Collecting beetles in Zhanaozen: Kazakhstan’s hidden tragedy

Your novel also goes beyond the events of 16 December 2011, describing the slow, everyday violence that characterises work in the oilfields and life in the city.

Indeed. The novel starts from the climax of the story, where we encounter the workers camping on the square during a hunger strike, being insulted by someone who throws a bone at them. Many readers expected the novel to continue from there to the shootings. But I wanted to pay attention to the reasons why the bloodshed happened in the first place. These are long-standing social problems concerning education, healthcare, and the security apparatus.

The Chinese novelist Mo Yan has a novel titled ‘The Garlic Ballads’ that develops in a similar way. It is about a revolt by Chinese garlic farmers in 1988. Mo Yan takes around ten pages to describe the revolt itself, but dedicates the rest of the novel to explore the larger social conditions which made the revolt happen. Similarly, in my novel I wished to explore the social conditions in Zhanaozen: why do workers steal oil from their workplace? Why can’t a woman who is due to give birth deliver her baby? Why is there no water and electricity, even when people are sitting on so much oil? Haven’t these things contributed to the unfolding of the tragedy?

Although ten years have passed, it’s still not an easy subject to discuss in public. How has the book been received in Zhanaozen and in Kazakhstan at large?

There has been a wide range of reactions, particularly from young people and on social media platforms. Many students of literature asked whether the book was based on real life events, and if we really live in this kind of country. Many were not even aware that it happened. Conversely, there was no discussion about the book in any of the official literary newspapers and journals, nor on any TV show. Two publishing houses rejected the novel, and it was only recently serialised by the literary journal Jalyn.

‘Qonyz’, the novel’s title, carries a series of allusions. For instance, the saying qonyz terip ketu – literally “going to collect beetles” – figuratively means “begging for alms”. What else does the title suggest?

In Kazakh cultural understanding, collecting beetles is the worst condition someone could find oneself in. It is similar to that of a beggar.

There is also a Kazazh legend about a beetle who rolls cow dung. Once, a very poor man met a saint who could grant him a wish. When asked whether he wanted to become a man of wisdom or one of wealth, he chose the second, because he had spent his whole life in poverty.

The saint grants his wish, but warns that the man will be cursed if he exploits his workers when he becomes rich. After becoming rich, however, he forgets about his promises. He beats his servants and doesn’t pay them for their labour. When the saint appears and tries to change his mind, the man still refuses to share his wealth. At this point, he starts sinking into the earth, but he still refuses to change his mind. First his legs sink into the ground, then his waist. Then his shoulders reach ground level and lastly his head. All the same, he says he can not share his wealth with anyone else. Then, while he is disappearing into the earth, his nose starts bleeding. And from the blood – which is all that is left of him – a beetle appears. This beetle then goes around collecting dung no matter how big it grows: it digs some up in order to eat it in the future, but then forgets where it put it. This cycle continues its whole life. In this case, the beetle is a metaphor for a greedy man who exploits others.

It was and still is the same in Zhanaozen, where monopolists and certain families exploit ordinary people and accumulate wealth from their labour. It reached the point of having to shoot people for that purpose. They are like those beetles, rolling their own shit no matter whether they have enough of it or not.

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