He Who Has Two Wives
Enbekshil Qazaq on the Miseries of Polygamy
"Enbekshil Qazaq" №62. 1923/from open access
As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, a great wave of awakening surged through Kazakh intellectuals, sparking a passionate quest for knowledge. This outpouring of intellectual zeal led to an explosion of new magazines and newspapers being published in Kazakh, heralding the dawn of a new era in sharing culture.
However, what these intellectuals wrote went beyond only spreading knowledge. Soon, a variety of publications emerged, covering topics like business, society, politics, art, and humor. Qalam invites you to explore snippets from Kazakh publishing culture and history, offering a glimpse into the important issues of the past.
From 1921 to 1924, the name of a particular Kazakh newspaper underwent many changes because the local population were not familiar with Bolshevik terms. It changed from Enbekshi Qazaqi
Kazakh Laborer to Enbekshil QazaqiIndustrious Kazakh and back again, while on the Russian side of the title page was printed the contradictory inscription Enbekshi Qazaq.iKirghiz Laborer As Bolshevik propaganda and repressions were only gaining momentum, the ideological tone of the work being published during these years was not yet very aggressive. Evidence of this is the misogynistic story ‘Envious Wives’, published in 1923 (№ 62), which is about the fate of the forty-year-old Rysbai, his two wives, Örik and Qamqa, and the troubles of polygamy.
The story begins with patriarchal folk ‘wisdom’:
He who has two cows enjoys his daily ayran,
He who has two wives endures his daily pain.
And then the story begins to revolve entirely around the confrontation between the two wives:
Örik has two sons and a daughter, while Qamqa has three sons and two daughters. The eldest are nearly fifteen years old. Their children are like cats and dogs—whenever they gather, it turns into shrieking and fighting. And these women themselves make arrangements with their children and on any given day they lie aside, watching.
One day, when Qamqa was feeding her daughter millet, Örik ran up and shouted: ‘She should be chewing on her snot, and you’re feeding her millet and sour cream. How will we profit from the butter if you feed your daughter sour cream? Shameless rival! If you weren't my enemy, you'd think about the future!’
As you might guess, for greater ideological effect, the two wives soon drive Rysbai to death, and then begin an endless war among his children for the inheritance, involving theft, fighting, and property damage. The story ends with both women wailing ‘Oh, God has punished us!’
The Enbekshi Qazaq newspaper was a regional Kazakh-language paper launched in 1921 by the regional committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. Since then, the newspaper has changed its name several times, from Sotsialdy QazaqstaniSocial Kazakhstan to Sotsialistik Qazaqstan.iSocialist Kazakhstan It is currently published under the name Egemen Qazaqstan.iSovereign Kazakhstan
