A certain amount of time passed before the cell door opened again and a soldier barked an order in Russian: ‘Prisoner Qodiriy! Out, with your hands behind your back!’ Abdulla was taken to another tiny room in the basement, where they thrust a board with a number on it into his hand and photographed him, first full-face, then in profile. In a neighbouring cell an elderly Jewish man shaved Abdulla’s head and chin with a razor. The barber was clearly forbidden to open his mouth in front of the soldier standing by, or perhaps he was a mute: he hissed and whispered the whole time, made wordless shushing and whooshing sounds, waving his arms to satisfy his craving for communication. Now and again he tapped Abdulla’s cheek; when it was shaved and free of foam, he tugged at his shirt collar, bent down to his ear and whispered again.
Abdulla was reminded of Oyxon affectionately fussing over Qosim, and again he almost laughed. No, he had to behave seriously while the razor was shaving his head, and now his face, under the soldier’s icy gaze. And he didn’t want his laughter to get the unfortunate barber into trouble: wasn’t the barber just another prisoner? Or did he do this job precisely so as to keep his freedom? Having your hair cut is usually relaxing, but to lose all the hair on your head and your face in one fell swoop is disagreeable. Abdulla’s upper lip was swollen. It was a good thing that he hadn’t been photographed in this state. Either because he was now hairless, or because he was looking at the Russian soldier, a narrative strand occurred to him, which he would use to full effect in the novel he had planned.
In the early nineteenth century, in the Polish province of Szawel, then part of the Russian empire, a son was born to the aristocratic Witkiewicz family. His father named him Jan, but his mother, who was a Francophile, called him Jean. The boy grew up to be clever and quick-witted. Apart from Polish, he had a fluent command of Russian, English, French and German. At the age of fourteen, when he was a pupil at the grammar school in Kroży, Jan Witkiewicz created a secret society called the Black Brotherhood, but was caught by the Russian gendarmerie while publicly distributing poems and leaflets attacking Russians and Russian autocracy. Despite his youth, the boy was deprived of all his property, his rights and his freedom, and sent into exile.
In the steppes around Orenburg, among Tatars and Kazakhs, the young Polish nobleman began studying local languages, and his mastery led the Tatars to call him not Jan or Jean, but Halimdzian, the Scholar.
From the occasional merchants who set off from Bukhara to Moscow, he acquired Farsi. So he spent six years wandering about, acquiring ever more knowledge. The famous German orientalist Wilhelm Humboldt, returning from his Siberian expedition, stopped at Orenburg and happened to meet the twenty-year-old Jan Witkiewicz. Delighted by the young man’s knowledge, Humboldt introduced him to Colonel Petrovsky, newly appointed governor of Orenburg.
The Tsar’s government had given Petrovsky the task of conquering Central Asia: he had great need for men like Witkiewicz. In 1835 he sent ‘Halimdzian’ to Bukhara as a secret agent. Jan took only a year to ingratiate himself with the Emir’s viziers and favourites, and brought important information back to Petrovsky. Numerous secretive missions followed, to Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.
For his service to the Russian government he was made an officer, and his rights and property were restored. In 1839 this thirty-year-old officer with brilliant prospects was summoned to the capital, St. Petersburg. In a hotel there he met, by chance, a childhood friend, the poet Konstantin Tyszkiewicz. The friends locked themselves in the hotel room, recalling stories of their shared youth and regaling each other with their recent experiences.
As Tyszkiewicz listened to Jan’s adventures – his transformation to Halimdzian, his travels to Bukhara, Nishapur, Kabul – he became paler and paler; when Witkiewicz told him about his officer’s promotion and the restoration of his rights, Tyszkiewicz could hold back no longer.
‘Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve sold out! You’re a traitor! Didn’t we swear to one another that we’d fight the Russians unto death ? You’re playing up to their Tsar!’ Tyszkiewicz leapt to his feet and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
The next day Witkiewicz was found in his hotel room, a revolver in his hand and a bullet hole in his head.
