Brother A’zam, I believe you are on the right track and should not give up.
A’zam, you have been the public face of and only link to Uzbekistan for those of us in the Literary world who have come to know you. Your unfailingly positive and friendly outlook combined with your musical and literary contributions have created in us all a desire to visit your homeland and to meet, exchange views and share creative endeavors with your fellow Uzbek writers. You are one of your country’s finest ambassadors.
I believe a big problem has been one of timing. Your wonderful initiatives of inviting foreign writers and organising events has occurred around and during the worst pandemic in living memory and regardless of the enthusiasm or efficiency of government departments, their officials will have necessarily been concerned with this fact. My advice is to be patient, keep the links and ideas active and have another attempt once the world wakes up from this nightmare.
I believe we, your fellow writers, can and indeed have an obligation to assist. If we start a letter-writing campaign to appropriate senior officials in your government explaining the benefit of fraternal literary links and those initiatives you yourself have already started, we may be able to enlist the assistance of one or two who can make a difference.
Frankly speaking few people could identify on a map where any of the Central Asian republics are located and most in The Western World have only heard of the region because of the Borat film with it’s less than flattering portrayal of Kazakhstan. Paradoxically this has led to a huge surge of interest and growing tourism in that country, proving that there is no such thing as bad publicity. If we can offer something positive and beneficial without the negativity, surely many will see this as a good thing.
Much of the world’s postal service is currently in disarray so I council you to be patient, but in the meantime let us try to identify individuals that we can write to who are sufficiently influential to make a difference. I will attempt to find out who represents Uzbekistan in my own city of Hong Kong and try to make contact. The Chinese government is very much pressing the development of trade between China and the Central Asian republics and cultural exchange often goes hand in hand with commerce. I will also try to find out who in the Hong Kong government is in charge of this issue.
If we writers can each do our small bit the group voice may be loud enough to be heard.
Warmest wishes to all,
David McKirdy
poet
Hong Kong
