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The book Behind the Silk Curtain is about multiculturalism, adapting to new environments, socializing with people of different cultures, about linguistic integration, gaining experience, and facing challenges, about friends and family, about some of the Kazakh traditions and the country's mentality, about charity and weddings and many other fascinating contexts she was involved in.
About the author
Gulistan is a Chairwoman of Kazakhstan diplomats' wives community. From 1993 to 2018 Gulistan has accompanied her husband, Almaz Khamzayev, a career diplomat, on diplomatic postings to Washington, D.C., USA; London, England; Madrid, Spain; Rome, Italy; and Brussels, Belgium. They have also been accredited to Greece, Malta, and San Marino.Gulistan is fluent in 7 languages: Kazakh, Russian, English, Italian, Spanish, French and GermanGulistan has written extensively about her life as the wife of ambassador in her books, which she has presented in Kazakhstan, in the US, in Italy, in Belgium and in Spain.Her first book, Leaving a Piece of My Heart Behind, written in Russian, was published in 2009 in Kazakhstan and re-edited in 2011. It is about women who, due to their husbands' jobs, had to leave their home country to follow their husbands, to find their own way in the host country and learn about the duties of a wife of an ambassador. She received many warm responses and comments from men and women of different ages and social status. The proceeds from the book sales went to support the Association of Parents with Disabled Children of Almaty, Kazakhstan.Gulistan has over 20 years of experience as a senior lecturer of English, having taught at Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University from 1979 to 1992 and as a senior lecturer at the Diplomatic Academy of Kazakhstan in Almaty in 1997-1999.She enjoys crafts and is fond of painting. She is also a contemporary painter, having mastered an array of painting techniques and skills while living extensively in Italy. Her painting style is a synthesis of her poetic inclinations that draw on and evolve from her own everyday experience and represents a merger of her cultural traditions with the thought and aesthetics of the West.In 2011 she received an award from AODI for her active participation in charity. She is also a member of the Brussels Circle of Diplomatic Artists.
