jobs, continued his education, taught, and served in the Red Army during World War II, not to be decommissioned until 1950. The war and its consequences had an enormous, negative impact on him that he tried to ease by developing a writing career in the post-Stalin 1950s. In 1953, the year in which Stalin died, Eniki became, finally, a professional writer.
Of immense importance to the development of Eniki’s intellectual and social worldview was the impact of modern influences from Europe and Russia on the latter’s Muslim communities beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century. These gave rise among Turkic intellectuals to a movement called jadidism which grew to envision a world different from any known before. It would be a new world underpinned and shaped by new methods (usûl-i jadid) that initially focused on language pedagogy and schooling for Muslim children but quickly expanded to include economic theory and development, gender relations, social organization, and cultural production, along with the many institutional paraphernalia that ultimately make up a society, its operative principles, behaviors and sensibilities, and its defining discourse. In sum, jadidism for Russia’s Tatar Muslims was modernity.
The short story that this Preface introduces is entitled «Beauty» (Матурлык, 1964), and is ostensibly composed by «an educated old man» who recalls it easily from his youth despite the ordinary setting, characters, and content. It is not a romance from the author’s life, yet is deeply biographical in spirit; it is not a tale of riotous joy, but one inspired nevertheless by a deep recognition of what beauty can truly mean. It has nothing to do with a bewitching woman, but with one who is quite elderly, disfigured, but simply beautiful in the most important motherly ways.
We only learn about this woman and her special beauty toward the end of the story, after three young male friends, one of whom is her son Badretdin, arrive at the latter’s home from the district medrese where they studied. Badretdin is described as a wonderful, thoughtful, and caring young man, «strange, mysterious, and nice,» whose extreme poverty, described in exquisite detail, worries him not for its immediate personal consequences but for the burdens it places upon his family. The narrator, however, is nothing but astonished that his friend is not embarrassed by his life’s circumstances, and even more so by the unattractiveness of his mother, who tries to hide her disfigured face when Badretdin insists that she join him and his friends for tea.
The absence of external beauty, however, proves meaningless in face of the deep reservoir of internal beauty that overflows from mother to son. Recognition of this truth leaves the narrator shaken and changed forever, and offers a lesson to all in keeping with the English idiom to never judge a book by its cover!
While these features of the story are central to its development and meaning, so too is the impact of jadidism in the lives of the three boys who are shakerts studying in a regional medrese. They are described by the author as caught up in a movement focused on such intellectual and literary figures as Ramiev and Tukay. The new writing, not just belles-lettres but expanding non-fiction, had thoroughly enlivened these and many other students in schools that traditionally trained members of the Islamic clerisy in purely religious subjects but which were now undergoing significant reforms affecting the character of the curricula so as to include a broad range of secular subjects. As the author writes, literature had «turned into something like bread» or put another way, was a «disease» consuming the human spirit. In our three heroes we can see hints of the growing tension between traditional and modern society, but for the moment, whether listening to larks filling the sky with sound, or to the message of the cuckoo bird to remember something «very important,» or to the poetics of Badretdin attempting to share life’s philosophy, those tensions were still far in the background.
Dr. Edward Ed. Lazzerini
Beauty
(Tale from an educated old man)
This story happened long, long ago, but is still before my eyes: my friends and I, three shakirds[1], we were returning to our villages from our district madrasah[2]. To tell the truth, Gylemdar and I, were going to one village – Chuarkul —, and Badretdin was heading to Ishle village, where we planned to leave him and continue on our way. I must add that the mare that lazily and slowly was bringing us back home belonged to Gylemdar. Because we were neighbors from the same village, one spring my family sent the horse to take us home; the next summer, the horse belonging to the family of Gylemdar was sent.
Badretdin was our occasional fellow traveler. To be sure, we gathered at the madrasah at the same time and left it at the same time, but we hadn`t had a chance to return home together before. Badretdin didn`t like to be a burden to other people. When school was over, he would go to the market and join others from his village, or would return to his village on foot, about 30 versts[3], plodding along. This time we invited him ourselves, insisting on heading home together.
Badretdin was the poorest shakird in our madrasah. No assistance came to him from his home. Very rarely someone from Ishle village brought him millet bread wrapped in a hemp rag or one lump of butter. Badretdin was always embarrassed: «Why did they send it? Tell my Mom that I am not hungry, and that they shouldn`t reduce their share of food». For some reason he did eat that butter, cracking it with awl, and shakirds asked him: «Why do crack it like this?», Badretdin would laugh and answer: «When you eat it with an awl, it lasts longer».
