The rare butterfly that led me to my father

Rena Effendi felt she barely knew her father. Rustam Effendi was one of the most notable butterfly scientists in the Soviet Union and was away a lot hunting for specimens, collecting over 90,000 butterflies across his career. Rena met him for the first time when she was six years old. Rustam was adored by his friends and fellow entomologists, but during his infrequent visits home to Baku in Azerbaijan, brought “chaos” to Rena’s ordered life with her mother. He died of cancer in 1991 when Rena was 13 years old, and she remembers a charismatic yet troubled, secretive man.

Several years later Rena, now a professional photographer, discovered that one of Rustam’s friends had named a butterfly after him – the Satyrus effendi, a butterfly so rare that some lepidopterists even referred to it as mythical. Rena was so intrigued that she set out to find this elusive butterfly and in doing so, hope to understand her father better. But the search was not straightforward. The Satyrus effendi takes flight for only two weeks every year and it lives in the heavily patrolled and mined border between Armenia and Azerbaijan. So Rena would have to cross a battlefield to find the butterfly... but she had help – Rustam’s friends.

Presenter: Jo Fidgen

Producer: Hetal Bapodra and May Cameron

Get in touch: [email protected] or WhatsApp +44 330 678 2707

(Picture: A black and white Polaroid photo of dark-haired Rena Effendi, aged 10, wearing a polka dot blouse, being hugged by her grey-haired father Rustam on the balcony of their home in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 1987. Credit: Effendi family archive)