In her earliest memories, Afarda Rasulova is lounging on colorful kilims and cushy pillows in the family’s living room and reading aloud to her mother.

As a working-class girl growing up in the provincial Azerbaijani town of Shaki during the early 20th century, Afarda’s mother had not been sent to school, and did not know how to read or write. Her daughter became part of her connection – and that of her husband, also illiterate -- to the world of imagination.

“Every evening, we gathered and my two brothers and I read books like ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and ‘The Children of Captain Grant’ [to my parents]. There was no TV. That was our evening ritual. Only when I went to study in Moscow, my mother learnt the Azerbaijani alphabet and was able to write me letters. She had crooked handwriting.”

Afarda Rasulova is my grandmother. Born in 1931, less than a decade after the Soviet Union’s creation, she was the first member of her family to go to university. She did not stop there. She became a professional textile designer, who, at the peak of her career in the 1970s, was a leading textile engineer at Shaki Silk Combine, reputed as one of the Soviet Union’s largest. She was elected to the town council in Shaki (also known as Sheki) as well as taught textile engineering at the local technical college. And she was a caring mother of three.