As the proverb says, «A sparrow doesn`t die from hunger in his homeland»[4]. And so it was that our Badretdin, even if he was suffering or had a lack of money, continued to study, and he studied very well. It is a well-known fact that a poor shakird in merciless poverty turns out to be very gifted. It is not possible to survive in any other way. A rich shakird, let`s say, even though muddle-headed, could stay in the madrasah as long as he wished, but a poor student, if he studied poorly, would be compelled to leave madrasah after the first winter… Moreover, if a poor student was studying very well, he could slightly improve his financial state.
And our Badretdin, as he was industrious and diligent, from time to time he received some help from rich benefactors; he earned a little as well by, giving help to weak students to prepare their home assignments; sometimes he helped teachers and copied prayers for sick people and Ayat al-Kursi verse[5] from the Qur’an, and received some coppers for it. In brief, he was never without work. At the same time he never asked for work or for help. «I am poor and it is your duty to help me» – we never saw such impudent misery on his face.
By nature he was a steady and patient young man. He didn’t fawn over others, didn’t brag, answered good with good, and bad with nothing; – somehow he managed to stay away from bad. What is interesting is that, – no matter how down-and-out he was, he never asked anything from anyone. Usually, shakirds asked this or that from him, as many things were necessary for life in the madrasah – a needle, thread, a thimble, an awl, a knife, tweezers, a mirror, various pens, paper and notebooks, even glue and wax, which he kept in a large belted and hinged chest which he made on his own. How did he manage to collect all these objects? As always, he decided that his poverty shouldn`t be a burden to anyone, and he did his best, even at the cost of food. It is true; he needed thick notebooks for classes. And the notebooks he had he wrapped very neatly, making a handle of foil not to smear the pages and treasured his notebooks carefully.
At that time, in other words years before the revolutions[6], shakirds were enthralled with new literature that was appearing. Literature had turned into something like bread for us!.. – Every shakird was writing songs, poems, even abstracts from novels into his thick notebook. Every other shakird was writing poems. Many of them were captivated with Sagyt Ramiev[7]. They followed him, they tried to look like him, and they learned his poems by heart… Even
shakirds (шәкерт) [ʃæˈkert] a student at a madrasah-level Muslim school who studies the basics of Islam, Arabic script, religious scholastic disciplines, and calligraphy. The curriculum may include foreign languages, arithmetic, geography, history, etc.
madrasah (мәдрәсә) [məˈdrasə] a college for Islamic instruction.
verst (верста) [versˈta] a Russian measure of length, equal to 1.06 km.
Илдә чыпчык үлми Ildә chypchyk үlmi
Ayat al-Kursi is the 255th verse of Surat al-Baqara, the 2nd sura in the Quran. This verse is about the Prophet Muhammad. Because it is the master of the verses in the sense of the largest verse is called Ayat al-Kursi. It was said that reading it in the evening when going to bed and in the morning would have many benefits. Meaning: «Allah! There is no God but He – The Living, The Self-subsisting, Eternal. No slumber can seize Him Nor Sleep. His are all things In the heavens and on earth. Who is there can intercede In His presence except As he permitteth? He knoweth What (appeareth to His creatures As) Before or After or Behind them. Nor shall they compass Aught of His knowledge Except as He willeth. His throne doth extend Over the heavens And on earth, and He feeleth No fatigue in guarding And preserving them, For He is the Most High. The Supreme (in glory).»
The October Revolution, officially known in Soviet historiography as the Great October Socialist Revolution, and commonly referred to as the October Uprising, the October Coup, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Bolshevik Coup or the Red October, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917–23. It took place through an armed insurrection in Petrograd on 7 November (25 October, old style) 1917.
Sagit Ramiev (Сәгыйть Рәмиев) Säğit Rämiev, (12 February 1880 – 16 March 1926), a Tatar poet, educated in the Tatar Husainia Madrasah and in a Russian school in Orenburg. From 1902 to 1906 he worked as a teacher, and then he moved to Kazan, where he began to work in the newspaper «Tan Yoldyzy». Since 1922 he lived in Ufa.Ramiev was also involved in translations – he translated into the Tatar language a number of works by L. N. Tolstoy, N. A. Nekrasov, D. Bedniy, as well as the lyrics of Marseillaise.
