The French author of Azerbaijani descent Umm-El-Banu Asadullayeva, better known as Banine, was born into a dream. Not just in the sense of enormous wealth – though her peasant-turned-millionaire family was incredibly rich; and certainly not in the sense of being surrounded by unconditional love though her innumerable relatives had enough affection for her, of various degrees of oddness. No, the very fabric of Banine’s childhood was dreamy, rich, nearly unrealistic – half Muslim, half European, in a restless port city on the outskirts of the Russian Empire. And it seems like, right from the start, she was ready to absorb every detail. “My memories of conscious awareness begin with toys that my father brought from Berlin. […] I perceived it all, felt it, marvelled and began to live” (14), she recalls in her memoir Days in the Caucasus.
Anne Thompson-Ahmadova, the first to translate this memoir into English, brilliantly renders one of the most delicious features of Banine’s writing: her near anecdotal tone. No matter how dark and catastrophic the historical events Banine describes – whether the ceaseless mutual massacres between Azerbaijanis and Armenians, the aftermath of the October Revolution in Russia, or the fall of the ephemeral Azerbaijani Democratic Republic after the Soviet invasion in 1920 and the subsequent loss of her family’s status and wealth – her voice remains mildly ironic and non-nostalgic, with almost no trace of excessive sentimentality or drama.
Banine came into the world in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 1905. Her maternal grandfather, peasant-born Musa Naghiyev, had become rich after discovering oil on his land, while her paternal grandfather made a fortune through shrewd investment. Due to that heritage, which would soon dissolve into thin air, Banine’s early days were filled with colorful contradictions and opposites: a Western-oriented father, a strict authoritarian Muslim grandmother, spoiled and cruelly inventive male cousins, three older sisters, and a Baltic German governess named Fräulein Anna. Banine grew up taking lessons in French, German, English, and Russian, participating in feasts marking the end of Ramadan, playing the piano, traveling between the city and the countryside with relatives, talking to poplars, talking to rivers. Daydreaming. She describes the Asadullayev clan as loud, vulgar, quarrelsome, “rich but not respectable at all” (14). The soft-spoken German governess, on the contrary, became for her a symbol of another world, “a guardian angel” who brought Christmas trees into the house and baked cakes “heavy with cream and sentimentality” (15). This childhood connection marked the beginning of Banine’s longing for a world outside Baku, which, in time, would form into a naïve but ever-lasting love for Paris.
Yet, this is not the story of an East-versus-West battle in which the latter always wins. As they grow into teenagers hungry for love and male attention, Banine and her sisters become hostile toward their German governess who “hoped to see us turn into Gretchens with delicate figures and easy sighs” (18). In the end, it is Fräulein Anna who serves as the first restricting force for the young Azerbaijani girls growing into womanhood. They “became resentful and beastly towards her, so unbearable was the brake she put on our instincts” (19).
Banine applies special amount of humor to describing catastrophes that happened strictly within the intimacy of the family circle. For example, in the scenes where her oldest sister Leyla runs aways with a Russian and Muslim traditionalists of the family triumph (their fears of toxic Western influences were justified after all!), the narrator’s voice sounds nothing short of satirical – the effect intensified by the smoothness of Thompson-Ahmadova’s translation.
Only later did I learn that Leyla had been found in a small hotel in some small town; that she was torn from the arms of a Russian aviator, beardless and amorous, whom she had decided to love until death; that said beardless, amorous aviator swore he had not ‘dishonoured’ Leyla and fell to his knees, begging permission to marry her; that my father almost killed Leyla; that Uncle Ibrahim almost killed the aviator; but without anyone killing anyone they led Leyla away in tears, abandoning the aviator with his broken heart in the small hotel in the small town. (106)
The female-centered stories form another essential part of the memoir, where the influences of both the Muslim and European worlds mix. Though Banine watches almost all women of the Asadullayev family eventually follow the principle that “one does not choose one’s husband,” their subsequent lives turn out to be anything but conventional – at least by the standards of the times and place they live in. Whether it’s Banine’s ravishing cousin Gulnar, who regrets the disappearance of polygamy in the nascent Soviet Union (‘Just think how good it would be if you married Selim too! It would be so much fun. Thank God, he has the drive for two ”) and is openly determined to cheat on her meek, newlywed husband (“Marriage is a monstrous institution if it is not alleviated by adultery”) (198), or Banine’s stepmother Amina, a socialite who despises Baku and longs to return to Paris, where she once lived. The women’s attitude toward their husbands is anything but submissive – even though most of the time they fully depend on them legally and socially. In a way, Days in the Caucasus is a vocal story of emancipation, brought about both by oil-induced progress and historical calamity.
Another feature that draws attention is the occasional combination of languages. Throughout her memoir, Banine uses expressions in Azeri (Azerbaijani), Russian, and German, sprinkling it with words from the languages that shaped her, each in its own way. Anne Thompson-Ahmadova, who has lived in Baku for many years, handles each case carefully, preserving the original words and adding English translations where needed. In the translator’s foreword, she specifically mentions her approach. Banine herself eagerly notes languages spoken in certain situations: while in the educated part of the Asadullayev house Russian was considered the language of “culture,” Banine’s relatives would immediately switch to Azeri whenever tensions ran high. In her writing, Banine also reverts to Azeri whenever culturally specific terms are used, which gives the readers from Azerbaijan like me a palpable sense of authenticity: “My dear khanim, may you enjoy heavenly blessings!” (254). Banine uses words like Vergissmeinnicht when first describing the atmosphere in which Fräulein Anna raised them, while English, for example, is not graced with Banine’s particular attention – she learned it but hated it, according to her own testimony.
French, on the other hand, is a completely different story. Though it is the language Jours caucasiens is written in , Anne Thompson-Ahmadova ensures that we feel the presence of French even within the translation, whether by keeping the original French lyrics of a song or preserving French expressions in dialogues or descriptions. “The costume’s pièce de résistance, if one can use that expression, was the skirt – or rather skirts, as they were layered one on top of the other. The quantity and their fullness were a sign of the wealth of the wearer: ‘Show me your skirts and I will tell you who you are’” (23).
Paris, in the end, is where a 19-year-old Banine escapes after years of historical and personal upheavals. It is where her days in the Caucasus end, and her Parisian ones begin. First published in France in 1945, Jours caucasiens was translated into Azeri and Russian only in the late 1980s. At the time, it wasn’t received particularly favorably in Azerbaijan due to its alleged vulgarity and “inauthenticity.” Only a few years ago, a full uncensored version of the book came out in Baku. Despite the controversies, Banine’s memoir Days in the Caucasus remains not just an important testimony of its time, but also a story that uniquely captures Azerbaijan at the beginning of the 20th century, something both English-speaking and post-Soviet readers rarely come across. Russian writer Teffi, who wrote a blurb for the original book, said that “the author reveals to us an utterly unfamiliar world.” But for contemporary readers from Azerbaijan, this life of alleged contradictions – a unique and loving blend of European, Russian, and Muslim influences, and many more, – is strikingly, heartwarmingly familiar. And this world remains just where Banine left it: between geographies, between realms, in a city by the Caspian Sea.
Banine, Days in the Caucasus. Translated by Anne Thompson-Ahmadova. Pushkin Press, 2020.
Leyla Shukurlie (Leyla Shukurova) is a writer, researcher, and translator from Azerbaijan. She holds an undergraduate degree in English philology and two graduate degrees in intercultural communication and media studies, from Hochschule Fulda, Germany, and New York University. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Words Without Borders, Turkoslavia, The Arkansas International, and Tint Journal. She shares her time and heart between homeland, Frankfurt, and New York.