Ali and Nino by Said Kurban – ‘regarded as a literary masterpiece and it is commonly considered the national novel of Azerbaijan’ it reminds one of Romeo and Juliet http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/07/romeo-and-juliet-by-william-shakespeare.html the lovers come from different, opposing creeds, not just feuding families - 9 out of 10

 

Ali and Nino by Said Kurban – ‘regarded as a literary masterpiece and it is commonly considered the national novel of Azerbaijan’ it reminds one of Romeo and Juliet http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/07/romeo-and-juliet-by-william-shakespeare.html the lovers come from different, opposing creeds, not just feuding families

9 out of 10

 

 

Ali and Nino is a wondrous work that is included on the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list –you can find it on The Guardian site, and if you google it, presumably as quoted above – and readers can see why such a compelling love story would be celebrated in Azerbaijan and elsewhere, perhaps not so much in Armenia

 

The two countries have fought a war recently and have clashed in the past, indeed, in the book, we have this conflict present, even at the beginning of the last century, we spend time with the protagonists between 1919 and 1920, and Ali Khan Shirvanshir is Muslim and Azeri, while Nino Kipiani is Georgian

They live in Baku, and we meet them when they are children, but already attached to each other, in spite of the rift that separates them – Ali Khan is ‘a native of the desert…The Orient’s intoxication comes from the desert, where hot wind and dry sand make men drunk, where the world is simple and without problems…’

 

We see some of these deep divisions in the present, as terrorist Hamas has attacked Israel on October 7, last year and they tortured, raped women, killed children, a total of fourteen hundred innocents, in the name of jihad, and because they are monsters – yes, Israel has retaliated and the civilian death toll keeps rising, the difference is that IDF does not target innocents, they are collateral damage

From the start of the narrative we see this clash between European ‘values’ and Asian traditions, the Shirvanshir family has roots in Persia – indeed, at one point they are forced to flee there, and they reside in a harem, with an eunuch who is very concerned with the ‘misbehavior’ of the European spouse

 

The tradition of the Muslim Shiite restricts rights of women – if they have any, we would say – they see Ali as holy, there is this separation within the Muslim word, where the majority are Sunni and an important minority is Shia, living mostly in Iran now, if we get from this novel that Azerbaijan may have affinities with the Shia also

If one respects the customs, men do not ask about the women – how is your wife, daughter, etc. is not a polite question, anathema in fact – they do not look at them, and they carry much less importance, if any, one would say, albeit Ali is in love with Nino and hence willing to look for accommodation

Some of the rules are outright horrendous, if not all this status – a woman is a man’s shadow, at least at the time we speak of, only if we look at Saudi Arabia and Iran today, abuse is the order of the day, as exposed in the glorious film Holy Spider – take this proverb ‘a woman has no more sense than an egg has hairs’

 

Some passages are amusing, if we pass beyond the outrage, or maybe also because they are so preposterous and absurd –Ali has this noble uncle, Lion of the Empire, an important figure in Persia, who has visited the royal houses, and was aghast to see the ‘naked women’, and the czarina taken around by an ambassador

Naked for this fundamentalist – now that is a question over the term, he is a Taliban for the Global North aka The West, as it is called now, but his views are common, the hoi polloi share his views – the czarina is dancing, though that is disgusting and incomprehensible for this Persian, who is shocked no man defends the honor of the czarina

 

Furthermore, they are taken to see a spectacle, in which a fat woman is screaming (for the same barbarian, we envisage it is the opera) and then she is taken to a pyre and set on fire, which is making him and his entourage rejoice, until they find that is that the immolation was just a symbol, it did not really happen

The background is similar to what we have today, a bullying Russia that is busy fighting and losing in The World War I, thus allowing a brief period of flourishing in Baku, they proclaim the independent state of Azerbaijan, in which Ali would play an important role, alas, that will be only a brief period, before the vile empire strikes again

 

The love story of Ali and Nino reminds one of Romeo and Juliet http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/07/romeo-and-juliet-by-william-shakespeare.html the lovers come from different, opposing creeds, not just feuding families, and the Kipiani family is horrified that their daughter would marry a Muslim; she has recently received the approval to use the title of princess from Russia

To complicate matters further, Nino is kidnapped by an Armenian who has paradoxically helped negotiate the marriage, and when he finds about this – spoiler alert, I just realized how late in the game this warning is inserted but on usual trends, there is no huge crowd that reaches this far – Ali rides a rare horse –the poor animal will be killed by the Russian owner, savage idiot – and catches up with the runaway

 

The hero kills the Armenian and his kin see it as his duty to murder the woman as well, they have what they call ‘honor killing’ to this day, but because he loves Nino, the protagonist spares her life, and later on, he marries her…

 

Now for a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

Some favorite quotes from To The Heritage and other works

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

‚parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”