 Good afternoon everybody and many thanks to all of you for joining us in somewhat different circumstances to the ones We originally envisioned. My name is Edward Tiemann. I'm an associate professor in the Slavic Department here at UC Berkeley We have moved our event today with Hamid Ismailov to an entirely online event Which I want to thank first of all our guests For his patience and also everyone else involved in making this happen, especially the Berkeley AV team And I also want to thank at the beginning of this event today The Institute for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, the Institute of East Asian Studies And the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures co-sponsoring this event We are deeply honored to host today Hamid Ismailov A writer and journalist and a major figure in contemporary world literature Born in 1954 in the Kirgis Soviet Socialist Republic Ismailov was forced to flee his home in Uzbekistan soon after its independence from the Soviet Union Due to what the state dubbed unacceptable democratic tendencies He moved to the United Kingdom where he worked for 25 years For the BBC World Service including for a time as its first writer in residence At present Ismailov is regional director for Central Asia at Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty Ismailov's prolific output includes the numerous works of poetry and prose in both Uzbek and Russian Translations into English include the railway the underground the dead lake and a poet and bin Laden His novel The Devil's Dance won the 2019 EBRD literature prize for the best work of fiction translated into English And his newest work Manashi was published last year in a translation from Uzbek by Donald Rayfield Ismailov's work combines a profound commitment to history and a remarkable dexterity in moving across cultural canons With a restless exploration of new forms styles and voices The setting for much of his writing is Central Asia which emerges from these books as a multicultural Multilingualistic space whose modernity has been shaped by overlapping and conflicting cultural currents Islamic, Turkic, Persian, Russian and Soviet The modern and the pre-modern interweave and coexist history myth folklore and religious experience Alongside accounts of Soviet modernization and its often catastrophic consequences or dark tales of post-Soviet post-colonial experience We came up with the title for this event readings with strangers Based on our sense that Ismailov's writing returns again and again to questions of in-betweenness The space is between fixed and immutable identity formations between languages between cultures between times There is a call in his writing to open ourselves up to strangeness and otherness In a way that is not just aesthetic, but also I think So we will begin today's event with a reading um from Hamid Ismailov himself Um a reading of the story The Stone Guest Well, for which I will offer a brief synopsis before Hamid reads since he'll only be reading sections from the story He will read a segment first in Uzbek and then the Some selections in English Then Harsha Rahman, I will ask a few preliminary questions to get our discussion going But we will also invite you watching on youtube to submit your questions through the chat function On the right side of the page and our online moderator Sophie Locky Will be reading your questions and introducing them into our conversation So as I said, I will preface Hamid's reading with a short synopsis of the story The Stone Guest Which will be read in the wonderful English translation of Shelley Fairweather Vega And Sophie, I will ask to drop a link to the story online in the chat so that those Following along virtually may may read along as Hamid is reading if they wish So in this story Surab Surat Aliyev a respected sculptor born in Uzbekistan Has lived and worked in Moscow for over 40 years long enough that his Uzbek has become rusty One day a distant relative from his from his village Sangin Calls out of the blue he and a friend have been arrested by federal migration services for not having the correct papers So Rob takes The studio They track then he kicks them out giving them two woolen sweaters and 200 dollars on condition that they return home Later that day they extract more money from claiming they need more than what he gave them to buy train tickets They then demand more again for plane tickets and while handling handing over this third sum of money Surab finds finds himself forced to bribe a police officer who accuses him of drug smuggling The ending of the story. I think I will leave Unsaid since Hamid will be reading from the end Hamid over to you Thank you Edward for introduction and for your warm words about my work and about myself I'm really honored To be in front of virtually in front of your students in front of your colleagues and That audience which maybe Will be joining us from Different places not just a Berkeley University, but maybe from other places as well. I'm really honored and Pleased to meet all of you So let's start with the Uzbek just to give a feeling of the text first in Uzbek and then I'll read some excerpts in English That is the feeling of how the story goes in Uzbek. Let me read some excerpts in English Sukhrop Surat Ali's friends used to tease him by calling him Zorab Tzereteli Sukhrop was a sculpture by trade But he was somewhat less of a household name than the popular Tzereteli whose oversized monuments loomed over so many Moscow squares Our sculpture Sukhrop instead was a serious artist and quite well respected among the elite of the Moscow's arts community It had been 40 or more years since Sukhrop had come to Moscow So if you often imagined, he was a child of these metropolis forgetting that he had in fact being born on the banks of Andijan's fatty Kutankano in provincial Uzbekistan He felt as if the clay of his own statue, so to speak had been gathered from this land not that one Virtually all fine art is premised on building and adding on, but the art of sculpture as the great sculpture Michelangelo taught consists of nothing but carving out and discarding the popular Tzereteli He once famously said that his David has always been there in the marble and his job was solely to chip away everything unnecessary Step by step, I think that kind of habit works its way into you These carving out and discarding seems to seep into your very life And you start to look at everything from this point of view with a critical eye What is empty or incidental or useless has no place in your heart And you find yourselves always striving to reach the essence of the piece The stone at the center The very core of things Well, some people are just built that way, aren't they? Our Sukhrop took that approach and because of that some of his acquaintances would have characterized him as an arrogant, crude man while only those very few close to him knew that that was only true superficially But come with me please and let's take a closer look ourselves Remaining faithful to Michelangelo's rule within this story of ours We will shun the useless side roads and delve straight into the heart of the matter Recently, aside from all the other immigrants here, poverty-stricken Uzbek syntagic Kyrgyz and Azeris have been leaving their hopelessly poor homelands and converging in odds on Moscow Back to Soviet times, you would have found them only out at Kazan station or the big exhibition grounds where they enga on the outskirts of the city But one time back then during intermission at the Kremlin Valley, Sukhrop spotted