Book Day. Guzel Yakhina. “Zuleikha opens her eyes. Zuleikha's long road to inner freedom. (Based on the novel by Guzel Yakhina “Zuleikha opens her eyes”)

Rated the book

Do you know this feeling when you open a book, read the first lines, and feel: “that’s it, I’m lost, I’m conquered and I definitely won’t be disappointed!”?
“Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes” had exactly this effect on me. Written in beautiful language, Guzel Yakhina’s book lives and breathes. It is impossible to tear yourself away from it, it absorbs the reader entirely, takes him captive. Probably not everyone will be so delighted with the book, but I have no doubt that many people will like it. For me it became one of my favorites.

“Zuleikha opens her eyes” is the story of a small and fragile, but strong and bright woman, who has faced so many trials that not everyone can withstand, stand and not break. But she did it. Not only did she not break, but she went through all the sorrows, hardships and losses with dignity, without becoming embittered. She adapted, accepted completely wild, unacceptable and sinful living conditions for her without complaint.
“Zuleikha opens her eyes” is a story of suffering, humiliation, dispossession, repression, and the bestial attitude of people towards similar people. The story of one state's path to a bright socialist future. A path lined with the corpses of innocent people, broken hopes, tears, sweat and blood.

Zuleikha opens her eyes, and the first thing she does is rush to her tyrant sparkle to empty her chamber pot. Before she had time to wake up, curses, humiliations, and insults rained down on her beautiful head. Her husband and mother-in-law don’t give her a penny, they beat her with words and fists. Zuleikha knows no peace. She is constantly in business, at the beck and call of others. Nobody sees her as a person. The cook, the maid, the husband's bedding, and the vessel into which the mother-in-law pours her spiritual pus and poison.
Zuleikha does not know happiness. She doesn’t even know life, real, full. Does not know affection and warmth, kind words. Zuleikha knows only hard work, beatings, insults, and 24-hour service to her husband and mother-in-law. And still she considers herself lucky that she got a good husband. He humbly endures everything, accepts it, does not contradict it and does not rebel. This is incomprehensible to me. But that’s just the way she is, Zuleikha. Such a person, such a person was raised.
But this is not all that befell the fragile Tatar woman. Zuleikha, at thirty years old, had never left her native village (except for trips to the forest for firewood and to the cemetery), dreamed of seeing Kazan at least once in her life. And she saw it. And not only Kazan. Together with hundreds and thousands of other such unfortunates - the “kulaks” and “ former people"(Dear mother... how scary, disgusting and inhumane these words are, even just by sight and sound) - Zuleikha will do long haul across the country, to the ends of the world. Into the remote taiga. They will be transported on trains, in cattle cars. And I will count them like cattle - by head, and treat them accordingly. After all, they are enemies, anti-Soviet elements, semi-subhumans. The months on the road are long, hungry, painful, and for some, deadly. And ahead is a frightening unknown.

Vivid images, captivating and touching storytelling. Scary, very scary.
And this is also the silent story of my family, for which the word “repression”, unfortunately, is not an empty phrase. I read and remembered my grandmother's stories. This is also why it touched my soul so much.

Rated the book

With LL, you never guess what you might read on the wave of hype: you might come across an excellent book that will change your physical state and smear it across the walls of your internal established canons or make you soar into the celestial spheres, or you might also come across boring nonsense or a collection of stereotypes. “Zuleikha...” is very interesting in this regard, because it did an excellent job of luring even without all the numerous mentions in the media, on review sites and everywhere else possible. The first part of the book (very insignificant, about one-fifth aftertaste a month after reading) is very interesting to read, although sometimes you doubt whether the author has gone too far with all these horrors, somehow they are almost to the point of caricature They look tear-jerking sometimes. On the other hand, you will think that this is how everything was, and in some places this is how it is, you calm down. (I’ll mention this in parentheses, because I don’t know how to put this into the direct text more subtly: it seems to me that sometimes, to create a creepy or tense effect, it’s better, on the contrary, to create less passions and horrors. Roughly speaking, the twentieth killed kitten (parentheses inside brackets with an unrelated comment - this is a bid for victory, let them be, it should be noted that this is an example from nowhere, there are no kittens in the text) touches literary text much less than the first couple, although in fact this poor little kitten in real life it would be as pity as the rest.) In this first tiny part of Guzel, Yakhina managed to create a special suffocating atmosphere of slavish lack of freedom, hopelessness, unbearability, which, however, must be endured, not to die. Accordingly, around this situation, even by the name, if you do not catch the facts mentioned in passing from numerous reviews, it becomes clear that Zuleikha will open her eyes next! Something will change! Something will happen! It would hardly be worth hoping for a feminist manifesto; it would be too unnatural and comical for a good book in this, so to speak, setting, precisely under such conditions. However, there is a beginning, it teases, it promises, it is fraught with many possibilities, and...

