Abdurashid Nurmuradov
The Bloody Veil
We didn’t really get anything at all. And not only us, but also our Fergan relatives who came with us. In the middle of the bare steppe with spots of salt are white concrete houses. In the summer they heat, in the winter they do not hold the heat. Around us a thick stone. In the exhausting heat you will not find a fifth shadow to hide. The sun will not have time to bow to sunset, as the bushes of the clouds raise sharp mosquitoes, which do not spare anyone – whether it is the wrinkles of the old man's forehead or the bloodless face of a child – they relentlessly swallow their sharp grief. There will be no living space in the morning. It is impossible to look at the faces of children: everyone is in wounds, mothers pour their bites with ash.
From my father’s words, I stumbled. It feels like we are leaving tomorrow, went out. The little girl grabbed in the ground, laughing loudly. The joyful feeling in my soul seemed to have been passed on to them in some way.
* * *
The father came back late, in a depressed mood. I couldn’t overdo myself and asked what was going on. He drew to himself a balysh1, lying on him with a dirty cloth, sweating his forehead. He drank a cold tea until the last bite and only then turned to me:
– My son, it seems to have to go to Tashkent faster. She has given up very recently. The doctor advised to hurry. On the way, I went to the post office and took my pension. I leave money, buy something to eat and take care of the children. As long as I put my mom in the hospital, you’ll have to deal with it yourself. God knows when I’m running. Having said this, he gave me a dozen out of a bundled cloth pack.
Son’s heart told me that my father was tormenting something else. He closed his eyes and walked away from talking, which was not typical for him.
I could not sleep all night. In the depths of the room lies the father, my brothers sleep between us. From time to time, I hear the voice of the sister Gulnoz, calling her mother in a dream. Her voice wrecked my soul even more. It was tight in the room. It feels like walls on four sides are trying to squeeze me. I suffocate in the dark. I feel like my father is not asleep either. It seems, an invisible thread is stretched between us.
– Rashidjan, do not you get sleepy?
–Yes, – I am answering.
– You are not small anymore, you know a lot. For me and my mother, you are the only support in the world. You probably condemn me for having to leave our hometown and wander in the naked steppe. Having lived my life, having became old, I realized that there is no happiness for an honest man in that blind light. You do not know everything.
All the relatives from our village were fed and raised by my mother, Uzuk. And I myself, how many people helped come out, accepted, listened. At work, what happened, my chest stood up to protect them. I thought, "Bloody, who can help if not them?" It will not be said in disgrace, they gathered with us every morning and ate our bread. One after the other, they grew up. My efforts went to institutions, began to earn. Eventually, they bit the hand that fed them. Because of them, my son, we came here. Like unfamiliar dogs, relatives clinged to me, and joined in the harassment arranged by my enemies.
– That is so, my son. No book can contain this history. If you are healthy now, I have nothing more to ask of God.
– Well, what happened, it passed, – he breathed hard. After a long pause he said:
– A month ago I received a letter from Vahidjan. He exploded on a mine and now he is in hospital. I couldn’t tell to mom, and you didn’t dare to tell. I read the word “exploded” and it was like a cliff in my heart. The head went round, the pressure rose. After that, I do not feel the letter of life in me. What it is to explode, I have experienced on myself, son. It is impossible to come to him. How, I do not know. – My father’s voice changed. He was crying. I felt like the earth was falling from under my feet. The head swings. "Exploded, exploded" thousands of times the voice of the father sounds in my ears.
Something burning rose from the inside and approached the throat. Tears flowed on my cheeks, not obeying my will. My sister turned to me:
– Mommy, Mommy, – she whispered, stroked my face. Then she hugged me tightly behind my neck and, as if on my mother’s chest, fell asleep with a strong, peaceful sleep. I could only hear her quiet breath.
And before my eyes was a brother standing in the train, with sad, anxious eyes. And I could not at that moment find the strength to ask my father in more detail how it all happened. As if he wanted to keep his brother in memory as he had.
Man has such a condition. You don’t want to live, but you live. You don’t want to breathe, but you breathe. You don’t want to see anyone, but you see. You get used to everything. Must be!
