And if no one is in love with you
And you are forlorn and lonely,
Then be sure somewhere on the high mountains, Rasul Hamzatof is dead

MANY summers ago, Ahmed Daud the master story-teller during a literary chit-chat asked me, “Tarar have you read Rasul Hamzatof Mera Daghistan?

“Rasul Hamzatof whose poetry was translated by Faiz sahib and included in his Sarre Wadieye Sina, yes I read the book mentioned by you some years back”

“How was it?” he asked with his high cheekbones and restless wolf eyes.

I hesitated, “Well it was a long time ago but the book was interesting enough.”

On our next meeting, like a magician he produced Mera Daghistan from the inner-pocket of his jacket.

“You should read it again, it is not an interesting enough book, as you put it very casually, but a great book”.

Ahmed Daud was wrong, it was not a great book but one of the greatest masterpieces ever written, fables, folk wisdom and tales from Daghistan written in a prose, which soared beyond the heights of Mount Olympus. It changed my whole concept of creative prose. In short I was not the same man after reading Mera Daghistan. There is hardly a single line which cannot be quoted as a quotable quote. It simply starts with a request from an editor of a Moscow literary journal, to the Lenin prize winner poet, to write an essay, short story or a sketch about his homeland, Daghistan, but it should not exceed more than nine typed pages. It exceeded far beyond nine pages i.e.; three hundred and fifty pages to be exact and resulted in the creation of a masterpiece which was Mera Daghistan. Some random quotes wont be out of place.

“If you can’t narrate a story, turn it into song and if you can’t sing, make a story out of it.”

“My land is my favourite subject. We do not choose to love our land but it’s the land, which chooses us. There is no eagle without his own sky, every mountain goat has its own rock, if there is a trout, there will be a clear water stream where it swims, every aeroplane has a landing strip and there is, not a creative writer who does not have his own land. If an eagle walks along the chicken in a poultry farm, he is no more an eagle. If a bull chooses to graze grass along with sheep, he will become a sheep. An aeroplane displayed in a museum is no more aeroplane and a writer who does not have a country to sing about is no more a writer.” A person who does not have command over the language and decides to be a poet is a madman who jumps in to a river but does not know how to swim.”

“They say a chicken dreamed that he has turned into an eagle and tried to fly from a rock and lost his wings.”

“A small stream dreamed that it was a river, it flowed towards a desert and dried up forever.”

“Don’t jump out of your bed as soon as you wake up, first of all think about the dream you had last night.”

Rasul’s love for his mother-tongue, Avar, that is spoken by only seventy-thousand people, is fathomless. He narrates that once he travelled to Paris for a literary conference and an Avar painter came to visit him. The painter had left Daghistan many years ago and was settled in France, married to a French girl. They had a full afternoon to themselves, eating, drinking and reminiscing about their native land. The Avar, painter requested Rasul to go to his mountain village, if possible, and find out if any of his relatives are still alive.

Upon his return, Rasul travelled into the mountains and with great difficulty found this small village of few huts and to his great surprise, the mother of that Avar painter, although very feeble and nearing blindness, was still alive. She had given up any hope of ever seeing her son again because she was sure that he had died somewhere in the distant lands. Upon hearing that he was still alive and very prosperous in Paris, tears of joy rushed out of her dimming eyes. But then suddenly she composed herself and asked Rasul, “You spent a whole afternoon conversing with him, tell me in which language were you talking to each other?”

“In French,” Rasul replied “because he has absolutely forgotten Avar.”

The mother upon hearing this, covered her head with a scarf and pulled it in front of her face, as was the custom when an Avar woman hears the news of her son’s death. “If he has forgotten his mother-tongue then for me he is dead.”

One of the most regrettable episodes in Rasul’s life was when he was influenced by Party propaganda, that the great freedom fighter of Daghistan Imam Shamil was in fact a British and Turkish spy who sowed the seeds of hatred amongst the Soviet republics. Rasul in his youthful exuberance, perhaps trying to please the Party, although he denies it, wrote a very derogatory poem about Imam Shamil, condemning him as an enemy of the Soviet people.

His father, a very devout Muslim, felt deeply hurt and told him, “Rasul don’t mess around with our Imam Shamil, if you do that you will not be at peace with yourself for rest of your life.” After some years he realized his mistake and regretted it so much that in 1961 when Soviet power was still at its peak, without fearing the wrath of Communist Party he wrote an apology which is again a masterpiece.

He says in the beginning of apology “Yes I became a shadow of those times whereas a true poet should never become a shadow, he should be a raging fire. I was like a raw unripe apple in those days. Now that I have matured I have realized what a fool I have been”. Due to the shortage of space I cannot quote the whole poem, here are some selected lines;


And my father, few days before his death,

Sang in praise of this hero, Imam Shamil,

And it is a bitter truth that the whole world condemned him,

As an agent of the enemies. My father would have lived a few more days,

If this insult was not heaped upon Shamil,

Alas, it was my own hand, which attacked Shamil with swords of poetry, that sword of my ancestors, which always bathed in the blood of enemies,

I called it a traitors sword, I.

During the nights I hear the sound of his heavy boots,

When all the torches embrace darkness, his shadow appears in the window and addresses me, “I have never been wounded in the battle, but you have wounded me with the arrows of your poetry, This is the first wound which I have received from my own son, Your arrows have pierced my heart.”

I am ashamed of myself for what I have done; I am ashamed from the shadow, which appears, in my window,

I am ashamed from my people. How can I ever apologize, I have to carry the burden of this guilt for rest of my life.

I am sorry my beloved land; don’t shower on me the arrows of hate.

After all you are my mother, and a mother always forgives her son’s crimes.


It was in 1996 during an international conference of writers that I had the opportunity of meeting Rasul Hamzatof, pleasant and chubby fellow with dimming eyes which always filled with tears when Faiz sahib’s name was mentioned. I presented him a copy of Urdu version of Mera Daghistan and obtained his autographs just like a schoolboy fan. He requested me to translate into Urdu one of his poems, which I readily did. Last September, when I was in Qatar, I asked the Russian scholar Natalia Pregarina about Rasul’s whereabouts. She told me that he is very ill these days. In Moscow you can see everywhere, posters with Rasul’s photograph wishing him a speedy recovery. But that has not happened. According to an Uzbek source, Rasul died about two months back.

O, Woman
And if no one is in love with you
And you are forlorn and lonely,
Then be sure that somewhere on the high mountains,
Rasul Hamzatof is dead.