a collective farm worker, a real heap from the sticks Conspicuous among the crowd and the sight of him cast Sukhrop the sculpture far into that night, deep into a state of shock He was so overwhelmed by feeling that he was moved to create his masterpiece, the Giriya, his very own Uzbek Pieta In that sculpture over at Jesus, just taken down from the cross, there hovered his mother, the Virgin Mary and his beloved Mary Magdalene, weeping and both of them were now the very image of Uzbek village women Crafted as if from the purest white bread dough and there just a bit removed from the morning women, the same collective farm worker stood sentinel So I'll read a bit from the center maybe from the very middle of this short story and then we'll go to the final of the story Back at his studio, Sukhrop kept thinking of that awkward watch he had kept under the cloth and those two innocent boys kept appearing before his spies Sukhrop suddenly bit his lip, though his nephew had been wearing the Scottish sweater he had given him that morning, his body had been wearing some sort of worn out old suit and the same flimsy old tracksuit He destructed himself from them, Sukhrop needed some clay, wanting to salvage just one thing from the days misfortunes, but no matter the circumstances, a hand cannot shape or form on its own So the clay only dried in his hands and he could only let it crumble back into teeny tiny pieces When you peel an onion and you try to dig too deep into the core, past the first layer and tears come to your eyes, that was the kind of mood Sukhrop was in. Had he gone the right thing? Had he done the right thing or should he have found the boys some little job to do, like all the others, instead of sending them back to where they had come from He had friends after all, and he might have found the right kind of place for them, even if it was just a night watchman or doing this or that at the Center for the Arts There were plenty of Uzbek night watchmen in Moscow, surely there was a room for one or two more I wonder if sculptures as a class generally maintain a greater distance from their doubts and regrets When you chip a piece of a rock, it can never go back into place, there is no use wishing the shape back together again But why at his age was he now, contrary to custom, still tottering back and forth like this? After all, he hadn't sent his nephew to his death or damnation He sent him back to his own motherland, his fatherland, but still Sukhrop's heart felt forged in clay, still his heart, just like that ceramic dish wouldn't be glued back together Well, now I am a poet here, martyred, having a chuckle at what had happened, and in that instant he realized what he should fashion out of the chunk and hunk of clay he had been needing And the final The next day, the next day nothing happened, the telephone didn't ring and the police didn't come looking for him, the Americans also choose to stay away The day after that too passed uneventfully, when the third day came, the studio had been tidied up, the broken ceramic pieces and empty vodka bottles had been thrown into the garbage and a handful of black raisins nestled inside the golden dupe which sat upside down to serve as a bow atop the embroidered silk tablecloth Sukhrop took the last $200 that remained in his stash, meaning to present it to Mashinka, his wife, the very evening And just now, as he paused to listen to his own art, finally, calm, a new sculpture project was taking shape in his imagination, maybe he'd call it the guest water, something like that That evening, returning home, Sukhrop gave Masha the $200 and the two of them relaxed with an expensive bottle of French wine while they sat watching television The news showed a story about 68 illegal immigrants from Central Asia being forced by the police out of an old building, scheduled to be torn down, that they had turned into a campsite and guest house No, and Sukhrop looked very closely, his nephew Sankin wasn't among them, but the sight of these 68 human beings living like dogs, said Sukhrop's huts pounding again That night, once again, Sukhrop couldn't sleep, he blamed his insomnia on the wine he had drunk, the news he had watched, and also the duplicity with which he treated his Mashinka His thoughts raced in all directions and gave him no rest Once upon a time in his youth, when he had just come to Moscow, Sukhrop too had been forced to spend the night in places, unfit for a dog And he remembered diving into his studies during the day, first human anatomy, then the study of form, then the arts of stone cutting and clay working He knew that all that suffering had been for the sake of the respected position he enjoyed today, yet could that position save him now from burning in fire and flames like a stone statue, not a bit In all his indecision, the fire and flames were consuming him Was Sukhrop, who had measured his life since a very young age in terms of work upon a great work, now falling victim to the petty bits and pieces of meaningless everyday life, or was he simply consoling himself with those bits and pieces You can talk and talk, but isn't the point to avoid breaking other people's hearts, fragile as glass, Sukhrop thought first of his angelic Mashinka, and Sukhrop thought of his sister Farah, whom he never knew and her scoundrel of a son, Sangin, what could he do to make them all happy He thought and thought and an idea came to him, he imagined a contraption like a cannon sitting on the seashore, his younger sister had been placed inside it, and then as if shot from a slingshot she flew far over the ocean She sought in the free flight of the sea, and she emerged from the sea form as a perfect statue, the goddess Aphrodite, maybe who could sell the contraption to the Americans, it would make him piles of money In the morning when he awoke in the undisputed semi-darkness of winter, he realized that the idea of the catapult machine still haunted him from out of the groggyness of night, perhaps it had been a dream, but a strong desire to build the thing still lingered Sukhrop didn't know whether to laugh or to cry when dawn came, by the time he reached his studio the gloom of that dream still had not dissipated, and he felt unable to apply hand or mind to any sort of work Again Sukhrop was plagued by thoughts about himself and his life, yet we will not be distracted, we will not go back on our promises, we have agreed to be loyal to the art of sculpture and we will proceed according to its rules It was around noon when the phone rang, an unfamiliar official sounding Russian voice asked his name, this is Sukhrop Surat Ali if answered Sukhrop, are you responsible for the individual known as Sangin Surat Ali if the voice asked Sorry, I'm just, could you repeat that Sukhrop was playing for time out of craftiness or denial, the voice at the other end sounded as if it were buried in paperwork Sukhrop instantly thought to put down the receiver, that good for nothing was subjecting him to one more disaster, but he was unable to keep silent Excuse me, is everything alright he asked, no, that's the problem, nothing is alright, the voice snapped at him and then went on aggressively, what all this is about, didn't you promise my colleagues you'd look after him, didn't you tell them you'd watch him and take care of him Excuse me, but what exactly happened interrupted Sukhrop impatiently, did you give him money to spend at the casino at the airport, he lost it all, started a fight and in the middle of the rascals he named you, what money, are you asking the questions now, I am