The Railway (11 page)

And so Hadjiya lost her first husband. The First Secretary, the public prosecutor and the mullah came round together to express their condolences; by then the three of them had made peace – basmach fighters from the mountains had carried off the last third of the cattle and poultry and so there was nothing left for them to fight over. But the First Secretary (who gave a speech about the contemporary political situation), the public prosecutor (who read out the verdict of the official inquest into Gazi-Hodja's death) and the mullah (who sang a prayer for the soul of the deceased) were rivals again before they left the house; each wanted Hadjiya for himself. Happily, however, the year 1937
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was about to begin and all three members of this warring troika – one of them about to hand Hadjiya an application for Party membership, another about to send her a threatening summons, and the third about to present her with a protective amulet – were arrested and sent off to some remote part of Siberia to fell timber and construct a railway. And that was the end of them.

Then the Germans invaded and Hadjiya's two brothers were sent to the Front, along with her brother-in-law Pochamir-Hodja; at the end of the War only one brother would return. Then Mahmud-Hodja himself was arrested; after starting to cultivate an abandoned vineyard, he was accused of “laying predatory hands on the property of the people.” Hadjiya had to move into Gilas, where she worked in the Papanin Tailoring Cooperative and married a prison guard, Israel-Warder, so as to be able to get parcels of food and clothing delivered to her father. She had, curiously, first been introduced to Israel by yet another prison guard – a Bukhara Jew by the name of Elias; he was a friend of her brother-in-law Pochamir-Hodja and had recently been transferred to Gilas from a jail in Bukhara. And he was the father of the town's new cobbler: a good-natured young man by the name of Yusuf.

In 1945 soon after Victory Day, it was Israel-Warder's turn to be mourned by Hadjiya. Israel-Warder had given her three children – of whom one, a girl called Nafisa, was still living. And since her father had been released from prison on the day of the Victory amnesty, Hadjiya no longer really needed him anyway.

Israel's death was due to sheer carelessness; his comrade Elias failed to observe safety regulations when firing his ancient Bukhara musket into the sky to celebrate the Soviet Victory. It was then Elias's turn to be put behind bars, and it was not long before his son Yusuf-Cobbler got into the habit of saying, “During the War my father lived opposite the prison, and since the War came to an end he's been living opposite his own home!”

Oyimcha was carrying grapes… grapes… grapes… Bunches of grapes… bunches of grapes…

Why had life turned out this way and no other way? The bunches of grapes were dripping, and the sun was reflected in the drops of water and in the bunches themselves – which seemed like ripe drops of light… light… light…

Obid-Kori was now the only mullah left in the region. Some mullahs had crossed over the mountains to China; others were teaching in village schools or interpreting for District Party Committees, still others were fighting in defence of the Faith.

Life had turned out this way and no other way, and this, no doubt, was an expression of the wisdom of Allah who was, no doubt, testing and punishing his servants, and Obid-Kori accepted in his heart that this was the life he must live. He had not fled over the mountains with Oyimcha's warlike brothers and uncles, although he had accompanied them, in accordance with his duty as a Muslim, from one Alay Kirghiz mountain settlement to another as far as the Kanchyn pass – from which a narrow one-horse track led to Badakhshan.

The horses had plodded gloomily on, gloomily on, and their cold-clouded eyes had kept looking back, past their scrawny flanks – as if the horses had wanted to leave their eyes behind, had wanted to leave their eyes behind in their own land...

Oyimcha had wept ceaselessly and amid her weeping had given birth to a child they called Mashrab… Mashrab…

Life had turned out this way and no other way, and through the Providence of Allah Obid-Kori had become neither a village activist nor an adviser to a District Party Committee nor an editor of the Kirghiz-and-Uzbek newspaper
Herdsman-and-Ploughman
– although activists tried more than once to drag him, like a cow about to be slaughtered, onto one of their Soviet-and-Socialist platforms. Nor did Obid-Kori join the basmach, even though they once abducted him straight from his bed. He had been sleeping out in the courtyard, Allah be praised, and so when he came back home at dawn, on foot, from Chachma-Say, Oyimcha was still peacefully asleep, surrounded by children who seemed like a bunch of grapes… grapes… grapes…

What had happened was this. Yormuhammad – one of the youngest and boldest of the basmach leaders, who had made a surprise attack on Chachma-Say with his Alay Kirghiz and seized control of these heights that command the entire Mookat valley – had happened upon an old woman repeatedly wailing the words: “The Lord save us from Yormuhammad! May his blood pour from his throat and may he die young!”

It is not for a warrior to correct an old woman, but there were people in the village able to explain why she was wailing: Yormuhammad's basmach had supposedly knifed her two sons and seized her husband, together with all his cattle. It took Yormuhammad only from the sunset prayer to the mid-evening prayer to find out who had been abusing his name: Makhsum-Kulluk, a Sart elder from a nearby village who had recently sent his youngest daughter to become yet another of Yormuhammad's wives. Yormuhammad accepted such gifts as gestures of support for his struggle and did not so much as glance at these new wives, who now occupied a whole mountain village near Shokhimardon, exciting the envy of the local Soviet poets. No one guarded them; they needed no protection beyond Yormuhammad's reputation for showing no mercy on or off the field of battle.