I tightly pressed my sweet sister to my heart, as if I was seeking refuge in her fragile, pure soul. And she, as if wishing to calm me, rubbed her cheek on my cheek, quietly standing. But the words of the father "exploded, exploded" still sounded in my ears, rushing into me from all sides, burned my heart."My brother, my dear, dear brother; what have they done to you, how are you now?”
The soul is devastated. As if something was broken inside. I can’t even imagine how my father lived this month. How was he…
I had a dream at night. My mother was in white clothes, holding bread in her hand:
– You and your father are deceiving me. Where did you hide Vahidjan? I’ll give him at least the bread he left behind, – she said, stretching a slice to me. I was awake. The sister was sitting on the bed and staring at me.
– Sleep, sleep, my sweetheart, – I said quietly, hugging her by the shoulders. Turning her head, she laid her head on my chest and fell asleep. It was down. A pale light broke through the dusty windows. The light filled the room.
Carefully, not to wake up my sister, I released my shoulder, laid the girl on the pillow and went out. A cold morning wind was blowing. Never flying beyond the threshold of my house, my thoughts are now far away. Everything was not nice, everything around me lost its meaning in my eyes. Even the magnificent mansion of the director of the state farm, which proudly stood before me, now seemed to me to have collapsed, lost its majesty. With a mixed sense of embarrassment and amazement, I looked at the marble facade of this house, the brilliant new "Volga" in front of it. Having a house and car was the limit of my dreams. Not only mine, but everyone around me. Now, in the face of the impending trouble, these values somehow immediately dimmed, lost their significance. I don’t know how long I stood on the threshold. I woke up when I felt my father’s touch. In his hand he held a knot. My distracted face worried him:
– Son, take yourself in your hands. I am already old.
You will remain the head of your brothers and sisters. Here is a letter from Vahidjan. Write him a more pleasant answer to raise his spirit. I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried, – he said and handed me a letter. – I will go to your mom. You will be alone, – he added and went out on the road. He walked heavily, slowly, tired, heading his head, as if he was searching for his once lost happiness on this dusty canyon road.
I was left with the letter in my hand, exhausted from reading, not finding the strength to uncover it, to find out where my brother was wounded. I stood unconsciously at the threshold. Someone pulled me by the sleeve. There was a sister next door. In her eyes was a childish anxious. I bowed and took her on my hands. The girl hugged me tightly and grabbed my cheek. She lacked the warmth and care of her mother.
We entered the house. I put her carefully, and she fell asleep again. My relatives were sleeping. And I was sitting next to them with a dying heart, looking at the letter. My patience has finally ended. Every word of grief entered my heart. I will never forget these simple and terrible lines.
"Hi, Dad! Your letter was read to me by my friend Samad. You wrote to the commander that I forgot you and didn’t write for four months. You asked him to punish me.
Father, forgive me for not being able to send you a message for so long. I was in the hospital without consciousness. Now I feel better, but I had to ask Samad to write a letter. Doctors say one eye can see. My hands were also shaken by the explosion of the mine.
Father forgive me. I feel how much damage I have done to you by writing the whole truth. How to? You are my father. You survived the war and shed blood, returned from the front crippled. Our fate is same, so I decided to tell you about my condition. Do not speak home. My mother did not survive.
How does she feel? I see her in my dreams every day. All in white clothes she approaches and sits next to me and, without saying a word, looks in my eyes for a long time. Tell me about her health. Mom, mom, from how many bad thoughts she saved me here.
Dad, do not burn up. Fate seems to be like that. You will not leave it. People like me are a lot here. The boys died no less. I’m not going to get out of the hospital soon. If I had been blind from birth, I have been so offended. It is hard to lose the white light in the night alone and plunge into the darkness. It is very difficult…
Goodbye, Dad. Say hello to my mother and brothers. Let Rashid-aka write me a letter in his free time.
Abduvahid.
September 13, 1982
My heart cried. And the younger brothers, not knowing anything, slept peacefully.
I sat for a long time like this. Thousands of thoughts revolved in my head. I cursed those who taught my brother. I powerlessly squeezed my fists, ready to break them into pieces. When my gaze fell on my sister, her hands were stretching up on their own, and I smoothed her confused hair. It seemed that her little face, her hair, her bracelets rejuvenated in my dark heart tenderness, love for family, for people. I felt like I was born again. Small care and worries gradually left me, giving way to those that were now the main ones.