And then another four-fifths of the book, where all these possibilities are wasted. There are some successful characters and scenes, there are several good ideas, for example, the “egg” around the professor, the appearance of a “ghost” and the image of the main informer of the entire book. There are scenes, paintings, and characters drawn out that are pleasing to the eye and ear. But on the whole, it’s empty love-related rubbish, which has collected a bunch of cliches, where moral torment, hook-ups, difficult conditions, drama-drama-drama and sort-of-struggle-with-oneself are mixed in different proportions, from somewhere far-fetched coincidences always emerge and all this happens against the backdrop of an indistinct Robinsonade situation divorced from reality with a poorly thought-out historical background. I just recently read “The Abode” by Prilepin, which I wasn’t exactly delighted with, but I have to give it due that the author tried his best to give authenticity to what was happening. Here there is not even any effort, everything looks conventional against the backdrop of a banal love affair.

Result: love story with a promising beginning and merged with everything else, which, unlike cheap shit publications, is written in really good language and with good moments. It can be read for a relaxing person, but it was not possible to rise above the level of mediocre fiction. But it’s immediately clear why he won so many female readers and admirers: the readership missed literature to relax the brain, from overall quality and a syllable that doesn’t make you want to puke. A rare product.

Rated the book

When talking about the most important books of the year, one cannot ignore the debut novel “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes” by a young author from Kazan Guzel Yakhina for at least two reasons: we, Baikal residents, may be flattered that the main events take place on the banks of the Angara, and everyone else may be interested , what are they getting for now? literary prizes size of 2-3 million (" Yasnaya Polyana», « Big Book»).

I would like to call the story about the Tatar woman Zuleikha, dispossessed and exiled to Siberia, a family saga, since it was written according to the history of the author’s family, whose family was exiled to Soviet time ancestors from Tataria to the banks of the Angara. The first in the family to be described is the most terrible and despotic character in the book - the hundred-year-old blind Upyrikha, who has real prototype- Great-grandmother of the author. The next two generations - Zuleikha, thirty at the beginning of the book, and her son Yuzuf - are an artistic invention, but the fourth generation is again quite a real man- author. It appears together with the voice-over text, when it briefly voices the immediate fate of the characters leaving the text. In approximately the same voice in “Seventeen Moments of Spring” it was said: “Stirlitz was sleeping, but he knew that in exactly 20 minutes he would wake up.”

There are other coincidences in the book: someone says that the chairman of the village council, Denisov, is a copy of Sholokhov’s Semyon Davydov; to someone, the crazy Professor Leibe, a great specialist in gynecology, resembles Professor Pavel Alekseevich Kukotsky. And the green-eyed Zuleikha herself looks like either Scarlett O'Hara during the famine and the sawmill, or like Angelique in Quebec, when around the clock it was necessary to gut the game and prepare firewood for the endless harsh winter. These three women It is also united by the obligatory “point” of women’s novels: attractiveness that does not leave any man indifferent. What kind of ones are there? unexpected turns plot, when in every new circumstances there is someone who will save and protect. In this story about the hardships of exiles, the “piano in the bushes” appears too often, and there are too many lucky coincidences. As if by magic it will be in right time the right doctor, almost everyone will survive a long winter without warm clothes and food, and for Yuzuf fake documents arise at the only right and quickly passing moment. And everything is written so smoothly that you can’t tear yourself away from the text until you finish reading it.

The first one is the strongest four parts novel: where about house-building, superstition, the enslavement of women, life in constant fear, hunger, the terrifying stories of the Upyrikha (“And do you hear, son? We didn’t eat them. We buried them. On our own, without a mullah, at night. You were just little and I forgot everything. And that there are no graves, I’ve already lost my tongue to explain to you that everyone was buried that summer - without graves”). Life through the eyes of a victim is what was shown well. And then the intensity of passions subsides, and it turns out that working in a logging camp is easy, digging a dugout for 30 people with sticks and spoons in a day is easy, surviving in damp and cold is easy, living as an exile in Soviet power- easily. Absurd! The word “workdays” is never uttered, but it is said that Zuleikha was able to start earning money and even saved some money. In a settlement of exiles, during the war. Against the background of such things, you can miss fun fact, that spoons in Siberia are made from shells, and a bear (and a moose) can be killed with one shot, when you pick up a gun for the first time and don’t even know where the safety is, the trigger, or where to aim.

