Kazakhstan is marking 85 years since the birth of Bakhytzhan Momyshuly, a writer and translator whose books kept the memory of the country's most admired figures in print — most of all, his own father. For travellers heading to Almaty, it's a good excuse to look past the mountains and bazaars and get a sense of the stories Kazakhs grew up on.
Momyshuly was born in Almaty on October 3, 1941, the son of Bauyrzhan Momyshuly, the Panfilov Guards officer celebrated as one of Kazakhstan's legendary Second World War heroes. Growing up in that shadow was not simple. His father was often away — posted to military academies in Russia and later Cuba — and his mother died young. Childhood polio left him needing repeated hip operations, yet he finished school and graduated from the Almaty Institute of Foreign Languages, today known as the Ablai Khan Kazakh University of International Relations and World Languages.
Summers told a different story. His father sent him to the family village in the Zhambyl Region instead of letting him holiday at resorts like his classmates. He initially resented hauling hay through the heat, but later credited those summers with teaching him the Kazakh language, his relatives and, in his words, where his roots were. That tension between a modernising country and its village traditions runs through much of his writing.
He started out as a literary translator, making leading Kazakh authors — Sherkhan Murtaza, Oralkhan Bokey, Zhaisanbek Moldagaliyev and others — accessible to Russian-speaking readers, before publishing his own fiction. His first collection, "Good Bridges," appeared in 1971, followed by a string of books through the Soviet era, including "I Am Still a Child" (1982) and "Giant Children" (1988). His best-known work, "Sons of the Great Wolf," is a collection of portraits of his father and other prominent figures such as longtime Kazakh leader Dinmukhamed Kunayev. He served on the board of the Union of Writers of Kazakhstan and received the Order of Kurmet among other honours.
His father remained the compass. The two had limited time together, but the son often repeated one phrase his father told him: wherever you run, I will meet you. After Bauyrzhan's death, Bakhytzhan found that to be literally true — in Moscow, Volokolamsk, Tashkent, Bishkek and across Kazakhstan, strangers who had fought beside or read his father kept "meeting" him. He died in 2012 at 71.
Why should a traveller care? Because Bauyrzhan Momyshuly is a household name in Kazakhstan — streets, schools and monuments carry it — and understanding that is understanding half the country's modern identity. A concrete stop: a memorial plaque on the Almaty house at the corner of Kaldayakov and Gogol streets, where Bakhytzhan lived from 1986 until his death. Pair it with Almaty's Panfilov Park and the Ascension Cathedral nearby, and you have a compact literary-and-history walk through the city.
Story credit: The Astana Times
