Lenur Ibraimov — a poet, who returned his CrimeanTatar name

The poet Lenur Ibraimov is among those who did not live to see the return of their people to their homeland.

He was born on 1, October 1939 to the family of a Crimean Tatar father and a Russian mother. On the 18^th of May 1944, when his father was at the front, his mother managed to hide the origin of their Crimean Tatar children thus having saved them from deportation.

But with the  years passed , he grown up in the Crimea that became orphaned by having lost its indigenous people, went to the Passport Office and change the Russian name Leonid to the one his father had given to him — Lenur and he also changed the nationality from «Russian» to «Tatar«.

Later, he wrote about what the only Crimean Tatar living in Crimea would feel like:

Tramping with no my folk for twenty years

In native land, I adopted the alien life in tears

And you, my tribe of Homeland being stripped,

Was under hoof without mercy trampled…

So long my people, small my people is in strife,

Against   the laws  both beaten up and robbed  

In exile lives the broken, justless life,

So long I’ll serve it with all my strive 

Later, there will be meetings with the compatriots involved in the national movement, searches, arrests, jails … And poems. Many poems about mothers, about love, about their homeland, about life, and …on foreboding for a lonely death. He lived a very short life, fearing that he will pass away without leaving a trace. However, he left us the Word. And it came to us in handwritings, creased slips of paper, sewn into the lining of clothes, household archives of members of the national movement. A collection of poems authored by the poet was collected from separate sheets, notebooks saved by his sister Olga and his friends; it was published a few years ago. Here we present three of the poet’s poems, written in 1972, the year when Lenur Ibraimov served time for his involvement in the national movement of Crimean Tatars in the Uzbek settlement of Zengi — Ata.

Hot summer is full of stifling sweat

Swearing in the dust, parched with the endless thirst

I live in the semi-illusive eternal concern:

My homeland, Crimea on a wonderful day to return.

To lighten my greedy-greedy breath’s wage.

For a broken heart to expand my tired cage.

All my desires — just trifles for an idle one

Yet, I’ll give up my life to have them truly come.        

***

I am the grandson of the rains,

I am the grandson of the leaf fall

Once upon a time, the ages back

I was a forest or a garden grass,

A lump of Earth, a gust of wind.

I understand the reason of the rains:

I am so close to them

To tongue of falling leaf I got accustomed

I am the flesh of land, I have a visa

While leaving dust, an image new to get inside attuned.

Perceiving the unearthly command,

I sing my heartfelt songs so that,

In following me, the folk will understand

How to love the world as our own homeland

***

I do not cry, no pity, no regrets!

One only thing I fear more than death:

I may burn out, may feel the pain no more

And die, and … no one would remember me.

On the days of fateful twistings

Everyone is taken by smaller deeds

I do not need immortality in life

That incense’s smoke of deceits.

I’ll be happy, believe or not,

Yes, I’ll be happier than most who live on,

If I am remembered after the death —

No, not myself but my honest verse

I beware of on thing — the oblivion

I do not grieve,  I am not sad for myself:

The soul fire of mine I treasure in life-

More than my life itself.