Jamilya

Jamilya
Chingiz Aitmatov (1958)
Translated from Kyrgyz to Russian by A. Dmitrieva
Translated from Russian to English by G. Meenaghan

So again I stand in front of the small, plainly framed painting. Tomorrow
morning I have to go to the village, and I stare at this painting for a long time,
fixedly, as if it can give me a kind farewell.
I have still never displayed it in exhibitions. Moreover, when relatives
come from the village, I try to hide it a little further away. There’s nothing
shameful in it, but it is a far cry from a model of art. It is simple, like the earth
is simple, depicted there upon it.
In the depth of the picture is the edge of a fading, autumn sky. Above a
distant mountain ridge, the wind chases quickly scattering thunderclouds. In
the foreground is a reddish-brown, sage-covered steppe. There is a road,
slick black, having not yet dried out from a recent rain. On its sides, broken-off
bundles of willow branches are gathered. Alongside the road’s washed-out
ruts stretch the tracks of two travelers. The farther off the tracks, the fainter
they appear, and it seems that if these very travelers take one more step, they
will disappear behind the frame. One of them … or rather, I’m jumping forward
a bit.
This was in the time of my early youth. The War was in its third year.
On the far fronts, somewhere near Kursk and Oryol, our fathers and brothers
battled, and we, then still adolescents of fifteen years, worked on the kolhoz1.
That heavy, everyday peasant labor lay on our yet undeveloped shoulders. It
was especially hot for us on the harvest days. For entire weeks we never saw
home; we were gone in the fields, on the threshing floor, or on the road to the
station where we delivered the grain.
On one such burning day, when the sickles gleamed white-hot from the
mowing, I, returning from the station in an empty wagon, decided to go home.

On a knoll, where the street ends near the creek’s ford, stood two
houses surrounded by a sturdy adobe wall. Giant poplars loomed over the
yard. These were our houses. Our families had lived in this neighborhood for
a long time. I myself was from the Big House. I had two brothers, both older,
both single, both had gone to the Front, and for a long time there had been no
news from either.
My father, an old carpenter, would always leave for the workyard and
its woodshop after completing the morning Namaz2. He always returned late
at night.

1
Kolhoz – (Russ. = Коллективное Хозяйство) a State-owned collective farm during the Soviet era.
2
Namaz – one of five daily Islamic ritual prayers occurring at dawn, midmorning, noon, afternoon, and
dusk.

At home my mother and little sister remained.
In the neighboring house, or, as they call it in the ayeel3, the Small
House, lived our close relatives. Neither our grandfathers, nor even our great-
grandfathers were brothers by blood, but I call them “close” because we lived
together as one family. Such was the custom from the nomadic times when
our forefathers pitched camp together and gathered the herd together. We
kept this tradition. When collectivization arrived in the ayeel, our fathers built a
common neighborhood. And not just us, but all of Aralskaya Street (which
incidentally, spans the entire village) are tribesman, all from one family line.
Soon after collectivization, the master of the Small House died. His wife
was left with two young sons. By the old tradition of the ancestral clans, which
was still observed in the ayeel, one cannot let go of a widow with sons. So our
tribesman married her off to my father. Duty bound him to do this before the
spirits of our ancestors, since he was the closest relative of the recently
departed husband.
That is how our second family came to be. The Small House was
regarded as an independent household with its own yard and its own herd,
but essentially we all lived together. The Small House also sent two sons off
to the army. The oldest, Sadyk, left soon after he was married. We received
letters from him, although it’s true that there were big lapses between each.
In the Small House remained the woman that I called “kichi-apa” –
younger mother – and her daughter-in-law, Sadyk’s wife. Both of them worked
on the kolhoz from morning until evening. My younger mother was a kind,
modest, inoffensive woman, never lagging behind those younger than her at
work, be it digging a ditch or irrigating. In short, she held her ketmen4 firmly in
hand. Fate, as if to repay her, sent her a hard-working daughter-in-law.
Jamilya was a perfect complement for her mother-in-law – tireless and
industrious, but just a bit different in her personality.
I loved Jamilya ardently, and she loved me. We were close friends, but
never dared to call each other by name. If we had been from different families,
I would certainly have called her Jamilya. But I called her “jenay5,” as the wife
of my older brother, and she called me “kichinay bala6” or “my kayeen7.”
The domestic duties of both households were carried out by my
mother. My little sister helped her – a funny little girl with tiny ribbons in her
pigtails. I’ll never forget how zealously my sister worked in those days of
hardship. It was she who tended the lambs and calves in the yards of both
households. It was she who gathered the peat and brushwood so that it was
always warm in the house. And it was she, my snub-nosed little sister, who
relieved my mother’s loneliness, distracted her from the dark thoughts of her
missing sons.
For the harmony and prosperity of the house, our large family was
indebted to my mother. She was the sole master of both households, the
guardian of the family hearth. As just a young bride, she entered the family of
our nomadic ancestors and then held sacred their memory, directing the
3
Ayeel – (Kyrg. = Айыл) village.
4
Ketmen – (Kyrg. = Кетмен) a garden instrument, resembling a hoe, used widely across Cent. Asia.
5
Jenay – (Kyrg. = Жене) sister-in-law.
6
Kichinay bala – (Kyrg. = кичине бала) little boy.
7
Kayeen – (Kyrg. = Кайын) in-law.

2

family in full righteousness. In the village she was considered the most
respected, reasonable person, wizened by experience. Mother was in charge
of everything in the household. Truthfully speaking, the villagers did not
recognize my father as the head of the family. More than once I happened to
hear people saying in regards to something: “Eh, it’s better not to go to the
ustakay8” – that’s how they respectfully refer to tradesmen – “He only knows
what his axe is. The old mother is the real boss over there, so go to her and
it’ll be a sure thing…”
I should probably add that, in spite of my youth, I was often mixed up in
the household affairs. This was only the case because the older brothers had
gone off to war. More often jokingly, but sometimes in earnest, they called me
“the jigit9 of two families,” the protector and bread-winner. I was proud of this,
and this sense of responsibility never left me. Moreover, my mother
encouraged my independence herself. She wanted me to be industrious and
quick-witted, not like my father who silently spent his days sawing and lathing
wood.

So then, I stopped the wagon near our house in the shadows under a
willow tree, and after loosening the tack, moved towards the gates where I
noticed our foreman in the courtyard. He sat on a horse with a whip tied under
the saddle, as usual. My mother stood near him. They were arguing about
something. Coming closer, I heard mother’s voice.
“God forbid, where have you ever come across a woman loading grain
sacks onto a cart. No, my dear, leave my daughter-in-law in peace. Let her
work as she always works. As it is, I haven’t glimpsed the light of day…you try
and manage two households. Sure, the little one is growing up. Still, I haven’t
stood up in a week, breaking my back as if I’m rolling felt10. And there’s the
corn drying up, waiting to be watered,” said my mother tempermentally,
sticking the tip of her elechek11 under the collar of her dress, as she often did
when angry.
“What’s with you?” said Orozmat in desperation, shifting in his saddle.
“If I had a leg and not this stump, do you really think that I’d be asking? Of
course it’d be better, as it were, if I heaved the sacks and drove the horses.
That’s not women’s work. I know. But where the hell do you find a man
nowadays? So, I decided to ask the soldiers’ wives. You’re refusing me your
daughter-in-law while the administration breathes down my neck…The
soldiers need bread, and we’re disrupting the plan12. This isn’t helping
anyone.”
I approached him, dragging my whip in the dirt, and when the foreman
saw me, he brightened up uncharacteristically. Apparently, some thought had
dawned upon him.
“Well, if you fear for your daughter-in-law, here’s her little kayeen,” he
pointed at me triumphantly, “and he won’t let anyone come close to her. Rest
8
Ustakay – (Kyrg. = Устаке) craftsman.
9
Jigit – (Kyrg. = Жигит) a master horse rider of Central Asia. Colloquially, a young, virile man.
10
Rolling felt – refers to the laborious process of making felt. Felt is used to cover the walls and floors
of yurts.
11
Elechek – (Kyrg. = Элечек) Kyrgyz national headwear for married women.
12
Plan – refers to one of Stalin’s –year plans – strict, long-term production quotas for the kolhozes.

3

assured, Sayeet is a fine fellow. These young men are our bread-winners,
and only they can rescue us…”
Mother didn’t let him finish.
“Oh yeah, look at you, my little scoundrel,” she began to nag. “His head
has long overgrown. His dad’s a good one – can’t even find time to cut his
son’s hair.”
“Well all right then, let sonny here play around with the old folks today,”
said Orozmat, smoothly taking mother’s tone. “Sayeet, stay home today and
feed the horses, but tomorrow we’ll give Jamilya a wagon. You’ll work
together. And look here, you’re responsible for her. Don’t you worry, mother,
Sayeet will definitely keep her from harm. And since we’ve come to that, I’ll
send Daniar with them. You know him – a modest young man…the one who
just came back from the Front. Then the three of them will drive to the grain
station. Who will dare touch your daughter-in-law then? Isn’t that right,
Sayeet? What do you think? We were thinking of making Jamilya the driver,
but your mom doesn’t agree. Convince her, eh?”
The foreman’s praise – the fact that he was consulting with me as with
a grown man – flattered me. Furthermore, I began to imagine how nice it
would be driving to the station with Jamilya. So, making a serious face, I said
to mother, “Come on, nothing’s going to happen. What, are wolves gonna eat
her?” This all said like a full-fledged wagoneer, spitting through my teeth, all
business, flicking my whip in the dirt and steadily rocking my shoulders.
“Look you…” said Mother, quite astounded and bordering on a smile,
then suddenly exclaiming, “I’ll show you wolves! Suddenly you’re a know-it-all.
What do you know?”
Here, Orozmat stood up for me. “Who else’d know, if not him, the jigit
of two households? You should be proud,” glancing warily at mother as if she
might again begin balking.
But mother didn’t object, she just rather suddenly drooped and, sighing
heavily, muttered, “How is he a jigit? He’s still a boy, and he’s day and night
off at work. Almight God knows where our jigits are. Our yurts are empty, just
like a broken camp.”
I had already left and didn’t make out what else mother was saying. On
my way, I snapped the corner of the house with my whip hard enough to
make dust fly, and, self-importantly ignoring the smile of my little sister, who
was molding peat in the yard with clapping hands, slipped under the
overhang. Here, I squatted and slowly washed my hands, pouring for myself
from a pitcher. Going then into my room, I drank a cup of kymyz13 and put a
second cup on the windowsill after crumbling some bread into it.
Mother and Orozmat were still in the courtyard, Only now they weren’t
arguing, but were carrying on a calm, quiet conversation. They had to have
been talking about my brothers. Mother was constantly wiping her puffy, red
eyes with the sleeve of her dress, thoughtfully nodding her head to the words
of Orozmat, who was comforting her, and directing her fogged-over gaze
somewhere far, far away, over the tree-tops, as if hoping to see her sons
there.
13
Kymyz – (Kyrg. = Кымыз) fermented mare’s milk. Crumbling bread in kymyz is an old Kyrgyz
tradition, slowly disappearing from the culture.

4

Putting aside her grief, it seemed that mother agreed to the foreman’s
wishes. And he, content with getting his way, spurred on his horse and left the
courtyard at a quick trot.
Of course, neither my mother nor I expected how this would all end.

