Translated by from the uzbek language Sarah Kendzyor. U.S.A
"Party"
My creative interests were not limited to literature alone. I also liked to draw pictures. In my brother"s book there were copies of a painting called "The Burlaks" by the Russian artist Ilya Repin. In it a group of hungry, exhausted, bearded men walked along the shores of the Volga river, a ship visible in the distance. Their heads were held down and their shoulders were tied with ropes. One day I saw a scene like this at the threshing floor of the collective farm where cotton was harvested. On this hot day in the middle of September a group of people, much like a group of prisoners, were lined up with their hands behind their backs, stomping the cotton on the threshing floor.
Their terrible situation reminded me of that of the burlaks. As November gave way to the frosts of December, there was no more cotton, and in order to do work for the "Homeland", cotton picking season had to continue, and in the evenings "harvester" machines would rumble, making an incredible racket as they ground the cotton bolls and divided the remaining cotton up, the people working there breathing in their dust. Although the dozens of "harvesters" would speak loudly in one voice, the meaning of their words was indecipherable, and it was impossible to tell which task the machines were performing at any given time. As the folk phrase "picked cotton ball" denotes, people in the harvesting machines would pull one over on them and escape home. The riches above ground, in general, move to a man within a pipeline with ease. The Uzbek people who have not shared in this zeal for gasoline used cotton to fuel their homes, much to their distress, and in the winter they would load the stove with coal and lay down on top of it, wrapped up in a quilt, trying to last the winter. Both my brother and I would brace ourselves for the cold, and halfway through the night we would be like a picked cotton ball. I would relish the heat of where we slept, but my brother did not feel this way. I thought about how the people who worked covered in the dust and pollen of the harvesting machines must have dust in their lungs that had been building up for quite some time. All their life they had been breathing in this poison, their nerves frazzled by the ceaseless noise, working around the clock for little in return.In our village the people picked not only cotton but also silk, taking the silkworms while they were sleeping. In the gloomy dim of dawn they would sharpen their axes and slice down the branches of the mulberry trees. Sometimes the trees would resist this and even a powerful blow of the axe would just bring injury to the person wielding it.Our community was dominated by a communist ideology. In front of every Soviet village building, in the office of every office of the heads of the collective farms, there would be a statue of the indigent genius Vladimir Lenin. His acolytes would tie red cloths to his neck, play the bugle and raise the flag. The sound of drums would echo in the streets as they fastened a wreath around his head, and people would emerge, grinning, from their mud-brick houses to take it all in. Children dreamed of becoming pioneer heroes like Pavlik Morozov, Petya Klipa, and Qichan Jakipo. At this time in our village there was a man named Kamoliddin. He was a good-natured man with a booming voice. He would walk amongst the people around singing loudly, his eyes wide, and when he laughed his mouth would open wide and he would reveal his small teeth. The nickname of this remarkable person was "Party". Some called him "partkom", or "party committee". Others shortened this to Kompartiya, taking the name from the words Komoldin and party. As is evident from this, whenever this person would promote the ideas of the communist party to the people, the people who were members of the komparty would invite him and as a result most of them said that he was a hardcore communist. When one member decided to investigate this, however, they found that Kamoliddin-aka was actually not among the ranks of the Kompartiya. After that, Kamoliddin aka, once called "Party", was found under the worthy penname of "muborak", or "happy". The "Komoliddin party" would sing in the fields, saying let there be water in the cotton plants, let the sun shine. He would wear a folded up newspaper on his head as a hat, and from time to time would read the articles and reports printed on it. If he was tired, he would lie down in the grass and sleep under this same newspaper, and if he felt like playing cards, he would tear up the newspaper into pieces and do so. It was truly a newspaper to serve all purposes.I remember that one day he said something interesting to me. He claimed that one evening a collective farm worker named Mirzavoy was distributing water into the cotton fields by himself under the light of the moon, and that in order for the water not to flood, he was filling the ditch with pieces of paper used as a type of organic fertilizer. Suddenly Mirzavoy heard a rustling sound. He stopped his work to listen to the sound, but then everything became silent. He thought, well, I guess I"ll get back to work, but then the sound started up again. Now Mirzavoy was frightened, because the villagers had told about their bad luck with distributing water in these fields. They said that at night a lone man had seen two wise women singing a sorrowful lullaby to a child cloaked in a white burial shroud, his hands covered up. The man"s voice became a croak as he told of how the exorcism rites performed had no effect. Thinking of this ominous tale, Mirzavoy-aka grabbed his hoe and fled toward the village. The rustling sound continued to follow him, as if something were hunting him down. Mirzavoy the irrigation expert ran home in terror, feeling like he was being pursued by whatever was making this sound. When he arrived at his house, his wife, who was standing in the yard, looked alarmed.
"Oh my God, what happened to you? Why are you running?" she asked.
"The two wise women were chasing me!" he cried and ran into the house. As his wife asked him questions, Mirzavoy the irrigation expert explained that he was pursued by something making a rustling sound and that it had followed him all the way to his home. Witnessing his fright, his wife began to laugh. "Hey, don"t worry too much. You may notice that you have a piece of paper caught in your belt. That sound you heard was the wind rustling the paper as you ran!" she said, cracking up.
A "political swindler" who left our village loved this amusing story, never tiring of laughing about it with that happy fellow Komoliddin, the loud voice of the "party". Komoliddin, whose teeth were small like a dolphin,"s but healthy and gleaming white. Komoliddin, whose honest laughter floods my memory like a ray of sunshine time and time again.