Notes On A Scandal

In October 2004, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray was removed from his post following comments which openly criticised President Islom Karimov, and US silence over the regime’s humanitarian abuses. The months beforehand saw him misdiagnosed with terminal heart disease and the subject of an internal FCO trial for 18 disciplinary offences, all but two of which were dropped. “It is a story of some really distressing times from my point of view,” he admits. Returning home to Britain, Murray brought with him Nadira Alieva, a woman half his age who he found working in an Uzbek belly dancing joint – and for whom he had recently left his wife.

In 2003, Nadira Alieva, an Uzbek teacher and part-time belly dancer met the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan while dancing in a night club in Tashkent. Shortly afterwards, Murray disappeared for five months, returning after suffering a pulmonary embolism and undergoing disciplinary action at work. When Murray lost his job only months later, Alieva agreed to accompany him back to Britain, leaving behind an Uzbekistan in which she had been beaten and raped.

“When I came to this country I didn’t want to remember anything. I am not that Nadira, I am a new Nadira,” she said to herself at the time. Together they moved into rented accommodation in Shepherd’s Bush once it became apparent that Murray had neither job nor savings. Derided in the British press as a “brainless bimbo” and as “amoral,” she trained as an actor and wrote a play about her experiences: The British Ambassador’s Belly Dancer.

Written in collaboration with playwright Alan Hescott, the one-woman show—performed by Nadira—charts the actress’s often harrowing upbringing, offering an insight into one woman’s experience under the repressive Karimov regime. Her family fell into extreme poverty and, subsequently, her father into drug addiction; she was raped on two occasions and, as a child, was used to smuggle heroin out of Afghanistan. One’s emotional priorities would have to be awfully skewed to leave a theatre dwelling more upon the ambassador’s indiscretions than the young lady’s incredible story.

The articulate, likeable woman I’m confronted with seems unlikely to play second fiddle to anyone. In many ways, the process of writing and performing the play has given her an independent voice: “I am feeling much better now that I’ve spoken out. You know when you are filled up and you want to just cry out? I’m probably the kind of person that’s not ashamed of telling things to an audience and I feel happier because I’m telling it to somebody else.”

But there’s an extra, more ambitious, dimension to her work, namely to give a voice to the suffering of other women in similarly repressive situations: “If I can help just a single young woman with my stories, I’d be the happiest person ever. Being in that situation, I’ve learned to be very strong and not to collapse, and to go on. Why I’m saying that is because in [Uzbekistan] loads of women, they kill themselves, they burn themselves. They are dying and nobody cares.”

Is this a political play then, I ask? “No, no,” she responds categorically. “Not now, because my family is still in the country.”

It seems cruel to observe but, were it not for Craig Murray’s struggles with the Foreign Office (he has, in the past, accused them of waging a smear campaign), it seems unlikely that I would be talking to Nadira at all. It’s worth noting that she goes by the name of Nadira Murray, though the pair are not married. “We are partners,” she says. “To be honest, I don’t believe in marriage. I’m now sounding terribly bad! But I don’t want to be restricted by obligations or rules. It’s not about our relationship. I just want to be free.”

I do wonder whether the surname is a deliberate attempt to capitalise on Murray’s celebrity, but there’s a lack of pretence in her claim that she “had no idea [the play] would have such successful publicity,” that leads me to suspect otherwise. Now though, she seems aware but unconcerned by the fact that plenty of her audience is there because of her connection with the ambassador: “I feel great!” she says of the disparity. “I think have learned through my own show. At the beginning I wasn’t very confident. But I’ve learned that I’m able to tell my story to people. And I’ve had loads of e-mails and fans writing to me, and that was fantastic. I felt like people were really listening.”

All sorts of paradoxes weave their way throughout the production, not least in the way that our two protagonists court both empathy and utter outrage. What’s most startling about the piece is its remarkable honesty. Details about the sexual abuse of women by Uzbek men are truly shocking, told with a matter-of-factness which means the play would not work in translation: “I had a couple of Uzbek journalists where I couldn’t answer their questions because I still felt restricted,” she recalls. Incredibly, English provides an freedom which she finds Uzbek stifles: “there is still this aura, this suspicion, this cultural thing you feel.”

Murray, too, has been drawn into the play’s revelatory spirit. It’s a brashness the ex-diplomat appears to be, if not enjoying, at least accepting.

“There are one or two revelations which are slightly toe-curling for me,” he chuckles. One suspects he is thinking here of the public disclosure of his predilection for spanking or perhaps of a line which reflects less well on both parties.

“When he saw me dancing at the club,” recalls Nadira, “he described me beautifully, he was in love with me at first sight. But my first sight was ‘Oh my God, who is this old foreigner. Does he have any money? Why is he looking at me? OK, I’ll treat him as a customer and take his money!’ You know, I might as well be honest!”

Faced with such moral dubiety, some tabloids have been a trifle upset by the whole affair, painting the former belly-dancer as a sexually exploitative gold-digger who plumped for Murray over two other boyfriends, and the former ambassador as a foolish, middle-aged sleaze.

“I am much older than Nadira,” says Murray, “there’s no doubt about that. But...we are still extremely happy together.” Nadira seems equally content: “I don’t feel like there is an age difference between him and me...You know, we’ve got our own silly way to love each other.”