Yormuhammad's treacherous father-in-law was brought to Chachma-Say towards midnight, at the same time as Obid-Kori. Yormuhammad said not a word about his tie of kinship with Makhsum-Kulluk, nor did he even show the man to Obid-Kori. He merely asked the mullah what punishment the Sharia decreed if two innocent men had been knifed and their father, seized together with all his cattle, had met his end in a mountain ravine. Obid-Kori thought for a moment, then quoted al-Marginoni
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from memory, adding, admittedly, that blood is never washed away by blood, only by tears.

“Write down what is written in al-Marginoni's
Hidoya
,” said Yormuhammad drily. When Obid-Kori had finished, Yormuhammad asked, “Now, how can I be of service to you?”

Obid-Kori shrugged his shoulders, raised his hands in prayer and said, “May Allah lead you along no path but the True Path!” Yormuhammad did not try to detain the mullah but simply ordered a horse to be saddled for him and an escort to be provided. Obid-Kori, however, had no need of horse or escort – this was his native land and everyone knew him – and he set off on foot for his village, which lay dark in the valley… dark in the valley…

That morning, in the most crowded part of the bazaar, where eight smooth-cheeked boys were selling flatbreads and four grey-bearded men were selling cream cheese, Makhsum-Kulluk's head was discovered on a tray, along with a page bearing a quotation from Burkhanutdin al-Marginoni's
The True Path
. The page was wet and swollen; blood was still oozing from the severed head.

“O Allah, why have you made your justice so harsh – and me, so ignorant, so ignorant?” Obid-Kori whispered during his midday prayer, as he prayed for everyone, both the righteous and the unrighteous, but most of all for those who are confused, who in the confusion of their souls and aspirations attempt to amend the pattern preordained by Allah… preordained by Allah…

Yes, life turned out this way and no other way. A week after this, to warn and edify the local population, the Bolsheviks exhibited the heads of two of Yormuhammad's basmach with the judgment of the Revolutionary Tribunal pinned to their throats. In reply, in the course of a single night, the entire Bolshevik leadership of Mookat was done away with as they slept – from Agabekov the one-armed Chekist to Kuldash the District Party Committee butcher who had bartered away his faith for the flesh of large-horned cattle. The response to this was the “Red Terror”: every local male between the ages of twenty and forty was exiled to the far North. Those able to move fast joined Yormuhammad in the mountains; those who moved too slowly were shot; and an entire regiment of Red Army soldiers under the command of Chanyshev-Tatar was stationed in the area to carry out the duties of the male population.

The apricots ripened outside, bright and translucent among leaves… leaves… leaves… The cherries grew darker and darker, and the children were unable to pick them all before nightfall. Oyimcha made jam, and instead of sugar she poured condensed grape juice over the cherries – or thick mulberry syrup. The syrup was viscous – and Oyimcha, sitting beside the hearth, moved the strainer slowly and heavily, slowly and heavily through the cauldron.

Obid-Kori was now the only literate Uzbek left in the village. Some Uzbeks had gone to Kashgar, some had been deported to the far North, others had died in the mountains and nobody, nobody had returned. And soon, when the region was declared part of Kirghizstan, there were no other Uzbeks left in the village at all.

Obid-Kori's nephew Shir-Gazi – who was married to Noroon, daughter of Togolok the sheep-shearer – had been the only literate Kirghiz in the village; for this reason, during indigenisation, he had been appointed Secretary of the Village Soviet. He at once reclassified the entire population of Mookat as Kirghiz, imposed traditional tribal tribute in addition to the various Soviet taxes and even asked his uncle to pronounce a fatwah to ensure prompt payment. Obid-Kori, however, sent Shir-Gazi packing as briskly as if he were the devil himself, and Shir-Gazi got his own back by denying his uncle the right to become a Kirghiz. And so it happened that, although all the rest of Mookat turned Kirghiz in the eyes of the Soviet authorities, Obid-Kori remained irredeemably Uzbek – the only Uzbek left in the village.
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Noroon's family, who supplied the village soviets with wool from Alay sheep, naturally spoiled Shir-Gazi, but he was still further corrupted by his power as First Secretary. He became fat and red, like one huge belly, and, seen from behind, his head looked like a sheared hindquarter of one of his father-in-law's sheep. Shir-Gazi threw his considerable weight around to such effect that his envious father-in-law once said to him quite directly and openly, “By Leninandstalin, I beg you to let me have your place for a fortnight, so I too can enjoy the pleasures of power!”

At first, Shir-Gazi refused, but Togolok had a word with his daughter, the beautiful Noroon, and after a week Shir-Gazi summoned the Kirghiz of Mookat to a meeting of the Village Soviet and decreed that, during his absence on a tour of inspection of socialist mountain pastures, Togolok Moldo-Ullu should take his place as First Secretary. And so for two weeks Togolok did as he pleased, fleecing the inhabitants of Mookat as if they were his own rams; and in return for allowing his father-in-law this pleasure Shir-Gazi acquired a flock of plump and woolly sheep in the mountain pasture of Kok-Bel – which was where he spent his two agonising weeks of separation from Soviet power.

