Kemel Ishakov

Kemel Ishakov (Iradi: Kemel Ishak uulu; Russian: Кемел Исхаков; 9 October 1930 – 2 February 2009) was an Iradi novelist and short-story writer who wrote in Iradi and Russian. He is regarded as Irad's national novelist. His novella Akyrky Ashuu (The Last Pass, 1964), about a clan's flight over the mountains in 1916, was the first major work of Soviet literature told from inside the Urkun. It made him known across the Soviet Union and is read in schools in both the Irad Special Economic Zone (ISEZ) and the Autonomous Tribal Regions (ATR).^[1]

His work often met resistance from Soviet censors over its Christian themes. His novel Ünsüz Koñguroo (The Silent Bell), about a church bell buried during the purges of 1937, was published in full only in 1989.^[2]

Early life

Ishakov was born in Arsha-Say, a village on a side stream of the Talas below the Talas Alatau, in what is now Talas District. His family were Christian horse herders on the local collective farm. His grandmother had survived the 1916 flight to Xinjiang, and her stories of it became the source of his best-known work. His father, Ishak, was one of the herders prosecuted for "sabotage" after the 1944 Wartime Mobilization Strike, when breeders hid Chongtor stallions from the Red Army. He served eight years in a labor camp and returned in 1953.^[1]

Like most Iradis of his generation, Ishakov was registered under a Russian-style surname formed from his father's name. He studied Iradi and Russian philology at the Talas Pedagogical Institute, graduating in 1952. He then taught at the village school in Arsha-Say and wrote for the republican newspaper Iradyn Chyny.^[3]

Career

First stories (1956–1963)

His first story appeared in 1956. Kök Jal (Grey Mane, 1959) tells of an old herder who keeps a grey stallion alive through a winter in a snowbound side valley. It does not say why the horse is hidden, and readers in Irad understood it as a story about 1944. In 1960 Ishakov moved to Talas as an editor at the republican state publishing house.^[3]

Akyrky Ashuu (1964)

Akyrky Ashuu follows a twelve-year-old girl, Bermet, and her grandfather as their clan leaves the Talas valley in the autumn of 1916 ahead of the punitive columns and crosses the passes toward China. The story is told in short chapters that end with lines from laments. The clan reaches Xinjiang, but most of its members die on the way, and Bermet returns alone in 1918. Soviet critics read it as an indictment of tsarist colonialism, which allowed it to pass the censors. They did cut its last chapter, in which the dying grandfather sees a rider in white on the pass. The full text was restored in 1990.^[2]

Ishakov's own Russian version appeared in a Moscow literary monthly in 1965, and the novella won the State Prize of the Iradi SSR in 1966. It was translated into more than twenty languages. The Talas State Academic Drama Theatre staged it in 1967, with Almaz Sarybaev as the clan elder's son. Critics have compared the novella with the 1916 sequence of Talgat Osmonov's film Rise of Glory (1979), although the film does not credit it.^[4]

Censors and the church (1965–1985)

Ünsüz Koñguroo tells of a village teacher who learns that the church bell of his village was buried by its priest in 1937, the year of the clerical purges, and that the old people still know where. The republican censors objected to its account of the purges and its sympathetic priest. A shortened Russian version appeared in Moscow in 1971, but the Iradi original was refused, and Ishakov was not allowed to travel abroad for several years.^[2]

His later Soviet works avoided direct conflict. The novel Kara Buka (The Black Bull, 1977) is set on a Virgin Lands cattle sovkhoz. It follows an Iradi horse herder who takes a job with the settlers' herds against his family's wishes and his grandmother's warnings about the black bull of Morkhan. Ishakov chaired the Union of Writers of the Iradi SSR from 1986 to 1991. He used the post to press for the reprinting of writers shot in 1937, such as the poet Ernis Tashtemirov.^[5]

After 1991

Ünsüz Koñguroo was published in Iradi in 1989. After 1992 Ishakov wrote mainly in Iradi. The Last Pass came out in English in Chicago in 1993, during Iradimania, and he visited Iradi communities in the United States in 1994. He was the first winner of the lifetime award of the Altyn-Zhylky Awards in 1996. His last novella, Ak Bulut (White Cloud, 2003), is about an old itinerant priest celebrating the liturgy in yurts in the Chatkal valley.^[1]

During the Second Iradi Civil War, in March 2007, he signed an open letter by writers, actors and clergy asking both sides to spare Talas. He died in Talas on 2 February 2009 and was buried in Arsha-Say.^[6]

Style and themes

Ishakov wrote in short, plain sentences close to spoken Iradi and used the forms of oral poetry, especially the lament. His recurring subjects were horses, memory and the survival of faith. Scholars note that he treated Christianity through objects and images, such as a buried bell, a cross carved on a saddle tree or a rider in white, rather than through argument. In this way he could write about faith in print in the Soviet period.^[5]

Legacy

Extracts from Akyrky Ashuu are taught in ISEZ schools, and village schools in the ATR teach the full text. Both administrations claim him. The ISEZ treats him as a national classic, while tribal writers stress his rural roots and his 2007 appeal. His house in Arsha-Say has been a museum since 2012. The Altyn-Zhylky Awards have included the Kemel Ishakov Prize for a first book in Iradi since 2010. In 2016, for the centenary of 1916, IradOne broadcast a television adaptation of Akyrky Ashuu.^[6]

Selected works

• Kök Jal (Grey Mane, 1959), story
• Akyrky Ashuu (The Last Pass, 1964), novella
• Ünsüz Koñguroo (The Silent Bell; cut Russian version 1971, full Iradi text 1989), novel
• Kara Buka (The Black Bull, 1977), novel
• Ak Bulut (White Cloud, 2003), novella

See also

• Iradi literature
• The Lost Tribes of 1916
• The Black Blizzard of 1916 (Poem)

References

1. ^ Talas State University Press (2014). Kemel Ishakov: A Life in Two Languages. Talas, pp. 1–132.
2. ^ Central Asian Cultural Studies Review (2019). 'Two Languages, One Pen: Bilingual Writers of Soviet Iradistan.' Vol. 11, pp. 88–109.
3. ^ Talas State University Press (2018). A History of Iradi Literature. Talas, pp. 140–188.
4. ^ Talas State University Press (2016). Blood on the Snow: The Iradi Clans in the Revolt of 1916. Centenary volume, Talas, pp. 237–260.
5. ^ Temirbekova, Ainura (2014). The Church of the Star: A History of the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church. Talas State University Press, Talas.
6. ^ Talas Herald (3 February 2009). 'Kemel Ishakov, the voice of the passes, dies at 78.' Talas.