Three days later my father came back. In his hands was knot with belongings of mother. Taking breath, he looked at us sadly, breathed hard. Gulnoz quietly clung to him. We were all looking forward to my father’s words.
– The mother greeted you all. She will recover soon and come. She asked to transmit that they would not joke and live together before her return, – finally, he said, glossing the hair of Gulnoz. As if only waiting for these few words, the younger brothers calmed down and stood up. Children cannot live in anxiety for a long time. There were my father, I and my sister. Gulnoz, rubbing her father’s beard, asked:
– Mommy has gone far?
The wrinkles on my father’s face became even deeper. The cheeks struck, and he, trying to cope with the trembling voice, said:
– Yes, she went far away. She will come, my daughter, your mother will come. I was upset by my father’s mood:
– Diagnosis is determined?
– Yes, my son. It seems to be a long time. Did you write a letter to your brother?
– I wrote.
Here is the whole conversation.
But I felt that my father was not agreeing. By nature, he is a determined man, not a talkative. I never put my concerns on other people’s shoulders. I had to wait for him to say something.
My father suffered from insomnia. At night he wandered around the house, and during the day he went to the camouflage and only rotated in the dark. This lasted a week. Then he crowd together and in the morning twilight he set feet on the path.
– I will go to your mom, – he said.
This time he was in Tashkent for a long time. I was walking alone, not knowing what to think. My heart is drawn there, but I won’t leave the kids alone. I had to wait. The father came home late at night, tired, with a grown jaw:
– I am tired, my children, I will sleep a little, – he said, asking for a bed for him. He came and immediately fell asleep. I didn’t close my eyes all night, I couldn’t find a place.
In the morning after tea, my father said to me:
– Son, next week you will sit next to Mom’s bed. She is now being watched by Shafoat.
Only now I realized that the situation is very difficult.
I write about those days and my heart breaks out of my chest. Life has severely punished us. I don’t know what sins. Next to me are my brothers, a sister, one smaller than the other, in the army, crippled Abduvahid, my mother is in the hospital. Black days fell on my father’s old age. There seemed to be no sorrow in the world that did not fall on our family.
In the morning I went on the way. The first person I saw in the hospital was sister Shafoat. During that time, she became old, sad. I called her. Looking around confusedly, she finally found me, looked at me and did not recognize. A moment of her sad look slipped on my face:
– Rashid, my dear, is it you? She finally cried out and ran to me. She cried for a long time, hiding her face on my chest. Then she took herself into her hands:
– My mom is bad, so bad. I just don’t know what to do, – she said, the tears flowed on her cheeks.
We entered the chamber together. My sister wiped her tears quickly. My heart was beating, it seemed, now, something terrible, irreparable was about to happen. My mother’s eyes were tied to the door. I quickly approached her. Her pale face turned to my side. For a moment she looked at me:
– Oh my dear, you have come! How could I not recognize you, – she said, trying to get up from bed. I fell on my knees in front of her. She grabbed my head, began greedy kissing my face, my eyes.
– I was like that, son. How are you there without me? The kids, probably, were completely tormented? – she asked with a chilling voice. I calmed her. Shafoat was sitting on the side with her head down, her shoulders trembled…
My mother cuddled another. In those few days she has completely changed. Her face was slightly different from the color of her clothes. The voice seemed to come from somewhere deep. She asked about Vahid. Then she closed her eyes and whispered rather than spoke:
– He dreams of me every day. He calls me for help. I hear his voice, but I cannot find him. If only my son was healthy. Was there no letter from him? – she opened her eyes and looked closely at me.
– The letter has arrived. It was brought yesterday. He sends greetings to everyone. Soon, he said, he will come, – I hurried out.
– How soon he will come, – she was surprised, because three months and thirteen days before his arrival!
– For holiday, for good service, – the commander permitted.
When she heard it, my mother thought for a long time. Without closing her eyes, she looked into the ceiling. She seemed to have forgotten about me, and her heart felt deceived. When her gaze again fell on me, she opened her eyes widely, surprisedly said:
– How are you still here? Go, my son, go on. I am better now. Go home to Shafoat.