***

I didn’t doubt a bit that Jamilya could handle a horse-drawn wagon.
She knew horses; this was Jamilya, the daughter of a horseherder from the
mountain village Bakayr. Our Sadyk was also a horseherder. One spring day
at the horse races, he wasn’t quite able to catch up14 with Jamilya. No one
really knows the truth of it, but they say that after that offense, Sadyk stole
her15. Others, however, claim that they married for love. Either way, it’s all the
same, because they only lived together for all of four months. Then the War
started and Sadyk was summoned to the army.
I don’t really know how to explain it. Maybe it’s because Jamilya
herded horses with her father as a child, and because she was her father’s
only child – both daughter and son – but there were some masculine features
that came out in her personality, something brusque, and from time to time,
even rude. And she worked with such intensity – a man’s way. She was able
to get along with the neighbors, but if they offended her without good cause,
no one could match her at swearing. There were even times when it came to
pulling someone’s hair.
More than once the neighbors came to complain.
“What kind of daughter-in-law do you have, anyway? Barely a week’s
gone by since she crossed the threshold, and she’s already hammering away
with her tongue. She’s got neither respect, nor shame.”
“It’s good that she’s like that,” Mother would respond. “Our daughter-in-
law likes to look truth in the eye. It’s better than holding it in and then whining
behind your back. You all do a good job of pretending to be pure – pure like
rotten eggs – clean and smooth on the outside, but on the inside…plug your
nose.”
Father and kichinay apa never treated Jamilya with the strictness and
criticism typical of in-laws. They treated her with kindness; they loved her and
wished for her to be true to her husband and to God. I understood them.
Having sent four sons off to the army, they found consolation in Jamilya, the
sole daughter-in-law of two households, and appreciated her accordingly. But
I didn’t understand my mother. She wasn’t the kind of person to simply love
someone. My mother had a powerful and stern personality. She lived by her
own rules and never broke them. Just like every year, with the arrival of
spring, she would stand in the courtyard and fumigate the yurt16 with juniper –
that yurt that father built in his youth. She instilled in us a strict love of work

14
“…couldn’t catch up” – refers to the traditional horseracing game of catch between a jigit and a
young, marriageable girl. The man must catch up to a woman and kiss her at fulеl gallop.
15
“…stole her” – refers to the still-existing tradition of bride stealing. Though officially illegal, bride
stealing is widely practiced in the more rural areas of Kyrgyzstan.
16
Yurt – (Kyrg. = боз- ъй) traditional nomadic dwelling of Asian nomadic peoples, in many ways
similar to the teepees of Native American peoples. 

5

and respect for our elders. She demanded unquestionable obedience from all
members of the family.
So it seemed that from the very first days after her arrival, Jamilya was
not the proper kind of bride. It’s true, she respected and obeyed her elders,
but she never bowed her head to them, nor did she turn to the side and make
sarcastic remarks like others her age. She always spoke her mind
straightforwardly, never fearing to make her own judgements. Mother often
supported her, agreed with her, but always kept the deciding word for herself.
It seems to me that Mother saw an equal in Jamilya, in her
straightforwardness and righteousness, and secretly wished to place Jamilya
in her own position at some point, to make her the same kind of all-powerful
mistress, the same kind of “baibiche17,” the guardian of the family hearth.
“Praise Allah, my daughter,” Mother would preach to Jamilya, “that you
came into a strong, blessed household. This is your happiness. A woman’s
happiness is to bear children so that there is wealth in the home. And thank
Allah that you will have everything that we old ones have gained; you can’t
take it to the grave with you, after all. Happiness only lives with those that
guard their honor and conscience. Observe and remember this…”
But all the same, there was something in Jamilya that bothered her in-
laws. Perhaps she was too openly happy, like a little child. At times she would
laugh loudly and joyfully, for no apparent reason. When she returned from
work, she didn’t just walk, but ran into the courtyard, hopping over the aryk18.
She would then, out of the blue, begin kissing and hugging one in-law after
another.
And how Jamilya loved to sing. She was constantly singing something,
never shying away in front of the elders. All of this, of course, did not fit in with
the village’s fixed standards of conduct for daughters-in-law, but both families
were comforted by the fact that, with time, Jamilya would settle down; such
energy only came with youth. But for me, there was no one better than
Jamilya in the whole world. We had so much fun together, were able to laugh
without any reason, and chase each other around the yard.
Jamilya was, in her own way, quite pretty. Shapely, stately, with thick
black hair plaited into two tight braids that she deftly tied together with a white
kerchief. They were always a bit crooked on her forehead, but it looked good
on her, beautifully shading the dark skin of her smooth face. When Jamilya
laughed, her bluish-black almond-shaped eyes flared with youthful passion,
and when she suddenly began to sing those salty, village songs, a wicked
sparkle would appear in those eyes.
I often noticed how jigits, especially those having returned home from
the Front, would stare at her. Jamilya loved to tease them, although it’s true
that she also never held back her hand for those that forgot themselves. All
the same, it enraged me. I was jealous for her, as little brothers are for their
sisters, and if I ever noticed any young man near Jamilya, I always tried to
interrupt them somehow. I would puff myself up and look at them with such
contempt, as if saying with my body, “What the hell are you gawking at?!

17
Baibiche – (Kyrg. = Байбиче) old, venerated woman.
18
Aryk – (Kyrg. = Арык) small stream or brook that commonly flows through villages as a general
water source and for irrigation purposes, often forming a miniature moat in front of houses.

6

That’s my brother’s wife, and don’t think that there’s no one to stand up for
her.”
In such moments I would, with deliberate forwardness (only sometimes
called for) butt into the conversation, trying to deride her would-be suitors.
When nothing came of this, I would lose my temper, stomping my feet and
snorting with my nose.
They would burst out laughing.
“Would you just look at him. There’s no way that she’s just his jenay.
How amusing…and we never knew.”
I would stand fast, but felt my traitorous ears burning red and tears of
shame welling up in my eyes. But Jamilya, my jenay, understood me. Barely
holding herself back from the surrounding outburst of laughter, she would put
on a serious face.
“What, do you think that jenays loll around in the road all day?” she
would say to the jigits with a dignified air. “Maybe yours do, but I sure don’t.
Let’s get out of here, my kaini19, and you guys beat it too.” Then, flaunting
herself in front of them, she would proudly toss her head, straighten her
shoulders challengingly, and leave with me, smiling silently.
I saw both amusement and annoyance in that smile. Perhaps she was
then thinking, “Oh kaini, you dummy. If I want to do something, no one’s going
to hold me back. Even if the whole family goes spying, you won’t catch me.” In
such cases, I would keep a guilty silence. Yes, I was jealous for Jamilya, I
idolized her, took pride in the fact that she was my jenay, and took pride in her
beauty and willful, independent personality. We were the sincerest of friends
and kept nothing secret from each other.
In those days there were few men in the village. Taking advantage of
this, a few of the men in the village behaved arrogantly towards women,
related to them disdainfully. “Why waste your time dawdling with women,”
they would say. “Just curl your finger and any one of them will come running.”
One day in the hayfields, Osmon, our distant relative, began coming on
to Jamilya. He was also one of those men that considered himself irresistible
to women. Jamilya, pushing away his hand, got up from the shade of the
haystacks where she was resting.
“Get away!” she exclaimed in distress, and turned away. “What more
can be expected from the likes of you, nothing more than a breeding horse!”
Osmon, sprawled out below the haystacks, contemptuously curled his
wet lips.
“The higher the meat dangles from the stick, the better it smells to the
doggy…What’re you afraid of? You’ll probably want it for the rest of your life,
and you turn your nose up?!”
Jamilya turned sharply.
“Maybe I do want it! But fate has turned out this way. And you, you
idiot, sit there laughing. I’ll be a soldier’s wife for a hundred years and won’t
ever even spit on the likes of you. You’re disgusting. I’d like to see who would
even talk to you if there weren’t a war right now!”

19
Kayni – see Kayeen (#7)

7

“That’s what I’m saying. There is a war, and you’re getting mouthy
without your husband’s whip. If only you were my broad, you wouldn’t be
singing so.”
Jamilya wanted to attack him, at least to say something more, but
stopped short; she understood that it wasn’t even worth it to associate with
him. She gave him a long, hateful glance, and then, spitting disgustedly, lifted
a pitchfork from the ground and walked off.
I was standing on a wagon behind the haystack. Seeing me, she
quickly turned to the side. She understood the state I was in. I had the feeling
as if it had been me, and not her, that had been insulted, that I, namely, had
been humiliated. With a heavy heart, I scolded her.
“Why are you involved with such people? Why do you even talk to
him?”
Up until evening, Jamilya walked around, frowning gloomily, not
uttering one word to me and not smiling like usual. When I drove the wagon
up to her, she swung her pitchfork, driving it into the haystack, and, lifting it
full, carried it away out in front of her, hiding her face behind it, if only to keep
me from mentioning the terrible offense that she was hiding in herself. She
threw the hay off with a jerk, and took to another haystack. The hay wagon
filled up quickly. As I was moving away, I turned and saw how she would
stand at times, leaning on the handle of her pitchfork, sadly thinking about
something, and then, suddenly remembering where she was, would get back
to working.
When we had loaded the last hay wagon, Jamilya, as if having
forgotten about everything around her, stared at the sunset for a long time.
There, behind the river, somewhere on the edge of the Kazakh steppe, the
hayfield’s languishing sun flamed like the top of a hot tandir20. It slowly ebbed
behind the horizon, giving the porous clouds a crimson glow in the sky and
throwing the last reflection of light on the lilac-colored steppe, already covered
in its depressions by the bluish tint of early twilight. Jamilya watched the
sunset with quiet rapture, as if a fantastic vision had appeared to her. Her face
brightened with kindness and her half-open lips smiled softly, child-like. Here,
Jamilya, precisely in answer to the unsaid reproaches that were still on the tip
of my tongue, turned to me and spoke in a tone, as if we were continuing our
conversation.
“Don’t even think about him, kichinay bala. To hell with him. Is that
really a man?…” Jamilya fell silent, leading her gaze to the fading edge of the
sun and then, sighing, thoughtfully continued. “How do they know, those like
Osmon, what a person has in her heart? No one knows that…perhaps there
are no such men on earth…”
While I was turning the horses about, Jamilya managed to run up to the
women who were working off to the side, and the sounds of their loud, happy
voices quickly reached me. It’s hard to say what had happened with her.
Perhaps her soul brightened when she watched the sunset, or maybe she
cheered up because she had worked so well. I sat in the wagon on a tall stack
of hay and watched Jamilya as she plucked her white kerchief from her head

20
Tandir – (Kyrg. = Тандыр) a semi-spherical brick and adobe Kyrgyz stove, traditionally used for
baking bread.

8

and ran after a friend, her arms thrown out wide, through the shaded, freshly
mowed meadow. The hem of her dress flapped in the wind. Then suddenly,
my own melancholy flew from me. “It’s not worth it to think about Osmon’s
prattle.”
“Giddyup, let’s go,” I urged on, spurring the horses.
On the day the foreman gave me the orders, I decided to wait for my
father so he could cut my hair. In the meantime I took to writing a response to
Sadyk’s letter. In this, we had our own rules: my brother wrote the letters to
my father, the village postman delivered them to my mother, and it was my
duty to read the letters and write responses to them. Not even having begun
to read it, I already knew that Sadyk had written it. All of his letters were one
and the same, like a vulture in a flock. Sadyk always began with the words, “a
message concerning health,” and then invariably imparted, “I send this letter
by post to my kin, living among the fragrant blossoms of Talas, especially to
my dear, beloved father Jolchubai…” Further on would be my mother, then his
mother, and the rest of us in strict order. After all this would certainly follow
questions about the health and prosperity of the clan’s aksakals21 and close
relatives, and then only at the very end, seemingly hurriedly, he would add,
“and I also send my regards to my wife, Jamilya.”
Of course, when one’s mother and father are alive, and the aksakals
and close relatives are still thriving in the village, it would be awkward, even
impolite, to remember one’s wife first, not to mention addressing the letter in
her name. Not only Sadyk, but every self-respecting man thought this way.
There was nothing to interpret here, such was simply customary in the village.
Not only was it not cause for discussion, we just didn’t even think about it, so
ingrained it was. Thus every letter was a longed for, joyous occasion.
Mother insisted that I read the letter over a couple of times. Then with
devout tenderness, she took it into her chapped hands and held it tightly, as if
it were a bird that would dart out at any moment. With difficulty, she finally
slipped the letter back into the triangle22, her rigid fingers trembling.
“Oh, my dears, we will preserve your letters like a talisman,” mother
kept repeating in a voice shaky with tears. “Look how he inquires about us:
father, mother, the relatives…but we’re not going anywhere, by ourselves
here in the village. But what about you? Just scribble the words, ‘I’m alive,’
and that’s it. We need nothing else.”
Mother looked at the triangle a bit longer, then hid it away in the leather
bag where she kept all the letters and locked it in a trunk.
If it happened that Jamilya was home at the time, they would give her
the letter to read. Every time she took the triangle in her hands, I noticed how
she blushed. She would read to herself greedily, quickly skipping through the
lines with her eyes. But the closer she came to the end, the lower her
shoulders would sink down, and the fire in her cheeks would slowly die out.
She would crease her stubborn brows, and after reading the last line, would
return the letter to mother with cold apathy, like she was giving back money
that was loaned to her.

