Habibullo-Eugene Kiselev
A Synopsis of my Life
December 8th, 2018, Saturday, 11:00:00 p.m.
Yekaterinburg, Russia. GMT 05:00
The other day, I received enthusiastic feedback on my books of poetry. The comments were given by my colleague, an ESL Teacher from the Ural State Mining University named Andrej Vladimirovich Yarovoy (Russian: Андрей Владимирович Яровой). I sent the electronic versions of these books to his e-mail address the day before. Andrej Yarovoy said he really enjoyed reading my books; he even quoted some lines from my poems in English and said my poems were indeed of a high quality. He also liked the translation of “Sud’ba nevesty” (English: “The Destiny of a Fiancée”), a longer poem by Alexei Kuzin. My colleague said he had visited Kuzin at his work to tell him that my translation was very enjoyable to read.
Tonight, as I was coming back from the Ural Federal University, where I am currently studying, I met Ramzuddin Niyazov, my old acquaintance! Wow! I was really happy to have seen him again!
Ramzuddin was a Hazrat of the “Ramadan” mosque in Yekaterinburg. Indeed, it was Ramzuddin Hazrat, who gave a very laudatory feedback on my poems about Islām. Of course, I had made some mistakes, and Ramzuddin had pointed them out. After that, I had successfully coped with correcting those minor errors. Ramzuddin even wrote a foreword for “Wisdom of Islam”, my sequence of Muslim poetry published in “A White Raven”. This foreword was called “A Word from the Priest”.
When I met him tonight, we talked for a short while only. Ramzuddin told me he did not serve in a mosque anymore. “I sit at home and drink tea. I’m retired now, I don’t want to work anymore” – he said. This was obviously a joke. Ramzuddin now lives in his town of Nizhniy Tagil in the Sverdlovsk Oblast.
At about 07:13 p.m. I gave a call to Marina Kamenskaya. We did not talk for a long time. She only said she was sick and that she liked the fact that I had published my English translation of “Kazach’ya poema” (English: “A Cossack Poem”) by Eugene Lobanov. “Each publication is a small stone to the pyramid of your glory (or your vanity)” – she said. “However, you are not subject to indulging in vain glory, I believe” – she added.
I told Marina, that the #31 of “Voskresenye” (English: “Sunday”) had been assembled by Ivan Kuznetsov and that Ivan had not told me anything about it nor to Eugene Lobanov, my Teacher. “Ivan has received a world-famous literary almanac from Lobanov absolutely for free, and he didn’t even think of inviting Lobanov to publish his works there” – I said with perturbation. Marina told me a great deal of stories connected with Ivan’s alcohol dependency, etc.
I expressed my desire to see Marina before the New Year’s, but she was doubtful about it. We finished with our conversation at about 07:39 p.m.
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