A Poet and Bin-Laden Read online

  Hamid Ismailov

  A Poet and Bin-Laden

  A reality novel

  Glagoslav Publications

  A Poet and Bin-Laden

  By Hamid Ismailov

  Supported by English PEN

  and

  Arts Council England

  First published in Russian as “Doroga k smerti bolshe,

  chem smert” in 2005 by Black Quadrat

  Translated from Russian by Andrew Bromfield

  Poems translated by Richard MacKane

  Edited by Camilla Stein

  © Hamid Ismailov 2011

  © 2012, Glagoslav Publications, United Kingdom

  Glagoslav Publications Ltd

  88-90 Hatton Garden

  EC1N 8PN London

  United Kingdom

  www.glagoslav.com

  ISBN: 978-1-909156-37-1

  Glagoslav Publications neither shares nor assumes responsibility for author’s political and other views and opinions as expressed in or

  interpreted from this book.

  This book is in copyright. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this

  condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  In Place of a Preface

  Cast of Main Characters and a Simple

  Timeline of Events

  11/09/2001

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  December 21, 1991,

  the town of Namangan

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  A Second Part

  Cast of Main Characters and a Simple Time Line

  To Christopher MacLehose who inspired me to write this book.

  Acknowledgements

  I am indebted to all those who helped me with this book and first of all to my wife Razia Sultanova and children Rano and Daniar Ismailov, to Andrew Bromfield who beautifully translated the novel and Richard McKane who translated the poems, as well as to Hugh Barnes who wrote a Preface. Monica Whitlock, John Spurling, Jill Shoolman and David Halpern kindly agreed to be the critical readers, checking the draft and making useful suggestions along the way. Their input is invaluable, and I am very grateful to them for their support. I am also indebted to late Anne-Marie Schimmel, Resat Niyazi and Shousha Guppy along with my friends Robert Chandler, Philippa Vaughan, Gwyneth Williams, Sian Glaessner and Zia Shakib for their encouragement and help with this book. Many thanks are due also to Lena Chibor, who bravely brought out the Russian version of the book, my agent Marc Koralnik, Liepman Ag, English PEN, Arts Council England, the Publisher Maxim Hodak for his passion and determination in making this book happen, to the Editor Camilla Stein, to the Marketing Manager Yana Kovalskaya and my friends mentioned in the novel.

  In Place of a Preface

  A Poet and Bin-Laden is a novel set in Central Asia at the turn of the 21 st century against a swirling backdrop of Islamic fundamentalism in the Ferghana Valley and beyond. It tells the story of the poet Belgi, who may be a grown-up version of “the boy” in Hamid Ismailov’s book The Railway. The new novel is equally rich in descriptive passages and teems with vivid personalities but, whereas the mood of The Railway was nostalgic and its setting a provincial backwater in Uzbekistan during the Soviet years, A Poet and Bin-Laden tackles the most urgent and topical subject of today’s world – the “war on terror” – and the novel’s scope is correspondingly international, with the action straddling the borders of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan. However, in A Poet and Bin-Laden documentary elements, instead of folklore, are used to propel the narrative. Real events and characters, including Osama bin Laden, who has a walk-on role, bulk large and give the novel its unique quality.

  The hero of A Poet and Bin-Laden is Belgi, whose presumed death in 2001, while fighting on the side of the Taliban, prompts the narrator to ask, Citizen Kane -style: how did a Sufi recluse living in harmony with nature come to die with other Islamic militants on the hilltops of Afghanistan? To answer this question, he retraces the story of Belgi’s life in the setting of some of the key events of Central Asia’s post-Soviet history: the purging of the democratic opposition, the rise of Hizb-ut-Tahrir (“Party of Freedom”) and the emergence of Islamic militancy, the cross-border wars of the 1990s, including the 1999 terror attacks in Tashkent, and the Batken insurgency of the following year. The novel also includes flashforwards to fighting in Vaziristan and the May 2005 massacre of civilians in the Uzbek town of Andijan. But the primary focus of the narrative is the image of this poet who becomes a terrorist in the eyes of the world. This wonderfully original construct allows Ismailov to explore the relationship between the timeless and dreamlike aspects of Uzbek culture – already familiar from The Railway, and now personified in Belgi – and the harsh reality of life caught between the dictatorship of President Karimov and jihadism.