21
Aksakal – (Kyrg. = аксакал) literally, “white-beard.” A respectful term for an old Kyrgyz man.
22
Triangle – (Russ. = треугольник) in order to economize during the War, the Soviet Army didn’t
provide envelopes. Instead, the soldiers folded their letters into paper triangles and sent them as such.

9

Mother understood Jamilya’s mood, apparently in her own way, and
always tried to cheer her up.
“What’s this about,” she would say, locking the trunk. “Instead of being
happy, you’re hanging your head. Or do you think that yours is the only
husband in the army? You’re not alone in your grief. This is our people’s
sadness, and you should cope with it like the rest of the people. What, do you
think that there are those that don’t miss and long for their husbands and
relatives? Pine away, but don’t show it. Hide it inside yourself.”
Jamilya would keep silent, but it always seemed that her stubborn and
melancholy look said, “You don’t understand anything, Mother.”
That time, Sadyk’s letter had arrived from Saratov. He was lying there
in the hospital. He wrote that, God willing, he would return home in the fall on
injured leave. He had informed us about this earlier, and we were all looking
forward to meeting with him soon.

Anyway, I didn’t remain at home that day, but left for the threshing
floor23. That’s usually where I spent the night. I hobbled the horses and led
them out to the lucerne. The overseer didn’t allow pasturing herds in the
lucerne, but I wanted my horses to measure up, so I broke this rule. I knew of
a secluded little place in the lowlands that no one could see at night, but this
time, when I un-harnessed the horses and led them out, it turned out that
someone had already let four horses out in the lucerne. This infuriated me.
Seeing as I was the master of a two-horse wagon, I had the right to be
indignant. Without really reasoning, I decided to drive these unknown horses
off somewhere a little farther along to teach a lesson to this impudent
whomever, encroaching upon my domain. But suddenly I recognized two of
Daniar’s horses, the same Daniar that the foreman had mentioned that
afternoon. Recalling that the next morning we were to drive the grain to the
station with him, I left his horses in peace and returned to the threshing floor.
It turned out that Daniar was there. He had just finished greasing the
wheels of his carriage and was then tightening the nuts on the axles.
“Danikay, are those your horses down in the lowlands?” I asked.
Daniar slowly turned his head.
“Two are mine.”
“And the other pair?”
“Those’re what’s her…Jamilee or something…those’re her horses.
Who’s she to you, your jenay?”
“Yeah, Jenay.”
“The foreman left them here, told me to watch ‘em…”
How good that I hadn’t driven off the horses.
The night came and a twilight breeze set in, blowing down from the
mountains. The threshing floor quieted down in turn. Daniar sat down beside
me under a stack of straw, but after a little while got up and went down to the
river. He stopped not far off, on a precipice, and remained standing with his
hands behind his back and his head slightly tilted to the side. He stood with

23
Threshing floor – a place where wheat is winnowed, stored, then sent to the mill. A grainery.

10

his back to me. His long, angular figure, seemingly carved by an axe, stood
out sharply in the soft moonlight. It seemed that he was listening intently to
the noise of the river, swelling all the more distinctly on the shoals at night. Or
perhaps he was listening to some of the night’s rustles and sounds, quite
imperceptible to me. “He plans on spending the night by the river again. What
a strange bird,” I grinned.

Daniar had appeared in our village not long ago. One day, a little boy
ran to the hayfield and said that a wounded soldier had come to the village,
but who and whose, nobody knew. Oh, that was something. You see, in the
village it was like this: when someone came back from the trenches, every
last man, old and young, came running in droves to see the new arrival,
greeting him with a handshake, asking whether he’d seen any relatives or
heard any news. Here, an unimaginable din would arise, everyone guessing,
“perhaps our brother has returned, or maybe our son-in-law?” Then the hay-
mowers would run up to find out what was going on.
It turns out that Daniar was related to a fellow countryman, a native of
our village. They say that he was orphaned as a child, wandering for three
years from house to house until he fell upon some Kazakhs on the Chakmack
Steppe; the relatives on his mother’s side were Kazakhs. There were no other
close relatives to turn him over to, since they’d all forgotten about him. When
people would ask him about how he’d gotten on after leaving his home, he
would always answer elusively. All the same, one could understand that he
had experienced grief, and then some, and was all too familiar with the
orphan’s lot. Life drove Daniar here and there, like a rolling stone. He
shepherded the herds for a long time on the Chakmack salt flats, dug
irrigation canals in the deserts, worked in the new cotton plantations and then
in the Angren mines near Tashkent, and left to the army from there.
The people of the village met Daniar’s return with approval. “As much
as he’s been knocked around the world, that he returned means that he was
destined to drink from his native spring. See how he hasn’t even forgotten his
native tongue. Sure, he mixes it a bit with Kazakh, but otherwise he speaks
cleanly.”
The old aksakals would say to him, “A stallion will track down his herd
from the farthest ends of the earth. To whom are one’s homeland and kin not
dear? It’s splendid that you’ve returned. We’re happy, as are the spirits of our
ancestors. And, God willing, we’ll defeat the Germans, live in peace again,
and you can settle down to the married life and watch the smoke soar above
your hearth.”
Tracing Daniar’s ancestors, they had ascertained exactly which birth
line he came from. Thus, there appeared in our village a new kinsman –
Daniar.
And so the foreman, Orozmat, brought to us in the hayfield a tall,
round-shouldered soldier, limping on his left leg. With his trenchcoat thrown
over his shoulder, Daniar walked jerkily, trying not to fall back behind the
pronounced gait of Orozmat’s stocky mare. But next to Daniar, the foreman’s
own small size and stiffness were reminiscent of a scared sandpiper. The
fellas all cracked up.

11

Daniar’s wounded leg, then still not totally healed, couldn’t bend at the
knee and therefore he was not fit for mowing hay. So they directed him to us
guys at the hay-cutting machines. Honestly speaking, we didn’t really like him.
His withdrawn nature didn’t sit well in our hearts. Daniar spoke little, and when
he did speak, one got the feeling that at that moment he was thinking about
something completely different, extraneous, that he had his own thoughts.
You were never quite sure whether or not he saw you, though he looked
straight into your face with his pensive, dreamy eyes.
“It’s sad to see how the poor fella can’t quite get it together after the
Front,” they would say about him.
What’s interesting though, is that even with his constant contemplation,
Daniar worked quickly and precisely, and from a distance, you might have
even thought that he was an open and friendly person. Perhaps the hard,
orphan’s childhood taught him to hide his thoughts and feelings, developed
this reservation in him. Maybe that was it.
Daniar’s thin lips, with the heavy creases in the corners, were always
tightly pressed together, his eyes looked sad and still, and only his mobile,
expressive eyebrows gave life to his lean, always haggard face. Sometimes
he would prick up his ears up, as if hearing something inaudible to others,
then his brows would shoot up and his eyes would alight with an
incomprehensible joy. He would then smile for a while and be happy about
something. This all seemed strange to us. And that wasn’t the only thing; he
had other quirks too. Such as when we tethered the horses in the evening and
sat by the shed while the cook fried up the food, Daniar would take off to
Lookout Hill and sit there until dark.
“What’s he doing up there? Did they put him on patrol or something?”
we all joked.
So one day, for curiosity’s sake, I snuck up behind Daniar towards the
hill. It seemed that there was nothing special there. The hilly steppe spread
out all around, immersed in the lilac twilight. The dim, shadowy fields
seemingly dissolved into the silence.
Daniar didn’t even take note of my coming. He sat, hugging his knees,
staring off somewhere in front of him with an unclouded, thoughtful look. And
again it seemed to me as if he was listening intently to some sound, beyond
my hearing. From time to time he would freeze and prick up his ears with eyes
widely opened. There was something wearing on him, and it appeared that he
would then and there stand up and fling open his soul, only not to me, for he
hadn’t noticed me, but to something huge, unembraceable and unknown to
me. Then I looked and didn’t recognize him: sullen and slack he sat, as if
simply relaxing after work.

The fields of our kolhoz were scattered throughout the flood-plane of
the Kurkurey River. Not far from us, the Kurkurey tore down from a canyon
and rushed through the valley with a furious, unbridled flow. The hay mowing
always happened during the high-water season of the mountain rivers. From
evening time, the water would begin to arrive, muddy and frothy. At midnight, I
sometimes awoke in the shed from the mighty river’s rumble. After settling in,
the dark-blue night looked into the shed with its stars, a cold wind sprang up

12

in spurts, the earth slept, and only the tearing river drew near us, seemingly
threateningly. Although we weren’t on the very shore, at night the water was
so closely palpable, that fear would unconsciously seize you. What if it
suddenly carries me off, washes me away? My comrades slept the
unwakeable sleep of hay-mowers, but I couldn’t fall asleep and left the shed.
Night was both beautiful and terrifying in the flood-lands of the
Kurkurey. Here and there, shadowy, hobbled horses showed up in the
meadows. A bunch of them were pastured in the dew-speckled grass, dozing
lightly with occasional whinnies. Nearby, the Kurkurey deafly rolled over
rocks, lashing a wet willow and then running into the shore. The unrelenting
river filled the night with a furious, menacing tumult. It demanded awe. It was
frightening.
On such nights, I was always reminded of Daniar. He usually spent the
night on the haystacks next to the shore. Wasn’t it frightening for him, too?
How did he not go deaf from the roar of the river? What did he find in this? A
strange man, not from this world. Where is he now? I looked from side to side,
seeing no one. The mountains’ crests showed forth in the darkness and
extended along the shore with the gently-sloping hills. There, in the upper
reaches, it was calm and starry.
You would think that it was time for Daniar to make some friends in the
village, but he remained alone like before, as if the understanding of
friendship and enmity, sympathy and envy, were alien to him. But you see, in
the village, it is the kind of jigit who does understand these things that is able
to stand up for himself as well as for others, is capable of doing good and,
once in a while, causing trouble, who, not backing down to the aksakals, can
be in charge of a wedding feast or a funeral, and who is always under the eye
of the ladies.
But if a man holds aloof like Daniar did, not getting involved in the
everyday affairs of the village, he will be the only one not to notice as the
others say condescendingly, “You’ll get neither good nor bad from that one.
He lives, the poor soul, and somehow makes ends meet. And anyway…”
Such a man, as a rule, acted as an object of ridicule or pity. And we
teenagers who always wanted to seem older than we were in order to be on
an even leg with the real jigits, constantly made fun of Daniar amongst
ourselves – never to his face, of course. We even made fun of how he
washed his own work shirt in the river and, ringing it out, would put it on while
it was still not dry. It was his only one.
The strange thing was that as quiet and modest as Daniar was, we still
decided not to treat him flippantly. Not because he was older than us – keep
in mind that with only three or four years difference in age, we didn’t stand on
ceremony; we just related to people using “sen24” – and not because he was
stern or self-important, which sometimes inspire a likeness of respect. No,
there was something secret in his quiet, sullen reflectiveness, and this held us
back – we who were ready to make fun of anyone at all.

24
“sen” – (Kyrg. = Сен) the intimate or informal way of saying you. This is comparable with “you”
(сен) as opposed to “thou” (сиз) in Middle English. The same forms appear in the Russian Language
(ты and вы).

