Səhnə Arxası

My great-grandfather — my mother's grandfather — was a man named Gulamhuseyn. Gulamhuseyn the Hatmaker! In those days hatmaking was considered a good trade: every man needed a hatmaker, because men wore hats back then. But my grandfather had even better talents. His memory (something I don't have) and his love of literature (this I do have). He could keep any poem, any text in his memory after hearing it just once. Grandpa Gulamhuseyn was a storyteller. My mother used to tell how the whole neighborhood would gather at night by candlelight, grandpa would start telling a tale, and before they knew it morning had come; at dawn everyone would go off to sleep, and in the evening they'd come back for the rest of the story. Though he himself drank, his nickname was Imam. The children of the Shahab neighborhood loved him dearly, because whenever he came home from work his pockets were full of sugared almonds and raisins to hand out to them. They say that when Soviet power was first established, Grandpa Gulamhuseyn was made a judge, but being so soft-hearted he pardoned everyone, and they quickly dismissed him.

Gulamhuseyn grew up in the same neighborhood as Jalil Mammadguluzadeh and was friends with Huseyn Javid (just look at that "circle"). He also taught Eastern tales and classical literature to the literary scholar Mammad Jafar. Mammad Jafar even wrote in his memoirs: "...after Aunt Zahra, blind Adigozal and Gulamhuseyn the hatmaker were my teachers of literature." (If you google "Papaqçı Qulamhüseyn", you can find the article.) Since there are no memories connected to Mirza Jalil, I take it that either they didn't get along, or my grandfather didn't like what he wrote; but they say Javid would read the poems he wrote in his youth to my great-grandfather first (the old man knew those poems by heart until the day he died). They even say that when Javid was in exile, he told one of the Azerbaijanis there to find Gulamhuseyn the Hatmaker in Nakhchivan and talk to him. During the Second World War, several people came, found my great-grandfather, they went off somewhere, and my grandfather came back home only three or four days later. Grandpa Gulamhuseyn never said a word about it at home. Near the end of his life Bakhtiyar Vahabzadeh also came to Nakhchivan, lived in his house for almost 20 days and recorded what he said on a dictaphone. They say my grandfather would sit in the public bathhouse (back then homes didn't have baths), drinking cognac and reciting poetry, while Bakhtiyar Vahabzadeh, without even undressing, simply rolled up his trouser legs and took notes right there in the bathhouse. Other poets and literary people also came to see the old man, but my relatives don't remember their names.

Then, in 2016–2017, a man in official clothes came from Baku to Nakhchivan and asked at Uncle Mamed's "chaychi" (people in Nakhchivan call a teahouse a "chaychi") whether anyone from Gulamhuseyn the Hatmaker's family was still around. By chance my uncle was there. They told the man that his grandson Huseyn was right there. He came up to my uncle and asked: "Your grandfather was supposed to have something left in his keeping — do you know where it is?" My uncle didn't know what he was talking about, but said there used to be his grandfather's notebook at home, and a distant relative of ours had taken it. The man took that relative's number and left. Recently I asked people to ask that relative about the story, and he said he doesn't remember anything like that (I think he doesn't want to talk).

Most of those people have passed away now, but their secrets remain in this world. Because it was the Soviet era, my grandfather told his family nothing, so as not to put them in danger. I wonder what my great-grandfather knew about Javid? What did those people who came during the Second World War learn from him? Where are those voices that Bakhtiyar Vahabzadeh recorded? What was the man in official clothes from Baku looking for, and did he find it? And, as always, there are more questions than answers...