If we perceive “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes” not as a historical novel, but as an example women's prose, then a lot can be attributed to artistic exaggeration and “it’s necessary for the idea,” even a happy ending. Because the idea as a whole is good and humane: from a downtrodden and submissive “wet chicken”, the main character will become an accurate and cold-blooded hunter, capable of standing up for herself, and the main villain will turn into a virtue and a handsome prince. Well, again the description reminds me of something. Synopsis of “Beauty and the Beast” and “Cinderella” at once. This is how a fairy tale turns out.

Among the trends in modern historical novels, which mainly address turning points of the past, there is an obvious tendency towards problems of statehood, power, universal human values, morality, religion. The actualization of the themes of evil and good, faith and its absence, the defense of moral ideals serves as a means of awakening national self-awareness.

Guzel Yakhina is considered the main discovery of the Year of Literature. Some critics draw analogies with the works of M. Sholokhov, V. Shalamov and A. Solzhenitsyn, calling her novel “ female version» “Abodes” by Zakhar Prilepin. Others consider the novel “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes” in the context of “women’s literature.” G. Yakhina belongs to the galaxy of “bicultural” writers (F. Iskander, Y. Rytkheu, A. Kim, Ch. Aitmatov): “The novel has the main quality real literature, goes straight to the heart. A story about fate main character, a Tatar peasant woman from the time of dispossession, breathes such authenticity, reliability and charm, which are not so often found in recent decades in a huge stream modern prose» .

At the center of the work is the fate of a young woman. In an interview, G. Yakhina noted: “For me, “Zuleikha...” is a very personal thing, I nurtured and wrote it for almost three years. You could say I had no choice what to write about - I knew for sure that I would write specifically about dispossession and kulak exile.” The history of the Yakhin family is presented in context great history Soviet countries. “Grandmother was 7 years old when her parents were dispossessed and the whole family was exiled to the Angara. They landed on an empty bank, in the remote taiga. At first they lived in dugouts, then they built houses for themselves and worked at the Ayakhtinsky gold mining plant. It was not a camp, but a labor settlement, called Pit-Gorodok. It stood on the Big Pit River, a tributary of the Angara... My grandmother lived in Pit-Gorodok for 16 years.”

“Zuleikha opens her eyes” is a work about the desire to live in spite of everything, about love that stronger than death. Addressing the topic of dispossession, Yakhina relies on tradition classic novels XX century in understanding the problem of “the role of personality in History.” Over the years of trials, the fragile girl Zuleikha developed a real Siberian character, the focus of the author’s attention is on his psychological research.

On the one hand, the novel “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes” is typically “ women's novel“, because at the center of the story is the fate of a woman, and the author strives to describe the feelings of his heroine as truthfully as possible. At the beginning of the story, Zuleikha is thirty years old, but it is surprising that the thirty-year-old woman is perceived by readers as a small, inexperienced girl who has yet to see the world “widely.” with open eyes" Not a girl and not an adult, a woman - in crucial moment fate. There is a scene in the novel in which Zuleikha stands in front of huge map and gradually realizes that the giant map is her entire Land of the Soviets, and she herself is a small grain of sand in it. Little woman and big map. This scene became the starting point of all previous and subsequent events in the novel.

On the other hand, Yakhina’s work can also be classified as historical prose. IN modern literary criticism There is no single interpretation of the term “historical prose.” If a novel reveals patterns public life, the appearance of people in their uniqueness, determined by the era, means this is a historical novel, although the work contains neither documentary evidence of phenomena nor historical figures. So, “historicism”, narration “about a bygone period” and “documentary” - these are the defining features historical novel in its classic form.

G. Yakhina’s novel is the story of exiled migrants: dispossessed from villages, St. Petersburg intellectuals. Life pits Zuleikha against the eccentric professor Leibe, the commandant Ignatov, and the artist Ikonnikov. The work has four parts: 1) “Wet Chicken” - the years Zuleikha spent in the suffocating atmosphere of slavery in her husband’s family; 2) “Where?” – six months spent on the road to Siberia; 3) “Live” – the period of construction of the Semruk village, the birth of a child, time to learn to live again; 4) "Return". The action of the novel covers the years 1930-1946.