13

It is possible that one particular event served as the reason for our
reservation. I was a very curious kid, and quite often people were fed up with
my questions. But questioning the soldiers from the Front was my real
passion. When Daniar appeared among us in the hayfield, I was always
looking for the right moment to get something out of the new Front man. One
time in the evening after work, we sat there in front of a fire, eating a bit and
resting quietly.
“Danikay, tell us something about the War before we go to sleep,” I
asked.
At first Daniar became quiet, and was perhaps even offended. He
stared into the fire for a long time and then lifted his head and looked at us.
“About the War, you say?” he asked, and, as if answering his own
personal reflections, murmured, “No, it’s better for you not to know about the
War.”
Then he turned, grabbed an armful of dried reeds, and after throwing
them into the fire, took to fanning the flames, not looking at any one of us.
Daniar said nothing more. But even from that short phrase which he
uttered, it became quite apparent that one couldn’t speak about the War
simply, that you wouldn’t get a bedtime story out of it. War baked the blood in
the depths of the human heart, and it wasn’t easy to talk about it. I was
ashamed of myself and I never asked Daniar about the War again.
Just as that evening was quickly forgotten, so too did the village lose its
interest in Daniar.

***

The next day, early in the morning, Daniar and I led the horses to the
threshing floor, and by that time, Jamilya had already arrived. After seeing us,
she yelled from afar.
“Hey, kichinay bala, would you bring my horses over here! And where
are my harnesses?” Then, as if she’d been a driver her whole life, she started
looking over the cart all business-like, testing with her foot to see if the wheel
bushings had been fitted well.
When Daniar and I arrived, our appearance seemed funny to her.
Daniar’s long, thin legs swung about in his broad-topped leather boots, which
were about ready to jump off his feet. And I goaded the horses with my bare,
black, calloused heels.
“What a pair,” Jamilya amusedly lifted her head, and, not missing a
beat, began to give us orders. “A little livelier, eh, so we miss the heat of the
steppe!”
She grabbed the horses by the bridle, confidently led them up to the
cart, and began harnessing them. She did it all by herself, only asking me one
time to show her how to adjust the reins. She didn’t pay any attention to
Daniar, like he wasn’t even standing right there.
Jamilya’s decisiveness and even her challenging self-assurance
apparently impressed Daniar. Not really amicably, but at the same time with a
secret admiration he looked at her, pursing his lips aloofly. When he silently

14

lifted the grain bag from the scales and lifted it up to the cart, Jamilya berated
him,
“What’s this? Is it going to be every man for himself? No, my friend,
that won’t do, so give me a hand over here. Hey, kichinay bala, what are you
looking at? Climb in the wagon and stack the bags.”
Jamilya grabbed Daniar’s hand herself, and when they lifted up the bag
together, clasping each other’s hands, the poor fella blushed from
embarrassment. And then every time they lifted the sacks, tightly grabbing
each other’s hands, their heads almost bumping together, I saw how
agonizingly uncomfortable it was for Daniar, how tensely he bit his lips, how
he tried not to glance at Jamilya’s face. But it didn’t bother Jamilya; she, it
seemed, didn’t notice her workmate, but rather, traded jokes back and forth
with the scalesman. Then, when the cart was loaded up and we took the reins
in hand, Jamilya, winking slyly, said between her laughter,
“Hey you, what’s your…Daniar or something? You’re a man by the
looks of it. Why don’t you be the first to start the trek.”
Daniar, still silent, tugged the wagon from its place. “Oh, you
unfortunate soul,” I thought to myself. “Why are you so bashful about
everything?!”
The road that lay before us was long: 20 kilometers through the steppe
and then across the canyon to the station. There was one good thing: as you
leave from the threshing floor, the road goes below the mountains the whole
way so that it wasn’t too tiring for the horses.
Our village, Kurkurey, is spread out along the banks of the River, on
the slope of the Great Mountains. As long as you still haven’t entered the
canyon, the village, with its shaded clumps of trees, is always in sight.
We managed to make only one trip per day. We would drive out in the
morning and arrive at the station after midday.
The sun burned mercilessly, and at the milling station you couldn’t get
anywhere: there would be carts and hay wagons with grain sacks, having
arrived from the entire valley, and donkeys and oxen loaded up from the
distant mountain kolhozes. Ushering them all in were dirt-blackened boys and
soldiers’ wives in faded clothes with bare feet, cracked from the rocks, and
bloody lips, chapped from the heat and dust.
On the gates of the State Grain Procurement hung a placard: “Every
ear of wheat to the Front.” A locomotive shunted, throwing out thick puffs of
steam and blazing with coal cinders. The trains flew by with a deafening roar.
Camels desperately and maliciously bawled, chomping their slobbery jaws,
not wishing to get up from the ground.
At the receiving and collecting point, under a white-hot roof, lay
mountains of grain. The grain sacks had to be carried to the tops, under the
very roofs, along a path made of wooden planks. The dust took the air from
the lungs and the grain left a thick stuffiness.
“Hey you, fella, look here,” yelled the grain inspector from below, with
red sleepless eyes. “Carry it to the top, the very top!” threatening with his fist
and breaking out swearing.

15

Well, what’s he swearing at? We know where to carry it, and we carry
it there. We’re the ones who carried the grain on our own shoulders from the
very field where the women, old folks and children collected the wheat; where
then in the desperately hot season, the thrasher drivers struggled with the
beaten-up thrashers—having long outlasted their lifetime; where the women’s
backs were constantly bent over their blazing sickles; and where little
children’s hands protectively gathered every fallen grain of wheat.
I still remember how heavy the bags were that I carried on my
shoulders. Such work was meant for the very strongest of men. I would be
going up, balancing on the path’s creaking, sagging planks, tightly biting the
edge of the sack with my teeth, just to keep ahold of it and not let it go. My
throat tickled from the dust, a heaviness pressed on my ribs and fiery rings
stood before my eyes. And how many times, weakening at the halfway point,
feeling how the grain sack was inexorably sliding down my back, I wanted to
throw it, and roll down to the bottom with it. But behind me there were people
coming. They also carried grain sacks—boys the same ages as me, also
youngsters or soldiers’ wives who had children. If there weren’t a war, would
they really allow them to carry such loads? No, I didn’t have the right to give
up, not when women were doing the exact same work.
I watched as Jamilya went ahead, having tucked her dress up above
her knees, and I saw how the round muscles tensed in her beautiful, tan legs.
I saw the effort with which she held up her flexible body, bending spring-like
under the sack. Only sometimes would Jamilya pause, as if feeling how I was
weakening with every step.
“Buck up, kichinay bala! There’s only a little left.”
But the voice itself was already smothered and inaudible.
When we turned back after pouring out the grain, we ran into Daniar.
He walked along the path, limping a bit, alone and silent as always. Coming
even with us, he threw Jamilya a somber, burning glance, and she,
straightening her tired back, flattened her crumpled dress. He looked at her
like that every time, each time like the first, but she continued to ignore him.
Such was already the way of things: Jamilya either laughed at him or
didn’t pay any attention to him at all. It depended on her mood. One time we
were riding along the road and suddenly she got something into her head and
yelled to me, “Hey, let’s go!” Then, whooping and swinging her whip above
her head, she drove the horses into a gallop. I was right behind her. We
passed Daniar, leaving him in thick, long-standing clouds of dust. Although
this was done in jest, not every man would be able to put up with this. But
Daniar, it seemed, wasn’t bothered. As we passed by, he looked with sullen
admiration at Jamilya, who was chuckling as she stood up in her wagon. I
turned around. Daniar was still looking at her through the dust. There was
something kind, all-forgiving in his look, but still I saw in it a stubborn,
suppressed longing.
Neither Jamilya’s pranks nor her complete apathy seemed to bother
Daniar. It was as if he had taken a vow to “endure all.” At first I pitied him,
and a few times said to Jamilya:
“Why do you keep making fun of him, jenay? He’s such a harmless
guy.”

16

“Oh him?!” laughed Jamilya, and waved a dismissive hand. “It’s all just
a joke. Nothing will come of it with that lone wolf.”
Then I began to laugh at and poke fun of just as much as Jamilya
herself. His strange, unyielding glances began to bother me, how he looked
at her when she hoisted a sack on her shoulders. But it’s true: in all that
ruckus and pushing in the chaotic commotion of the workyard, amidst those
hoarse, disorganized people, Jamilya struck everyone with her precise,
assured movements and light step, as if it were all happening with room to
spare.
You couldn’t really help but look at her. Taking a sack from the side of
the wagon, Jamilya would stretch herself out, bending and lowering her
shoulder, tossing her head to the side such that her beautiful neck was
exposed and her sun-browned braids almost touched the ground. Daniar, at
seemingly odd moments, would come to a standstill, escorting her to the
doors with his eyes. He probably thought that he did this unnoticed, but I was
watching, and I began to not like it; it began to get on my nerves. I certainly
wasn’t able to consider Daniar worthy of Jamilya.
“Just think, even he is looking at her. So what does this say about the
others?” My whole being was indignant. And that childish selfishness, from
which I hadn’t yet freed myself, ignited me with a burning jealousy. Children
are always jealous for their relatives around strangers. So instead of pity for
Daniar, I experienced then a feeling of such enmity that I rejoiced and gloated
when others made fun of him.
However, one day our pranks ended quite sadly. Among the sacks in
which we carried the grain, there was one huge seven-pood25 sack woven
from woolen burlap. Usually, two of us would deal with it, for it was beyond
one man’s strength. One time at the threshing floor we decided to play a trick
on Daniar. We hoisted this huge sack into his wagon and piled other, smaller
sacks on top of it. On the way to the station, Jamilya and I ran into a Russian
village and picked a bunch of apples from someone’s garden, then laughed
the whole rest of the way as Jamilya threw apples at Daniar. Then, as usual,
we passed him, raising a cloud of dust. He chased us all the way across the
canyon to the railroad crossing where the road was blocked. From there, we
arrived at the station together, and it turned out that we somehow completely
forgot about that seven-pood sack, remembering it only when we were
finishing the unloading. Jamilya mischievously nudged me in the side and
nodded towards Daniar. He stood on the wagon, anxiously examining the
sack, and was apparently mulling over how to go about it. Then he looked
around from side to side and, after noticing how Jamilya was choking from
laughter, blushed brightly.
“Pull up your trousers, or else you’ll lose ‘em halfway there,” yelled
Jamilya.
Daniar tossed a mean glance towards us, and we didn’t get a chance
to think the better of it before he shifted the sack along the bottom of the
wagon, put it up on the wagon wall’s edge, leapt down, holding the sack up
with one arm and, hoisting it onto his back, took off. At first, we pretended
that there was nothing special in all this. The others, even more so, noticed

25
Pood (Russ. = пуд) approximately 36 lbs., making the grain sack approximately 252 lbs.

17

nothing. “There goes a man with a sack, just like everyone else.” But when
Daniar approached the walkway, Jamilya caught up to him.
“Toss the sack, eh. I was just joking!”
“Go away!” he said clearly, and started up along the walkway.
“See. He’s lugging it,” Jamilya uttered, seemingly justifying it all.
All the while, she quietly chuckled, but her laughter was becoming
somehow unnatural, as if she were forcing herself to laugh.
We noticed how Daniar began to fall harder on his wounded leg. Why
didn’t we think about that earlier? To this day, I can’t forgive myself for that
stupid trick. It was me, the idiot, who thought it up.
“Turn back,” yelled Jamilya through her fake laughter.
But Daniar already couldn’t turn back—there were people going up
behind him.
I don’t remember clearly what happened next. I saw Daniar, head
bowed low, bent down under the giant sack, biting his lips. He was going
slowly, carefully lifting his wounded leg. Every step apparently caused so
much pain that his head would twitch and he would freeze for a second. The
higher he climbed up the path, the more he swayed from side to side. The
sack itself rocked him. I was so horrified and ashamed that my throat dried
up. Having frozen to the spot, I sensed with my whole being the weight of his
load and unbearable pain in his crippled leg. Once again he reeled, then
shook his head, and my eyes began to swoon, to blur, and the ground swam
beneath my legs.
I came to when someone suddenly grabbed my hand so hard my
knuckles ached. I didn’t immediately recognize Jamilya—whitest of white,
with huge pupils in her widely-opened eyes, her lips still quivering from her
recent laughter. And not just us, but everyone that was there, including the
foreman, ran up to the foot of the walkway. Daniar went another two steps,
then wanting to adjust the bag on his back, began to slowly sink down to one
knee. Jamilya covered her face with her hands.
“Throw it! Throw the sack!” she cried.
But for some reason Daniar didn’t throw the sack, although he had long
been able to throw it down to the side of the walkway so as not to knock down
those walking behind. Having heard Jamilya’s voice, he lurched forward,
straightening his leg out, made another step and again tired out.
“Throw it, you son of a bitch!” screamed the grain inspector.
“Throw it!” yelled the people.
This time, Daniar stood up.
“No, he’s not going to throw it!” someone whispered with conviction.
And it seemed that everyone—both those that went behind him on the
walkway and those that stood below—understood that he wouldn’t throw the
sack, as long as he himself didn’t fall and tumble down with it. A deathly
silence settled in. Behind the wall, from outside, a locomotive whistled in
staccato.
Daniar, swaying slightly as if stunned, walked upwards under the red-
hot, metal roof, bending the walkway’s planks. After every two steps he would