But the children grew in spite of everything, the children grew just as bunches of grapes go on swelling… swelling… Oyimcha sewed belts for them during the languid summer days, slowly fluttering her swan-white sleeves… sleeves… sleeves… She embroidered lines of her own poetry on these belts in silk thread and the children learned them by heart as a defence against calumny and the evil eye.

Why, why, why did life turn out this way and no other way? And what other way is there? Is there another way in the world, or is that just a dream people dream? Or a dream dreamed by Allah himself, to console people? Oyimcha appears, carrying a full basket of grapes; she appears and disappears. And nothing is left in the place of her grapes, her bright, airy grapes – only patches of sunlight among vine-leaves… vine-leaves… vine-leaves…

Calumny and the evil eye did not fall on the children – Allah be praised! Calumny and the evil eye fell on Obid-Kori. The children had gone off to the bazaar, taking with them hens' eggs for holiday egg-battles; and the youngest, Mashrab, came back in tears, saying that the son of Umarali-Moneybags had smashed everyone else's eggs with an egg-like stone he had found in the Kakyr-Say river. And nobody had been able to prove that this stone was not an egg.

Nothing had been forgotten. Obid-Kori was reminded that he had studied in a hotbed of opium for the people, that he had participated in the Kokand bourgeois-nationalist congress, and that he had gone on believing in his illusory Allah during the epoch of militant materialism. He was also accused of treason towards the Motherland and betrayal of the Kirghiz people. And who, you may ask, charged him with all this under article 58?
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Kukash-Snubnose, whom Obid-Kori had himself taught to read and write. This green-eyed young Sart – now a Kirghiz NKVD officer – was interrogating Obid-Kori every other day in the main jail.

Oyimcha had been carrying a full basket of grapes, bright bunches of bright grapes, grapes, grapes, when Shir-Gazi had come with four policemen to arrest Obid-Kori.

And the children were at the bazaar, and the yard was empty, and only patches of light, patches of light lay on the ground, which was covered by the shade of vine-leaves… vine-leaves… vine-leaves… Oyimcha wept. Obliged as she was to hide from these profane ones, she cried from deep in the house; her tears fell like grapes, grapes, grapes and her wordless howl carried far beyond the gate…

Grapes lay scattered over the yard. Shir-Gazi and the four policemen trampled over them in their boots, pressing, squashing, stamping them down like patches of light, patches of light in a deserted court… court… courtyard…

Yes, life turned out this way and how else could it have turned? Words can turn out other ways, words can be replayed and replied, relayed and re-lied, rehearsed and re-versed; words can be the tools of a green-eyed Judgment-Day-Devil like Kukash-Snubnose – but life is one, and life is from Allah. And what do we know of it? It cannot be sensed or weighed between words any more than the rays of the sun can be sensed between leaves… leaves… leaves… And only the leaves' shadow catches the little patches of light, surrounds, frames, defines, confines, arrests.

Life happens in words. One person says or thinks of another: “they did right” or “they did wrong.” But what is this “right” or “wrong” outside of words? Or if words are turned upside down, turned head over heels? If, instead of leaves casting a shadow imposed by the light, the shadow gives birth to the leaves and light is the leaves' product?

The iron grating in the small prison window Obid-Kori looked through after saying his prayers had precisely this relationship to the sky and its blue, to its sun and its occasional white clouds. The grating was formed by two verticals and six rusty crossbars.

And after each interrogation by the Judgment-Day-Devil, when everything he said was turned back against him, old Obid-Kori, refusing to understand anything at all, sat on the stone bed beneath the grating and, between his repeated prayers, which gave words back their meaning, remembered a family legend told him by Oyimcha… Oyimcha…

Oyimcha's maternal grandfather, Mullah Tusmuhammad-Okhun, had studied as a young man in the Miri-Arab madrasah in Bukhara – the madrasah where Obid-Kori had studied fifty years after him. One winter, after reading the Koran in his cell, Tusmuhammad realized that it had been snowing. It had been snowing so thickly that he could no longer open the door. Snow fell for three days and three nights. Or maybe longer – Tusmuhammad, barely pausing in his studies, ate his entire store of food, all his thin porridge. And it went on snowing. There was no food left in the cell, and time did not stop. And Tusmuhammad prayed and read the Koran… prayed and read the Koran… He lost count of the days and nights. And it went on snowing. And during one of these countless days or countless nights he was sitting and listening to the falling snow and thinking about the might of Allah, who had sent people down on this earth just as he sends down snow, snowflake after snowflake, snowflake after snowflake, when he heard a strange noise in a corner of his cell. And he saw a shining hen. Together with seven golden chicks, she walked across the cell and out of the door, the snow dissolving before her as the door silently opened. The sun was shining and the muezzin was calling the faithful to their prayers. And the sky's blue, blue, blue pierced Mullah Tusmuhammad-Okhun's eyes so deeply that Obid-Kori was able to see traces of that celestial blue in them even after Tusmuhammad had gone blind in his old age.