Photo of Azamat Altay and Chingiz Aitmatov (USA-Kyrgyzstan)

In addition to doing research, writing and editing, I believe writers have to be lucky. One of my lucky moments in writing Have the Mountains Fallen: Two Journey of Loss and Redemption in the Cold War (Indiana University Press, 2018) came during a snowy weekend in January 2016 in Queens, NY, when I discovered a photograph which tied together years of research. That weekend I was a guest of the late Azamat Altay’s family. From my research I had a hunch that Altay -- one of the first Kyrgyz to emigrate to the U.S. after World War Two -- and Soviet Kyrgyz writer Aitmatov had a tight bond, despite being on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain. After all, Aitmatov was praised in communist Moscow for his short stories and books, while Altay was a former Soviet soldier who had jumped to the West after World War Two and then helped establish the Kyrgyz service of Radio Liberty as one of America’s “soft power” weapons against the Soviet Union.

To assist me with my research, Altay’s niece Gulnara stacked her uncle’s photo albums on a coffee table in the living room. Between turns helping the family shovel snow from their driveway, I turned the pages of the photo albums, and, as I fingered the pages, the man whose life I had studied for seven years came to life in color pictures. There were photos of Altay as an émigré in Europe in the 1940s and 50s, his early life in the US working in university libraries, and vacations to warm spots with his wife Saniye.

And then I saw the photo which confirmed my hunch. Taken in July 1975, likely by Saniye, the grainy photo finds Altay and Aitmatov sitting comfortably on a couch in the very same room in which I was sitting. In fact, Altay’s framed representation of Mecca’s Kaaba, which is visible in the photo above the mean’s heads, still hung on the wall across from me.

How the two men met on Thursday, July 17, 1975, is a triumph of personal connection over political division. Aitmatov was in America to promote the production of his play The Ascent of Mt. Fuji at Arena Stage in Washington, DC, in large part because Altay had convinced Arena Stage to lobby the U.S. State Department for a visa for Aitmatov.

But Altay had doubts that the two men would be able to meet in the US, given that Altay’s name was on the Soviet blacklist and the Soviet KGB would watching Aitmatov’s every move. But that evening, after he got a call from a mutual acquaintance saying Aitmatov wanted to meet, Altay, his wife and a dinner guest raced to Aitmatov’s hotel. For the 54-year old Altay, it would be a chance to finally meet the man whose books had helped to keep the spirit of Central Asia alive in him during decades of isolation from his homeland.

Aitmatov and Altay embraced in the hotel lobby, and in a Soviet moment likely afforded by Aitmatov’s stature as a high-ranking member of the Communist Party, the group then strode past KGB guards on the way to Aitmatov’s room. There, while others spoke Russian, Altay and Aitmatov, two men linked by a desire to keep Kyrgyz culture, history and language alive, talked animatedly in their native Kyrgyz.

The scene was a terrestrial version of dramatic events that had happened earlier in the day when, in one of the most visible signs of a warming in relations between the US and USSR, American spacecraft Apollo had linked up with the Soviet Soyuz spaceship over the Atlantic Ocean.

In Aitmatov’s hotel room that evening, a celebratory atmosphere prevailed. The impromptu gathering of Kyrgyz in New York had as much significance for the tiny Kyrgyz people as did the Apollo-Soyuz linkup, maybe more. It represented a coming together of the disparate parts of the Kyrgyz elite: Aitmatov, a leading cultural light of Soviet Kyrgyzia, in the same room with Altay, an American Kyrgyz and a broadcaster for Radio Liberty —a Kyrgyz Hall of Fame, if you will.

A few days later Aitmatov attended a gathering at Altay’s house, when the photo was taken. Before leaving in the wee hours of the morning, Aitmatov signed a copy of his book Farewell, Gulsary for Altay, using his birth name in a sign of respect. The words were simple and short — “To Kudaibergen, my fellow countryman, in memory of our meeting” — but they meant the world to Altay.

Jeffrey Lilley is the author of Have the Mountains Fallen: Two Journeys of Loss and Redemption in the Cold War (Indiana University Press, 2018), which recounts the remarkable lives of Chingiz Aitmatov and Azamat Altay. He first visited Kyrgyzstan in 1995.