Mother's Testament: 6 A letter of parting

The days continued to pass in their endless stream. Once Gyuli and the other women had finished digging the aryks they changed to irrigating the wheat. One hot day, as they took their lunchtime rest and were drinking tea in the shade of some trees, their ketmens laid aside, Tursun arrived unexpectedly and went up to Gyuli. ‘Kichik-apa, my mother has asked you to stop work for today and go home.’

            ‘What’s happened? Is something the matter?’

            ‘I don’t know’ is all that the boy let slip, and it seemed to her, as he turned and hurried away, that he was hiding something from her. For several days, ever since her bad dream, Gyuli had remained in an anxious state, and now she sensed trouble. A sudden weakness came over her whole body and she looked at her companions helplessly. When they saw her condition they all urged her to go. ‘Go home, go on, you should go and see what’s happened. It must be something or she wouldn’t have sent for you.’ Then Mervanam got up and said to Gyuli: ‘Whatever it is, I’m coming with you.’ She straightened up her dress and the two women set off.

            When they reached the house, out of breath, they were met by silence in the yard. The door to the house stood ajar. Gyuli crossed the threshold and found Kurvan-aka and the village elders, Mahmut-aka, Davut-aka and Zair-aka inside. They were all sitting with mournful faces, and Gyuli felt her heart break loose and begin pounding convulsively in her chest. She was barely able to bid them good day. Then she saw Hadzhyar, sitting by the window with tear-stained eyes. Unable to utter a word, Gyuli dropped her gaze to the floor and froze in that position, biting on a corner of her shawl. Silence filled the room until it was broken by the soft, sorrowful voice of Zair. ‘Daughter, as you know, “where there is life there is also death”. We have received news that Tair has died. Be strong!’

            It was as though Gyuli did not hear the last two words. Her face turned as pale as the wall, her lips went blue and then she fell unconscious to the floor.

            The old woman called out to Mervanam: ‘Get some cold water and splash her face.’

            The two women sprinkled Gyuli’s face and began to rub her hands and shoulders. She came to, looked round bewildered and broke down in tears.

            ‘Come now, my dear, be strong! Remember you’ve got three children.’

            The pain of loss was familiar and understandable for old Zair. He squatted down and began reading from the Qur’an. After this they all expressed their condolences to Gyuli and to old Hadzhyar and left the sorrow-filled house. Maysimyam came and tearfully embraced her sister. They wept together at length, clinging tightly to one another. The children came in, and without understanding what had happened, clung to their mother and cried with her. As she held them tightly to herself she wailed all the more. ‘My poor little orphans, my little lambs! Your mother’s suffering has still not come to an end. Your father has been taken from us – he’s been kept from us for ever! O Tair, my love! And he’s taken away the dreams we had together… O Lord, did you only bring me into this world in order to suffer?’

            ‘Gyuli, please, don’t grieve so much, you’ll frighten the children,’ urged Mervanam, though she was crying as well.

            The tragic news spread fast round the village, and one by one, friends and relatives began to visit. Again and again the air trembled with groaning and weeping. When Gyuli saw Tair’s menfriends also weeping for him, she howled in despair: ‘I’ve lost my Tair, Dzhelil! How much he longed to come home. Tair, your children have become orphans! My poor Tair, how much they tortured you, my Tair…’

            Old Hadzhyar looked tearfully towards Gyuli and tried to persuade her to calm down, but was unable to restrain her own weeping.

            The elderly Zaynaphan, who had come to give her condolences, thought back to the death of her own daughter and said tearfully to Gyuli: ‘We have to hold out through everything that we are sent, my dear. What can we do? Now you’ll have to act as the children’s father as well as being their mother. And may God make it easy for you.’

            The other women spoke in agreement. Then when old Rozihan arrived together with Alahan and Tadzhigul, who had been her companions during the difficult years in exile, another wave of lamenting filled the room. Each of them was also grieving for the suffering that had been their own lot.

