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Part
I
Ubykh
waiting discovery
- Dear Mr.
Hewitt, first of all, I would like to thank you for making it possible
for us to have this interview with you despite your busy schedule.
I wonder if you may agree with me but in my opinion many academics
who study and work on diverse regions and cultures of the world
quite often develop a special kind of relationship with these regions,
peoples and their cultures that is beyond pure academic interest.
How did your involvement with Abkhazia commence?
I first became
interested in Caucasian languages through Georgian. My interest
in Georgian developed because I was in Cambridge University working
towards a PhD comparing old Greek and Armenian languages. Because
I was looking at Armenian for two years, I was told that I would
have to take accounts of the developments in Georgia too, because
Georgian and Armenian cultures and languages have been so close
for so many centuries. Then, I started looking at Georgian and reading
about not only Georgian but also other Caucasian languages, which
led to my discovery of the North Caucasian languages. I started
reading George Dumesil's works on Circassian, Ubikh and, to some
extent, Abkhazian.
Around the time,
that was 1973-1974, in Cambridge, someone, who had been studying
with me that had come to London to work for one of the oil companies,
came back to Cambridge, and heard of my interest in Caucasian languages.
He told me that a colleague of his at BP, someone called Fahri Yaman,
was from Turkey but from the Circassian community. He said to me
that if I had been interested he could arrange for Fahri to come
and see me.
 Because
Fahri, although he was born in Demirkapi, Balikesir, speaking Circassian,
had not been living in the Circassian community for many years,
he had more or less forgotten his native language. Nonetheless,
he wanted to know people who wanted to study his native language.
Therefore, we
arranged for Fahri to come and visit us in Cambridge where we made
some recordings of the words he could remember. Then he said to
me that if I had been interested he could arrange for me to go to
his native village in Turkey to do some work with people whom he
knew as a child. I said "yes" and we arranged this. I
went to Demirkapi Koyu, near Balikesir, in 1974. I spent about four
weeks in Demirkapi doing some recordings and some investigation.
Besides, at
my request I was taken by bus to Haciosman Koy where I spent one
night and made the acquaintances of some very old Ubikh speakers
about towards the end of my stay where I was given a telephone number
for one of the sons of Tevfik Esenc, the last fully competent speaker
of Ubikh, whom I could contact when I got back to Istanbul. We did
this. Therefore, I had a chance to work with Tevfik Esenc for a
week.
-
What is your level of knowledge on Ubikh then?
Well, I did
some work on it and I have written at least one article on it. I
am hoping at some stage to do a comparative grammar of Northwest
Caucasian languages, which will involve working more on the published
material.
A
WEEK WITH TEVFIK ESENÇ
- Just before
we move on to talk more about your family life I wish to ask you
to what extent you were able to utilise Tevfik Esenc's knowledge
of Ubikh in such a short period of time?
In reality,
I could only spend 1 week with Tevfik Esenc. It was my final week
in Turkey and I was staying in Istanbul on my way back to England.
I was staying in a flat in Sisli. It was a rather unfortunate circumstance
because the person, in whose flat I was staying, was actually dying
of mouth cancer. Because his son, who could also spoke English who
could have acted as an interpreter was returning to his studies
at Sorbonne in Paris, this elderly gentleman was the only possible
translator I had. Since he had the cancer of the mouth, he really
could not speak. Therefore, I had this opportunity to speak to a
native speaker of Ubikh without an interpreter. Consequently, I
took the opportunity to make a large number of recordings. Well,
when you make recordings, you should really make the transcriptions
at the time. I was not able to do that. Now, I have all these recordings
made 28 years ago but they are still untranscribed. So, there is
still some Ubikh material waiting for transcription.
When I got back
to Cambridge, I made use of these materials. As in those daysI was
interested in a particular dispute about the nature of two sounds
in Ubikh I prepared, using my recordings, some spectrograms and
suggesting the correct analysis of these two sounds in Ubikh. You
could say this is my contribution to Ubikh. There is all this material
to be worked on, including, I might add, that section of translation
of Shakespeare's Hamlet the famous lyric - To be or not to be- in
Ubikh. I have this in Ubikh just waiting to be worked on.
-We
did not know that!
Well, no one
does!
MARRIAGE
AS REWARD IN LANGUAGE INVESTMENT
-How did
your Caucasian adventure started?
This was in
1974. Around this time, I developed an interest spending a year
in the Caucasus through the British Council Exchange Scheme with
the Soviet Union. Of course, Georgia was the only place where foreigners
would be allowed to spend a year in the Caucasus. Obviously, I applied
to go to Tbilisi. As result, I was accepted for this programme in
1975-1976. I got to Tbilisi and arranged to have practical tuition
for Georgian but I also made it clear that I wanted to continue
studying Circassian because Circassian was the language I had worked
on in Turkey and that I knew most about amongst the Northwest Caucasian
languages. In addition, I wanted to do some work on Chechen and
Avar, too. Somebody was found for Chechen. In fact, the same person
also taught me some Avar.
I was told that nobody was found who could give me further lessons
for Circassian in English but somebody was available who could give
me instructions in English in Abkhaz. At that stage, I had studied
on Circassian and had worked with Tevfik Esenc on Ubikh. These were
the two Northwest Caucasian languages that I had wanted to work
on. Abkhaz I really had not looked at.
However, the
opportunity presented itself that you can do Abkhaz or you can do
nothing. Therefore, I chose Abkhaz. Since I knew I was going to
be looking at Abkhaz, I started asking around in the accommodation
block where I was staying if there were any Abkhazians who could
give me some instructions as native speakers as the person who was
teaching me was a Georgian girl. Then, I was told that there was
a room upstairs in the block and two Abkhazian girls were living
together there. I arranged for a meeting with them around September
in 1975.