—
Abdulla left this episode as a draft to work on later when he had time, perhaps, to include in his book as a separate chapter, ‘Russian Roulette’. If, God willing, he got out of here alive, he would go back to Witkiewicz’s adventures in Bukhara. The story needed one or two extra subtleties to give it shape. And the language needed to be refined a great deal. For now, could he tell the story to the young Russian soldier? Would he be able to understand it? Like his hair, Abdulla’s thoughts had left his head and scattered. He had to focus his mind. Especially in this place.
The barber had finally finished his work. Abdulla was again led down a long corridor, past identical steel doors, back to his cell. He had to concentrate his mind, reign in these wild fantasies. What was he going to be asked if he was interrogated? He ought to have his answers ready. What was he accused of? The Tatar interrogator’s paper, if he wasn’t mistaken, mentioned Articles 58 and 67. That morning Abdulla had noticed a battered book, The Criminal Code, by the door of his cell. He picked it up and searched through it for the relevant articles. The 58th.
A counter-revolutionary action is any action aimed at overthrowing, undermining or weakening the power of workers’ and peasants’ Soviets and of governments of the USSR and Soviet and autonomous republics, elected by them under the Constitution of the USSR and the constitutions of the union republics, or at the undermining or weakening of the external security of the USSR and the main economical, political and national achievements of the proletariat’s revolution.
Given the international solidarity of interests of all workers, such actions are considered counter-revolutionary also when they are directed against any other workers’ state, even though this state may not be part of the USSR.
Abdulla re-read the article several times, but could not understand what action of his could fall under these charges. Still, if the cap fits, wear it!
He turned a few pages to article 67:
Any kind of organisational activity directed at preparing or committing counter-revolutionary crimes, as well as participation in an organisation formed for preparing or committing any such crime, is punishable as a crime in accordance with the appropriate articles of this section.
However hard he tried, this article left Abdulla equally stumped. On the one hand, the fact that he couldn’t understand it depressed him; on the other, reason told him that he’d never been involved in any such crimes, a thought that gave him relief.
For want of anything else to do, he started reading other articles. The one on ‘Hooliganism’ made him think of the troublemaker Toshp’olat; when he came to ‘Theft’, he remembered Namoz-the-Thief, both characters in his own stories. After reading the book from beginning to end, he had still failed to find an article that applied to him; so he began inventing new articles, comic ones which he might well be charged under – ‘Dreaming’, ‘Reflecting’, ‘Taciturnity’, and so on. But none of those activities were listed in the Code.
—
Early in the spring of 1242, Nasrullo gathered an army and again set off to attack Bukhara. The first time, he had returned empty-handed. Then, less than three months later, when Emir Husayn also passed away and the throne was hurriedly taken by their younger brother Umar, a second mission had also proved in vain. But this journey was going to be victorious: it was going to get Nasrullo his quarry.
Now, according to reports sent by courier from his faithful vizier Hakim, Umar spent his time not on matters of state, but drinking and making merry. At a time of crisis, when the emirate was on the verge of collapse, all he wanted to hear about was wine and concubines. His viziers and lords, displeased by this, encouraged Hakim to send messengers to Nasrullo.
/> This time there would be no false delicacy. Nasrullo was not going to back down: you get a throne not by asking for it, but by snatching it, just as in bozkashi. On his way to Bukhara, Nasrullo paid a visit to the tomb of Xo’ja Bahoviddin and asked the venerable saint to support his cause. After a few weeks’ siege, on the twentieth of Shaaban, the first month of autumn in 1826, the nobility, led by vizier Hakim, betrayed the acting ruler Umar, opened the gates of the castle to Nasrullo, imprisoned the younger brother and put the elder on the throne.
Whether our venerable saint had a hand in this, or whether Nasrullo’s strong will was sufficient, the disgraced Umar was bundled onto a horse and driven out of the city. As he rode away, a commoner raised his hand to snatch off the former Emir’s gold-embroidered hat; someone else tore off his silk gown and cummerbund, so that yesterday’s Emir left the streets of Bukhara bare-headed and naked. Oh treacherous and disappointing world!
