Said Ahmad

Said Ahmad (born Saidahmad Husanxo'jayev) was born on 10 June 1920 into the family of an office worker in the Samarqand Darvoza quarter of Tashkent. His father, Husanxo'ja Dadaxo'ja o'g'li, spoke good Russian and for a time gave the poet Elbek a home in his courtyard. According to the writer’s memoirs, his father was arrested by the NKVD in 1938 and died while under investigation.

After secondary school he studied at the Benkov art college and, in 1940–1943, at the Nizami Pedagogical Institute in Tashkent. His sketches and stories began to appear in newspapers and magazines in the late 1930s, and his first collection of stories, “Tortiq” (“The Gift”), came out in 1940. He worked for the satirical magazine “Mushtum” in 1941, for republican radio in 1942–1943, for the newspaper “Qizil O'zbekiston” in 1943–1947 and in the prose department of the magazine “Sharq yulduzi” in 1948–1950. These years produced the collections “Brave Heart” (1942), “Fergana Stories” (1948) and “Love” (1949), and a novella of village life, “Native Fields” (1949).

In November 1949 he married the poet Saida Zunnunova. On 10 May 1950 he was arrested as an “enemy of the people”. After nearly eleven months in solitary confinement he was sentenced without trial, by a Special Council, to ten years in the camps and sent to Jezkazgan in Kazakhstan. Saida Zunnunova was expelled from the Writers’ Union and left without work, but she did not renounce her husband. After Stalin’s death the case was reviewed, and in March 1955 the writer was released and returned to Tashkent.

The novella “The Verdict” (1958) and the collection “The Steppe Eagle” (1960), about the people who reclaimed the steppes of Central Fergana, led up to his largest work, the “Ufq” (“Horizon”) trilogy. Its books appeared as “Days of Parting” (1964), “On the Threshold of the Horizon” (1969) and “Forty-Five Days” (1974), the last of which opens the story. The trilogy follows people’s lives before, during and after the war, against the building of the Great Fergana Canal and the reclamation of the steppes, and in 1977 it won him the Hamza State Prize of the Uzbek SSR. His novel “Silence” (1988) exposed the hidden dramas behind the calm surface of the stagnation years.

Said Ahmad was known above all for his humorous and lyrical short stories, and he was among the founders of a theatre of satirical miniatures on Uzbek radio and television. His fame grew further with the comedy “Kelinlar qo'zg'oloni” (“The Revolt of the Daughters-in-Law”, 1976), about the domineering Farmonbibi, who shares a courtyard with her seven daughters-in-law. It was staged at the Uzbek National Academic Drama Theatre and in many countries abroad, and in 1984 Melis Abzalov filmed it at Uzbekfilm. His comedy “The Bridegroom” (1986), about the troubles of a lonely old man, was staged at the same theatre, and Uzbekfilm’s “Drama of Love” (1970) was made from his screenplay.

After independence he published the humorous collections “Xandon pista” (1994) and “The Price of a Kiss” (1995), the memoir essays “What I Lost and What I Found” (1998) about Ghafur Ghulam, Oybek, Abdulla Qahhor, Mirtemir, Shaykhzoda, Saida Zunnunova and other writers, the books “Dark-Eyed Majnun” (2001) and “Dawn Caught on the Eyelashes” (2003), and three volumes of selected works (2000). He was named People’s Writer of the Uzbek SSR in 1980 and Hero of Uzbekistan on 25 August 1999.

Said Ahmad died in Tashkent on 5 December 2007, aged 87, and was buried in the Chig'atoy cemetery. Saida Zunnunova had died long before, in 1977; their daughter is Nodira Husanxo'jayeva. On 10 June 2013 a monument to Said Ahmad and Saida Zunnunova was unveiled in the National Park in Tashkent. In 2019 the director Nozim Abbosov made the feature film “Said and Saida” about the couple’s fate during the repressions, with Nodira Husanxo'jayeva among the screenwriters.