Days in the Caucasus

We all know families that are poor but ‘respectable’. Mine,
in contrast, was extremely rich but not ‘respectable’ at all.
At the time I was born they were outrageously wealthy, but those
days are long gone. Sad for us, though quite right in the moral
scheme of things. Anyone kind enough to show interest might
ask in what way my family wasn’t ‘respectable’. Well, because on
the one hand it could not trace its ancestral line further than my
great-grandfather, who went by the fine name of Asadullah, meaning
‘loved by Allah’. This proved very apt: born a peasant, he died
a millionaire, thanks to the oil gushing from his stony land, where
sheep had once grazed on meagre pickings. On the other hand
because my family included some extremely shady characters on
whose activities it would be better not to dwell. If I get caught up
in the story, I might reveal all, though my interest as an author is at
odds with my concern to preserve the last shreds of family pride.
So, I was born into this odd, rich, exotic family one winter’s
day in a turbulent year; like so many ‘historic’ years, this one was
full of strikes, pogroms, massacres and other displays of human
genius (especially inventive when it comes to social unrest of all
kinds). In Baku, the majority of the population of Armenians and
Azerbaijanis were busy massacring one another. In that year, it
was the better-organized Armenians who were exterminating the
Azerbaijanis in revenge for past massacres, while the Azerbaijanis
made the best of it by storing up grounds for future slaughter.
There was, therefore, something for everyone—except of course
for the many who sadly lost their lives.*
No one would have considered me capable of taking part in the
work of destruction, but I clearly was, since I killed my mother as
I came into the world. To escape the bloodshed, she had chosen
to give birth in an oil-producing area in the hope that it would be
quieter there; but in the chaos of the time she ended up giving birth
in dreadful conditions and contracted puerperal fever. In addition,
the house was cut off from outside help by a violent storm, compounding
the confusion into which we’d been plunged. Without
the complex care that her condition required, my mother fought
the illness in vain. She was lucid when she died, full of regret at
leaving life so young and of anxiety at the fate of her loved ones.
My memories of conscious awareness begin with toys that
my father brought from Berlin. It was through these that life was
revealed to me: I first perceived the world through the purring
stomach of a plush cat, the beautiful gleam of a maharajah astride a
grey buckskin elephant, the bowing and scraping of a multicoloured
clown. I perceived it all, felt it, marvelled and began to live.
My early years were the happiest; I was so young compared
to my three older sisters that I enjoyed all kinds of privileges and
knew how to make the most of them.
But, more than anything, my happiness was the result of my
upbringing by a Baltic German governess—she was my governess,
my mother and my guardian angel too. This saint (the noun is no
exaggeration) gave us her health, and her life; she wore herself out
for us, suffered all sorts of trouble because of us, and received little
joy; she always sacrificed herself and asked for nothing in return.
In a nutshell, she was one of those rare beings who are able to give
without receiving.
Fräulein Anna had fair skin and flaxen hair, while the four of
us had brown skin, black hair and a markedly oriental, hirsute
appearance. We made a fine group when we surrounded her in
photographs, all hook noses and close-set eyebrows, she completely
Nordic. And I should say that in those days—despite the prohibition
of the Prophet, enemy of the image—we often had our photograph
taken, dressed in our finery and flanked by as many relatives as
possible, all against the background of a painted park. A harmless
obsession that can be explained by the novelty of the process for
the near savages that we were; an obsession to which I owe several
hilarious and touching pictures that I preserve with great care.