18

pause, losing his balance. Then, gathering his strength anew, he would move
up further. Those walking behind him tried to adjust their pace to him and
also stopped short. This wore them out, as they were already strained to the
breaking point. But no one got upset and no one cursed at him. As if
connected by an invisible rope, the people walked with their loads like they
would along a slippery, dangerous path when the life of one depends on the
life of another. In their concordant silence and monotonous swaying was a
slow, singular, oppressive rhythm. One step after another behind Daniar, and
then one more. The soldier’s wife that walked behind him clenching her teeth
looked at him with great sympathy and entreaty. Her own legs were giving
way, but she prayed for him.
There was only a little left to go. The steep part of the path was almost
over. Daniar began to reel again, his wounded leg no longer obeying him.
From the way it looked, he would fall down if he didn’t release the sack.
“Run! Help him from behind!” Jamilya yelled at him, and desperately
stretched out her arms as if she could help him with this.
I tore up along the walkway. Pushing my way through people and
sacks, I made it up to Daniar. He glanced at me from under his elbow, veins
swelled on his wet, shaded forehead, and his blood-shot eyes burned me with
anger. I wanted to help lift the sack.
“Leave,” Daniar wheezed threateningly and moved forward.
When Daniar, breathing heavily and limping, came down below, his
arms dangled like whips. Everyone silently made way for him, but the
inspector couldn’t hold back and yelled out,
“What’s with you, fella? You gone nuts?! You think that I’m not a
human being, that I wouldn’t have let you dump it out at the bottom? Why are
you hauling that kind of sack?”
“That is my affair,” Daniar answer quietly.
He spit off to the side and went off towards the wagons. We didn’t dare
to lift our eyes. It was shameful and troubling that Daniar took our stupid joke
so closely to heart.
We rode silently all night. For Daniar this was natural, and therefore
we weren’t able to figure out whether he was offended by us, or whether he’d
already forgotten about everything. But it was still painful; our consciences
tortured us.
In the morning when we were loading up at the threshing floor, Jamilya
took that ill-fated sack, stepped on the corner with her foot, and tore it with an
audible ripping.
”Here’s your burlap!” She threw the sack at the legs of the bewildered
scales man. “And tell the foreman not to palm this kind off on us anymore!”
“What the hell’s gotten into you?”
“Oh nothing.”

***

19

All the next day, Daniar revealed none of his offense, held himself evenly
and taciturn, only he limped more than usual, especially when he was carrying
grain sacks. Apparently, he had seriously irritated his wound the day before.
The whole time this reminded us of our guilt before him. If only he had started
laughing or joking, it would have been easier – from that we could have
forgotten about the unpleasant affair.
Meanwhile, Jamilya made it appear that nothing special had happened.
Ever the proud one, she even laughed, but I saw that she wasn’t really herself
all day.
We returned late from the station. Daniar rode in the lead. The night
shone forth magnificently. Who doesn’t know those August nights with their
distant, but at the same time close, unusually bright stars? Every little star
was in plain sight. One of them, seemingly covered by hoarfrost on the edges,
all a-twinkle with its icy beams, looked at the Earth with naive amazement
from the dark sky. While we were riding through the canyon, I stared at it for a
long time. Pebbles crunched under the wheels as the horses eagerly trotted
home. The wind brought from the steppe the bitter pollen of blooming
sagebrush, the barely discernable aroma of the ripe and cooling rye, and this,
mixed with the smell of tar and sweaty horse tack, slightly dizzied my head.
On one side, above the road, overhung shaded cliffs grown over with
dogrose. On the other, far below in the thickets of willow and wild poplars,
raged the unflagging Kurkurey. From time to time, from somewhere behind
us, trains would fly across a bridge with an all-pervasive thunder and, moving
away, would leave behind the clattering of their wheels.
It was good to ride through the coolness, to look at the horses’ swaying
backs, to listen to the August night, to breathe in its scents. Jamilya rode in
front of me. Tossing her reins, she glanced from side to side and began to
quietly hum something. I then understood: our silence lay heavily on her. On
such a night it is impossible to be silent; on such a night you want to sing.
So she began to sing. It is possible that she sang because she still
wanted to somehow return the former spontaneity to our relations with Daniar
and she wanted to drown out her feeling of guilt before him. Her voice was
clear and impassioned, singing ordinary village songs such as “I Wave a Silk
Kerchief to You,” or “On the Distant Road, My Sweet.” She knew many such
songs and sang them simply and sincerely so that it was always pleasant to
listen to them. But suddenly she cut her song short and yelled to Daniar, “Hey
you, Daniar, why don’t you sing a little something. Are you a jigit, or what?”
“Sing, Jamilya, sing,” Daniar responded with embarrassment, having
brought the horses to a halt. “I’m listening to you. Both ears are tuned.”
“What? You think that we don’t have ears, or something? Think it over. If
you don’t want to, you don’t have to.” And Jamilya began singing once more.
Who knows why she asked him to sing? Perhaps, just because, or
perhaps she wanted to goad him into speaking. More likely, she just wanted
to talk with him, because after a few minutes she yelled out again, “Hey, tell
us Daniar, have you ever been in love?” and began to laugh.
Daniar didn’t answer. Jamilya also fell silent.
“She found someone to ask to sing,” I grinned to myself.

20

By the brook that intersects the road, the horses, clacking their shoes on
the wet, silvery rocks, slowed their pace. When we had passed the ford,
Daniar urged the horses forward and then unexpectedly began to sing in a
voice constrained and jumpy from the ruts.

“My mountains, my blue-white mountains,
land of my ancestors, land of my fathers!”

He suddenly faltered, coughed, but then brought forth two more lines in
a deep, hearty voice, though in truth, tinged with a slight hoarseness.

“My mountains, my blue-white mountains,
my cradle…”

Here, he again stopped short as if he was frightened by something,
and became silent.
I vividly imagined his self-consciousness, but even in that timid, broken
singing, there was something extraordinarily exciting and though the voice
was undoubtedly good, it simply wasn’t believable that it was Daniar’s.
“Would you look at that,” I let out.
And even Jamilya exclaimed, “Where were you before? Go ahead and
sing. Sing, like you ought to!”
Up ahead appeared a narrow shaft of light – the exit from the canyon
into the valley. From there blew a slight breeze. Daniar once again started to
sing. He began timidly, unsure, but gradually his voice took on a force that
filled the whole canyon, responding with an echo in the distant cliffs.
What impressed me most of all was the passion, the enthusiasm that
saturated the melody. I didn’t know what to call it, and I still don’t know. Or
rather, I can’t determine: Is it only the voice, or something still more significant
that emanates from a man’s soul, something that is capable of calling forth
such emotion in another man, capable of enlivening his innermost thoughts?
If only I could reproduce Daniar’s song. In it there were almost no
words, and without words it lay bare the immensity of the human soul. Not
before that and not after have I heard such a song; it resembled neither
Kyrgyz nor Kazakh melodies, but in it were remnants of both. Daniar’s music
drew into itself all of the very best melodies of both native peoples, and in its
own way, wove them into a singular, unique song. It was a song of the
mountains and the steppe, rising up clearly like the Kyrgyz mountains and
spreading out freely like the Kazakh steppe.
I listened and marveled. “So this, it turns out, is who Daniar is. Who
would have thought?”
We rode through the steppe along the soft, well-traveled road and
Daniar’s tune now expanded in breadth, new upon newer melodies of
surprising diversity changed one after another. Is he really so wealthy? What
happened with him? It was as if he was just waiting for his day, his hour.

21

All of a sudden, those peculiarities – his dreaminess, silence, and love
for solitude – that brought out of people such puzzlement and mockery,
became clear to me. I understood now why he sat out for entire evenings on
Lookout Hill, why he remained alone for the night by the river, why he
constantly listened to sounds indistinguishable to others, and why his eyes
would suddenly burn and his usually guarded brows would fly up. This was a
man deeply in love. And he was in love, I sensed, not simply with another
person; this was some other kind of huge love – for life, for the land. Yes, he
kept this love in himself, and only through his music he lived it. An apathetic
person couldn’t sing that way, wouldn’t possess such a voice.
When it seemed that the song’s last echoes died out, its new, trembling
upsurge seemingly awakened the dozing steppe. The steppe listened
thankfully to the singer, having been shown much kindness by the native
melody. Like a wide stretch of river, the ripe, blue-gray wheat swayed, waiting
for harvest, and pre-dawn patches of light ran across the field. At the mill, a
mighty copse of willows rustled its leaves; behind the river, the campfires
were burning low and someone, like a shadow, noiselessly rode above the
river’s shore toward the village, at times disappearing into gardens, other
times appearing again. From there came the smell of apples, the dairy-fresh
honey scent of blooming corn, and the warm smell of drying peat.
For a long time, Daniar sang selflessly. Quietly, the bewitched August
night listened to him. Even the horses had long ago settled into a measured
gait, as if they were afraid to disturb this miracle.
Then, suddenly, on the highest, ringing note, Daniar cut short his song
and, letting out a whoop, drove the horses into a gallop. I was thinking that
Jamilya would rush after him, and prepared myself, but she didn’t stir. She
remained sitting, her head leaned against her shoulder, as if she were still
listening to the uncooled notes hovering somewhere in the air. Daniar had left,
but we didn’t utter a single word all the way to the village. But then, did we
really need to? You can’t always say everything with words.
From that day forth in our lives, it seemed that something had changed.
I was now constantly expecting something good and desirable. In the
mornings we loaded up at the threshing floor, arrived at the station, and then
we would already be impatient to leave quickly so that we could listen to
Daniar’s songs on the way back. His voice was implanted in me, and haunted
me at every step. I ran with it in the mornings through the wet, dewy lucerne
to the hobbled horses and the sun, laughing, rode up from behind the
mountains to meet me. I heard his voice both in the soft rustle of the golden
rain of wheat thrown up by the old winnowers, and in the smooth, whirling
flight of a solitary kite in the steppe’s heights. Daniar’s music seemed to be in
all that I saw and heard.
In the evenings, when we rode through the canyon, it seemed to me
that every time I was being transported into another world. I listened to
Daniar, covering my eyes, and in front of me arose amazingly familiar scenes
from my chidhood: A spring caravan of delicate, smoky-blue clouds drifted by
above the yurts in the crane’s heights; horse herders flew around the summer
pastures along the droning earth with clatter and neighing; young stallions
with uncut manes and a burning, black fire in their eyes encircled their mates,
crazy and wild; flocks of sheep spread out among the hillocks like tranquil

22

lava; a waterfall tore down from the cliffs, dazzling the eyes with the whiteness
of its stirred-up froth; on the steppe, behind a stream, the sun dropped down
into a thicket of willows, and a single, distant rider on the fiery edge of the
horizon, seemed to ride behind it – a hair’s breadth from the very sun – and
then drowned into the glades and twilight.