supposed to be interrogating you At that Sukhrop's spirit began to sink, his knees shook, feeling weak he took a seat on the alabaster lap of the statue and the statue cracked under him, there was no point hiding now I apologize comrade, what did you say your name was, yes it's true, I gave Sangin some money to send him back home, he is a scoundrel, a fool, and told all the pain and animosity of Sukhrop last few days came pouring out This unfamiliar voice had penetrated right to his boiling, rolling heart, he told him about his visit to Autufiba, about his studio being turned upside down, about how the expensive Scottish sweaters he had given them were gone, along with every last bit of money he had kept from his wife, and they were not even really related at all to him Sukhrop bundled all of this up and released his anger into the phone I have no such relative, do whatever you like with him, he declared concluding his angry lament Funny, usually officials demonstrate less patience, but this one maintained complete silence until Sukhrop was done speaking Once Sukhrop beat a complaining was done, the man held to this respectful silence for a time and then he continued, I apologize but we have nothing left to do with him himself Askin had went mad and stopped him in his jail cell, I was calling to tell you the appeal may come and collect his body That December night was a snowless one, so far as if the great sculpture in the sky was just about to tear a statue apart by hand and plus the dust would soon be settling everywhere Sukhrop and Marsha were on the road to the Madedova airport and I too am ready to depart now from what I agreed to own a wing That's enough I think, literature is my art, that's all the profession is a merciless one Like a stone peeling layer upon layer of wood away from the core and whether he ever reached the heart, the pit or not, I don't want to watch Sukhrop surat alif the sculpture On a harsh Moscow winter night carrying the corpse of his frozen rascal of an efful, like a stone statue from the jail to a waiting here sir This is his life's work, his most heartrendingly perfect statue, most is the very elemental core of all his searching and striving, the naked sharp truth is what it was I say I want to be done with this type of art so foreign to me, in which I have been nothing but migrant laborer myself, much better to wrap up in a warm soft layer or conjecture and invention don't you think Come, let us start down our own part again, Sukhrop surat alif's friends used to call him teasingly surat surat alif, thank you Thank you very much Hamid for sharing this wonderful story and as we begin our discussion I just want to remind the audience to please enter any questions you may have for Hamid into the chat function on YouTube and Sophie will come around to them in a little while and I think she's also going to share another link from Words Without Borders that offers some more resources for contextualizing and interpreting the story but perhaps to get the discussion started off and I'm joined now by my colleague from Slavic associate Professor Hashir Rahm I wonder if I might ask a preliminary question Hamid about this text and how you came to write it so what really strikes me about the story perhaps it would strike most people is this interesting combination of a meditation on art and the nature of a particular art form, sculpture and the distinctive quality of that art form alongside an account of migration, the experience of specifically post-Soviet migrants from Central Asia in Moscow as a mass phenomenon of post-Soviet period and it's distinguished perhaps from someone like Sukhrab who is a migrant of an earlier period from someone who migrated within the Soviet Union from Soviet Uzbekistan to Moscow and has established himself as a fairly well respected artist so I wonder what to make of the fact that you're bringing these two themes, these two questions together in a very pronounced way in this story is there a kind of analogy being drawn here, is there some way in which the sculptor's complete control over his work somehow is juxtaposed to his lack of control over his actual life is it that the sculptor's work for all its kind of vaunted cultural cachet is actually on some level still equally debased, equally dependent on the wealth of others as the migrant workers I wondered if you could share any thoughts you have on that So obviously several ideas were making me to write this short story, first of all the scale of the migration to Russia of Uzbeks, of Tajiks, of Kyrgyz, Central Asians, from Caucasus, all former Soviet countries maybe when I was writing this particular short story and it was written in the early 2000s dish years I wasn't rationalizing or thinking about the postcolonialism and the tendencies of postcolonialism maybe the first approach of mine was emotional one, because you know generally this migration broke lots of taboos in the Uzbek society lots of cultural traditions in the Uzbek society, it was so unexpected by its scale, by its numbers, by its sweeping nature that first me as a writer maybe took it quite emotionally On the other hand, you know as a writer you're always looking for the new forms and for the new ways of storytelling and short story allows you in a way you know be as poetic as possible because poetry for me is about the new forms of the you know of saying of expressing yourself prose is more about the situations about it's a longer thing so you can't play too much with the form in the long prose but short story gives exactly the right balance when you can use the you know formality of a poem at the same time the storytelling of the novel let's say or novella in that sense yes maybe one of the ideas there are lots of ideas I believe in this short story but at the same time one of the ideas maybe which is coming back to me while I'm reading now was that all of us we are migrants in a way when I was young when I used to write poetry one of my lines was going to spray I came to this world so all of us we are migrants and guests in this world so though we are expressing our ownership of certain territories or whatever but possibly our four fathers came here as migrants or four fathers of our four fathers so despite or despite of our upbringing despite of our affluence and all of that all of us are migrants the elite is also migrant might be migrants so in a way he he is the symbol of these elitist you know migration who fills himself you know one of migration in the face of the mass migration of those people who he considers a riffraff of this world yeah but that is the point where art needs the life and this juxtaposition for example between the life and the art is at the center of this particular piece for example obviously the sculpture or the art of sculpture gives additional challenges for a writer you know you can be for example you can use fugues in your short stories you can use for example you know the art of composing for example musical composing but here I decided to go for the sculpture because because I wanted to come to the very essence of this relationship between the art and the real life I notice also the I mean the title is a kind of intertextual aside right just during to what Pushkin's Malinkaya tragedia come and ghost Yes and the title plays here a certain role because Sangin in Tajik or in Persian means the stone so the person who is coming he is a stone as well you know and reference to Pushkin here is playing a certain role because in Pushkin coming the ghost or the stone guest is a retribution is a symbol of