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Ghazaleh Alizadeh: » خانه ادریسیها (The House of The Edrisis (Volume 1)
This is the first of two volumes of this book. The title actually translates as House of the Hydrangeas. The novel is set in what we now know as Ashgabat, capital of Turkmenistan. It had been part of Persia but, at the time this novel is set – the 1910s – is part of the Russian Empire. The action takes place in and around the eponymous house belonging to the Edrisi family.
The Edrisis were a well-to-do family but things have changed. Various Edrisis who had lived there have either died or sold up what they had and moved elsewhere. At the beginning of the novel there are four people left in the house. There is the matriarch Mrs Edrisi, an elderly lady who reminisces about the past and who worries about her sole surviving daughter, Leqa, and her grandson, Vahab, who is thirty but looks older. Unfortunately for Mrs. Edrisi, neither has shown the slightest inclination to marry. Leqa abhors men. (Does she have a contagious disease?”
Mrs. Edrisi shook her head. “Detestation of the male species.) She is very precious and fragile, easily upset. Her mother has urged Vahab to find her a suitor but Vahab does not do as other men. You go out all over, to the streets and bazaars. Why don’t you find a suitable suitor for her?” his grandmother asks and later says to Leqa You are going overboard calling him a man. Men usually do something, have a business, a fiancée, a friend, go horseback riding and hunting, or boozing up in a tavern.” She sighed. “If only there was a man in this house!
While Vahab does occasionally go out, his main love is books. He has an extensive library to which he frequently adds, sleeps in late and often wanders the house at night. Leqa, for her part. is a competent pianist and is often found to be playing their piano. The fourth member of the household is the old retainer Yāvar who often reminisces about the past.
There are a few ghosts whose memory somewhat haunts the family. The main one is Rahila, daughter of Mrs. Edrisi. She died of a mysterious fever when Vahab was ten but he was infatuated with her then and remains infatuated with her. Her room has been kept exactly as it was when she died. Vahab has the only key and frequently goes to the room to sniff his aunt’s clothing. No-one has access to the room. Vahab has shown interest in only one other woman – an actresss called Roxana Yashvili, lover of Marenko, the people’s poet. Vahab likes her because she looks like Rahila. The other main ghost is Vahab’s mother, Rana whom he did not like.
One of the many things Alizadeh does well in this book is to show a decaying, decadent family living in a decaying, decadent house. The four residents are clearly to be seen as members of an aristocracy whose time is up while the house is not in good condition. Many rooms, formerly inhabited by long since departed relatives, are empty. How many room are there? Even Mrs. Edrisi does not know. When asked she hazards a guess but is not sure. Pigeons fly around the sitting room and plaster falls off. There is no money for repairs.
But the world is changing. There has been a revolution led by a group known as the Fire Stokers, whose headquarters are called The House of Fire. The family know though seem unwilling to accept that it will not be long before they turn up at their door and, indeed, they do.
Firstly there are only a few. They break a few things, steal a few things and then go. But they return, first in small numbers and then in large numbers. And they move in. Some of them have never slept in a bed and are happy to do so, They take stuff, urinate in valuable vases, break things and make themselves at home. There is a hierarchy. A large – very large woman called Showkat seems to be in charge. she helps herself to some of the clothing, is very happy to start fights – fist fights – with anyone, male or female and makes it very clear that she is in charge and is giving orders to everyone – the family and the fellow Fire Stokers. Most of them seem to be given the title Hero. They have various pasts, from those who had spent a life of drudgery to a poet, a former head gardener and a one-legged fighter called Qobad.
Many of them have children who swarm all over the house. They burn some of the library and books, break things, steal things and seem to enjoy, to a certain degree, being in large house. The women love wearing the clothes and jewellery. More and more arrive with their own stories, including Roxana Yashvili, which gets Vahab carried away, not least because she sleeps in Rahila’s room.
Has the world come to an end?” Vahab asks Mrs Edrisi. “For me, yes she replies. Initially the family try to keep away from them but cannot avoid them and even establish an uneasy truce with some of them, though not with Showkat. While this is going on we learn the back stories of some of them but also more about the Edrisis, particularly the unhappy marriage of Vahab’s parents. We also learn about Roxana Yashvili’s involvement with the family and Mrs Edrisis’s involvement with Qobad, which prompts her to say Why did you let me rot in this house? I wasn’t like them, the women of this cursed house.
There is a lot going on in this novel – a decaying house with four people more or less cut off from the real worldd and living in their own enclosed world and how both the new world, i.e. the revolution, and the old world, i.e. their often troubled and murky past arrive and change them quite drastically, with Leqa coming to accept other people, Mrs Edrisi regretting her past, Vahab realising that there might be more to life than books on The Middle Ages and Yavar unsure which side he is on. Throw in the colourful revolutionaries, from the ferocious Showkat and Roxana, also unsure which side she is on to a host of other characters of all ages all playing an often unpredictable role and you have a very lively mixture.
This is the first of two books, with the second part planned for publication a a later date.
Publishing history
First published in 1991 byTirazheh Publishers
First published in English in 2024 by Syracuse University Press
Translated by M. R. Ghanoonparvar