Once Nasrullo had been crowned, and in accordance with the saintly Bahoviddin’s testament on magnanimity, he ordered that his younger brothers Zubayra, Hamza and Sardar be made joint governors of Narazim, a province of Bukhara. He reappointed Hakim as first vizier and treated the common people to a banquet of plov.
One day, however, when Hakim was closeted with his ruler, the vizier hinted in a jocular tone: ‘Your grace, it’s possible that appointing your younger brothers to stately positions might be interpreted negatively.’
‘Why?’ the Emir asked rather brusquely.
‘I’ve heard that in the Ottoman sultanate there is a strange view that when someone inherits the throne, his brothers, even if they are babies, should be executed. So that they don’t have any claim to the throne.’
‘Do you agree? Then I’d have been martyred myself.’ This time, there was discernible menace in Nasrullo’s tone.
‘God forbid!’ said Hakim, hurriedly correcting his mistake. ‘The aim is to keep this throne which has come into your august hands free from pretenders or protests.’
The ceiling candelabra was flickering, casting strange shadows on Hakim’s face.
‘Tell me something else,’ Nasrullo asked casually, ‘what sort of man is that chef of yours? Can he be trusted?’
‘He hasn’t forgotten what you taught him when he was in your service,’ said the Chief Minister, confused, not knowing what attitude to take.
‘The reason I’m asking is that our noble father fell ill so suddenly. And our brother Emir Husayn’s life was destroyed when he was in his prime. Could your chef have had a hand in this?’ Nasrullo’s questions had taken the tone of an interrogation.
‘Good God, no!’ the vizier exclaimed, reining in the conversation again. ‘He’s a pious man, the only things he worries about are pastry and heaven.’
‘Pastry, you say. I suggest we take precautions against my younger brothers.’
Anyone who happened to overhear this conversation would probably have understood little, but a vizier who had served five or six rulers had to be alert to all the implications, like a small porcelain bowl nesting inside a bigger one. Were these the final words of the unreliable Nasrullo, governor of the province of Qarshi, or the words of the newly enthroned Emir Nasrullo, now taking advice from Hakim his Chief Minister?
‘The chef is here, and their lordships are in Narazim,’ he said, testing out the ground.
‘That’s what I was saying.’
No, the old fox reflected, our Emir is still too fragile to conceal his thoughts and intentions: as the chef himself would put it, the syrup hasn’t been distilled yet. When he spoke, his voice was firm. ‘We’ll get the Master of the Emir’s horses to do what’s necessary.’
Before the month was out Emir Nasrullo’s three younger brothers had their handsome throats slit in the middle of the night. On Nasrullo’s orders, three days’ mourning was observed in Bukhara for the martyred princes.
Now that’s what you call a crime, Abdulla thought to himself.
—
The even flow of Abdulla’s thoughts was broken. Even when a man has been in prison before, he cannot get used to the tricks it plays on his mind. At midday a small mustard-coloured rissole was served with thick noodles. Abdulla was mulling over a question. ‘Is this nightmare of mine going to go on much longer? If I can wake up now, let me do so, let me wake up now,’ he said. The day dragged on relentlessly. Abdulla recited his midday prayers sitting down. Were they going to give him any news of Rahbar and the children? Instead of going to the Railway Workers’ Palace for the New Year celebrations, were they on Leningrad Street, freezing in the January cold as they tried to find out what had happened to him? What was the thread of his thoughts before this one? It was impossible to think straight in such a situation. When your life had been razed to the ground, could your thoughts make sense or form a response? He didn’t know which one to fixate on, which one to allow, which might give comfort or an answer to the quandary that had befallen him. Or was he now truly in thrall to mania? Had the devil which had taken control of his thoughts likewise taken hold of his life? When Abdulla was a child, the moment he told a story about the devils’ dance, his late father had joked, ‘Turn your thoughts to something good; can’t you think about more constructive things?’
True, wasn’t it high time he directed his thoughts to worthier subjects? Mightn’t he then turn this novel into something material like his previous one, Past Days?