***

The Kazkh steppe spreads wide behind the river. It spreads our
mountains apart to either side and lays bleak and unpopulated.
In that memorable summer when the War broke out, fires blazed up on
the steppe and herds of cavalry horses clouded it with hot dust as couriers
rode off in all directions. I remember how a Kazakh rider, from the opposite
bank, yelled in a gutteral shepherd’s voice:
“Saddle up, Kyrgyzi. The enemy has come!” and then dashed off into a
whirlwind of dust and the waves of a burning mirage.
The steppe lifted everyone to their feet, and amidst a darkly festive
drone, our first cavalry divisions moved from the mountains through the
valleys. A thousand stirrups rang out and a thousand jigits looked to the
steppe. In front, red banners fluttered on flagstaffs, and in back a great,
sorrowful cry of wives and mothers struck the earth behind the hoofed-up
dust. “May the steppe and the spirit of our hero Manas aid you!”
Bitter tracks remained there, where our people went off to war…
Daniar opened this whole world of earthly beauty and excitement
before me in his song. Where did he learn this? From whom had he heard all
this? I understood that only one who had whole-heartedly longed for his land
for many years and had gained that love through suffering could love the land
so much. When he sang, I saw him as a little boy, wandering along the
steppe’s roads. Maybe then those songs about his homeland were born in his
soul, or perhaps it was when he stepped along the fiery walks of war.
Listening to Daniar, I wanted to press myself to the earth and tightly
embrace it, like a son – if only because a person can love it so. Then, for the
first time, I felt like something new had awoken inside me, something that I
was not able to name. But this something was insuperable; it was the demand
to express myself. Yes, to express, not only to see and feel for myself, but to
bring to others my sights, my thoughts, my feelings, to tell people about the
beauty of our land just as inspirationally as Daniar was able to do. I stood
frozen from an unexplainable fear and joy before something unknown. But
then, I still didn’t know that I needed to take a brush into my hands.
I had loved to paint since my childhood. I used to paint pictures from
textbooks, and my classmates said that they turned out “to a T.” The teachers
in school also praised me when I brought my paintings for the school
newspaper. But then the War started, my brothers went away to the army,
and I quit school to go work on the kolhoz like all of my peers. I forgot all
about paints and brushes and didn’t think that I would ever remember them.
But Daniar’s songs lifted my soul. I walked around as if in sleep and looked at
the world with astounded eyes, like I was seeing it all for the first time.

23

And how Jamilya had changed! It was as if there had never been that
witty, sharp-tongued joker. A light, spring melancholy obscured her dimmed
eyes. On the road she was constantly, persistently thinking about something.
A vague, dreamy smile wandered on her lips, and she quietly rejoiced at
something about which she alone knew. She would load up a sack on her
shoulder and just stand there, seized by an inexplicable fear, as if before her
ran a raging current, and she didn’t know where she should go ahead or not.
She avoided Daniar, didn’t look him in the eyes.
One day at the threshing floor, Jamilya said to him with a weak, forced
annoyance:
“Could you, maybe, take off your shirt. I’ll wash it.”
Then, washing the shirt out in the river, she spread it out to dry and sat
nearby, for a long time diligently pressing it with her palms and examining its
worn-out shoulders in the sun. She rolled her head around and again took to
pressing, quietly and sadly.
Only once during this time did Jamilya laugh loudly, infectiously, and
like before, her eyes glowed. From the lucerne’s haystacks turned a noisy
throng of women, girls, and jigits – former soldiers from the Front – trotting to
the threshing floor.
“Hey, Baii26, the wheat bread is not for you alone. Feed us. If not, we’ll
throw you into the water,” and the jigits jokingly brandished their pitchforks.
“You won’t intimidate us with pitchforks! I’ll find something to treat your
girlfriends, but you’d better win your own bread,” Jamilya replied clearly.
“Since you put it that way, all of you into the water.”
Here, the guys and girls began to grapple. With screams, squeals, and
laughter, they pushed each other into the water.
“Grab them! Pull!” laughed Jamilya, louder than anyone, quickly and
adroitly dodging the oncomers.
The strange thing was that it was as if the jigits only saw Jamilya. Each
tried to catch her and hug her to himself. Then three lads caught ahold of her
and carried her to the riverbank.
“Kiss us, or else we’ll throw you!”
“Go ahead and swing!”
Jamilya twisted and turned, threw back her head, and called to her
girlfriends for help through her loud laughter. But they were all frantically
running along the shore, fishing their kerchiefs out of the river. Amidst the
jigits’ friendly laughter, Jamilya flew into the water. She came out of the river
with wet, tousled hair, even more beautiful than before. Her wet, calico dress
stuck to her body, outlining her strong, rounded thighs and maidenly chest,
and she, noticing nothing, swayed slightly with happy streams of water
dripping all over her flushed face.
“Kiss us!” the jigits insisted.
Jamilya kissed them, but again flew into the water and again laughed
aloud, throwing back her heavy, wet locks with a toss of her head.

26
Baii – (Kyrg. = бай) refers to a person of great wealth in Central Asia.

24

Everyone at the threshing floor laughed at the youngsters’ escapades.
The old winnowers, having tossed aside their shovels, wiped off their tears,
the wrinkles on their brown faces shining brightly with joy and, for an instant,
coming to life with youthfulness. I also laughed with all my heart, having
forgotten this time about my jealous duty to guard Jamilya from jigits.
Daniar alone was not laughing. I happened to notice him and fell silent.
He stood alone at the edge of the barn with his legs spread widely apart. It
seemed to me then that he was about to tear off, run and grab Jamilya from
the arms of the jigits. He looked at her, not faltering, with a look of both
sadness and admiration, showing both joy and pain. Indeed, both his
happiness and grief were in Jamilya’s beauty. When the jigits pressed her to
themselves, forcing her to kiss each of them, he lowered his head and made a
move as if to leave, but never left.
Around this time, Jamilya noticed him. She immediately cut her
laughter short and cast down her eyes.
“Enough, you’ve had your fun!” she abruptly put the dispersing jigits in
check.
Someone else attempted to grab her.
“Get away!” Jamilya pushed aside the jigit, tossed back her head, and
after throwing a guilty, passing glance in Daniar’s direction, ran into the
bushes to wring out her dress.
I still wasn’t completely clear about their relationship and, admittedly,
was afraid to think about it. But for some reason, I was always ill at ease when
I noticed that Jamilya became sad because she herself avoided Daniar. It
would have been better if she laughed and made fun of him like before. But at
the same time, I was seized by an inexplicable joy for them when we returned
to the village in the evenings and listened to Daniar’s singing.
In the canyon Jamilya rode in the wagon, but on the steppe she would
climb down and go by foot. I also walked – it was better to walk along the road
and listen. At first, each went beside his own wagon, but step after step, not
even noticing ourselves, we approached closer and closer to Daniar. Some
unknown force drew us to him, wanted us to perceive in the darkness the
expression of his face and eyes. Is it really him singing? The unsociable,
sullen Daniar?!
I noticed every time how Jamilya, shaken and deeply touched, slowly
stretched her hand towards him, but he didn’t see this; he looked somewhere
above, far away, propping up his head with his palm and rocking from side to
side. Then, Jamilya’s hand unconsciously lowered to the side of the wagon.
Here, she shuddered, sharply pulled away her hand, and stopped. She stood
in the middle of the road, downcast, in a daze, looking at him for a long, long
while, then moving again.
At times it seemed that Jamilya and I were bothered by the same kind
of single, identically incomprehensible feeling. Perhaps this feeling had long
ago been hidden in our souls, and only now its day had come.
Jamilya was all the more lost in thought in her work. In those rare
moments of rest when we lay around the threshing floor, she didn’t find a
place for herself. She hung around near the winnowers, took to helping them,
powerfully tossing a few shovels-full of wheat into the wind and then suddenly

25

threw the shovel and took off towards the straw piles. Here, she sat in the cool
breeze and, as if fearing loneliness, called to me:
“Come here, kichinay bala. Let’s sit awhile.”
I was always waiting for her to tell me something important, to explain
what was troubling her. But she didn’t say anything. Silently, she lay my head
in her lap, looking somewhere in the distance, ruffling my prickly hair and
stroking my face with hot, quivering fingers. I looked up at her from below, at
her face, full of confused anxiety and longing, and it seemed that I recognized
myself in her. Something wore down on her also; something was growing up
and maturing in her soul, demanding an exit. This terrified her. She wanted
desperately, and at the same time did not want to admit to herself that she
was in love, just like I wished, and did not wish that she loved Daniar. In the
end though, she was still my parents’ daughter-in-law, my brother’s wife!
Such thoughts passed through me but only for an instant. I drove them
away. For me, the true enjoyment then was to see her kind, half-opened,
child-like lips, to see her eyes, clouded by tears. How pretty, how beautiful
she was; how her face breathed with such radiant passion and animation.
Then, I only saw all of this, but didn’t understand. Even now I ask myself the
question: “Is love, perhaps, the same kind of inspiration as an artist’s or a
poet’s inspiration?” Looking at Jamilya, I wanted to run out into the steppe and
cry out, asking the earth and sky what I have to do. How am I supposed to
overcome this inexplicable unrest, this unintelligible joy in myself? Then one
day I found an answer.
We were riding from the station as usual. Night had already set in.
Clusters of stars swarmed in the sky, the steppe was becoming drowsy, and
only Daniar’s song, breaking the silence, rang out and fell away into the mild,
dark expanse. Jamilya and I walked behind him.
What happened to Daniar this time? In his melody was such
tenderness, such heartfelt longing and loneliness that tears rolled down my
throat from sympathy and compassion for him.
Jamilya went along, head bent, tightly holding onto the wagon’s edge.
When Daniar’s voice again began to climb, Jamilya lifted up her head and, in
one motion, jumped into the wagon and sat near him. She sat petrified, arms
crossed on her chest. I walked nearby, running forward a bit and looking at
them from the side. Daniar sang, apparently not noticing Jamilya next to him. I
saw how her hands lowered weakly and then, clinging to him, she gently
leaned her head onto his shoulder. Just for an instant, his voice wavered, like
the waver of a whipped show-horse, and then sounded again with new
strength. He sang of love.
I was shaken. It was as if the steppe had roused, blossomed, drawn
back the darkness; and I saw on the wide steppe two lovers. They didn’t
notice me, like I wasn’t even there. I walked along and looked at how they
rocked in time to the song, having forgotten about all worldly things. I didn’t
recognize them. It was still the same Daniar in his unbuttoned, worn-out
soldier’s shirt, but his eyes, it seemed, burned in the darkness. It was my
Jamilya clinging to him, but a quiet, timid Jamilya with tears on her eyelashes.
These were new, unprecedentedly happy people. Wasn’t this true happiness?
Daniar wholly gave her all of his inspired music; he sang for her and he sang
of her.

