little alleys, and I would die away from the Orient, like a fish out of water.’ For a moment she closed her eyes.