He recalled the poet Nodira. He recalled a female reciter, who wrote under the name Uvaysiy, and the Emir Umar, who used the pseudonym Amiriy.
Nodira was jealous of Umar from the day she married him, when he was still a prince. Initially, she was jealous of his princely title; later, when his father Emir Olim suddenly died and the emirate was inherited by the son, her jealousy extended to the endless tasks of the ruler: the state council, the hunts, the invitations to banquets.
Nodira imagined that the world was trying to take him away from her embraces:
The fire of jealousy has burned flowers in the meadow,
Together with her smile’s buds and the open seed-pods, its fine narcissus eyes…
On the eve of her wedding, Nodira’s father gave his daughter the following advice: ‘Be attentive to your husband, always take care of him. A man is a ruler outside the house; but when he comes home, he is ruled by his wife. Lead by your mother’s example!’ Of course, her mother may have slipped these words in her husband’s ears to further her own noble interests, but Nodira seemed to have taken this good advice to heart: from time to time, examining her doubts and suspicions, she would reflect further.
One day, Umar went hunting on the reed-covered banks of the Syr-Darya river with his male courtiers. To stave off boredom, Nodira invited the womenfolk to the palace. After a feast and a banquet with much amusement and dancing, Uvaysiy recited some riddles:
What is this dome, whose door has no sign of an opening,
How many fair maids stroll around the place?
If I cared for the girls and broke the dome by force,
Their faces veiled, their livers would bleed…
Someone guessed, ‘The Emir’s harem’; someone said ‘Bread in the oven’. Only the clever Nodira grasped the underlying meaning: a palace with no doors or windows had to be dealt with by breaking it down, how else could the girls be freed? ‘Smashing the dome’ clearly referred to the hymen. ‘Hiding from blood’, red juice, that was… ‘Pomegranate juice’ exclaimed Nodira. Uvaysiy showed her admiration for Nodira by punning on her pseudonym: ‘“Precious” doesn’t do you justice!’
The day before, the royal lady had risen from her blessed bed rather belatedly: her husband had left early for a meeting of his council, the smell of his royal body still lingered on the pillow, and his gown lay on the blanket. Picking it up, she spotted a piece of paper sticking out from the cuff. Nodira unfolded the paper to find a stanza in the Emir’s hand.
My dar
ling’s cheeks were ruby red, ripened pomegranate red
And pomegranate red the liver’s blood that rose in every tear I shed.
Having read the first two lines of this refrain, Nodira’s face flushed bright red, as red as pomegranate juice. Her eyes ran over more of the verses.
My dear one teased the luscious fruits, and for them her lips did part:
‘My lips are ripe and juicy figs, my throat a pomegranate’s heart.’
If a garden plays with flowers and with pomegranate fruit –
For my love my face is the rose, my smile pomegranates suit.
Nodira moved her lips as she read on, and thousands of heart-breaking suspicions began to form within her mind, as densely packed as pomegranate seeds. She knew what ‘figs’ meant in love’s language, and it made her apprehensive.
I’m drawn to your peach lips, oh gardener, I simply cannot choose
But do not let my blood spill out like pomegranate juice.
If my juice flows out then take it to the dance under the moon
Let my love know my soul will bleed like the pomegranate soon.
Her eyes anxiously perused the lines, she whispered as she examined them: ‘My Emir never compared my lips to a peach. He never likened them to a pomegranate.’ Her heart ached as if withered and squeezed.
I tried to mend my broken heart, with every tear I shed
Who’s my sultan in this garden but the pomegranate red?
Parted from the apple of your throat, my flesh pales as yellow pear
I swallow my own blood – my teeth the pomegranate’s snare.
When she read the phrase ‘the apple of your throat’, it was clear that the mysterious pomegranate dome had been smashed; no, this was no young girl, not a young woman. Scattered seeds had been crushed, threshed… surely not…
Parted from your grape-like eyes, their seeds in my eyes sow
The Devils' Dance Page 4