26

Again, that same unexplainable excitement that always came with
Daniar’s songs possessed me. All of a sudden it became clear what I wanted.
I wanted to paint them.
I was scared of my own thoughts. But the desire was stronger than the
fear. I would draw them as happy as they were then! But would I be able to?
The fear and joy took my breath away. I went along in a sweetly drunken
reverie. I was also happy then, because I still didn’t know how many
difficulties this bold desire would cause me in the future. I told myself that I
had to see the land as Daniar sees it, that I would retell Daniar’s story with
paint, that there would also be mountains, the steppe, people, grass, clouds,
and rivers. I even thought, “Where will I get paint?! They won’t give them out
at school – they need it for themselves,” as if the whole affair came down to
that.
Daniar’s song suddenly cut short. Here, Jamilya impulsively embraced
him, but then drew away, freezing for an instant before lurching to the side
and climbing down from the wagon. Daniar hesitantly pulled the reins and the
horses stopped. Jamilya stood on the road, her back turned to him, then
sharply lifted her head, gazing at him, half-turned, and, after wiping away her
tears exclaimed,
“Well, what are you looking at!?” and after a pause of silence, sternly
added, “don’t look at me. Ride on!” and went to her own wagon. Then she
turned on me, “…and what’re you staring at? Sit down and take your reins!
Oh, it’s only grief with you all.”
“What’s with her all of a sudden,” I wondered, driving the horses on. It
wasn’t worth it to guess – it couldn’t be easy for her having a lawful husband,
alive somewhere in a Saratov hospital. But I decidedly didn’t want to think
about anything. I was angry at her and at myself, and would have despised
Jamilya if I found out that Daniar wouldn’t sing anymore, that I would never
again have occasion to hear his voice.
A death-like exhaustion pained my body and I wanted to quickly make
my way to the threshing floor and collapse in the straw. The backs of the
trotting horses swayed in the darkness, the wagon shook unbearably, and the
reins slid out of my hands.
At the threshing floor I somehow pulled off the horse collars, threw
them under the wagon, and after making my way to the straw, fell. That time,
Daniar drove the horses to pasture himself.
The next morning, I awoke with a feeling of joy in my soul. I was to
paint Jamilya and Daniar! I squinted my eyes and very precisely imagined
Daniar and Jamilya the way that I would depict them. After that, I just needed
to take up a brush and paint.
I ran to the river, washed my face and hands and ran off to the hobbled
horses. The cold, wet alfalfa thickly quilted my bare feet, stinging their
cracked, red soles. But I felt wonderful. I ran and noticed as I went what was
happening around me. The sun stretched up behind the mountains and a
sunflower that had randomly grown up above the aryk reached up to the sun.
Chokeweeds greedily crowded around the sunflower, but it didn’t back down:
it intercepted the morning sun’s rays despite the chokeweeds, lapped them up
with its yellow petals and fed its full, compact basket of seeds. Water trickled

27

along the ruts of the aryk’s crossing, which had been mashed down by wagon
wheels. A lilac-covered islet was overgrown with stripes of fragrant mint. As I
ran along my native land, swallows dashed about above my head, racing one
another. Oh, if only there had been paint to depict the morning sun, the blue-
white mountains, the dew-covered alfalfa, and that wild sunflower that grew
alongside the aryk.
When I returned to the threshing floor, my joyful mood immediately
darkened. I saw Jamilya, gloomy and frowning. She probably hadn’t slept all
night. Dark shadows had set in under her eyes. She neither smiled at, nor
conversed with me. But when the foreman, Orozmat, appeared, she went
right up to him and said, without so much as a “hello”:
“Take your wagon. Send it wherever you want, but I won’t ride to the
station anymore!”
“What’s all this, my dear Jamilya? Did a gadfly bite you, or something?”
Orozmat was good-naturedly taken aback.
“The gadfly’s somewhere under a calf’s tail! And don’t try me. I said I
don’t want to, and that’s it!”
The smile disappeared from Orozmat’s face.
“Whether you want to or not, you’re going to deliver that grain,” he
banged his crutch on the ground. “If someone offended you, speak up. I’ll
break my crutch over his neck! If not – don’t be stupid. That’s the soldiers’
grain you’re delivering. Your own husband’s there,” and, turning sharply, he
hopped off on his crutch.
Jamilya was embarrassed, blushed all over and, after glancing towards
Daniar, quietly sighed. Daniar was standing a little ways away, back turned to
her, jerking tight the hame-strap on a horse collar. He heard the whole
conversation. Jamilya stood there a bit longer, pulling at the whip in her hand,
then waved her hand in frustration and went to her wagon.
On that day, we returned earlier than usual. Daniar drove the horses
the whole way back. Jamilya was morose and silent. I couldn’t believe that
before me lay a scorched, blackened steppe, since the day before it had been
nothing like that. It was as if I’d heard about it in a fairy tale and that picture of
happiness hadn’t left my head, transforming my perception. It seemed that I
had captured the very brightest piece of life. I imagined it in all of its detail,
and this only excited me. I didn’t calm down until I had stolen a dense ream of
white paper from the scalesman. I then ran behind the haystacks with my
heart pounding in my chest and put the paper in an evenly whittled wooden
shovel which I had swiped from the winnowers on the way.
“Praise Allah!” I whispered, like my father did once when he sat me on
a horse for the first time, as I touched pencil to paper. These were my first,
clumsy strokes. But when Daniar’s features became clear on the paper, I
forgot about everything! It already seemed to me that that August, twilight
steppe lay on the paper, that I could hear Daniar’s song and see him there
with his head thrown back and chest lain bare, that I could see Jamilya
clinging to his shoulder. This was my first original drawing: see the wagon,
and see both of them are there, the reins thrown out in front of them, the
backs of the horses swaying in the darkness, and further on the steppe the
distant stars.

28

I drew with such rapture that I didn’t notice anyone around, and only
came to when someone’s voice rang out above me.
“Have you gone deaf or something?”
It was Jamilya. I was flustered, blushed, and didn’t have time to hide
the drawing.
“The wagons have been loaded for a long time. We’ve been yelling our
heads off for a whole hour! What are you doing here? And what’s this?” she
asked as she took the drawing.
“Hmph,” Jamilya angrily hoisted her shoulders.
I was ready to fall off the face of the earth. Jamilya spent a long time
examining the drawing, then raised her sad, misty eyes and quietly said:
“Let me have this, kichinay bala…I’ll hide it away as a reminder,” and
folding the sheet in two, stuck in under the hem of her bosom.
We had already gone out onto the road, but I couldn’t seem to come to
myself. It was like it had all happened in my sleep. I couldn’t believe that I had
drawn a likeness of what I had seen. Somewhere, in the depths of my soul, a
naive jubilation had arisen, even pride, and dreams - one bolder than the
other, the other more alluring than the one - that left my head spinning. I
already wanted to create a multitude of different drawings, not with a pencil,
but with paint. I hadn’t even noticed how fast we were going. It was Daniar
who was driving the horses so hard, and Jamilya wasn’t lagging behind. She
looked from side to side, smiling at times, poignantly and guiltily. Then I
smiled: it all meant that she wasn’t angry at Daniar and me anymore, that if
she asked, Daniar would sing tonight.
We arrived at the station that time much earlier than usual, and the
horses were foaming as proof of our speed. Daniar began to lug the sacks
from the get-go. Where he was hurrying to and what was going on with him
was impossible to understand. When the trains passed by, he would stop and
follow them with a long, thoughtful look. Jamilya also glanced to where he was
looking, like she was trying to grasp what was on his mind.
“Come over here. The horseshoe is dangling. Help me take it off,” she
called to Daniar.
After Daniar tore off the horseshoe from the hoof, which he held
between his knees, and stood up straight, Jamilya said, looking him in the
eyes:
“What’s with you? Didn’t you understand? Or am I the only person on
earth who’s alone?”
Daniar silently turned his eyes away.
“You think it’s easy for me?” Jamilya sighed.
Daniar’s eyebrows shot up, looking at her with love and sadness, and
said something to her, but so quietly that I couldn’t make it out, and then
quickly walked off to his wagon, pleased by something. He walked, stroking
the horseshoe from time to time. I looked at him and wondered: what, in his
words, could have comforted Jamilya? How could there be comfort if a person
says with a heavy sigh, “you think it’s easy for me?”
We had already finished the unloading and were getting ready to leave
when a thin, wounded soldier in a rumpled overcoat with a napsack over his

29

shoulder walked into the workyard. A few minutes before that, a train had
stopped at the station. The soldier looked around and yelled out:
“Who’s here from Kurkurey village?”
“I’m from Kurkurey!” I replied, wondering who this could be.
“Whose would you be, little fella?” the soldier was about to make his
way over to me, but just then saw Jamilya and joyfully smiled in surprise.
“Kerim, is that you?!” exclaimed Jamilya.
“Oh Jamilya, little sister,” the soldier threw himself towards her and
clasped her hand with both of his.
It turned out that he was a kinsman of Jamilya’s.
“How fortunate! As soon as I found out, I turned this way,” he said
excitedly. “I just came from Sadyk; we were together in the hospital. God
willing, he’ll return in a month or so. When we were saying good bye, I said,
‘Write a letter to your wife. I’ll bring it to her…’ Here it is, safe and sound.”
Here, Kerim handed Jamilya a triangle.
Jamilya grabbed the letter, flushed, and then paled, carefully looking
sidelong at Daniar. He stood alone by the wagon like that time by the barn,
with his legs spread wide and eyes, full of anguish, looking at Jamilya. Then,
people came running from all sides, acquaintances and strangers, gathering
near the soldier and scattering inquiries. Jamilya hadn’t even time to thank
him for the letter when Daniar’s wagon rumbled by, tearing out from the
workyard, and bouncing off the potholes, sailed along the road.
“Has he lost his head, or something?” the people yelled from behind.
They were already leading the soldier away, and Jamilya and I were
still standing in the middle of the yard, looking at the fading puffs of dust.
“Let’s go, jenay,” I said.
“Ride on. Leave me alone,” Jamilya answered bitterly.
So, for the first time, we rode separately. A hot, sweltering heat burned
my dried out lips. The cracked, scorched earth, which had turned white-hot
during the day, seemed to be cooling to a salty gray. At dusk, the rippling
misshapen sun wavered in that same salty, off-white mirage. There, above
the hazy horizon, gathered red-orange storm clouds. A hot, dry wind swooped
down in spurts, forming a white film on the horses’ muzzles and they, sharply
tossing their manes, dashed away, scattering wisps of sagebrush along the
hillocks.
“Is it gonna rain, or what?” I wondered.
How helpless I felt. What anxiety had seized me? I whipped the horses
that were still trying to move into step. Lean, long legged bustards, frightened,
flew off somewhere towards a ravine. On the road gathered withered leaves
of desert burdock – a type that we don’t have, brought from somewhere in the
Kazakh lands. The sun went down. Not a soul was around on the steppe,
exhausted for the day.
When I arrived at the threshing floor, it was already dark. Silent. Calm. I
called out for Daniar.

30

“He left for the river,” replied the watchman. “It was so dead quiet that
everyone left for their homes. There’s no wind on the threshing floor and
nothing to do.”
I drove the horses out to pasture and decided to turn for the river; I
knew Daniar’s beloved place above the embankment.
He sat hunched over with his head bent on his knees, listening to the
river tearing along down below the precipice. I wanted then to approach him,
embrace him, and say something kind. But what could I say to him? I stood to
the side for a little while and then returned to the threshing floor. I lay on the
straw for a long time, looking at the clouded, darkening sky and thought, “Why
is life so complex and incomprehensible?”
Jamilya hadn’t returned. Where had she disappeared? I couldn’t fall
asleep, though I was dying from exhaustion. In the distance, summer lightning
flashed above the mountains in the depths of the clouds.
When Daniar came back, I wasn’t sleeping. He aimlessly wandered
around the threshing floor, constantly looking towards the road. Then he
collapsed onto the straw pile behind me. “Will he go away somewhere?” I
thought. “He can’t remain in the village now. But where does he have to go?
Alone, homeless, needed by no one.” I was already hearing, through my
dream, the slow rattle of a slowly approaching wagon. It seemed that Jamilya
had arrived.
I don’t remember how long I was sleeping when suddenly someone’s
steps began to rustle through the straw by my very ears, as if a wet wing had
gently brushed me on the shoulder. I opened my eyes. It was Jamilya. She
came from the river in a cool, rung-out dress. She stopped, nervously looking
around, then sat next to Daniar.
“Daniar, I came. I came on my own,” she said quietly.
Silence was all around; lightning noiseless glided downward.
“Were your feelings hurt? Badly, yeah?”
And again silence, with only a soft splash when a washed-out clod of
dirt broke off into the river.
“Am I the guilty one? And you’re not guilty…”
Thunder rumbled in the distance above the mountains. The lightning lit
up Jamilya’s profile. She looked around and then fell down towards Daniar.
Her shoulders trembled convulsively under Daniar’s arms. Stretching out on
the straw, she lay next to him.
A quickly ignited wind flew down from the steppe, spun the straw in a
whirlwind, slammed into a rickety yurt that stood near the edge of the barn,
then crookedly spun along the road like a top. Once again, blue flashes of
summer lightning rushed about in the storm clouds, thunder crashing through
above my head with a dry crackle. It became wondrous and frightening; a
storm was imminent – the last summer thunderstorm.
“Did you really think that I would exchange you for him?” Jamilya
whispered passionately. “No. No way! He never loved me. He just added his
regards at the very end of the letter. I don’t need him or his belated love. Let
them say whatever they want. My dearest, lonesome, I won’t give you up for
anyone. I have loved you for a long time. And even when I didn’t know it, I

31

loved and waited for you. And you came, like you knew that I was waiting for
you.”
Blue lightning, one breaking after the other, plunged into the river
below the embankment. Chilled, slanting raindrops rustled among the straw.
“Jamilyam, Jamiltai!” Daniar whispered, calling her by the tenderest
Kyrgyz and Kazakh names. “Turn over and let me look into your eyes.”
The storm burst forth.
A large piece of felt, torn off from the yurt, began to thrash about like a
crippled bird flapping its wings. In frantic bursts, torrential rain gushed as if
kissing the ground, whipped downward by the wind. At an angle, across the
whole sky, thunder resounded like powerful landslides. Bright flashes of
lightning broke out in the mountains like a tulip’s spring fire. The wind howled
and raged in the ravine.
The rain poured, and I lay, buried in the straw, feeling how my heart
was beating under my arm. I was happy and had a sensation as if I was
looking at the sun for the first time after recovering from an illness. Both the
rain and the lightning’s flashes reached me under the straw, but I was content.
I dozed off, smiling, not understanding whether it was Jamilya and Daniar
whispering or the abating rain rusting on the straw.
It was time for the rains to come. It would soon be Autumn. The air was
already infused with that moist, autumn smell of sagebrush and rain-soaked
straw. What awaited us in the Fall? For some reason, I never thought about
that.