            Gyuli’s friends Mervanam, Mariyam and Zaynaphan, who had taken charge of the kazan, began to prepare omach, a soup containing pieces of dough. So, although Tair’s body was somewhere far away, his people remembered him with a traditional omach and then went to their homes.

            Tair’s death struck Gyuli like a bolt of lightning. She could not come to terms with her loss, nor come back to her ordinary self. The dream she had continued to nourish, that one day he would come home and they would live happily together, was gone. Ahead of her lay nothing but tribulations. Would she have the strength to face them, or would she, like Tair, eventually succumb and cease living in this world? Yet if she – then what would become of the children? Horrified at having entertained such a thought, she said to herself firmly: ‘No, never think like that. I need to live, for the sake of the children – who are Tair’s and mine!’ She looked up to the sky, where the bright, joyful sun was casting its golden rays generously upon all.

            Less than a month after the arrival of the tragic news, the postman Masim-aka brought Tair’s last letter. Gyuli had just returned from the fields, stoked the fire in the hearth and begun to prepare the evening meal.

            She took the letter and pressed it feverishly to her heart, then opened the envelope with trembling hands. She read:

            ‘Hello, my dear ones! How are you? Have you returned home safely? Gyuli, my love, you are a courageous woman and I believe that you have great power of will. The very fact that you are bringing up our three children, despite all the hardships and humiliation, is heroism in itself. I am forever glad to have been able to spend those happy days with you in the house that we built together.

            ‘If you are wondering how it is for us here, then I will tell you that many have died, unable to survive the back-breaking work and the appalling conditions. And I too am lying down and am seriously ill. For the sake of the children and for your sake I ask Allah for good health, but who knows what will be? Gyuli, if something should happen to me in these distant lands, please tell the children when they are a little older that their father was a prominent man, kind and brave, honest, but never was he an ‘enemy of the people’. All that is a lie. The day will come when people will realise that we were pure and honest, that we worked for the people tirelessly. But for now, we – thousands of intellectuals along with ordinary uneducated people – have been made the victims of a loathsome policy. If I could come back home I would tell you how many good and worthy people have died because of this policy. How much I long to come home, to see you and to talk with you heart to heart! But with every day that passes I am growing weaker. Gyuli, the Tair you knew is no more. I am like a skeleton with skin stretched over it; my heart goes on softly beating, but the rest of my body died long ago. Gyuli, you are the dearest thing to me in this world. So now, although you are left without me, please bring up our three children. I ask Allah that you will be able to see them grow, mature and achieve something in life. Kiss the children and hold them for me. Please give my greetings to my relatives and friends. And be happy.’

            It looked as though Tair had wept as he wrote the letter. Tears were spattered on the paper, together with drops of blood from when he had coughed, which made some of the words impossible to read. Gyuli re-read the letter several times and stood fixed, deep in her thoughts. She then remembered the dream she had had the previous Friday. In the dream, Tair seemed to be lying beside her. He said, ‘Why is there such an enormous distance between us? I was only just able to reach you. Gyuli, my love, I cannot live without you, and that is why I have flown to you, to take you with me.’ After saying this, he caressed Gyuli and kissed her. She answered him sadly: ‘Tair, I would go with you without hesitating for a moment, but the children are still small and I cannot leave them.’ She lifted her hand to touch him, but Tair had vanished.

            Then Gyuli had woken, shaken, her heart beating wildly and her body shivering. Remembering the dream now, she let her eyes roam about the room. It felt to her as though Tair were here in the house. ‘He’s leaving, but Tair’s spirit has come to us.’ Wiping her tears on her sleeve, she got up. She had no right to sit idle – the children needed to be fed.

            That night Gyuli could not sleep. Whenever she closed her eyes she saw Tair lying withered and exhausted. The sight of him like this crushed her heart with pain and made her eyes fill with tears.