retribution here in the start at the very beginning of the short story he is nuisance rather than retribution but from nuisance he is becoming the retribution you know we may be one of the challenges of this story or the problems which this story is posing in front of myself as the water in front of you as a reader is you know are we entitled to consider any human being as a nuisance or not because the retribution is very very harsh but do you see the I suppose it makes me wonder if there's a sort of part of that retribution is that Sukhrop has in some way abandoned his responsibility to the place from which he comes is this a kind of I mean you spoke about it as a part of a sort of perhaps universal experience of migration but there also seems to be in the story a certain idea of a responsibility towards home right towards the place from which you have come there can't be entirely dismissed even if he sort of seems to take it most throughout most of the story as a kind of unpleasant burden that he is in some sense obliged to help with Yes, we may even think that he became one of the Russians because everyone is calling for one of the Soviets because everyone is calling Kim Surab Seretely who is the ultimate kind of you know symbol of the Soviet art let's say yeah or of the end of the Soviet Empire so in that sense yeah let's allow him to be a Soviet person let's say and even though he may not care about his homeland or whatever at least he must care about another human being whatever this human being is yeah sometimes you know but as I'm saying he looks at this human another human being as a nuisance to his life to his art but it turns out that this human being in a way reflects the very essence of the human nature you know and he brings out he brings out like the like the Khamenei goes to you know the very essence of the he poses the very essential question which he was looking all his life you know going to the very core of the things so here we are human to hear human is the very essence of our sort of art of our you know message to this world in a way when we are allowed to lose our humanity you know with what what is the you know this crossing line when we are allowed to treat another person as rubbish as riffraff or whatever or scoundrel as he puts it there there's also the presence of the that seems also to be relevant to the presence of the American guests in the story who are actually the other guests right there's the second set of guests who have come from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to visit the famous sculptor Surop when they arrive it's just after his his relative has trashed his studio and to come on his nerves after encounters come in and they think oh well you're just I can't read the exact words but sort of he's being true to his Russian nature right in some way that he's there and he smells a vodka and everything's a total mess and it seems like in some sense there's almost this kind of chain of a sort of a sort of a hierarchy of elites looking down on people that they see is not quite at their level right yes stay stay aside I'm look at I'm going to talk to the very important person type of relationship you know so you are nuisance because I'm dealing with different people in different circumstances for different purposes but this contrast is showing that you know you can't relate to other human being you know on the basis of hierarchy on the basis of you know of values material values let's say because these people Americans are giving him money but Sangin is taking all his savings which which he didn't give even to his wife to Marsha I wonder if I might ask a kind of a broader question about this story both in the context of your own work but also as you say this phenomenon of Central Asian migration to Russia in the post-Soviet period is such a huge and significant social phenomenon I wonder what your sense is of how much it is reflected in other forms of cultural production I mean I'm there's there's the recent Kazakh film Ika right I'm feeling the name of the director right now but it's about a Kazakh or maybe kid this woman who's gives birth while she's working in Moscow and the question about whether she can actually keep the child or not that would cause quite a lot of attention recently do you feel like this is a wider phenomenon that has been sufficiently illuminated I don't think so I don't think so because generally for the Central Asian authorities be it authorities political authorities or aesthetic authorities this is one of the taboo themes generally migration is one of the taboo themes because because it shows the situation within the countries which can't for example provide the population with jobs for example the level of employment is so big even if the there is employment so the payment for this employment is so low therefore people are traveling and living through all mayhem for example through all xenophobia in Russia lots of them especially initially were killed were beaten up and the constant violent relationship with the from the police of Russia so in that sense unfortunately it's one of the taboo themes though the brave artists from Central Asia like you mentioned Ika for example film there was another film the Uzbek film of Yusuf Razikov about the migrants as well about the father coming to you know to find his son in Russia so there were attempts but unfortunately not enough and therefore you know seeing the scale of this problem I myself wrote not just one short story not just this one but the series of short stories about different aspects of this migration to Russia to other countries because it's a huge social problem you know it goes hand in hand with criminality with human traffic with the modern slavery all of that is present in this migration all of that is present in this migration but as I'm saying unfortunately for the authorities it's not the you know picture they want to see even in political terms for example the authorities they should have protected these migrants with some kind of you know bilateral agreements bilateral decisions between the Central Asian countries and Russia let's say some of them doing some of this job Kyrgyzstan for example did some of job you know protecting their migrants but Uzbekistan Tajikistan never even discuss these issues unfortunately perhaps this could be a moment I could jump in yes please absolutely oh okay so I actually was I was also equally you know intrigued by the the way that you juxtapose these two art forms explicitly sculpture and then implicitly literature sculpture being thematized through the work of the hero literature implicitly thematized through your work and the way you kind of you essentially contrast literature and sculptures in some ways dialectically opposed because sculpture in some ways as you put it pairs away and removes the superfluous in order to reveal what you say is the essence of things while literature is in a sense about adding on right what you call at the end of the story this soft layer of conjecture invention right and there's almost a sense of at the beginning a kind of envy towards the work of the sculptor because the sculptor is the one who is able to get to the essence while literature simply adds on in by way of fiction but what struck me is that by the end of the story these two this relationship is actually reversed right where you how many smile of as a writer I able to accomplish what your hero Sahurab did not right and so I was wondering what that says about literature right that even as you you make this you pay this homage