![]() ![]() In Azerbeijan, a bevy of Russian women archivists painstakingly pore through handwritten contracts, synagogue records and files of photos seeking any trace of Nussimbaun or his family. Buried beneath a tombstone sporting a turban instead of a cross, he was greatly mourned by many in the town, who had dubbed him “Arafat.”įascinating as these stories are, they pale beside the passion of the storytellers themselves. Elfriede herself emigrated to Greece and became obsessed with Plato, the unique subject of all her subsequent writing.Nussimbaum/Bey hied himself off to Positano, Italy, where he wrote radio propaganda for Mussolini and died of gangrene during the broadcast of one of his pieces. ![]() In Berlin, Nussimbaum/Bey connected with the second possible Said: Baroness Elfriede von Ehrenfels, a noted bohemian figure whose signature appears on book contracts made out to Kurban Said. Born in Baku (site of “Ali and Nino”) into a Jewish family, he subsequently converted to Islam, emigrated to Germany to flee the invading Russians (his eponymous hero Ali, on the contrary, dies defending Azerbaijan from the Soviet hordes) and next resurfaced in Berlin as “Essad Bey” (“prince of the desert”), moving to Austria when the Nazis grew suspicious of him. ![]()
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