  The story begins on the eve of 9/11, with the narrator’s haunting description of the airplane attack on the Twin Towers as seen on TV while he is on holiday in Central Asia. Subsequent chapters shift backwards and forwards in time, but two main themes emerge: the rise of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan under the charismatic but reclusive leadership of Ta
hir Yuldash and Juma Namangani; and Belgi’s movement from the outer edge of the circle, from the mountains of Osh, into the inner sanctum of al-Qaeda, and ultimately to a meeting with Sheikh bin Laden himself. His journey begins with a search for a Sufi spiritual master and ends in guerrilla warfare, and it is this tension between a transcendental and a violent response to oppression, between the book and the bomb, that gives the novel its specific poignancy. Along the way, Ismailov provides wonderfully vivid accounts of historical events (as witnessed by Belgi) such as the siege of Kunduz, the breakout from Shebergan prison – a kind of Afghan Guantanamo – and the insurgency in the Ferghana Valley.

  In the Tajik village of Hoit, an IMU stronghold, he is recruited by the Islamists and subsequently crosses the border with Afghanistan during the US bombings. He is taken prisoner by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, but after escaping from Shebergan is reunited with his defeated comrades – and all this time he is writing poetry!

  His poems, along with the stories of eyewitnesses and participants in events leading up to the Andijan massacre, grant the reader insight into the very heart of a secretive world previously concealed from outside view. This, of course, is a very topical book, with reports of the death of the Taliban in 2001 now clearly exaggerated. From a journalistic point of view, it is so rich in first-hand and exclusive material, not least the appearance of bin Laden, that it is certain to attract a great deal of interest. But the real achievement of A Poet and Bin-Laden is an imaginative one – this is a very powerful story about the forces of extremism in human nature, good and evil, poetry and terror. It is in every way a grown-up version of The Railway.

  Hugh Barnes

  On you r road there are nails, stap les,

  rusted corks, the dried apr icot of time,

  a concrete pa th, the railway, grass h ere and there,

  a living snowdrop or simple, ordinary wire...

  In actual fact, in fact all this leads one

  to t hink then, but at the s ame time your premonition

  reali ses: your life in its complete u selessness

  can be tied in with these things.

  Do not grieve about this,

  death in f act is neither high nor lo w.

  It is not death that i s greater

  but the thought of the road to death

  tha t overcomes death itself.

  -Belgi

  Cast of Main Characters and a Simple

  Timeline of Events

  Belgi, aka Yosir – an Uzbek “new generation” poet, widely translated in the West, who becomes a militant,

  Bakh, aka Haroun – his friend, interested in Sufism, who is killed by militants,

  Alish, aka Umar – Belgi’s friend and his translator, who also joins the militants,

  Sher – Belgi’s brother, killed by the Uzbek authorities while being held in detention,

  Caroline Rowley – an American journalist, Bel gi’s girlfriend,

  President Islam Karimov – the current Uzbek President who cam e to power in 1989,

  Tahir Yuldash – aka Amir Muhammad Farruk – leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, killed in 2009,

  Juma Namangani – military commander of the IMU, killed in 2001,

  Zubair – spokesman for the IMU, k illed in 2001,

  Zainiddin Askarov – aka Abdurahman Mansur, for mer spokesman for the IMU, died in an Uzbek prison,

  Abdurashid Dostum – an Afghani genera l who is an ethnic Uzbek.

  Numerous journalists and experts, who have contribu ted materials, memoirs and stories, as well as many m ilitants and members of the Taliban.

  1989 – Islam Kari mov comes to power as the First Secretary of Uzbekistan’s Communist Pa rty. He later becomes President of Uzbekistan;

  1992 – a standoff betw een Islam Karimov and Tahir Yuldash, when the Muslims of Namangan effectively take the Pr esident hostage, and he promises an Islamic state. This is when Belgi fir st names him “Comrade Islam”;

  1992-1996 – President Karimov crushes the s ecular opposition and dissenters take refuge in the mosques, he launches hi s campaign against Islam in the country under the pretext of fighting W ahabbism;

  1998 – the mutilated body of Belgi’s brother Sher is handed over to h im by the police, who claim that he committed suicide. Belgi and his friends end up in a militant camp in Hoit.

  1999 – six explosions that occur in Tashke nt are blamed on Islamic militants, but later substa ntial evidence indicates the involvement of the Uzbek special s ervices; the authorities imprison thousands of believers, thousands flee to Tajikistan and Afghanistan;

  1999 -2000 – in summer Islam ic militants make incursions into Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan : the so-called Batken war;

  2001 – “9/11”: the Americans start bombing Af ghanistan: Belgi is arrested by the Americans, then released and, like many Uzbek militants, he disappears.