to another art form you actually steal right it's it's it's credentials it's it's it's unique capacity so I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about what that says particularly in the context of course of the Islamic tradition where the idea of sculpture is on the one hand forbidden right but then there is also this long tradition in in Arabic and Persian and Urdu poetry perhaps in Uzbek as well in which the the beloved is also described as a book as a as an idol right yes it's a very good question so obviously there was some playfulness in you know juxtaposing those things I think that you know that the arts are interchangable in a way you know there's sort of you know in the in the crossing in a way they are good part of that we are as human beings you know we are not compartmentalized as sculptures as writers as musicians know the art comes from the same impulse in a way in a human being to tell the story in different manner in different manner through through let's say objects through sounds through tastes through this and that yeah through words like for example I am doing so in that sense the impulse is the same telling the story through different means though we as human beings we love to separate everything to put everything you know to stamp everything separately and put on different shelves and there was a certain playfulness here as you are saying charismatic playfulness here to play with these two concepts as if they are different to each other or opposite to each other in fact no they are not opposite and the essence once again we are coming to the same conclusions what Sukhrop was doing throughout his life expressing himself expressing the world around him yeah why he wants to for example to make his pieta or why he wants to make his you know ultimate sculpture so because he wants to get the ultimate truth of human nature in a way which is given to us through colors through sounds through tastes through words through all of that together as well so there was a certain playfulness in that one right yeah the the second question that I had for you which I think is partly you know largely anticipated by Edward but I'll perhaps phrase it slightly differently when we when we when we when we sat down yesterday to discuss your Russian work Bakaiania repentance we I think many of us in the class were marveling at the density of its literary allusions to the classical tradition of 19th century Russian literature and as Edward pointed out we have yet another reference here in the title as well as in the name of the the hero sangin to to to the stone guest at the same time what gets a very strong sense and we got this yesterday as well that however, however, however dense the text is with allusions to this past this classical past, you're very much rooted in a kind of post late Soviet and post Soviet present in which those allusions have to play a necessarily different role specifically with respect to the relationship between art and life or art and death and life right and it struck me when I was I went back and I was thinking more about the stone guest and its relationship to your story the pushkin text and it struck me that both texts in many ways are tragic right, but in fact what pushkin story does which draws on this romantic tradition of the fantastical scare right the fantastical in that in that text, the statue of the dead commander is actually reanimated right comes back to life so that the story traces a passage from kind of a death to a kind of ghostly life right into which he then draws the hero Don Juan right but in your story in fact something different happens that the guest worker sangin goes from not from death to life but from life to death right so there's a kind of an inversion there that's in that and his dead body becomes essentially the sculptors tragic legacy right and there is no possibility of resuscitating or reviving his body except arguably through your story right and I was wondering then if you if you felt that you had reached some perhaps a slightly different conclusion about what art can do right does it still can it still revive or resuscitate the way pushkin story can where the statue comes back to life or is your vision of art different in some way that that's more rooted in a more perhaps even more radically a tragic understanding of what art can do or what it cannot do it's a difficult question it's a very difficult question because yes, all of us we are in dialogue with our cultures with our past, and we're always revisiting our archetypes the cultural archetypes the you know the things which our forefathers said or did so it's a constant revision it's obvious but at the same time yes by doing that we are we might and we are coming to different conclusions because the life is changing the life is changing our experiences are changing so in that sense maybe one of the things which occupies me very often when I'm playing or when I'm using the you know some themes or archetypes from the past you know to apply them to my life in a way to examine them by my life by my vision which might be completely different sometimes I think that literature though we don't say it very often as writers it's like a sort of you know put doing an experiment like physical experiment but in a way psychological experiment let's say yeah to prove some concept some theories through the life of your characters whether it proves it or this this proves for example the assumption yeah previously come by Pushkin by Tolstoy by you know Lermontov if I'm writing in Russian but if I'm writing in Uzbek by Navoy and others so it's always a sort of give and take in that sense and you might come and you are coming very often to different conclusions different conclusions one thing which sort of protects me to put a stamp and say that is the you know that is the truth is once again seeing them you know they might have believed that was the truth yeah but you are coming to different conclusions with the same material in a way so therefore I would rather leave it open to the readers and to the audience you know to interpret it in their own manner but I'll give the results of my experiment I'll show the results of my experiment and then in that sense each work of art is an experiment that shows it's so limited truth yes absolutely you don't want to necessarily generalize absolutely absolutely though we play sort of you know in generalization for example here I played with as I told you for your previous question played quite generalizing let's say rules of sculpture and rules of literature but in fact they are much more complex those rules sometimes we are playing with them in order to sort of you know to to make this experiment more obvious in a way I see thank you yeah one final question I would have has to do actually with the theme that again Edward also touched upon of migration and I was particularly struck by the fact that you focused in the story not on the the you know the the apparatus of the Russian state nor do you even ultimately point to the actual killer of sanguine who is described in passing as a Russian skinhead right who is undoubtedly in the immediate sense responsible for sanguine's death right but in a sense you make the story about the sculptors responsibility which is not simply the responsibility of one family member for another but in a sense I think he's in a sense a stand in for you right because you you talk about your own responsibility as an immigrant I'm wondering here I mean and I think this could be said of all three of us Edward myself and you