Izvještaj s događaja: Jahina Guzelj „Zulejha otvara oči“ i „Ešalon za Samarkand“

WRITTEN BY: Katarina N. Furtula

On the penultimate day of the Bookstan festival, July 5, 2024 in Buybook's garden, the books of the Russian writer of Tatar origin Guzel Yakhina (“Zuleikha” and “Train to Samarkand”) were presented. The interview with the writer was conducted by Adijata Ibrišimović-Šabić, while simultaneous translation for non-Russian speaking audiences was done by translator Tea Stanić.

After expressing her gratitude to the publisher on the invitation to participate in the festival, Guzel Yakhina excitedly declared that she feels at home in Sarajevo, because of the multiculturalism, the Turkish she hears in speech, the Slavic languages, as well as the street names.

The beginning of the conversation was marked by the novel “Zuleikha”, when Adijata Ibrišimović-Šabić noticed that the symbolism of the beginning of the journey in the novel actually represents the beginning of the author's writing journey. The author went on to talk about the reasons why she decided to write this novel and that her desire was to write a historical novel on the one hand, and a timeless history, a woman's story that is not bound by time, on the other. Guzel also pointed out that “Zuleikha” is on the border between literature and film, that it reminds of a screenplay because of the short dialogues and the use of the present tense, that is, the present moment.

When asked by Ibrišimović-Šabić whether this novel can be seen as a novel about the fate of all the resettled people of the world, Guzel Yakhina replied that there are parallels that could be seen that way, but that the novel is actually a history of involuntarily resettled people. And that it is about personal history, the history of her grandmother who was moved to Siberia together with other children.

When it comes to the second novel that was presented, the novel “Train to Samarkand”, the author emphasized its documentary basis. The plot of the novel is connected with the national crisis in Russia in the 1920s, when there was a famine. Then they sent children by train to the parts of Russia where the situation was better, from Petrograd and Kharkiv to Turkmestan, from Kazan to Samarkand. Adijata Ibrišimović-Šabić noticed the realism and horror of the scenes of cannibalism in those trains, the shocking descriptions of death agony, nightmares, which the author confirmed that she found in the archives, documented as stories of surviving children. However, as she points out, she did not write this novel so that readers would perceive it as horror, but the task of this novel is to evoke sympathy for the victims of that time.

The conversation about Guzel Yakhina’s novels was filled with emotions, partly because she wrote about the personal history of her grandparents, and partly because of the universality of the theme of human suffering in repressive social systems – a small man in a big history. In the end, what was present during the entire conversation represents a kind of conclusion, and that is how much literature actually helps us to save the past from being forgotten.

Fotografija (c) Milomir Kovačević Strašni