            Next morning she rose early, washed, whispered ‘Bismillah’ and filled a tea-bowl with clear cold water. She said a long prayer in remembrance of Tair, drank the water and then, paying no attention to anything, went out into the yard.

            From the cowshed there came the mooing of the calf. It was probably hungry. Gyuli’s first task every morning was to check up on the animals and chickens. But today, like somebody who was entirely carefree, with no obligations to anybody, she heard neither the mooing of the calf nor the clucking of the chickens…

            The sun rose higher. Gyuli went into the garden and breathed deeply of the cool morning air. Her gaze fell upon some trees in the garden that Tair had planted and upon the wattle fence of willow switches and thorny twigs that they had built together to enclose the garden. But then she thought: ‘It’s no use dreaming. I need to get busy if the children are to eat.’ She picked up the ketmen and began loosening the soil around the pumpkin and weeding among the potatoes, then brought water from the aryk to water the aubergine, tomatoes and peppers. She was so occupied with her work that she did not notice how much she was perspiring. A sense arose in her that together with the perspiration, she was also sweating away her suffering and anguish, and she began to feel more at ease.

            Old Hadzhyar came out carrying a cast-iron chugun and was pleased to see that Gyuli had had the sense to occupy herself with work. While she made tea, Gyuli went to milk the cow, took the cow out to the herd, then fed the chickens, cleaned out the cowshed and managed to mould a few more dung bricks.

            Now the whole family sat down to morning tea. ‘You must have got up with the sun,’ said Hadzhyar to Gyuli, ‘you’ve got so much done in the garden!’

            In the last few days Gyuli’s face had become even more brown and she had grown still thinner. Yet although her eyes concealed sorrow, she said, calmly and unexpectedly: ‘Yes, I couldn’t sleep any longer, and then when I went into the garden there was so much work staring at me. So I did some before going out to the field. Selimyam, would you and Saniyam please weed the two onion beds in the vegetable patch? The onions have done well, but there are a lot of weeds. But make sure you weed them carefully and don’t trample any of the onions, all right?’

            ‘Of course, mother. And you’ve sown osma and hina for us too?’

            ‘Yes, the osma is next to the onions. I sowed the hina along the side of the aryk, and I think it’s already started growing. And would you weed the flowers as well, but be very careful not to pull up the flowers together with the weeds. Yadikar, you’re not to go out in the street – just play in the yard.’

            ‘Mama, I want to go and play with Arup next door.’

            Hadzhyar finished drinking her tea, swept the crumbs from the table into a bowl and raised her hands for prayer. The others followed. Then Gyuli heard women’s voices in the street and stood up. ‘Be good children now and don’t be a nuisance to your moma, she said, then picked up the lunch that the old woman had prepared for her, placed the ketmen on her shoulder and went out of the yard.

            Though they were poorly dressed and half-starved, the women and girls did not complain as they went out to the fields, but instead kept their spirits up with jokes and banter. And today, once they had properly irrigated the wheat, they all gathered together for lunch and began talking. ‘Oi, boss, go and get some tea,’ called out Mervanam, seeing Shavdun riding past on his horse.

            ‘Thanks. And you, you can have a rest, but don’t forget about the water.’ He said nothing more and turned towards the village.

            ‘Poor old Shavdun. He’s got a lot older and so thin,’ said Adalyat sorrowfully, watching him riding away. Adalyat was a woman of medium height with a white face, attractive eyes and brows and a name that suited her very well. It came from the Arabic name adel, meaning ‘just’ or ‘fair’. People respected her – maybe because she was a little older than the others, or perhaps because she looked after them all.

            ‘Well, find him a suitable woman and marry him off,’ chuckled Zaynap.

            ‘Who’d want him in the state he’s in at the moment?’ asked one of the others.

            ‘Well, heaven knows, he’s so pathetic because he’s on his own. But get him hitched to a good woman and she’d scrub him and dress him up and he’d soon be the big dzhigit again,’ said Adalyat, demonstrating with her thumb.