present we're actually all immigrants here right and at the same time there I think you made this very what's I think the great inside of your stories that you essentially made a kind of sharp distinction between two kinds of migration right though those of us who migrated for professional purposes and who still enjoy many of the privileges of citizenship and with all of the mobility and the professional success that that can afford and then the other kind of migration right the undocumented the refugee, the guest worker, and it strikes me that perhaps the great merit of the story is to juxtapose those two kinds of migration, both of which have I think shaped the world we live in today, but which in fact, have very different socioeconomic trajectories, and we often I think obscure one in favor of the other. I was wondering if you had any final thoughts on that. Yeah, it's a very good question. So, you're absolutely right. Yes, by showing that you are closer to understanding the other side as well you know because generally with the xenophobia. It's quite understandable that what xenophobia is. So, there is no subtleties there so much. It's better maybe to, you know, I'm thinking to myself, for example, we're talking quite a lot about radicalism. For example, Islamic radicalism, which is against let's say America, let's say, yeah, but take tomorrow out America of this equation, yeah, this radicalism will be fighting their own countries. Take out the countries, they will be fighting, you know, the other street or the other city of that country. Take out the other country of this or street from this equation, they will be fighting their brothers. So, basically the nature is the same in a way of xenophobia. So, in a way, I'm trying to show here the xenophobia of Sukhrop in a way, rather than showing the black and white xenophobia of a policeman, let's say, yeah, a policeman is present there, he is making money out of that or beating up them and so forth, yeah. But the mechanism in order to understand the real mechanism, the core of mechanism, it's better to sort of, you know, to put this, you know, experience as close as possible, to put two particles too close to each other in a way. Then you start to understand where this, you know, this pleasure with other person comes in a way. So, I thought that is the better way to show the nature of xenophobia, rather than sort of, you know, to show the black and white police brutality against the migrants, which we're showing in news, which we're showing anywhere. So, for me, the task was more subtle, you know, how the xenophobia appears in a person, even so refined person as Sukhrop Surat Ali. And that xenophobia would be not, it's immediately evident through the class distinction between us. Yes. Are you suggesting that there's something even deeper than that, which is the fear of the other within oneself, of something that one has left behind or repressed within oneself? It might be that one, or for example, generally it's about sort of, you know, your disorder in my order. You are bringing your chaos into my order. That is the essence of the, you know, you are sort of, you know, screwing everything up in my house. That is the, yeah, in a way. Okay. Thank you. Back to you. Maybe a good time actually to open up to some questions from our audience. I believe we already have a few gathering themselves in there. And please, once again, everybody, feel free to post any comments or questions you have for Hamid, and we will read them out. And I'm going to call on Sophie Locky, who is a graduate student in the Slavic department, who's going to read out some of the questions that we have online. So Sophie, over to you. Thank you so much and thank you Hamid for this wonderful reading. I think one of the first, there are two questions I'd like to pair together, perhaps they both relate to translation. The first question is from Mary Nicholas who asks the main character struggles to speak in Uzbek since he's lived so long in Moscow with his Russian wife. And she's kind of asking about the texture of the original Uzbek text and whether the omniscient narrator himself has a colloquial or natural academic register in contradiction to our hero. And then the second question to kind of couple this way that we're thinking about transitions and translation is from Sabrina, who I believe is also a translator from Uzbek into English. And Sabrina asks, many of the events on your tour have focused on translation of your own work into English, but could you maybe speak about your work as a translator from Uzbek and other languages, and potentially the translations that you make between your own kind of fictional worlds that exist in Russian and Uzbek? So that's the first one. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Sophie. So I'll read maybe a bit in Uzbek, where maybe you can gather something here. So it's completely broken. So it's completely broken Uzbek here, which has been translated by Shelley so you can read in the translation. So he is using new words which none existent in Uzbek. He sort of, you know, takes two words and smashes into one word, for example, he's all over the places with the declination is all over the places with suffixes with everything with choice of words as well. So it's completely broken Uzbek, Russified broken Uzbek in the original. So Shelley was responsible for the translation of this particular piece of container of Uzbek into English. So this is for my translation life. Yes, I spent 2025 years of my life translating literature from different languages. And it was a pragmatic decision, because, you know, I couldn't publish my poetry because it was too decadent for the Soviet poetry. Therefore, I use as a shield, people like Berlin, Rimbaud, and Lorca. So you used to translate them into Uzbek, Mandelstam by the way too. Quite a lot of poetic translation. Then it turned into a sort of, you know, money making tool in a way, because people were asking me, you know, queuing, you know, to be translated. And I've translated several books which I completely didn't like and I don't like this period of my life because you should have lived, you know, earned some money and it was an easy translation, you know, no challenges at all just straightforward translation. I was playing a role of Google at that time, translating from one language to another, mostly from Uzbek into Russian. But then I found more noble way of translating because I consider him my teacher in a way. He is an academic in Uzbekistan, Aziz von Pulatovic Kayumov, a wonderful connoisseur of our classic literature, number one connoisseur of our classic literature. He invited one day me to his Institute of Manuscripts, and he said, we've got plenty untranslated and published manuscripts of our great, great medieval literature. And I'm hiring you to translate it into Russian. And under his, you know, auspice, I've translated Sufi poems of Ahmad Yugnaki, of Alisha Navoi, of Muhammad Nios Nishati, of Saikali, plenty, plenty of wonderful first class world class poetry into Russian. And nothing of that has been published, you know, but I'm looking forward that some point maybe those poems will be translated. Here, I used all my art. I've studied these wonderful literature, and it was one kind of my academy, you know, how to render from language to language. Using 100% of your, you know, skills of your effort, of your zeal, and enthusiasm. So, unfortunately, as I'm saying, nothing has been translated, but I've got a book so called Uzbek Sufi poems, you know, a big book which is ready to be