In the novel there are three “meaningful” centers, climaxes in which the consciousness of the characters and their outlook on life change. Three times Zuleikha “opens her eyes.” Describing the hardships of Zuleikha’s life, Yakhina conveys the main thing throughout the work philosophical thought: no amount of everyday slavery and political hard labor can truly break the will strong personality. Zuleikha survived and did not lose human qualities, did not become embittered, did not prefer death to the struggle for life. The heroine seems to “shout” to people: “Open your eyes!” “Zuleikha opens her eyes” is also a deep philosophical novel. This is the author's requiem for the victims of the totalitarian regime.

A stylistic feature of the book can be considered a mixture of languages (Tatar, Russian, French), attraction folklore elements(perfume, urman, farashte), allowing one to understand the scale of the people's tragedy and its internationality.

What is the genre modification of the novel? Historical or historical adventure novel? Epic or family saga? It depends on the interpretation of the work. It is obvious that before us is modern historical prose, which will not leave anyone indifferent.

A review of G. Yakhina’s novel “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes” was prepared by graduate student of the literature department Olga Sergeevna Khanenko based on the publication of the author: Khanenko, O.S. Genre- style features modern historical prose(using the example of G. Yakhina’s novel “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes”) - Magnitogorsk: MSTU im. G.I.Nosova, 2016.

Failed writers are always given examples of people who have not found a response from publishing houses for a long time. Guzel Yakhina would have continued to try to adapt the text for a long time, but she was lucky - she was published by AST, namely the Editorial Office of Elena Shubina. An unnecessary story instantly gains many readers, the author becomes the winner of three prestigious awards: “Book of the Year”, “Yasnaya Polyana” and “Big Book”, her first major creation is included in short list“Russian Booker” and “Nose”. Net income from awards alone exceeded five million rubles. Why is Yakhina not an example for failed writers after such success? You need to not give up and believe in yourself to the end, even if there really is nothing worthy in you.

The book “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes” greets the reader with threads of dried tears. Everything is bad in the life of the main character, a victim of domestic violence. And while the country is plunged into darkness, dispossessed by the poor, the light goes out in Zuleikha’s gaze. Every time she opens her eyes and sees injustice. Hitting her is her husband’s favorite pastime. Harassing her is a passion of the old mother-in-law. Because she vertically challenged, then she has to sleep on the chest. Will Zuleikha survive under such circumstances if she continues to bear future dead? It is impossible to give birth to a son. Nothing holds daughters back. Maybe Yakhina did not want to breed a new brood of victims of reality? We need a boy, but he is not there.

Oppression in the family applies only to Zuleikha. She humbly accepts the traditions of the people, when a woman is not supposed to claim rights. One gets the feeling that the main character lives in a closed world, where the Red Horde NEP members, greedy for crops and livestock, sometimes penetrate, so that the reader finally understands how hard life was in the twenties of the 20th century. No feminism and no rights to a piece of land. You constantly owe someone: even if you die, pay it back. It's impossible to escape. Zuleikha could not demand respect for her dignity, no matter how she opened her eyes. Destined to obey the will of others.

The period of Zuleikha’s stay in her husband’s house is an ideal representation not only of the suffering of the Tatars at that difficult time, but also characteristic description everyday life of the population during the formation of the Soviet state. The reader will not learn anything new from the text. Yakhina suggests looking at the past from a slightly different angle - from the perspective of a Muslim woman. While peasants and workers overthrew the kulaks, slaves could not count on liberation from oppression. Make up or get a bullet in the forehead, if you declare the dignity of an individual, then you will have to prove your case before a heavenly judge.

The opening episodes are a treasure trove. useful information. What is happening on the pages clearly appears before the eye. It seems that the intensity of passions will only increase further, and the thirst for reading will intensify. But when it comes to dispossession, a six-month stay in a carriage and the long-awaited settlement in Siberia, then the reluctance of publishers to give way to the debut work of a then little-known author becomes understandable. Nobody believed in the possibility of promoting a book with such content.

Yakhina didn’t have enough fire - we have to admit it. All her energy went into depicting the everyday life of a woman in the unfortunate circumstances of domestic violence, which she could know about personally or through stories. Each line is filled with pain, giving an understanding of the true nature of man, who is no different from an animal. Whoever is stronger is the one who “rapes”: Zuleikha is the husband, the husband is the NEP.

The illusion of negativity blooms wildly as soon as the main character’s ordeal begins. You shouldn't expect to find happiness. Everything is going from bad to worse. However, we must admit that Zuleikha is always lucky. She is like a true representative of wisdom oriental man, subconsciously understands the benefits of misfortunes. The chain of events that happens to her is built by Yakhina accordingly - at first the main character almost drowns, after which she safely floats up, awaiting the next problems.

