“My friend – Ashgabat”: a literary portrait of the city from a Ukrainian writer
For those who have visited Ashgabat at least once in their lives, this city becomes not only a good memory, but also a place where you want to return again. Ashgabat has become native and truly close to Ukrainian writer Agatha Turchinskaya. During the Great Patriotic War, she lived here in evacuation, worked for the newspaper “Turkmenskaya iskra” and took an active part in public activities.
Agatha became an orphan as a child and was brought up in an orphanage, and when she grew up she became a teacher at an orphanage. That is why the girl was so sensitive to manifestations of spiritual warmth. The surrounding nature, acquaintance with Turkmen literature and, of course, people, their friendly, warm welcome, endlessly inspired the Ukrainian woman to create.
The period of Agatha Fedorovna’s stay in Turkmenistan is vividly presented by her in the cycle of poems “In the Turkmen land”, the poem “Kurban Durdy”, the essay “People of Oji village” and other works. One of the writer’s brilliant works was a dedication to the Turkmen capital city, a novel titled “My friend – Ashgabat”.
The original version of the work was published in 1955 under the title “Portrait”. Subsequently, a substantially supplemented and voluminous text of the novel appeared in print under the title in Ukrainian “Друг мій Ашхабад”. The book has been translated into Russian and Turkmen several times. All copies of the edition were quickly sold out the bookshelves and, today, it has become one of the rare books.
The literary work invites you to travel along the Ashgabat streets of the 20-30s. Together with the heroine, an artist from Ukraine Marta Boreiko, the reader got to the Turkmen hinterland, where the reader learns the life of the villagers. As Agata Turchinskaya recalled: “The Turkmen land has such a magic power, capturing the soul of a person, who has at least a little tour of it, and then holding for life, and knocking in his heart: tell about me, sing, draw me”.
And she wrote:
“Sumbar valley... Who in Turkmenistan has not dreamed of seeing it? Sumbar is the valley with pomegranates blooming with fiery color on the slopes. The beautiful Sumbar valley, in the middle of which there are green meadows and the fast Sumbar River. Sumbar is the valley, where the road is surrounded by dense grapes. The Sumbar valley is bordering with the village, where People’s Poet of Turkmenistan great Magtymguly was born.
On the pages of the novel “My friend – Ashgabat” Marta Boreiko gets acquainted with the works by Magtymguly, which deeply touched her heart. Agata Turchinskaya herself finds an unsurpassed peak of genius in the poetry of Magtymguly. And she draws a parallel between the significance for the Ukrainian national culture of the personality and poetry of Taras Shevchenko with the importance of Magtymguly Fraghi for the Turkmens.
After the liberation of Ukraine from the Nazi invaders, Agata Fedorovna returned to her home city of Kiev. She was awarded a medal for her valiant work during the Great Patriotic War. In 1964, the writer once again visited Ashgabat, met with friends she found here, whose prototypes are captured on the pages of the aforementioned novel.
Agata Turchinskaya found a second home in Ashgabat and corresponded with comrades from Turkmenistan for the rest of her life.