published in Russian so hopefully one day I'll publish it. Thank you so much. Yeah, we do have another question from the chat that comes from Emna Salami, who asks about your practice of choosing art forms to engage with, and whether you might offer a comparison or just an engagement with his sculpture versus the music and the Dombra violin playing in Yes, you can use all, as I said, I was writing quite decadent poetry, yes, and that was quite decadent poetry, one of the tasks of this quite decadent poetry. When I was 23, so I wrote a symphony, a poetry symphony, which was called Lorkeana, so it was devoted to Lorke, but where I tried what, you know, Scriabin tried the music to unite all the forms of art in one. In the word, you know, so there I applied all kinds of, I studied all the aesthetics of all kind of art forms, you know, in order to use in my poetry, and I wrote this symphony, I wrote this symphony, and I'll tell you a comic situation with that one. So I started to look where to perform it. I was 23, you know, wanted to become a celebrity in Tarshkent, you know, with this symphony, so there were no places where to perform it. Ultimately, my friend Mark Weil, who used to run the theater, he said, there is an elitist cinema theater in Tarshkent, Pianier, where they used to show Tarkovsky's film, Wider's films, so just buy this cinema theater and perform there. So I went to this cinema theater with the recommendation of Mark Weil, and I bought for 70 rubles, which was my monthly salary, the cinema theater for one night. So basically, instead of showing the film, you know, I bought to show my performance, I paid for all seats in the cinema theater. So then the performance should have been quite strange. So basically, I should have read my poetry and they should have been a sort of, you know, light from my behind, you know, and the shadows of my hands, for example, moving in different manner should have affected the sitting for, you know, the audiences. But according to the rules of this cinema theater, we couldn't install any lamps there, because in cinema you can't install any lamps. We decided to find at least the chandeliers, you know, the chandeliers with five candles on it. But candles were too big, you know, it was the Soviet time, so you couldn't find anything. The candles were too big in order to fit the chandelier. So basically, we cut them into five pieces which were hardly sort of fitting the chandelier. And the script was like that. So a young lady announced that for the first time in the world, there is the poetry symphony by Hamid Ismailov, and then she goes back to the hall and sits in the first row. And at that time, the electrician of the cinema theater switched off the light and I start my performance. So everything turned like it turns in Soviet Union upside down. So we gave to the electrician a bottle of vodka in order to perform his duties. He drank this vodka before the performance. So from the very beginning he switched off the light. So a poor lady went to the scene, you know, and stumbled and fell down. So that was the beginning of the performance of the world premiere of my symphony. And instead of saying, Golas vtichene, she said, Grom vnachy, so announced as a Grom vnachy. And instead of sitting in the first row of the cinema theater, she all of a sudden, you know, started to run across the scene and stumbled upon me who was coming out of the scene, you know, with the chandelier with candles. So everything dropped down. So basically it was a failure upon a failure upon a failure. So that was my first experience of bringing all arts together, you know, so ever since I started to become very suspicious of bringing cards together. So in that sense, I'm working very, very cautiously now, you know, trying, for example, as you are suggesting, for example, just don't write into that lake or sculpture in the, in the stone guests. But the idea behind that, that all the arts are interchangeable. And we could repeat the experiences of, you know, our forefathers who lived during the Renaissance time we can be quite artful in many arts. So that would be my maybe answer. Sorry for the long answer, but yeah, that was the case with us. Thank you so much. Again, there are two additional questions in the chat, which I also think maybe we can think about in relationality to each other. The first is from Olga Silberburg, who is asking about the theme of migration, specifically towards Russia and how it fits within your broader scope of work. And she's asking particularly about Gaia Queen of Ants and the theme of migration to Europe. And then Marsha Whittle, who is a graduate student in our department is asking also about this kind of geography or cultural geography that's embedded within your text, and where you see the relationship line between literature and art and space and how you see literature and art as speaking through each other. Thank you Olga and thank you Marsha. So migration, migration, as I said, initially we were quite unexperienced and we didn't expect this scale of migration, because I tell it often that during the Soviet time there were lots of, you know, attempts to migrate Uzbeks into Russia under the communist regime. So for example, there was a campaign to move Uzbeks to Nechernozimye in order to work in Nechernozimye, which was abandoned by Russian peasants and farmers. So Uzbeks used to go there, leave maybe a week or so and immediately come back. So there were lots of cases of sending Uzbeks to Udarnaya-Komsomolskaya Stroyka as well for as soon as they arrived there they would spend one day, two days and back to Uzbekistan. So in that sense, Uzbekistan was a bread place in a way so they didn't want to change it or replace with any other. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, all of a sudden all the traditions, all the, you know, local customs were broken up. And both men and women and also children and also old people started to migrate to Russia. But then later we started to understand that it's a sort of normal process which happened during the sort of, you know, break up of the British Empire, of the French Empire, with Windrush, with, you know, lots of people from Bangladesh, from Pakistan, coming to Britain, for example, colonies usually they go after their metropolis. For different purposes. Some go for education, some go by sort of intermarriages, some go by previous connections, some go for better life, some go for earning some money and provide something and supply money to their own countries. So the same happened with Uzbekistan, with Kyrgyzstan, with Tajikistan. Russians were not expecting that one, Uzbeks they were not expecting that one, but it happened like in every sort of case of post-colonial development. And now we are much cleverer in that sense. We can project what would happen, for example, in this relationship, you know, in the future, looking at the experiences of Britain, of France, of other great empires who were sort of, you know, broke up as empires. So it allows you to project something so you can learn. But unfortunately, neither Russian side nor our Central Asians, they consider it as if it's happening for the first time, they don't consider that it's post-colonial, they never considered that it was colony as well. So lots of resentment towards that. But specialists, people, artists are looking through the lenses of what might happen. For example, I'll give you an example of in literature, let's say, how, for example, you know, the post-colonial representatives of yesterday's colonies became the leading force in