Shafoat stood up and approached us. She has calmed down a little.
– Mom, then we will go. I’ll be back tomorrow morning, she said.
– Go on, my children. Crossing the road carefully, kiss your daughters, Shafoat, – said the mother and closed her eyes, again immersed in her thoughts.
We went out on the street. My sister cried again. I asked her with a painful heart what happened to our mother.
– The tongue does not turn to say. You and I are the eldest in the family. Our mother has blood cancer, – she said.
I didn’t understand her words, not knowing what disease was blood cancer.
– It’s white blood, – Shafoat explained, no one has cured this disease yet. White blood cells eat red. Then the liver fails. Then…
Shafoat was a doctor. From her words I got stuck in place. My sister cried and took my hand. There was sweat on my forehead. The whole body was covered with cold steam. In just a few days, two such terrible events. One there, far away, outside of the country, the other here, in the native land.
I don’t know why, but I didn’t cry. When my mother died, I couldn’t cry too long. There was someone inside who was holding me back. It still seems like this someone is shaking my heart hard. But without tears on the day my mother died, then I cried every day, every hour. It was a cry without tears, silently crying soul. As a stranger, I watched her silently.
My sister and I went to my mother every day. Every day she was looking forward to us. She showed her hands and said with a sad smile:
– And the hands are all pale and pale. Blood is becoming less.
– Everything will be fine, soon. We will make a big celebration when Vahidjan returns. Repair as if nothing had happened, – the sister tried to reassure her.
– How do you know, daughter? They transfuse blood every day. No any changes. When I get up, my head turns. If only my Vahidjan would come alive and healthy. Only about it I think. He does not leave my dreams at all. Rashidjan, you should have visited all of them at home. Your father probably has his head around. And the kids missed you, – she said.
I could not even think about it. How could I leave my mom knowing what she was in?
Thus passed two weeks. In the morning, the sister took the children to the kindergarten. Her husband studied at the time in Moscow, in graduate school. So my sister and three children lived in town alone. The house, the children are all on it.
At ten o’clock we were finally in the hospital. When we entered the room, my mother was transfused blood. When she saw us, she shrugged her head and smiled. We passed carefully and sat down on our chairs. I quietly watched the glass hanging on the tripod from which the blood dropped. The drops slowly hanged, broke, hanged again, involuntarily I started counting them. I counted several hundred. Excited, I did not notice how the door to the chamber opened, how my mother's muddy pupils expanded.
– Son! – She cried, rushing up from the bed. I was encountered. There was a man in a soldier uniform on the doorstep. The soldier quickly approached and hugged her. Mother tightly grabbed the soldier’s neck, cried, her chilling voice filled the chamber:
– My dear son, have you come back? Thank God that I saw you. Now let him cleanse my soul. My son! Every day you dreamed of me. Thank God you are healthy. I have nothing to ask for now, neither from man nor from the God.
– Mom, go to bed! Go to bed! From the cry of my sister, I came in and looked at my mother. Blood flowed through her hands, sliding down, scattered over her clothes and painted it in red. I ran to her and took her shoulders, trying to lay down. But it was impossible to separate her from her son. A nurse came to help. Together we put my mom in some way. Taking the air in his hands, she was repeating: "Son! My dear! My son!" – she lost consciousness. I remember that day and I still hear my mother’s voice in my ears… What unfortunate days… What terrible days… I do not wish to survive them and my enemy.
In a moment, doctors entered the room. My mother was lying on white blankets. White sheets, white face, only on the chest was a bloody spot.
Strongly grabbing my brother’s hand, my native brother, in whose appearance I could not believe, I left the hospital. My sister followed us. Three of us, hugged, we cried long in the hospital garden. My brother’s face became unrecognizable. There is no eye. One hand is broken and we still don’t know what happened to it.
A cruel fate has thrown our family, so ignorant of fun or satiety, into the abyss called disaster. We walked along the wide city street, full of life, joy, cheerful faces and felt more unhappy. Everyone was busy with their thoughts. The blow of fate that has struck a man, sink in everyday worries, sharply changes him. The consequences of such a blow I passed through myself, from my own experience.
