‘One day the prisoner is in solitary confinement when he hears a noise. As if someone is digging the ground up with a pickaxe. The next night, the same sounds are repeated. At first the sounds seem to be some way off, like a ticking clock, but every night they get louder and closer. Someone’s digging a tunnel, the prisoner concludes. One night a corner of the extraordinary prisoner’s cage collapses, a hole opens up, and out pop the prison chief and the interrogator. When they see the prisoner’s dumbfounded face, these two tricksters laugh themselves silly.’
As if interested to see the effect of his words, Trigulov fell silent for a while. Abdulla hid behind his smoke and tried to guess what lay behind all this.
‘Don’t think, Qodiriy, that this has any connection to real life. It’s only something I’ve made up.’ But Abdulla was well aware of the effect that the ‘made-up’ could have on real life. You could surrender to inspiration and write about the most unbelievable things, and five or ten years down the line, this same ‘made-up’ thing would turn up in your life.
‘“All right, don’t be disheartened,” those two officials tell the remarkable person as they lead him to the pit. There are trenches leading from this pit like a spider’s web to every cell in the prison. Realising that these two men were preoccupied with their conversation at this point, the theatre director slips unnoticed into the underground passage and, after many twists and turns, finally emerges at the surface. He sees the lights of the city glimmering in the distance. After all that humiliation, his heart is excited by freedom, and he heads for the city. But before he takes five steps he comes up against a paper wall and tears it down: he has come back to the prison chief’s office. Naturally, the prison chief and his interrogator are waiting for him. Again, uproarious laughter breaks out.
‘The novel is made up of scenes like this. So our remarkable theatre director, who used to believe himself in charge of the play, is in fact just a character trapped inside it. What do you say to that, writer?’
‘I’ll have to think about it,’ said Abdulla.
—
When he looked at the men around him, messily fussing and bustling about, the superiority of himself and all his countrymen was brought thudding home: how in heaven’s name had he become so inextricably entangled in their pointless occupations, their senseless intrigues? More to the point, how was he going to get out of such a quagmire? From 22 February 1841, on the orders of Emir Nasrullo, Colonel Stoddart stayed in the house of the Naib Abdusamad: a native of Tabriz whose notoriety stretched from Baghdad to India by way of Kabul – all of which places he had been forced to flee when his various schemes were uncovered. His chief talent lay in ingratiating himself with intemperate rulers, and as the success of this was usually in proportion to the latter’s depravity, he had fallen on his feet with Nasrullo in Bukhara. He had been quick to smell the potential for extortion in having an envoy of Queen Victoria under his ‘care’, and was likewise keen to scotch any attempts by which Stoddart might win Nasrullo’s favour and thus his freedom. After inspecting the Emir’s troops and proposing that he replace compulsory service with a volunteer army, Abdusamad presented the idea to Nasrullo as if it were his own. When mineral ores were found near Samarkand, Stoddart tested them and drew up a plan for extraction: but it was Abdusamad who showed these papers to the Emir, receiving the praise and the gold-embroidered gowns for himself.
These tricks might not have been so serious, if he were only to stop at them; but, like a tax collector mounted behind his victim, he was determined to squeeze everything he could out of Stoddart. ‘Aren’t I the one who rescued you from the pit? The Islamic judge and the Chief of Police are both in my pay. If I want, I can have you thrown as food to the worms and insects. So write to your chiefs that, in exchange for the help I’ve given you, they are to open an account for me in India with two thousand pounds in it. Until I receive confirmation of that, you haven’t a hope of getting out of here.’
On the next occasion this devil had a new request: ‘Write to your chiefs.’ Abdusamad presented himself to the Emir on 7 March and told his Majesty, ‘Sire, according to my information, Stoddart never gave you on any occasion a letter from the British government confirming his authority; is this true?’ The Emir has confirmed this. So Abdusamad said, ‘I have information regarding such a letter.’
‘What does it contain?’
‘In it, the British government announced its gratitude to you, warns you about plans by the Russians and Persians to attack the Uzbek khanates. Their advice is to return your Russian prisoners to their homeland, so as not to give the Russians any pretext for war. I can quote: “It is in the interests of both Bukhara and Britain to keep the Russians away from the Uzbek khanates. My appeal to you, your Majesty, is a recognition of your high reputation among the Uzbek khans. The British have sent Stoddart here to ensure unity among the Uzbek khans.”
‘Word for word,’ Abdusamad warned Stoddart; ‘and none of your tricks. If I find out you’ve been deceiving me, I’ll see you rot. Now write to your government that they are to draw up an agreement of friendship with Bukhara, with the Nayab Abdusamad named as intermediary, and including a provision for the appropriate fee.’
