Letters from Kazakhstan: A Review of Women’s Writing in Amanat

Amanat: Women’s Writing from Kazakhstan

translated and edited by Zaure Batayeva and Shelley Fairweather-Vega

Guady Boy, LLC, 2022; 296 pp; $22.00

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In the introduction to this first-of-its-kind collection, editors and translators Zaure Batayeva and Shelley Fairweather-Vega explain that the Kazakh word amanat carries multiple interpretations. It can be a promise for the future, a task with moral obligations, or a material legacy for future generations to cherish and pass to their descendants. This collection encompasses all these. The final essay, in particular, embodies “a realization that . . . the present moment never exists independently of the past and the future and that women have a sacred role to play in escorting our families and our nations through times of both joy and sorrow.” In the 2000s and much of the 2010s, the few works in translation were principally by Soviet-era men. In Amanat, the authors, translators, and publisher offer a correction to this imbalance with this gift to English speaking readers. 

Along with the rest of Central Asia, Kazakhstan is heir to many layers of history. A number are referenced in Amanat’s contemporary writings, though most prominent are the experiences of individuals who lived during the Soviet regime and the social and economic upheavals following its dissolution. The result is a pastiche of urban and rural, traditional and modern, religious and secular, the contemporary world of oil companies and businesswomen set alongside village and collective farm life. 

In the closing essay, “My Eleusinian Mysteries” (Russian)*, a nighttime drive across the Central Asian steppe provides the background for author Zira Naurzbayeva’s reflections on past and present. With her sleeping daughter in her lap, she ponders the mourning of the Greek agricultural goddess, Demeter, following her daughter’s retreat to the underworld each year. Demeter’s sorrow plunges the upper regions into wintry cold until Persephone’s return brings spring and new life. 

In a reversal of the Greek myth, the author recalls the grief-filled years that followed her mother’s passing. Naurzbayeva’s daughter, deprived of grandmothers herself, seemed drawn to everyone else’s, as if in recognition of their vital role. Naurzbayeva likens the headlights guiding them across the nighttime steppe to the line of mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers who have preceded her. “I thought about how my daughter would take the cup of life from me, the one our grandmothers had carried through the darkness of millennia, through war and hunger, through victory and defeat.” 

Demeter proves an apt emblem not only for mothers but for writers and translators as well. In a personal email, editor/translator Fairweather-Vega invoked another nurturing metaphor for the act of translation. “The authors of Amanat trusted their children, their stories, to me and Zaure, to care for them and raise them in English as we saw fit, and we tried hard to raise them well outside of their home environment and birth families.”

The translators’ skill is manifested by the diversity of voice, nuance, and tone they evoke in this assembly of twenty-four pieces by thirteen authors. All are keen observers of culture and human nature. Deft handling of dialogue and narrative lifts the curtain on the complex web of relationships and social structures engendered by history. 

Batayeva translates into Kazakh as well as English, and excerpts from two of her novels appear in the book. Fairweather-Vega translates from Russian, Kazakh, and Uzbek. She has translated a number of works by the major Uzbek author Hamid Ismailov, including We Computers. She has also translated a middle grade novel by two of the authors represented in Amanat—Batu and the Search for the Golden Cup, by Lilya Kalaus and Zira Nauryzbai. (The latter is identified in Amanat as “Naurzbayeva,” with a Russian suffix observable in surnames across former Soviet Central Asia. Some individuals, like Nauryzbai, have chosen to revert to a more traditional form of their family names.) 

In “The Beskempir” (Russian), Naurzbayeva returns to the theme of grandmothers, offering literary cameos of those she has known in Almaty, once Kazakhstan’s capital. “City life was more than just unusual to them. It went against their traditional upbringing and their sense of decency.” She describes a visiting mother who insisted on “handling any physiological needs” in the bushes outside her son’s house, because “God forbid my son or my daughter-in-law or my grandchildren hear any gurgling!” The sharply rendered personalities made this one of my favorite pieces. I was swept along by a tide of respect for these women and regret for the losses they endured. 

Another favorite is the short story “Aslan’s Bride” (Russian), by Nadezhda Chernova. In this bittersweet tale, Milochka, a young Russian woman, longs for a family of her own. In despair of finding love, she abandons the city. At length she wanders into a seaside village populated by widows, their husbands and sons all lost in the recent war. She winds up living with the elderly Tomiko, who declares that when her son, Aslan, returns, Milochka will be his bride. Slowly, Milochka embraces the rhythms of rural life, and eventually, her identity as Aslan’s intended. 

One day, Milochka is astonished to realize she looks like the Greek goddesses in Tomiko’s book of ancient history. “The tilt of her head had the grace of some wild creature, running free. And her eyes shone with the glorious light of love that has been transforming faces for a thousand years or more.” Themes of nature, longing, hope, maternal nurture, and cross-cultural affinities run like crosscurrents through this richly textured piece.

Where “Aslan’s Bride” touches on mothers without children, other stories hinge on children without mothers. Ayagul Mantay’s “Orphan” (Kazakh) constitutes a lament for loss and temporality. The title character is an enigmatic, hunchbacked man on a Soviet-era cooperative farm. Young people and adults alike puzzle over his propensity to keep company with children, with whom he alternately plays and remonstrates. After his death, the adults refer to him as the “poor old orphan,” and the young narrator wonders how an old man can be an orphan. 

A close call with snakes by the river makes the children realize the hovering “orphan” was looking out for their welfare. The belated recognition of their loss echoes the maternal absence suggested by the title and underscores our universal vulnerability. The piece closes with the image of the narrator’s silent father, speechless before the mystery of death: “‘Papa, why don’t people live six hundred years?’ I asked, and my father caressed my head with his big palm.”

The title story, “Amanat” (Kazakh), by Oral Arukenova, depicts the push-and-pull of history operating on family life. It opens with a mother’s dying wish, delivered to her eldest for her youngest. “I have an amanat. . . . Build a new house for Zhalgas. Find him a nice Kazakh girl and save him from that albasty of a girlfriend he has.” But Zhalgas’s partner of ten years is Russian, and none of the family’s proposed brides can lure him away. In the end, Zhalgas’s brother is prevented from fulfilling the task entrusted to him—his mother’s amanat. What becomes of the first type of amanat—a promise for the future? Is this lost? Or has Zhalgas set the stage for a new beginning for his family? 

The translators’ observation about the sacred role of women applies to nurturers of any gender: We have a responsibility to usher our people (whether children, mentees, students, or friends) through life’s changes, mindful of the past, hopeful for the future. This volume represents stories of individuals attempting to fulfill this charge. It also represents the work of women who have persisted in their craft through tumultuous times. It is a privilege to read them.

*Kazakh selections are translated by Zaure Batayeva. Russian selections are translated by Shelley Fairweather-Vega, with the exception of “Procedures Within,” translated by Sam Breazeale.