I went through the stages - I escaped death from infection, the ship sank - I gave birth to a son, the war began - someone should be free. In the series of situations described, you need to be prepared for sharp plot twists. The more Zuleikha suffers, the better. It is necessary to let her experience all the hardships of the most extreme degree, so that the reader again and again sympathizes with the main character.

Such a baby is able to survive everyone and continue to obey the people around her. She was not brought up in the spirit of that time, so she is perceived by a person from the outside. Her once limited understanding of the world has expanded dramatically, only inner world remained within the same boundaries. It turns out that a person cannot make a qualitative leap from an awareness of dependence to an understanding of personal freedom: he continues to live according to medieval ways, without striving to become part of a matured world. Zuleikha does not feel the need to rise above reality - she is part of the system.

Did Yakhina want to show the limitations of the main character? Why does Zuleikha open her eyes only literally? Spiritual growth the reader can't wait. The plot rails will carry the carriage forward, new ones will appear characters, the lines of fate will begin to intersect and diverge again. The initial tragedy turns into melodrama. Everyone is already suffering, including former punishers. There is no need to talk about justice - this concept did not exist in the Soviet Union. If it was necessary to make someone an enemy of the people, then they did it; received honor and respect - then they went along with others along the stage. The country has become a camp for everyone. Maybe that’s why Zuleikha didn’t try to escape.

The main character wanted one thing - to live. She is ready to accept any humiliation just to continue breathing and open her eyes once again. She could not be broken. After all, it is difficult to break someone who has been accustomed to endure bullying from an early age. The steel was hardened in father's house, so Zuleikha had to remain steadfast, which is what she does until the last pages.

When there is no way out, a person does the impossible. This happens to Zuleikha all the time, which is why they wake up inside her. supernatural powers. She doesn't understand how she manages to do something like this. Yakhina only manages to create such situations. Here Zuleikha drags her husband home and puts him to bed, now she almost drowns, but here she boldly goes against a dozen wolves, not giving them a chance to get to her, putting them down one by one with well-aimed shots. This cannot happen in real life. On the pages of the book, the author is not limited in understanding the reality of what is happening - he is the master of the situation, having his own point of view.

Guzel Shamilevna Yakhina

Zuleikha opens her eyes

Zuleikha opens her eyes
Guzel Shamilevna Yakhina

Prose: feminine
Guzel Yakhina was born and raised in Kazan, graduated from the Faculty of Foreign Languages, and is studying at the screenwriting department of the Moscow Film School. She has been published in the magazines “Neva”, “Siberian Lights”, “October”.

The novel “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes” begins in the winter of 1930 in a remote Tatar village. Peasant woman Zuleikha, along with hundreds of other migrants, are sent in a heated carriage along the age-old convict route to Siberia.

Dense peasants and Leningrad intellectuals, declassed elements and criminals, Muslims and Christians, pagans and atheists, Russians, Tatars, Germans, Chuvashs - everyone will meet on the banks of the Angara, daily defending their right to life from the taiga and the ruthless state.

Dedicated to all those dispossessed and resettled.

Guzel Yakhina

Zuleikha opens her eyes

The book is published under an agreement with the literary agency ELKOST Intl.

Love and tenderness in hell

This novel belongs to that type of literature that, it would seem, has been completely lost since the collapse of the USSR. We had a wonderful galaxy of bicultural writers who belonged to one of the ethnic groups inhabiting the empire, but wrote in Russian. Fazil Iskander, Yuri Rytkheu, Anatoly Kim, Olzhas Suleimenov, Chingiz Aitmatov... The traditions of this school are a deep knowledge of national material, love for one’s people, an attitude full of dignity and respect towards people of other nationalities, a delicate touch to folklore. It would seem that there will be no continuation of this, a disappeared continent. But a rare and joyful event happened - a new prose writer came, a young Tatar woman Guzel Yakhina easily joined the ranks of these masters.

The novel “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes” is a magnificent debut. It has the main quality of real literature - it goes straight to the heart. The story about the fate of the main character, a Tatar peasant woman from the time of dispossession, breathes such authenticity, reliability and charm, which are not so often found in recent decades in the huge stream of modern prose.

