Katherine E. Young

From Stone Dreams: A Novel-Requiem by Akram Aylisli

[translated from the Russian]

Chapter One
The Curious Death of an Old Coat-Check Girl, the Deadly Dangerous Joke of a Famous Artist, and the Party Card-Pistol

The condition of the patient just delivered to the trauma department of one of the major Baku hospitals was very serious.

They carried the patient, lying unconscious on the gurney, along the very middle of the half-lit hospital corridor that stretched the length of the whole floor to the operating room, which was located in the other wing of the building. There were two women in white lab coats, and two men in similar coats. The surgeon himself walked beside the gurney, a spare, silver-haired man of middling height, distinguished from his colleagues by his reserve, the compelling sternness of his face, and the particular cleanliness of his lab coat.

If there was something unusual and seemingly incongruous in this ordinary scene of hospital life, it was the tragic humor in the appearance and behavior of the person who had brought the patient to the clinic. That small, fidgety man of 55 to 60, with a small face not at all in harmony with his enormous, round belly, ran around the doctor, constantly repeating the same thing over and over:

“Doctor, my dear Doctor….they killed him. Such a man, in broad daylight, they beat him, destroyed him. It’s these erazy, Doctor, erazy. Five or six of these erazy-boys…. These sons of bitches, these refugees simply don’t respect people, Doctor, my dear Doctor. They don’t recognize artists, or poets, or writers. Just call someone an Armenian—and that’s it. Then they slam him to the ground and trample him, like wild animals. They tear him to pieces and no one dares get involved… I told them: ‘Don’t beat him,’ I said, ‘That man’s not Armenian, he’s one of us, a son of our people, the pride and conscience of the nation.’ But who listens? They didn’t even let me tell them my name. They kicked me so hard in the side that I almost died there, too. Right here, Doctor, in the right side. It still hurts badly now….”

The doctor didn’t really understand what the man who had brought the patient was saying. Maybe he didn’t want to understand. Maybe he wasn’t even listening to what that fussy, funny man who had knotted a yellow tie over a brown checked shirt was babbling incessantly. However, an observant person might have noticed that the doctor from time to time smiled into his moustache. And not because every word, every gesture of the man who had brought the patient rose to comedy. But, rather, because the light-haired man lying on the gurney was slender and remarkably tall. And it’s possible that the contrast in appearance between these two reminded the doctor of the very saddest pages of the story of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

When they reached the doors of the operating room, one of the men in a white lab coat blocked the path of the funny man in the yellow tie.

“Let him in,” said the doctor. “It seems he has something to say. Let him have his say.”

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Individuals of Azeri heritage born in Armenia who later resettled in Azerbaijan — trans.

About Akram Aylisli

Akram Aylisli is a political prisoner in Azerbaijan thanks to the novellas that have been translated with this grant. One novella portrays Armenians (who have been in conflict with Azerbaijanis for the last thirty years) with empathy; another depicts a corrupt, authoritarian regime in a fictional country rather like Azerbaijan. In 2013 Aylisli was stripped of his honors and presidential pension; his books were burned, his family members were fired from their jobs, and he received death threats. International supporters nominated him for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. He lives under de facto house arrest in Baku.