When I went
in to be introduced to them, the two girls were there. They had
a Circassian flatmate along with a Georgian flatmate. There was
also a Circassian boy, a historian, who was doing a PhD in Georgia.
He, luckily, spoke English and his name was Almir Abregov. He said
that his real family name was Abrec and he was an Ubikh. So he spoke
English to me and spoke Russian to the other people present. Of
course, he could also speak Circassian.
 Anyway,
one of these two Abkhazian girls, who was in the room, started to
provide food for me on a number of occasions because "she was
a good cook" and it was not easy to find something to eat in
Tbilisi at that time. That of course led to me spending more time
in this particular room talking to her through that Circassian who
spoke English to me and Russian to her.
Because this
girl, Zaira Khiba, who was also a post graduate student studying
phonetics of her native Abkhazian, had picked up some Georgian simply
by living in Tbilisi but never spoken it we were bot able to communicate
through Georgian around Christmas time. Subsequently, the relationship
developed and in the summer of 1976, before I returned to England,
we actually got married in Tbilisi. Well, I can say that an accidental
possibility to study Abkhaz led to a meeting with a native Abkhaz
that led to a marriage which has now lasted for 26 years.
Of course, later
I was introduced to her family in Abkhazia and I found myself in
the rather unique position of being an Englishman who spoke Georgian
and had relations with Georgians, but who also had a family on the
Abkhaz side of what became an actual conflict as in 1989 and more
especially in 1992. This is why I got involved in the situation
there and why I, today, have political problems in Georgia.
-Some people
say that George Hewitt's particular position on the Georgian-Abkhaz
issue is related to his family ties…
However, I would
say at this stage that it is not simply because I had an Abkhazian
wife that I decided to speak out in 1989 against the Georgian nationalism
which is a charge that has been laid against me by certain people
in Georgia. They say that the only reason George Hewitt took this
particular position regarding the politics of Georgia was because
he has an Abkhazian wife. This is not true. My wife knows this very
well. I am interested in all the languages of the Caucasus and those
that are in danger have a particular fascination for me. Because
my meeting in 1974 with Tevfik Esenc or the fact that I actually
met the last speaker of a Caucasian language had an important influence
on me ever since. I could see that the way the politics was developing
[in Georgia in 1989] was such that would have to endanger the Abkhazians
as a community.
Therefore, I
spoke out in 1989 because of the language connection not because
I was married to an Abkhaz, as many Georgians think. I think it
is important to say this.
This is the
story of how my involvement with the Caucasian languages started,
which also includes part of my family history. Just before I conclude
I wish to add that the other Abkhazian girl sharing the room with
Zaira, Aza Yinalipha, eventually married to my interpreter Alik
Abregov and they have been living in Maikop and have two children.
Moreover, we, off course, have two daughters of our own. Therefore
it is fair to say that it was quite an important meeting that resulted
in Alek the interpreter marrying one of the Abkhazians and I, the
foreigner, the other.
GEORGIAN
ACCUSATION: STABBED US IN THE BACK
- Did the
fact that you were married to an Abkhazian cause any problems before
the Georgian-Abkhazian war?
To be honest
I did not have any problems in any real terms until 1989. However,
when we travelled to Georgia, if I told the Georgians I was in the
company of that I was married to an Abkhazian their first reaction
would always be " Oh how wonderful! A foreigner who has a daughter
in law in Georgia!" In other words, they were interpreting
the Abkhazians as part of the Georgian community. Yet, very soon
they would start to ask me "tell us please, why it is that
the Abkhazians hate us and we have so many problems with them."
In other words,
initial reaction was one of joy, but it would soon turn into one
whereby the situation is not deemed quite right! Very often, the
conversation would go on a little bit further and I would be told
"you know, you really should have waited longer as we would
have found you a Georgian girl!" That was an indication that
the relations between the two communities were probably not actually
good at a deeper level.
It was as a
result of carrying out some research in Georgia at the end of 1987
for a paper for a talk I was due to give in London in January 1988
on language planning for Georgia that I discovered something about
the history of this relationship. It was that in middle years of
20th century the Abkhaz schools were closed, the Abkhazians were
forced to learn Georgian and various members of Georgian-speaking
community-particularly Mingrelians, were forced to leave Georgia
to settle in Abkhazia in order to reduce the number of Abkhazians
in Abkhazia. These were carried out as parts of the process of Georgianisation.
I then discovered
to my surprise that many people who had been alive in those years
in Georgia did not know about it. Or rather, they claimed not to
know about it when I started speaking about it. Then I realised
that this was the source of this hostility between the two communities.
At any rate,
I wrote my article and I gave my speech at the School of Slavonic
and East European Studies. This article eventually was published.
Then when I saw that nationalism was beginning to swell up in Georgia
in late 1988 and early 1989 and started reading some of those nasty
stories and articles in Georgian newspapers about the threat from
minorities, the so called Muslim minorities among whom of course
the Abkhazians were included even though the majority of the Abkhaz
are not Muslims, that I decided to make a statement using the information
that I gathered during that research in Georgia in 1987.
Because of this
statement, I was regarded as betraying Georgians. They felt that
they had educated me but I was stabbing them in the back by taking
the side of a minority whom they felt was hostile to Georgia's possible
independence.
Consequently,
the statement that I made at SOAS was eventually published in Georgian
newspapers after the first clashes took place in Sukhum in 1989.
I, myself, was abused across the whole Georgian media and subsequently
have not been back in Georgia although we do try regularly to visit
Abkhazia.
That was 1989
and you could say this was when my problems really started in Georgia.
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