The somewhat cinematic style of the narration enhances the drama of the action and the brightness of the images, and the journalistic style not only does not destroy the narrative, but, on the contrary, turns out to be an advantage of the novel. The author returns the reader to the literature of accurate observation, subtle psychology and, most importantly, to that love, without which even the most talented writers turn into cold recorders of the diseases of the time. The phrase " women's literature” carries a disdainful connotation, largely due to male criticism. Meanwhile, women only in the twentieth century mastered professions that until that time were considered male: doctors, teachers, scientists, writers. During the existence of the genre, men have written hundreds of times more bad novels than women, and it’s hard to argue with this fact. Guzel Yakhina’s novel is, without a doubt, female. ABOUT feminine power and female weakness, about sacred motherhood not against the backdrop of an English nursery, but against the backdrop of a labor camp, a hellish reserve invented by one of humanity’s greatest villains. And it remains a mystery to me how it was possible to the young author to create such a powerful work, glorifying love and tenderness in hell... I heartily congratulate the author on a wonderful premiere, and the readers on their magnificent prose. This is a brilliant start.

Lyudmila Ulitskaya

Part one

Wet chicken

One day

Zuleikha opens her eyes. It's dark like a cellar. Geese sigh sleepily behind a thin curtain. A one-month-old foal slaps its lips, searching for its mother's udder. Outside the window at the head of the room is the dull groan of a January snowstorm. But it doesn’t blow from the cracks - thanks to Murtaza, I caulked the windows before it got cold. Murtaza is a good host. AND good husband. He snores loudly and richly on the male side. Sleep tight, before dawn is the deepest sleep.

It's time. Allah Almighty, let us fulfill our plans - let no one wake up.

Zuleikha silently lowers one bare foot to the floor, then the other, leans on the stove and stands up. It cooled down overnight, the warmth was gone, and the cold floor burned my feet. You can’t put on shoes - you won’t be able to walk silently in the felt boots, some floorboard will creak. It’s okay, Zuleikha will be patient. Holding his hand on the rough side of the stove, he makes his way to the exit from the women's quarters. It’s narrow and cramped here, but she remembers every corner, every ledge—for half her life she’s been sliding back and forth like a pendulum, all day long: from the cauldron to the men’s half with full and hot bowls, from the men’s half back with empty and cold ones.

How many years has she been married? Fifteen out of your thirty? This is even more than half of my life, probably. You'll have to ask Murtaza when he's in the mood - let him do the math.

Don't trip over the rug. Do not hit your bare foot on the forged chest on the right side of the wall. Step over the creaky board at the bend of the stove. Silently slip behind the calico charshau separating the women's part of the hut from the men's... Now the door is not far away.

Murtaza's snoring is closer. Sleep, sleep for the sake of Allah. A wife should not hide from her husband, but what can you do - she has to.

Now the main thing is not to wake the animals. Usually they sleep in a winter barn, but in severe cold, Murtaza orders to take the young animals and birds home. The geese do not move, but the foal tapped his hoof, shook his head - the devil woke up. He will be a good horse, sensitive. She reaches out her hand through the curtain, touches the velvet muzzle: calm down, yours. He gratefully puffs his nostrils into his palm - he admitted. Zuleikha wipes her wet fingers on her undershirt and gently pushes the door with her shoulder. Tight, upholstered with felt for the winter, it gives heavily, and a sharp frosty cloud flies through the crack. He takes a step, crossing a high threshold - it was not enough to step on it right now and disturb the evil spirits, pah-pah! - and finds himself in the hallway. He closes the door and leans his back against it.

Glory to Allah, part of the journey has been completed.

It’s cold in the hallway, just like outside—it stings your skin, your shirt doesn’t warm you up. Jets of icy air hit my bare feet through the cracks in the floor. But it's not scary.

The scary thing is behind the door opposite.

Ubyrly karchyk - Upyrikha. Zuleikha calls her that to herself. Glory to the Almighty, the mother-in-law lives with them in more than one hut. Murtaza's house is spacious, consisting of two huts connected by a common entryway. On the day when forty-five-year-old Murtaza brought fifteen-year-old Zuleikha into the house, Upyrikha, with martyrdom on her face, dragged her numerous chests, bales and dishes into the guest hut and occupied it all. "Don't touch me!" – she shouted menacingly to her son when he tried to help with the move. And I didn’t talk to him for two months. That same year, she began to quickly and hopelessly go blind, and after some time, she began to go deaf. A couple of years later she was blind and deaf as a stone. But now she was talking a lot and couldn’t stop.

Nobody knew how old she really was. She claimed a hundred. Murtaza recently sat down to count, sat for a long time - and announced: his mother is right, she really is about a hundred. He was a late child, and now he is almost an old man.

