A Kazakh Teacher's Story by Mukhamet Shayakhmetov

After exhausting my usual options (library, amazon and ebay), a last minute search on abebooks turned up this volume by Tajikistan‘s national poet and one of the most important writers in the country’s history, Sadriddin Aini (pictured below).Īlthough hesitant to choose another memoir (especially immediately after Kazakhstan) I was happy to see that this book also included two novellas: Ahmad the Exorcist and The Village School.īorn in 1878 in what is now Uzbekistan and then the Emirate of Bukhara, Aini, the son of a farmer, has penned this memoir to show what life was like in the emirate, in a situation he describes as “ out-and-out feudalism“.Īini, who helped propagate the socialist revolution and Jadidist educational reform in Central Asia and wrote this book in the 1950s, states that “ no-one can fully appreciate life today – Soviet socialist life – unless he has actually experienced the old days“. What I found particularly interesting about this statement, is the contrast it provides with Mukhamet Shayakhmetov’s Kazakh memoir. The Sands of Oxus: Boyhood Reminiscences of Sadriddin Ainiįinding a book by a Tajik writer was hard. The author's moral integrity, stoicism and profound respect for the struggles of the common people stand out in this memoir of a life of self-effacing dedication.“ A man’s greatness is not measured by his physical stature, nor his learning by the size of his turban“ Through his insightful portraits of local party bosses, district officials and bureaucrats, and tales of the vicissitudes of daily life, a broader, more personal picture emerges of life under Stalin and of his pervading shadow decades on. Mukhamet endeavors to pick up the pieces of his prewar life, working hard to support his extended family, marrying, continuing his education, and eventually embarking on a life in teaching dedicated to giving young people the best education possible. As he encounters scenes of desperate poverty, he quickly realizes the immense sacrifices made by local people, particularly women, while the able-bodied men were away fighting. It is early 1945, and the author, Mukhamet, still recuperating from serious war injuries, has traveled thousands of kilometers back to his home village in the eastern Kazakh steppe. This book begins where 'The Silent Steppe' left off.

A Kazakh Teacher's Story by Mukhamet Shayakhmetov