by Bibish
And several months later, Linda’s younger son John came with his bride, Magenta, and lived with us. In the morning my children woke up and said: “Mom, do we really have American guests, sleeping in the same apartment as us, we just can’t believe it.” It really was quite fantastic!
They both know about art and music and they write poems. I showed them one of my dances. They liked it a lot, they said the movements were beautiful and it was very expressive. They asked why I didn’t dance. I didn’t say anything, I couldn’t tell them that no one here was interested.
I also told them that in my free time I was writing an autobiographical book that was called “A Cry from the Heart” (that was what the book you are reading was called at first). They were interested and asked me to let them take a photocopy. They said: “Would you like us to take it to America, translate it into English, and publish it?”
An unexpected suggestion like that really set my head spinning.
On the thirteenth of January we celebrated my birthday together, then soon after that they went away and took my book and the cassette of my dances with them. They were on their honeymoon traveling in Europe, through Holland, Denmark, France, and then they were in Ireland. And so you could say my art has been everywhere in the world!
It seemed to me that I’d been almost as low as I could get, and God had sent these people to me.
So that was how more and more bright times began appearing in my life. Now I hope for the best.
And I want to finish the book with a letter to my father. I tried to find the right words for it for a long time, but I just couldn’t. Finally I’ve managed to write it.
A LETTER OF REPENTANCE TO MY FATHER
Hello, my dear dad! Here I am at last writing you a letter. Perhaps you’ve been waiting for me to do it for a long, long time. My life lies like a stone on your heart. Dad, it’s good that God has taken pity on me and now I can apologize to you. I couldn’t find the words for a long time. I wasn’t really in touch with myself. But this is what happened today: When I was standing in our market, a real storm began to blow. The sky turned black, a wild wind sprang up, the trees swayed, the roofs were torn off several houses (they showed it on the television later!). It started tearing the tarpaulins off the trading booths as well. And at that inappropriate moment I suddenly realized what I had to write. I found a pencil, but I didn’t have any paper! I went dashing to a trader nearby who was packing up his goods and getting ready to leave. I shouted:
“Give me some paper!”
He said:
“What do you want paper for now? There’s a hurricane starting!”
“I have to write a letter to my father!”
“Were you waiting specially for a hurricane to start to do that? Will cardboard do?”
“Yes, as long as I can write on it!”
I ran to my place and wrote down on that piece of cardboard the most important thing I wanted to say. And the boards that hold together the top of the booth were tumbling down on me. Now I’m continuing the letter at home.
My grandmother Niyazdjan told me how I was born. The women in our kishlak used to have their children at home, they didn’t go to the hospital. A midwife used to come to help them give birth. And all the relatives and friends would be there in the house. In our parts women give birth standing, leaning on a long stick like a pole. It’s easier to push like that. And so my mother was leaning on this pole and she squatted down, she was just about to give birth! My grandmother called you:
“Nizom, the birth’s starting, come quickly!”
You had to help, bring some warm water and something else as well.
But at that moment you were writing a plan for a lesson and you kept saying:
“I’ll come after I finish this, I’ll come in a moment.”
My grandmother said:
“Son, the child can’t wait, come quickly!”
Before you could even touch me, I just popped out and tumbled on to the old kurpachka. I was born very quickly.
Later, when I started writing stories in the sixth grade, Mom used to remember that I was born when you were writing your lesson plan.
I was restless from when I was little. I was always trying to swim against the current. I wanted to be an artist, not an ordinary one but one with a capital letter. I wanted to “discover America” in the kishlak. But America was discovered by poor Christopher Columbus, who suffered torments for his ideas and died a pauper!
I know all the things I did were outrageous for our kishlak. And I didn’t think about you, or my brothers and sisters. I thought only about myself. And in the end I ran away to Leningrad. But no one knew about that disgrace, because when they asked you, you said: “She’s away studying.”
Dad, I remember when I was six or seven, you sat me on the frame of your bicycle and we went to Khiva. Probably to do some shopping. It was spring, nice and warm, the fruit trees were in blossom. We were riding past our lake and you were singing a song, you always hum it, even now. It had these words in it: “If a rose grows in a nightingale’s cage, he will think it a dry briar!”
I remember that song of yours, and it seems to me that deep in your heart you must have understood the things I did.
In the summer you always used to lay in fuel for the winter. You scraped the dung out of the cowshed, then mixed it with kerosene that you got from the tractor drivers and made flat cakes by hand.
One morning I found you doing this heavy work. I took a broom and started sprinkling the yard with water in order to sweep it. When I was very close to you the water accidentally got onto your sweaty back. You got angry and threw the spade you were using to mix the dung at me. The spade hit my leg. It hurt a lot. Then your anger cooled and you came over to me, but at that moment I hated you! I didn’t understand then that you were messing around with manure for our sake, so that we wouldn’t be cold and ill in winter.
And when in one year my two brothers and my sister all died one after another, you almost went out of your mind, you wanted to go away with the whole family to the Far East. But you didn’t go, there wasn’t enough money. It’s probably good that you didn’t go, because just at that time there was a powerful earthquake in the Far East and many people were killed.
When Mom was very angry with me, she used to say: “It would be better if you had never been born!” But now I don’t regret that I was born, although my life is very difficult. But then after all, for grandmother Niyazdjan and for you life was hard too. For you books were the most important things in life. Perhaps it will make you happy to know that I have been able to write this book.
Forgive me, I know some pages will be hard for you to read. And forgive me for the pain I have caused you, my dear dad, if you can, forgive me!
Your daughter Hadjar