Tulip (Lat. Tulipa) is a perennial flower of the lily family, which has scaly bulbs. Its history as it ‘conquered’ the world is of interest as well. It goes back to the 16th century, when a sizeable shipment of seeds and bulbs was sent to Vienna. Charles de l’Ecluse, the director of Vienna’s Imperial Medical Garden, started actively cultivating tulips. Soon afterwards tulips spread beyond the borders of Austria and were imported into France and Holland, where they proved so popular that they became collector’s items.
Nursulu Shaimerdenova
The Flower-Princess
ISBN 978-0-9926186-0-5
© Nursulu Shaimerdenova, 2013
© Translation by Katharine Judelson, 2013
© Design by Yuri Kumikov, 2013
© Aitmatov Academy, 2013
Published by the Aitmatov Academy, London, 2013
This story is dedicated
to my daughters
Azhar, Alia and Ayazhan
In times of old there lived a family in the immense spaces of Kazakhstan, where the wind blows and tumble-weed swirls across the desert, passing down legends and fairy-tales from generation to generation. It was a family in which friendship and affection reigned – they reigned between Father and Mother, Grandfather and Grandmother, their children and grandchildren.
In the very middle of one night a pair of brothers, twin-brothers, was born into that family. One was named Kunzhan, which in the Kazakh language meant “Soul of the Day” and the other Tunzhan which meant “Soul of the Night”.
The brothers grew up healthy, strong and handsome, resembling each other most closely despite the difference between the times of their birth. Kunzhan had been born when there were five minutes left till midnight, while Tunzhan had been born when the large hand of the clock showed five minutes past twelve, at the very moment when men start to count the passage of the new day. For the twins those ten minutes were of great importance. They were to shape so much in their lives to come.