  Map of Central Asia

  11/09/2001

  The website “Conference of the Refined” at http://library.ferghana.ru/uz/index.htm provides the following information about Belgi (real name Asror Abutov, nom de guerre Yosir):

  Belgi is a poet of the Uzbek “new wave” and author of the volumes of poetry Yo’l (The Path ), Ikkinchi kitob (The Second Book ), Bambergiana and Moskva Daft ari (Moscow Notebook ). The recently published English book Poet f or Poet included a number of poems by Belgi, as well as this brief biographical note: “Born in 1961 in Osh in the Ferghana Valley, applied unsuccessfully to the Literary Institute, took work where he could find it, travelled widely. Now living in seclusion in the mountains of his native province… ”

  When I asked the author of this note about the final sentence, he exclaimed: “At that time how could I have known that this reclusive Sufi retreat in search of a spiritual master would lead to Afghanistan?” And indeed, at the time when those words were written, the mountains of the Osh province were far from being a theatre of military operations where Islamic militants made annual forays or a political bazaar where some traded in politics and others in narcotics or foreign hostages.

  I shall try to recount all this in detail, but I shall start, I think, from the very end.

  On September 11, 2001 I was on holiday with my family at Issyk-Kul Lake: how can you expect any Tashkent or Central Asian intellectual to summon up the effort to go any further than that? Before lunch we had been swimming and riding in a catamaran, and after lunch we were relaxing at home. In an attempt to salvage something from those meaningless, monotonous days when, as Pushkin said “ Fare niente is my law”, I was sitting there with a pen and a sheet of paper and a gradually mounting sense of frustration with the members of my household because of the pointlessness of it all. The members of my household were applying their own precautionary defensive measures: in other words, it was normal family life during a holiday. Eventually we decided to walk to the lake again, I blamed my fruitless depression on my wife’s zealous attitude, she got even with me for absenting myself from family activities for two hours, and our two children automatically took mental note of the new cracks between their parents in order later to coerce one into buying ice cream and the other into the interminable construction of skyscrapers of sand.

  And now I attempt to recall every little detail, as if there had been some kind of portent, the way a bird will occasionally fly for some distance in front of the windscreen of your car, or the silence is suddenly sucked into both your ears in a contracting sphere of dread, but there was nothing like that, except perhaps for those sandcastles that were washed away by the cold water of the lake.

  We got back to our room in the early evening, but there was still some ti me to go before supper and so on this occasion I felt justified in switching on the television and flicking through the channels. It was strange, th
ough – the foreign satellite channels were all showing a pictu re of a fire that had started in some tower or other. For som e reason I thought about the Tate Gallery in London – I had recently read about it being opened in the magazine Ogonyok. Why did I think about Lon don? Most likely because there was someone speaking from London: then I real ised it was the BBC channel and I started listening carefully. I wouldn’t claim that my English is very advanced – sure, I studied it in school and passed the minimum postgraduate reading requirement, but I’d say I’m probably better at expressing m yself in Uzbek at the market than understanding what those analysts are barking about in all those d reary, identical studios. Even so, I did make out the words “New York” a couple of times. And while I was wondering j ust what it all had to do with New York, the little aeroplane appeared on the screen, exactly like in a second take, and flew slowly and surely into a nother tower concealed behind the first one. This time I understood without any words – simply fr om the childish cry emitted by the anchor man – that they weren’t showing a Holly wood film, that these unimaginable things were happening even as I watched, and at that moment the ent ire world was turning into one big Hollywood....

  Our whole fam ily sat in front of the television all that evening, missing supper – no great loss – and later, after the whole chilling event had been dubbed and explained by the Russian language channels, in the dead of that cold Issyk-Kul night I had a strange dream that I still remember to this day.

  In one of the kishlak s, or mountain villages, where I used to be sent for Young Pioneer camp, I walked o ut of the gate and saw a car hurtling along in my direction. The car’s wheels were running along the unbroken line of yellowing clay fences sticking up out of the white snow, as if these f ences marked its only road through the s nowfall; it was attached to these f ences, and its impetuous motion followed their curves. I would have thought the car was racing along almost vertically, if it had not gone whooshing past me, turned in a steep arc and shot off beyond the dark f orms of the bridge and the river that I could see down below. “Lunatic!” I thought, and was about to carry on walking downhill when the car emerged from a dip, swung round and set off back across the bridge. Now it was aiming for me. I went dashing across the snow to get as far away as possible from those fences that held the car the way the ele ctric wires hold a suburban train, but the car made a sharp U-turn and seemed to come lunging after me. I dashed along through sn ow up to my knees, sometimes slipping into steep holes, but in any ca se leaving a deep track behind me as I fled. The car could easily pinpoint my location. I put on two rapid spurts of speed and slid down the side of the hollow, all the way to the channel of the glimm ering river, and a thought flashed through m y mind like lightning: “The car will run straight off into the river here!” True, there was also the thought that it might hook me and pull m e with it, but the thought that came after th at was even more frightening: “What if the driver comes after me without his car…” How could I defend myself on the white s now?