Both my sister and I thank God that my brother, though grieved, came back alive. Now he was another man. This is no longer the young man who looked at me frightenedly from the train. He was a warrior who exploded on a mine. He did not need instruction or consolation. In one word, he looked up, comforted me, his older, but now weaker brother. He was not my younger brother, but my older brother. Yes the elderly! And how could he, who had been between life and death for months, be the younger brother of a man who has been messing with dirt all his life and has seen nothing but his swamp.
My primitive, small words began to disperse like fog. What will grow in the deserted place is still unknown, but one thing is clear: there has appeared a powerful germ of life. He was raised by my younger brother.
* * *
Mother is dead. Completely freed from all earthly concerns, she lay in our house, in our hometown, where we returned. And the steppe, and dusty roads, and nasty mosquitoes, everything is already there, behind. Together with the shadow of the mother’s soul, we returned to our hometown. There were red maces, streams, green grass. My mom wanted to see them again.
My mother’s body lay on a new blanket. We, her children, were gathered around, all crying. Only Gulnoza smiled and repeated:
– Mom came, Mom came!
* * *
… We went to my mother’s grave. When he bowed over her, the father whispered:
– Your son is going to the city. Wish him a good way, let his spirit be hard and his head clear. May the spirit of your mother support you, son. Abduvahid hugged me by his shoulder with his scattered hands:
– Now you run out into people for our happiness. You wanted to be a writer. Write about our mother, about the people with my fate. – We said goodbye. They stayed at my mother’s grave. I walked along the road that led to the city with my old suitcase in hand. After walking a little, I turned back. Father and son. Two fates, repeating each other, relying on each other.
I don’t want to talk about my customs in the city. They survived every village boy who came to study in a big city. But wherever I worked, I remembered, kept in my heart, like a precious diamond, the words of my brother, which sounded at the tomb, as a will. At the time when I came to the city, it was difficult to write about the guys with my brother’s fate. But from those terrible places, one after the other, zinc boxes arrived with the inscription, weighing two hundred kilograms. In one house, in another, there was crying and worship of mothers. The people, with their shoulders down, listened silently to their heartbreaking cries.
Every time I came into the village, I looked at my brother, his frozen face, his eye, the place where his hand was, and found no place for myself, feeling my helplessness. His surviving, but submerged blurred eye looked at me, as if reassuring, sympathetic, as though wishing to say, "Don’t be sad. There will be days when you will be able to write about everything".
Every time I returned to the city, my father and brother accompanied me to my mother’s grave. This has broken up many times. Many times I returned to the city with a bitter feeling of dissatisfaction with life.
But you can’t be silent forever, everything ends someday and I exploded. I began to collect materials about the lives of Afghan soldiers. My hopes, the people with whom I was born remained in different parts of the country. For years while collecting material for the book, I listened to them and still listen now. I believed that their voice would be heard by my people.
* * *
The guys who were affected by my brother’s fate spoke reluctantly about themselves. I had to meet with them many times to recreate the picture of what they experienced.
– Give it up, they repeated. Why torment yourself and ourselves? Write better about our hard-working dekhkans. What have we seen? The blood? The broken bodies of friends? With these hands we gathered their bones and pieces of meat from the dust and placed them in the graves. At first, we cried. Then we stopped. Our hearts turned into stone. Day after day we lost human appearance, became angry. We were crushed, killed. The outcast friends gathered our bloody bodies. We returned home without feet, without hands, without eyes. And for all this, the medal "For Courage" and "The Order of the Red Star" were hanged on our chest. We killed completely strangers who were never our enemies, and they killed us. I thought we were doing this for the sake of our country. How about otherwise? After all, we were boys whose mother’s milk still did not dry out on our lips, and we believed what we were beaten in our heads.
What else to say? Please do not remember those days. These memories are too heavy. Again before my eyes is blood, death, horror. Why are you bleeding the hearts of people who have already suffered from this life? My lips trembled when I spoke these words.
The mother of a soldier wounded in the Afghan war with tears in her eyes could not withstand:
– Burn in hell who brought my child to this state! We did not have time to rejoice that our son grew up and became a support for us as this trouble happened. Who to curse, I don’t know, – she recounted, wiping the tears off the edge. Her son hurried to reassure her:
– Do not cry, Mom. I am alive. Think of the mothers whose children have not returned, and then you will understand that you need to thank fate, not curse it, – he said, trying to wipe her tears with his unburned hands. In those moments, I remembered my brother, my mother, my poor, beloved mother.