***

That Fall, after a two-year break, I went back to school. Quite often,
after my lessons, I would go down to the river’s steep slopes and sit near the
old threshing floor, now soundless and empty. Here, I painted my first pictures
with my amateur paints. Even by the standards of those days, they weren’t all
that successful.
“Worthless paints! If only I had some real ones!” I said to myself,
though I couldn’t imagine how they were supposed to be.
Only considerably later on did I have occasion to see real oil paints in
lead tubes.
Paint aside, it seems that, all the same, those teachers were right: You
have to study it. But I couldn’t even dream of studying. While there was no
news from my brothers, my mothers wouldn’t let me go for anything – her only
son, the “jigit of two households.” I didn’t even dare mention it. And that
Autumn, as luck would have it, turned out to be so beautiful that you couldn’t
help but paint it.
The chilly Kurkurey had shallowed, exposing boulders overgrown with
dark green and orange moss. A bare, delicate willow gleamed from the early
frosts, but the poplars still retained their thick, yellow leaves. The
horseherders sooty, rain-soaked yurts darkened in the meadow on the red
aftermath, and above their smoke vents whisked odorous, blue-gray tendrils.
As happens in the Fall, sinewy stallions neighed vociferously, wandering

32

around the mares; it would be difficult to keep them in check in the single-
stallion herds of mares. The sheep flock, having returned from the mountains,
wandered in droves throughout the harvest fields. Up and down, rutted paths
criss-crossed along the steppe, brown and devoid of trees.
Soon the steppe wind began to blow, the sky darkened, and cold rains
dribbled – snow’s harbinger. One day though, the weather turned out to be
decent, so I went down to the river – a fiery bush of mountain rowanberry had
long since caught my fancy. I sat in a willow tree, not far from the ford. Dusk
set in. Suddenly, I saw two people that were, judging by everything, fording
the river. It was Daniar and Jamilya. I couldn’t tear my eyes from their stern,
anxious faces. Daniar walked jerkily, with a rucksack behind his shoulders,
the folds of his wide open trenchcoat whipping against the vinyl tops of his
sole-less boots. Jamilya had tied on a white kerchief, pressed down on the
back of her head. She was wearing her best, most colorful dress, in which she
loved to strut around the bazaar. On top of in was a quilted velvet jacket. In
one hand she carried a small bundle and with the other she held on to the
shoulder-strap of Daniar’s bag. As they went, they were exchanging words
about something. They went along the path, through the ravine, among
groves of willow. I looked at them from behind and didn’t know what to do.
Perhaps, to shout. But my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth.
The last crimson rays were sliding quickly through a row of spotted
clouds along the mountaintops, and immediately it began to darken. Daniar
and Jamilya, not stopping to look around, hurried towards the railroad’s
double-track. Their heads glimmered a couple more times in the willow groves
and then went out of sight.
“Jamilya-a-a!” I yelled with all my strength.
“A-a-a-a!” the echo helplessly responded.
“Jamilya-a-a!” I yelled once more, and forgetting everything, threw
myself after them, running straight into the river.
Clouds of icy spray flew into my face and my clothes quickly soaked
through, but I ran further, not taking the time to figure out a path. Suddenly I
fell to the ground at full force, having caught myself up on something. I lay, not
lifting my head, tears beginning to pour down my face. The darkness pressed
all of its weight on my shoulders. Supple stalks of willow began to whistle
thinly, sadly.
“Jamilya. Jamilya.” I sniffled, choking with tears.
They were gone. I had parted with those people, dearest and closest to
me. And only then, there on the ground, I suddenly realized that I loved
Jamilya. Yes, that was my first, still childhood love.
I laid there for sometime, burying my face in my wet elbow. I had
parted not only with Daniar and Jamilya, I had parted with my childhood.

***

When I finally arrived home after trudging around in the dark, there was
turmoil in our yard. Stirrups rang out, someone was saddling horses, and
drunken Osmon, atop a prancing horse, was yelling at the top of his lungs.

33

“Shoulda driven that stray, half-breed out of the village a long time ago.
Shame, disgrace to the whole clan! If he comes my way I’ll kill ‘em on the
spot. Let em judge me. I won’t allow any old wanderer to carry off our women!
All right, saddle up jigits, he’s got nowhere to go. We’ll catch em at the
station!”
I turned cold: “Where are they riding to?” But, having convinced myself
that the posse had gone along the main road to the station and not to the
double tracks, I furtively sneaked into the house and buried my head in my
father’s fur coat so that no one could see my tears.
There was so much talk and gossip in the village. The women outdid
themselves passing judgement on Jamilya.
“That idiot! She left such a family and trampled on her own happiness.”
“…makes you ask: what was she in want of? His only belongings are
an old trenchcoat and some holey boots!”
“Sure, their herd didn’t fill the whole yard! But that straggler, hobo – all
he’s got is what’s on him. Oh well, the little pretty will come to her senses,
even if it’s too late.”
“That’s just it! What did Sadyk lack as a husband, as a master? He’s
the first jigit in the village.”
“And the in-laws? God doesn’t give everyone such in-laws. Go, look
around for such a baibiche. She’s ruined herself, the fool, and not for a damn
thing!”
I alone, perhaps, did not judge Jamilya, my former jenay. So what if
Daniar wore an old trenchcoat and holey boots? I knew that in his soul he was
richer than us all. No, I couldn’t believe that Jamilya would not be happy with
him. I was only sorry for my mother. It seemed that her former strength left
with Jamilya. She became sullen, depressed, and as I now understand it,
could never reconcile with the fact that life sometimes so drastically breaks
with its own traditions. If a storm uproots a mighty tree, the tree will never
stand again. Before, Mother never asked anyone to thread a needle for her –
her pride didn’t allow it. Then one day I returned home from school and saw
how Mother’s hands were shaking; she couldn’t see the needle’s eye and
began to cry.
“Here, thread the needle,” she asked and sighed heavily. “Jamilya will
go to waste. Oh, what a mistress of the house and family she would have
made! She left…renounced us. And for what? Was she so bad off here?”
I so wanted to hug and comfort my mother, tell her what kind of person
Daniar really was. But I didn’t dare—I would have wounded her for the rest of
her life.
One day, though, all the same, my naive participation in this untoward
event ceased to be a secret.
Sadyk returned presently. Of course, he mourned, though he did say
to Osmon while drunk, “She left, and good riddance. She’ll croak somewhere.
There’re enough women to go around in our lifetime. Even a golden-haired
woman doesn’t stand up to the most worthless fella.”
“Ain’t that the truth!” Osmon responded. “I am only sorry that I didn’t
come across him then. I’d ‘a killed him then and there…and tied her by the

34

hair to a horse’s tail! Probably set out southbound for the cotton fields or took
off to the Kazakhs. It’s not his first time wandering. I just can’t figure out how
it came to be that no one knew a thing and no one ever would have thought it.
It was all her, the miserable…she set it up. If I get my hands on….”
Listening to such talk, I wanted to say to Osmon: “You just can’t forget
how she chewed you out in the hayfield. You’re the miserable one.”
Then one day I was sitting at home painting something for the school
newspaper. Mother was bustling over by the stove. Suddenly, Sadyk burst
into the room. Pale, with maliciously squinted eyes, he threw himself at me
and shoved a piece of paper under my nose.
“Did you draw this?!”
I was dumbstruck. It was my first drawing. A living Daniar and Jamilya
glanced at me in that instant.
“Yeah.”
“Who’s this?” he pointed his finger at the paper.
“Daniar.”
“Traitor!” Sadyk shouted in my face. He tore up the drawing and left,
slamming the door with a bang. After a long, oppressive silence, my mother
asked, “You knew?”
“Yes, I knew.”
After leaning herself against the stove, she looked at me with deep
surprise and disappointment. Then, when I said: “And I’ll draw them again!”
she sadly and weakly shook her head.
I looked at the fragments of paper lying scattered on the ground and an
intolerable bitterness stifled me. Let them think of me as a traitor. Who did I
betray? The family? Our clan? But I didn’t betray the truth, the truth of life,
the truth of these two people. I couldn’t tell anyone about that, even my
mother wouldn’t have understood. Everything blurred in my eyes, and the
fragments of paper, it seemed, swirled on the floor as if alive. That instant
when Daniar and Jamilya looked up at me from the drawing cut so deeply into
my memory that I suddenly thought that I could hear the song that Daniar
sang on that memorable August night. I recalled how they left the village, and
an irresistible desire arose in me to leave for the road, to leave as they did—
decidedly and bravely—along that difficult road to happiness.
“I’m leaving to go study. Tell Father. I want to be an artist,” I said
firmly to my mother.
I was sure that she would begin to reproach me and cry, remembering
my brothers who perished in the War. But, to my amazement, she didn’t cry.
She just quietly and sadly said:
“Leave then…you’ve become fully fledged on your own, now you’re
flapping your wings. Who knows how high you might fly? Maybe it’s your
path. Leave…perhaps you’ll change your mind there. It’s not handicraft,
that—drawing and painting. Go study, find out…just don’t forget where your
home is.”
From that day on, the Small House separated from us, and soon after, I
left to study.
That’s the whole story.

35

At the academy where they sent me after the art institute, I presented
my degree project—a painting that I had long dreamed of.
It’s not hard to guess that Daniar and Jamilya are portrayed in this
painting. They are walking along a road on the August steppe. In front of
them is a bright, wide expanse.
Though the painting is not perfect—mastery doesn’t come quickly—it is
all the same, my first, conscious, creative impetus.
And now there are failures and there are difficult moments when I lose
faith in myself. In such times I am pulled to this dear painting, to Daniar and
Jamilya. I stare at them for hours on end, and every time I carry on a
conversation with them.
Where are you now? Along which roads do you travel? There are
many new roads before you on the steppe—throughout all of Kazakhstan to
the Altai and Siberia! Many brave people labor there. Perhaps you set out for
those lands. You left, my Jamilya, along the wide open steppe, not looking
back. Maybe you are tired, maybe you have lost faith in yourself? Lean on
Daniar. Let him sing you a song about love, about the land, about life. Let
him sing of the steppe and let it stir you with all of its colors. Let it remind you
of that August night! Go Jamilya, and don’t ever regret; you have found your
long-sought happiness.
I look at them and hear Daniar’s voice. He calls me to my path—the
road, which means that it is time to go. I am leaving for my village, along the
steppe, where I will find new colors.
Let every brushstroke sound with Daniar’s melody. Let every
brushstroke beat with Jamilya’s heart.

36

Jamilya

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