The vampire usually wakes up before everyone else and brings out into the hallway her carefully kept treasure - an elegant chamber pot of milky white porcelain with soft blue cornflowers on the side and a fancy lid (Murtaza once brought it as a gift from Kazan). Zuleikha is supposed to jump up at the call of her mother-in-law, empty and carefully wash the precious vessel - the first thing, before lighting the oven, putting in the dough and leading the cow out to the herd. Woe to her if she sleeps through this morning wake-up call. In fifteen years, Zuleikha slept through twice - and forbade herself to remember what happened next.

It’s still quiet outside the door. Come on, Zuleikha, you wet chicken, hurry up. Upyrikha first called her a wet chicken - Zhebegyan Tavyk. Zuleikha did not notice how, after a while, she began to call herself that.

She sneaks into the depths of the hallway, towards the stairs to the attic. Feels for the smooth-hewn railing. The steps are steep, the frozen boards groan faintly. From above there is a whiff of frozen wood, frozen dust, dry herbs and the faint aroma of salted goose. Zuleikha gets up - the sound of the snowstorm is closer, the wind beats against the roof and howls in the corners.

He decides to crawl around the attic on all fours - if he walks, the boards will creak right above the head of the sleeping Murtaza. And she crawls along, the weight in her is nothing at all, Murtaza lifts it with one hand like a ram. She pulls her nightgown to her chest so as not to get dirty in the dust, twists it, takes the end in her teeth - and feels her way between the drawers, boxes, wooden tools, carefully crawls over the cross beams. He rests his forehead against the wall. Finally.

He gets up and looks out the small attic window. In the dark gray pre-dawn haze, the snow-covered houses of your native Yulbash are barely visible. Murtaza once thought that there were more than a hundred households. It's a big village, to say the least. The village road, bending smoothly, flows like a river beyond the horizon. In some places the windows in the houses were already lit. Rather, Zuleikha.

She stands up and reaches up. Something heavy, smooth, and large-pimpled lies in the palm of your hand—salted goose. The stomach immediately shudders and growls demandingly. No, you can't take the goose. He lets go of the carcass and searches further. Here! To the left of the attic window hang large and heavy panels, hardened in the frost, from which there is a barely audible fruity scent. Apple marshmallow. Carefully boiled in the oven, carefully rolled out on wide boards, carefully dried on the roof, absorbing the hot August sun and cool September winds. You can bite off a little at a time and suck for a long time, rolling the rough, sour piece across the palate, or you can stuff your mouth and chew, chew the elastic mass, spitting the occasional grain into your palm... Your mouth instantly fills with saliva.

Zuleikha tears a couple of sheets from the rope, rolls them tightly and tucks them under her arm. He runs his hand over the remaining ones - there are many, many more left. Murtaza should not guess.

And now - back.

She gets to her knees and crawls towards the stairs. The marshmallow scroll prevents you from moving quickly. It’s really a wet chicken, I didn’t think to take any bag with me. He goes down the stairs slowly: he can’t feel his legs - they are numb, he has to put his numb feet sideways, on the edge. When he reaches the last step, the door on the Upyrikha side swings open with a noise, and a light, barely visible silhouette appears in the black opening. A heavy stick hits the floor.

- Is there anyone? - Upyrikha asks the darkness in a low male voice.

Zuleikha freezes. My heart is pounding, my stomach is squeezing into an icy lump. I didn’t have time... The marshmallow under my arm thaws and softens.

The ghoul takes a step forward. Over fifteen years of blindness, she has learned the house by heart - she moves around in it confidently and freely.

Zuleikha flies up a couple of steps, clutching the softened marshmallow tightly to herself with her elbow.

The old woman moves her chin one way and the other. She doesn’t hear anything, doesn’t see, but she feels, the old witch. One word - Upyrikha. The stick knocks loudly - closer, closer. Eh, he’ll wake up Murtaza...

Zuleikha jumps a few more steps higher, presses herself against the railing, licks her dry lips.

A white silhouette stops at the foot of the stairs. You can hear the old woman sniffing, noisily sucking in air through her nostrils. Zuleikha brings her palms to her face - that’s right, they smell like goose and apples. Suddenly, Upyrikha makes a deft lunge forward and swings her long stick at the steps of the stairs, as if cutting them in half with a sword. The end of the stick whistles somewhere very close and, with a ringing sound, pierces the board a half-toe away from Zuleikha’s bare foot. The body weakens and spreads like dough down the steps. If the old witch hits again... The ghoul mutters something incomprehensible and pulls the stick towards her. The chamber pot clinks dully in the darkness.

- Zuleikha! - Upyrikha loudly shouts at her son’s half of the hut.