the literatures. You remember V.S. Naipaul, you remember Salman Rushdie, Tariq Ali, all of them, yeah, Mohsin Hamid and all of them, who write beautifully in English. So sometimes their style is even, you know, even more exemplary than the mainstream literature of the metropolis. The same is happening in Russia with the names of Gzelyakhina, with the names of Alisa Ganiyeva, many, you know, people who are doing this kind of literature. It's an example, one of the examples. So as for the second question, as for the second question, literature and reality, yes. As I said, literature and space, I think. Yeah, literature and space, geography. You know, since I'm moving around the world, you know, so my literature and my observations are also moving with me, not just in terms of, you know, of my perceptions, but in terms of my language, in terms even of choosing language or choosing forms of storytelling. So I'm an open minded person, you know, but open to all kind of influences. So living 25 or 26 years in England, for example. Obviously, it was the longest period, you know, I lived in one place, for example. So obviously I've adopted lots of things, you know, good, bad, maybe of the population which lives in Britain, I became a part of this British culture in a way. So it reflects in my writing as well. So for example, Gaia, which you quoted, is written and happening in Eastbourne in Sussex, though the main characters are Central Asians, but Central Asians deprived of their natural habitat and natural space. So once again, it's an experience for me to look what happens to people, you know, which are deprived of their natural habitats and natural spaces. And by looking at them, I look, I'm looking at myself as well, at my own experience. Through them, I'm learning about myself as well and through learning myself, I'm creating those characters as well. So it's a sort of interchangeable, you know, process. And maybe follow up on one of those strands from that set of very interesting questions that Sophie just shared with us. From what you've just said, it seems that to some extent you, perhaps if not necessarily understand yourself as a post-colonial writer that you feel a certain affinity with other figures who might be classified in that way. Figures like Rushdie and Naipaul. I wondered if you could speak a little bit about how you understand your relationship to other forms of Central Asian writing of the late Soviet and post-Soviet period. I was thinking particularly of a figure like Chinggis like Marta, for example, whose texts often contain a kind of combination of folklore and legend and myth with a more kind of contemporary realist mode, right? This kind of fantastical realism, perhaps, that sometimes compared to the magical realism of someone like Garcia Marquez. Is that strain of really late Soviet writing, something that you see as an influence for you or something that's trying to do something similar to what you attempt in your own work? Yeah, there are two parts of this question. One is, you know, influencers. Another thing is intention of myself, for example, yeah. Intentionally, I never tried to be specifically different to, you know, to someone else, yeah. I was trying always to be myself in a way. I'm saying myself, it's not something monolith, something fixed, something, you know, just forever. It's fluid thing, you know. As I'm saying, you know, if I moved, if I lived in France a year, some features of my psyche have changed, yeah. If I lived a year in Germany, obviously, I was influenced by German culture as well. If I lived for so many years in England, obviously, so I adopted some traits and features of English life as well. So in that sense, I'm ever changing person in a way. And I'm trying to fix myself, though I'm escaping from all kinds of easems, yeah. I'm not becoming, God bless me, and not becoming a member of groups, let's say, of Central Asian writers, though they try to always to stamp, you know, upon me, a Central Asian writer, an Uzbek writer, a British writer or whatever, but luckily I was escaping somehow all these definitions, yeah, for the sake of my own writing. So, in that sense, I will be changing and I will be writing those things which, you know, the group writers never write, like for example, you know, in Uzbek writers, I will be writing in Russian, against Russian writers or in comparison, not against, in comparison to Russian writers, I will be writing in Uzbek, against the, or in comparison with some writers who can like therefore were writing both in their language and in Russian, I wrote several novels in English, for example, and about English life, not about the Uzbek life in Uzbekistan. So that differs me from an English writer or British writer as well, you know, so I was lucky in that sense, you know, to escape all the groupings, one thing. But influences is completely different thing, yeah, and here, yeah, when I'm writing, for example, Central Asian novels, be it happening in Kazakhstan, be it happening like, for example, Manashi is happening between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, yeah. I feel the shadow of Aitmatov everywhere, you know, the issues are so similar, which Kyrgyz used to raise, yeah, and I'm raising, though luckily, you know, for every Tolkien, there is a rolling, yeah, a new rolling. So in that sense, so the time is changing always, you know, for every Aitmatov there is another smile of maybe, you know, though we are talking maybe about the same themes, the same, you know, issues, but the time is changing and these themes or these issues are, you know, acquiring new features, new meanings. But I'm constantly feeling his shadow, you know, especially when I'm written already, yeah. And then all of a sudden I realize, look, for example, the railway or the step, for example, was in his, this novel, the Kazakh family was in this novel, the orphanage or orphans were in his, the Billy Parahot, for example, so wherever I go, he has already been kind of, you know, in Central Asian novels. But at the same time, there is enough of space to other people to come to the same places and to get the different results. Thank you. That's a wonderful answer that I think in so many ways seems to me to resonate with your work more broadly this, both this kind of interest in evading being fixed into firm categories, constantly moving between different forms of experience, different languages, but also that awareness of the power of the past and of cultural tradition to actually shape the way that we experience any one particular place. Right. And it's really that the tension between those two things that I think so much of your writing brings so vividly to the floor. Perhaps this is a good moment. If Vanessa Harsha and Sophie have any final comments or thoughts they want to share. Perhaps this is a good moment for us simply to thank our guest, Hamid Ismailer, who's bravely adapted to our slightly changed format for today and conducted this event wonderfully and richly from his hotel room. So I want to thank Hamid Ismailer very much for joining us today. I'm very grateful and very honored to be able to host him here at Berkeley. Thank you to Harsha and Sophie for also being part of the event. And thank you to everyone who's been watching. And I think we'll wrap it up there for today. So thanks for very much for joining. Can I join to thank everyone who took part in this who organized this and hosts as well. Thank you very much indeed. I really appreciate your participation in today's evening. Thank you Hamid. It was our pleasure.