Remembering Shamshad Abdullaev, the world-class Uzbek poet too few knew
Al Jazeera
Dedicated to his art form, Abdullaev was embraced by unorthodox artists in ex-Soviet republics.
Shamshad Abdullaev’s very name was a confluence of cultures.
A Persian first name (“a pine-like tree”), an Arabic last name (“A servant of God”), and a Slavic “ev” ending that simply means “of”.
This combination was possible in the former heart of the Great Silk Road, in ex-Soviet Uzbekistan, a Central Asian nation once associated with political purges and child labour in the cotton industry.
With the look of an ageing Italian film star and the demeanour of a refined aristocrat, Abdullaev, who died of cancer at age 66 on Tuesday, was a poet and essayist who wrote in Russian.
His artistic output is modest – several small books of poetry and essays, and a film script that never became a film but helped him buy an apartment in the eastern Uzbek city of Ferghana in the late 1980s.