            ‘It’s so long since Zoryam died. Poor thing, and he’s left with two children. But at least he’s still got Zoryam’s mother – how’d he manage without her?’ said Maryam.

            ‘Well,’ said Adalyat, playfully, ‘why not marry him to  Saadat?’ She gave a crafty smile and glanced inquisitively at Saadat. Saadat’s eyes widened and she hid behind Gyuli.

            ‘What are you looking at me like that for? Isn’t Shavdun your type, then?’

            ‘No, he isn’t. When I want someone I’ll find him myself,’ said Saadat, hurt, and got up and went off with a friend to look for segiz.

            ‘Oi, just look at her,’ said Adalyat, finishing her tea. Then her look fell upon Gyuli who was sitting opposite her.

            Nobody dared to joke with Gyuli. Her face was serious and gloomy. Fearing that Adalyat might turn her attention to her next, Gyuli got up and tossed her ketmen onto her shoulder. ‘You go on and finish your tea. I’m off for a while.’

            Mervanam followed her. They walked along the aryk, directing water to where it was needed and gathered two large heaps of brushwood; these they tied up ready to take home with them. Mindful of the harsh cold of winter, Gyuli gathered a bundle of brushwood almost every day.

            That evening, when she had returned home with the bundle of firewood on her back, she found old Momun, Tadzhigul’s father, and her mother, the elderly Patam waiting for her. Once they had exchanged the traditional greetings and asked one another after their health and family affairs, the old man said: ‘Gyuli, we’ve only just heard the news about Tair. Tadzhigul told us today, so we have come to express our condolences, to remember Tairzhan and to pray for him.’

‘And you can’t change what fate deals you, so you will have to take courage and be patient,’ said Patam, wiping her tears. ‘It would have been wonderful if Tairzhan had come home to you, but what can you do? It wasn’t to be. So, daughter, you need to be strong. Let your children carry the light of Tairzhan. Good health to them all.’

Momun read from the Qur’an, remembered Tair and prayed at length. The old woman and Gyuli thanked him and then started discussing household matters. While they did so, Selimyam set the dzhoza table in the middle of the room and placed a cloth over it.

‘I’ve brought some things,’ said Patam, and put on the table a bowl of zhutta, four small nan, two packets of tea, material for a dress for Gyuli and a shawl for Hadzhyar. ‘Hadzhyarhan, Gyuli, please at least accept these little things. Don’t be offended that we weren’t able to come to express our sympathy at the proper time.’

Hadzhyar and Gyuli stood up and thanked her. ‘Why, you didn’t need to worry, Patamhan. We’re grateful that you have come from Zharkent to give your condolences,’ said Hadzhyar.

Gyuli and Tadzhigul went out to the kazan and poured out the suyuk ash that the old woman had prepared for them. To the four eggs she had fried in the kazan she added beans, pumpkin seeds and a little basil and coriander for seasoning. They then brought the tasty-smelling lapsha into the room and served it into bowls. Maysimyam arrived, and Gyuli noticed that she had come alone and asked why Kurvan-aka was not with her.

‘He only came home for a minute, he just had his dinner and went straight back out to the fields. They’ll be ploughing until dawn.’

They ate unhurriedly, talking about past times. When the old Patam and Hadzhyar started discussing their relatives it became apparent that they were in fact related.

Wiping the sweat from his brow with a white cloth after the hot food, Momun began to speak about the death of Tair. ‘In my seventy years I’ve seen much that is good and much that is bad. As far as I can see, these troubles have spared nobody. My own elder brother Akvyar, an imam, was condemned and then arrested. He was a believer and he never meddled in anything – all he did was pray to God and taught Islam in the medrese. But one evening in 1937 he was accused of issuing anti-Soviet propaganda. They interrogated him, they tortured him and in the end they branded him an ‘enemy of the people’ and sent him to one of the Siberian camps. After some time we received a document confirming that he was dead. My poor brother – in his declining years, clearly he couldn’t survive this torment. All this was a terrible ordeal, both for my brother’s family and for us.’ He wiped his eyes with the kerchief; they had begun to shine with tears.

