★★★★☆
A collection of three novellas, People and Trees encapsulates the experiences of a boy growing up in post-World War II Azerbaijan.
People and Trees was Akram Aylisli’s first trilogy of novellas, originally published in Azerbaijani in 1970. It was translated into Russian the following year, soon selling millions of copies across the Eastern Bloc. It is from the Russian that translator Katherine E. Young developed this first English edition in 2024.
Born in the Ordubad region of Nakhchivan in 1937, Aylisli grew up in a rural village, experiencing the transformation of traditional Azerbaijani society into Soviet modernity. It is these experiences that are at the heart of People and Trees, which focuses on the childhood of Sadyk, a stand-in for Aylisli himself.
Each novella — The Tale of Medina, The Tale of the Pomegranate Tree, and the titular People of Trees, as well as the short story The Tale of the Silver Tweezers — focuses on a different aspect the narrator Sadyk experiences as he grows from a toddler into young adulthood, all in the company of his aunt Medina.
One of the biggest threads to connect all of the stories, besides of course the timeline and Sadyk’s narration itself, is Aylisli’s clear focus on domestic violence. Abuse by husbands towards their wives is normalised within the village, where it is seen as proper or even as a sign of pride following the death of many men as a result of World War II.
‘I always felt sorry for Sadaf, especially after Yakub returned and a huge bruise swelled up under her eye. The eye was painful, but Sadaf didn’t hide the bruise, didn’t cover her face with a scarf—she wanted to show everyone that she had a husband. These days it’s rare for people to have husbands.’
At one point, Sadyk is told by Yakub, the closest male role model he has, that his own father had told him: ‘You had to have a firm hand with women, they had brains like chickens. And thrashing, you absolutely had to thrash them; otherwise, they’d grow completely stupid’.
Despite these constant overtures, Sadyk grows to reject these ideals, supporting his aunt Medina in her efforts to remake her own life after her abusive husband fails to return from the war, as does Sadyk’s father. Indeed, at many points, the book can appear almost feminist in its rejection of traditional male violence, while also being consistent with Soviet rhetoric in its attempts to modernise traditional cultures and improve the status of women.
Yet Aylisli does not fully embrace a generic happy ending — while Medina is able to escape her first abusive husband and, for a time, a second marriage proposal from the abusive Yakub, she holds family above anything. With not much choice for women without some form of male monetary support, and wishing to send Sadyk to school in Baku, by the end of the third novella, Medina is forced to reluctantly give in to Yakub’s desires, agreeing to become his wife. Sadyk, now in his late teens, seems glad of this, despite his earlier wishes that his aunt stay free and stand on her own two feet. Perhaps an unexpected decision for the modern reader, it illustrates the complexities of life at this time, and the hard choices people had to make in order to cope.
Another theme that appears throughout the People and Trees is that of nature as contrasted with the Soviet collective and modernity. Through this angle, Aylisli is quietly subversive in his portrayal of Soviet life, portraying incidents where the Soviet system is cast in a rather poor light, not grasping the reasons why traditions exist or that change can come through unorthodox means. It is also in these moments when Sadyk observes the nature in his surroundings that Aylisli’s lyrical voice, as expertly translated by Young, really comes through.
‘Then my father spoke, and my aunt listened. And the night listened to what he said, and the trees listened, silently bowing their heads. And when my father fell silent, the stars started whispering with the mountaintops, and today there was something especially ominous in their whispering.’
Despite being an early work, People and Trees showcases Aylisi’s literary skill, which was to earn him the title of People’s Writer and the highest Azerbaijani state awards. His disregard for avoiding sensitive topics, however, is also what led him to be stripped of said awards after publishing a novella in 2012 covering the massacres of Armenians in Baku in 1989 and by Turkish troops in 1919. Today, Aylisi remains under de facto house arrest in Baku. Though a controversial figure in Azerbaijan, Aylisli’s work stands on its own, providing a good snapshot into the life of the general populace whether from the Soviet period or more recently.