This is how the morning usually starts at home.

Guzel Yakhina

Zuleikha opens her eyes

The book is published under an agreement with the literary agency ELKOST Intl.

Love and tenderness in hell

This novel belongs to that type of literature that, it would seem, has been completely lost since the collapse of the USSR. We had a wonderful galaxy of bicultural writers who belonged to one of the ethnic groups inhabiting the empire, but wrote in Russian. Fazil Iskander, Yuri Rytkheu, Anatoly Kim, Olzhas Suleimenov, Chingiz Aitmatov... The traditions of this school are a deep knowledge of national material, love for one’s people, an attitude full of dignity and respect towards people of other nationalities, a delicate touch to folklore. It would seem that there will be no continuation of this, a disappeared continent. But a rare and joyful event happened - a new prose writer, a young Tatar woman Guzel Yakhina, came and easily joined the ranks of these masters.

The somewhat cinematic style of the narration enhances the drama of the action and the brightness of the images, and the journalistic style not only does not destroy the narrative, but, on the contrary, turns out to be an advantage of the novel. The author returns the reader to the literature of accurate observation, subtle psychology and, most importantly, to that love, without which even the most talented writers turn into cold recorders of the diseases of the time. The phrase “women's literature” carries with it a disparaging connotation, largely at the mercy of male criticism. Meanwhile, women only in the twentieth century mastered professions that until that time were considered male: doctors, teachers, scientists, writers. During the existence of the genre, men have written hundreds of times more bad novels than women, and it’s hard to argue with this fact. Guzel Yakhina’s novel is, without a doubt, female. About female strength and female weakness, about sacred motherhood, not against the backdrop of an English nursery, but against the backdrop of a labor camp, a hellish reserve invented by one of the greatest villains of humanity. And it remains a mystery to me how the young author managed to create such a powerful work glorifying love and tenderness in hell... I heartily congratulate the author on the wonderful premiere, and the readers on the magnificent prose. This is a brilliant start.

Lyudmila Ulitskaya

Part one

Wet chicken

One day

Zuleikha opens her eyes. It's dark like a cellar. Geese sigh sleepily behind a thin curtain. A one-month-old foal slaps its lips, searching for its mother's udder. Outside the window at the head of the room is the dull groan of a January snowstorm. But it doesn’t blow from the cracks - thanks to Murtaza, I caulked the windows before it got cold. Murtaza is a good host. And a good husband. He snores loudly and richly on the male side. Sleep tight, before dawn is the deepest sleep.

It's time. Allah Almighty, let us fulfill our plans - let no one wake up.

How many years has she been married? Fifteen out of your thirty? This is even more than half of my life, probably. You'll have to ask Murtaza when he's in the mood - let him do the math.

Murtaza's snoring is closer. Sleep, sleep for the sake of Allah. A wife should not hide from her husband, but what can you do - she has to.

Glory to Allah, part of the journey has been completed.

It’s cold in the hallway, just like outside—it stings your skin, your shirt doesn’t warm you up. Jets of icy air hit my bare feet through the cracks in the floor. But it's not scary.

The scary thing is behind the door opposite.

Ubyrly karchyk- Upyrikha. Zuleikha calls her that to herself. Glory to the Almighty, the mother-in-law lives with them in more than one hut. Murtaza's house is spacious, consisting of two huts connected by a common entryway. On the day when forty-five-year-old Murtaza brought fifteen-year-old Zuleikha into the house, Upyrikha, with martyrdom on her face, dragged her numerous chests, bales and dishes into the guest hut and occupied it all. "Don't touch me!" – she shouted menacingly to her son when he tried to help with the move. And I didn’t talk to him for two months. That same year, she began to quickly and hopelessly go blind, and after some time, she began to go deaf. A couple of years later she was blind and deaf as a stone. But now she was talking a lot and couldn’t stop.

It’s still quiet outside the door. Come on, Zuleikha, you wet chicken, hurry up. Wet chicken - Zhebegyan Tavyk– Upyrikha called her for the first time. Zuleikha did not notice how, after a while, she began to call herself that.

He decides to crawl around the attic on all fours - if he walks, the boards will creak right above the head of the sleeping Murtaza. And she crawls along, the weight in her is nothing at all, Murtaza lifts it with one hand like a ram. She pulls her nightgown to her chest so as not to get dirty in the dust, twists it, takes the end in her teeth - and by touch she makes her way between drawers, boxes, wooden tools, and carefully crawls over the cross beams. He rests his forehead against the wall. Finally.