Moved by the old man’s story, Hadzhyar now told them about her husband Mahammyat, tears also building in her eyes. ‘What didn’t we suffer, all of us? How much patience we humans have! And Tair also was no stranger to me – he was the son of Mahammyat’s sister. But now, here I am, grown old and living with Gyuli, looking after her children. I thank heaven for these times.’

‘You’re right, Hadzhyarhan, helping each other out and talking peacefully over tea – this is how we can comfort one another. What could be better, in fact? Our Tadzhigul could hardly work on the kolkhoz – she’s so weak she can barely look after the children. Grandfather and I have decided to take her and the children to Zharkent, where she can get treatment. God willing, Askar-zhan will come back home. And Gyuli, there is a saying – “a good thing is never forgotten”. For three years you did all you could to look after our daughter, and we will never forget that. May God grant that you will see your children’s good fortune in life.’ Tears ran down old Patam’s hollowed cheeks as she spoke, burning her face.

Gyuli served the zhutta that Patam had brought on plates and poured hot, freshly-made aktyan-chay into bowls. They went on talking for a long time, discussing the things they had experienced and suffered. Each of them began to feel a sense of ease. When, after the prayer at the end of the meal, the guests got up from their places, Tadzhigul embraced Gyuli tightly. ‘All good health to you, sister. I don’t know whether we’ll see meet again. God knows. Thank you again so much for everything.’

She was very pale and thin. Every now and again she would cough and break out in sweat. Gyuli saw that the spark of hope in her eyes was fading, and said to her: ‘Tadzhigul, sister, don’t cry. You’ll recover. Tell yourself you’re going to live for the sake of your children. Then you’ll get better.’

But Tadzhigul’s eyes were like a dying flame. The two women, who had overcome all the tribulations of three years of exile, both sensed that they would not see each other again.

Some time later came the news that Tadzhigul had died. As though she had lost a member of her immediate family, Gyuli cried out bitterly: ‘What sort of a treacherous world is this? They say that death is indifferent to young and old, but who’s to blame for Tadzhigul, still so young, going down with an incurable illness? What have her parents done to deserve this, and her children left as orphans? What will happen to them?’ She tried to puzzle these questions herself, then, finding no answer, broke down in tears.

* * *

‘My story isn’t boring you, is it?’ Mehriban looked over at Ruth.

‘No, of course not! Far from it – the characters of your book are becoming real for me. I’m impatient to know what happens to them all later.’

‘You know, we were brought up in the Soviet system, which taught us to show great respect to people who wear medals and decorations on their chests. This is because they fought at the front for our peace and safety, and we are well aware of this fact. And yet, just think how much effort was also expended by the women who stayed at home in the villages, who replaced the men in the fields – and how much their health was sacrificed, working outside in the rain, in the cold, and knee-deep in mud. They grew wheat and carried sacks of grain on their frail shoulders, along with all the hardships of those times! None of them got medals or decorations, and many people nowadays have no idea of how much, through their hard work, they helped bring Victory Day closer. They worked from morning to night and were paid only a scoop of roasted wheat per day, yet those women never gave up – on the contrary, they put their will to the test and held out. We are still amazed today by their resilience. Today’s young people simply can’t imagine the conditions in which those women had to live. For them it’s just a legend.

‘And yet they had reasons to be grateful for their lot. They could sell vegetables from their plots and take eggs from their chickens to the shops, and they became skilled at buying meat and butter at the bazaar and tea, salt, soap and sweets in the shops. They thanked God for all this, saying they’d go through anything for the sake of the children, to ensure that they never know war and could live in peace. There were women from our village like this, who were able to live through anything, regardless.’

‘I saw a film,’ said Ruth, ‘that highlighted the heroic efforts of Russian women during the Second World War. Your tale has only confirmed this.’