In June 1941 the harvest looked promising. The young wheat swayed in dense golden waves and the villagers had hopes of a rich yield. Young people mowed the lush grass to make winter feed for the animals, and in the cool of the mornings they gathered sweet clover. All around, the high-spirited shouts of the lads and girls rang out, and sometimes songs. The life of the village seemed at last to be running a peaceful course.
The high summer days also brought plenty of work at home. Apples and apricots swelled with juice and the vegetables in the gardens ripened. Gyuli was working in the fields from morning to evening, so it was left to Selimyam and Saniyam to pick and dry the tomatoes by themselves. And Yadikar, now growing fast, was the family’s best gatherer of berries. Nor did old Hadzhyar sit idle; she cut coriander and basil in the garden, washed it and laid it out on a tablecloth in the yard to dry out.
‘Moma, why don’t we dry apples and apricots on the roof this year?’ suggested the girls.
‘No, I’m afraid we can’t. There was a leak in the roof because of all the rain in the spring, and it might fall in if you climb on it.’
Certainly the house, left without its proper owners for three years, now needed attention. For this reason, when it was announced that the harvest was to begin in a few days, Gyuli arranged with the brigadir to take two days off. Her first task was to fix the roof. She dug a small pit at the edge of the yard and prepared an adobe mixture of straw and clay. Then she called her nephew Turgan to help her, and between them they managed to cover the whole of the roof with the mixture.
Knowing that she would shortly be occupied from morning to night with work in the fields, Gyuli harvested everything she could from the vegetable patch and garden, loaded up a cart and drove to the bazaar. The money she made selling her produce she spent on provisions and on dresses and school things for the girls. Hadzhyar sewed them rag bags for carrying books. It was still a long time before school started, but even so, the girls tried on their new dresses every day. By now Selimyam had reached the age of nine and Saniyam was two years younger. They could hardly wait for September.
On 22 June the collective farmers went to help the young people mowing the grass. When the work was in full swing, the chairman of the kolkhoz appeared, together with a representative of the local government. The chairman seemed to be at a loss. He called all the villagers together and spent some time scrutinising the gathering.
‘Dear comrades, the war has started,’ the chairman said eventually, then was silent.
The farm workers, not fully comprehending, looked at each other in silence. The chairman cleared his throat. ‘Comrades! Early this morning the Fascist German army treacherously attacked our Motherland,’ he shouted. ‘Now there are rallies taking place and men are being called up all over the country to fight against the enemy. The government has declared the Great Patriotic War.’
The listeners held their breath, trying to grasp what they were hearing.
‘The war has come, comrades,’ the chairman said quietly.
Now the local government representative spoke. ‘Comrades!’ He looked round at the mothers and fathers, the dzhigits and the girls. ‘This is now wartime. From tomorrow the men will start to receive call-up papers from the enlistment office. So be prepared! And as for all women and children, the work in the fields will be left to you. We need to ensure our soldiers are well supplied with provisions! Be strong! Be courageous!’
Noise broke out among the crowd gathered. There was worry on their faces. The men frowned and clenched their teeth, while the eyes of the women were shining with tears. Hard times were coming for everyone. Would they be able to halt them?
‘Comrades!’ called Kurvan-aka, stepping forward, ‘the news of the war has shocked us all. But I suggest that we gather our strength right now and help the women with the haymaking as much as we can. Let’s continue working until we get our call-up papers, and this will help our mothers, wives and sisters to manage when we’re gone. And it will help ensure that the harvest doesn’t spoil and they aren’t left hungry. Then we can go to face the enemy with an easy conscience.’
The chairman and the government representative agreed with Kurvan’s speech. A representative of the young people said that the boys would go to the recruitment office themselves and write declarations of readiness to volunteer for the front.
After the meeting everyone who had been in the field hurried home.
From that day onward the people knew no peace of mind. Weeping could be heard in all the houses. A few at a time, fathers and sons set out for the front. The first to leave from our village were Dzhelil, Adil, Kudryat, Arup, Mahammyat and others, ten men in total. The men who remained in the kolkhoz were asked to work day and night under the slogan All for the Front, All for Victory! But the main burden of the farm work fell onto the shoulders of the mothers, children and old people.
In August the harvest began – the toughest time of the year for the villagers. The mothers we knew – Gyuli, Mervanam, Mariyam, Zaynaphan, Adalyat, Roshangul, Zoryam, Saryam, Zunaryam, Baharyam, Dzhannyat, Izzyat, Zileyhan, Imyaryahan and others – worked themselves to the point of exhaustion from morning to night. They set an example to the rest. Each day they harvested not just a thousand square metres but fourteen hundred. Because they exceeded the daily quota by so much, they were designated Leading Women. This, however, drained them severely. They went home in the evenings and collapsed with exhaustion. One or another of them might weep in despair and curse at all and sundry. But the morning would come and the women would rise again at the crack of dawn; rubbing their aching arms, legs and backs, each set about tidying their yard, milking their cow, fixing new dung bricks to their wall, then drank a bowl of tea, picked up their sickle and set off again for the fields. Nor were children exempt from the war effort: forced to grow up fast and share the burden with the adults, they gleaned the fields after the harvest. From early spring right through to late autumn, all who remained in the village, from seven to seventy, went to work in the fields.
Kurvan-aka could not understand why he had not been called up to the front and felt that perhaps he had done something wrong. One day at the evening meal he said: ‘They called Pahirdin up today. Tomorrow I’ll go to the recruitment office as well and ask why they haven’t sent me papers.
Tursun now glanced at his parents and then moved his gaze to his brothers and sisters. ‘Dada, ana, I also got my call-up today. I leave for the front in three days.’
Hearing this, everything went dark before his mother Maysimyam’s eyes. She pressed her hands to her breast. ‘Accursed Fascists! You make mothers grieve! This war is depriving us of husbands and sons! What will happen to us?’ She wiped her moist eyes with the tip of her shawl. ‘Will I see you again?’ she addressed Tursun with anguish.
‘Don’t cry, Mama. I’m not going to the front alone,’ he said, trying to comfort her.
And yet, take a child away from its mother and the mother feels that a part of her heart has been torn away. Maysimyam sat motionless. The war had reached her own family and now loomed over it, over her village and over her country.