Over the years, I have visited thousands of people who have returned from Afghanistan. Many times I listened to their short, unimaginable stories. Hundreds of times I looked into the wrinkles on the faces of sedentary mothers who greedily listened to their children. They all seemed to me like my brothers and my mothers. In houses with lining, in poor housekeeping, in the restrained voices of the boys, in the restless gaze of the mothers, in everything I saw similarity to my family. It seemed that the bitter fate hit only children from poor families, destroyed, and returned them to their homeland. Every acquaintance with a new family left a scar in my heart. Then it seemed to me that I experienced something like this myself; I saw it all, experienced it, and became disabled. I have started having nightmares. My legs, my arms, and my broken eyes demanded that I bring them back to my bodies. I fell into this state only from the stories I heard, being a healthy person. And what might then happen to them as eyewitnesses and participants in this nightmare? It was difficult even to watch the boys when they painfully gave details of what happened to them. At such moments I silently lowered my head. These were hard, sad days in my life. It seemed as if I had become a part of their suffering heart.
It was as if my body was infiltrated by electricity when I saw guns in the hands of boys, machine guns and tanks in the toys department of "Children's World". In front of my eyes, the toys turned into real machines, guns, huge tanks. There was a continuous shooting in my ears. I was scratching. It happened, I did not endure and offended in anything innocent girls-sellers. In those days, I came home, trembling with my whole body, inflicting my anger on my relatives.
– Something is happening to your father. Probably found a girlfriend. He was never in such a state, as if he had been replaced, – my wife cried, pressing her children.
But it was more and more difficult for me to get rid of this compulsion, of my obsessive thoughts.
As an obsessed man, in search of Afghan soldiers, I wandered through the distant corners of the country and disappeared for months. I came home shocked from meetings, stories, pressed, like a madman, the button of our apartment.
"Go there where you have been overnight", – I heard the angry voice of my wife, and the door before me closed with a whisper. Not to forget the days when sad and tired, I turned back from the door of my home.
Muhammadrahmat from Khodjent told me that he involuntarily pulled his head into his shoulders and covered his face with his hands when the shells exploded in the cinema. At first I was surprised, but later I realized that there is nothing worse than war and there can be neither winners nor losers. Because both of them and others carry blood, tears, death. I began to understand why so many writers turned to the subject of war. L.Tolstoy, A.Barbus, E.Hemingway and Y.Bondarev… War brings unbelievable trials, countless miseries and suffering to man, and there can be no justification for it.
Now, when I think about war, I see my real heroes with wounded bodies and souls passing by. And once again I assure you: the warriors are those who sacrificed their lives to an unknown monster – to war, are my brothers, my relatives, my friends.
Sabir came to me, my cousin. I was very pleased. I know him from childhood. He was a simple, straightforward guy. With his father Muhammad once in childhood I pasture sheep. Then Muhammad-aka became ill and went to the hospital. He seemed healed, but soon the illness returned. He was treated again, but the disease never receded. He is still in the hospital. The mother was left with ten children in her arms. She raised them for her salary of sixty rubles herself. I brought Sabir to the army from Tashkent. He arrived in Afghanistan. It was not long before I received a letter from him. In the letter a few words: "Rashid-aka, I am in Leningrad. And I am injured. Be healthy". He spent a year in Leningrad. He returned crippled.
When he crossed the threshold of the house, my face was distorted by pain. Those long-standing memories came back to me again, my mother’s bloody shirt, my father’s silent cry in the middle of the night when he was known about his son’s injury, my brother’s whisper at my mom’s grave.
…A year passed.
Sabir said that he entered to the preparatory department of the law faculty of the university. His joy also calmed my heart. I hugged him, greeted him and filled my soul with tenderness.
At the table I asked him:
– Well, Sabir, tell me about it. Was it hard to take the entrance exams?
He strangely smiled:
– You know, Rashid aka, it turns out to be doing that to put your chest under the bullets. I passed literature and history, and at the exam in social sciences the teacher took and asked, "Say the truth, how did you pass the other exams? Who helped you, who asked for you?"