Though Stoddart understood that he was becoming this man’s puppet, he could do nothing to stop it, for Abdusamad had imprisoned all his servants, and set spies to keep watch on him day and night. His situation, then, was desperate, and worsening by the day.
—
Abdulla kept returning to what Trigulov had said. Was the talk about a prisoner who’d been sentenced to death – the interrogator who whispered it into his ear – a hint about his own fate? What stopped Trigulov saying so outright? Was he afraid of breaking the law? Abdulla permitted himself a wry smile. Was it possible, then, that the interrogator really was a frustrated would-be writer? Then write about your father, about your mother, about your Tatar homeland, even about Tashkent which gave you refuge… but perhaps, after spending so long in this line of work, all he knew was this prison and the prisoners in it.
The cell doors clanged open and Sunnat entered with a Russian soldier. When Sunnat’s eyes met Abdulla’s, the latter felt his chest tighten. He hadn’t seen the Uzbek soldier for so long that he’d stopped expecting him. If only he’d known he would be coming back, he could have had written another note, ready to be passed to the outside world. Though he longed to rush forward, Abdulla held himself back, waiting until the queue of people thinned before going up to get his food. He let the Russian soldier give him his bowl and then deliberately dropped it onto Sunnat’s trolley. Sunnat and Abdulla bent down together to retrieve it, exchanging hurried whispers.
‘They’ve moved to Ko’kterak.’
‘Did you see them?’
‘The neighbours told me.’
That was all there was time for. Sunnat ladled porridge into Abdulla’s bowl, the Russian soldier gave him a piece of sour-smelling black bread and a mug of stew-like tea. His heart relieved, Abdulla went back to his place.
—
A prison runs on its own timetable. Not just in the sense of what time its occupants must get up, or have meals, or see the barber. If your name is called out in the daytime or the evening, then it’s either for questioning, for a confrontation, or, in the worst case, to Room 42 for a thorough beating. If you leave at midnight, your neighbours who lie down next to you know not to panic, that you’ll be back among them by morning, rubbing your sleepless eyes. But if it’s that hour in the night just before dawn prayers, when you can’t distinguish a black thread from a white one, the man whose name is called awakes with a shudder, or writhes on the ground, or clutches at someone’s side – before he is subjected to force, and dragged off, trying to conceal himself, clinging to a hiding place he will not return to, or weeping openly, begging for mercy, as he begins to embrace his fellow-prisoners. Only the strongest recite the shahada, say farewell to those around them, and then stride off towards
the exit and are transfigured, into the dark. All those who are left behind either recite their prayers or weep quietly. Or sit together, unable to settle down and go back to sleep until morning comes. Everyone knows the fate of those who are taken out at that early hour.
Over two nights at the end of March, names were called out: the mulla first, then Kosoniy at dawn the next day. Perhaps because the surviving prisoners didn’t know what the mulla was accused of, or because Abdulla was one of the few who had conversed much with him, his disappearance did not affect them too badly. But when Kosoniy had his name called out, everyone awoke. The elderly man walked around to look at everybody, taking the time to say to each, ‘We commit all of you to God!’ As he went out, striding purposefully towards the light coming from the door, Abdulla felt a sense of something left undone, like a dark pit in his heart.
Sitting in his place, and without making a sound, Abdulla began to weep. He wept as much as he could in that dark hour. He wept as he recalled his mother, who hadn’t lived to Kosoniy’s age; he grieved for the wife and children he had failed to make happy; for his friends lying here in neighbouring prison cells; his tears were bathing the defunct and forgotten, his wretched people and their errant history, of whom beautiful, betrayed Oyxon seemed such a potent symbol, her memory in danger of being lost along with her poetry, another chapter of Uzbek literature brutally excised.
The moth in its flame was burning, the candle was slowly weeping.
The air was split by lightning, I was scorched with the pain of parting.
And for my heart’s sharp suffering, the world was bleakly weeping.
Every thorn on the mountain of grief, pricked my toe and made it bleed.
My beloved showed no mercy, lovers were sadly weeping.
And was there anyone at all who knew of my pain indeed?
Oh yes we laughed with our mouths, but our hearts inside were weeping.
—
Now that Jur’at and Kosoniy were no more, Abdulla felt that all the prisoners around him were somehow ephemeral, and thus it was imperative to get all the information he could from them. Those he singled out were Professor Zasypkin, now appointed elder; Muborak; and the Party functionary Laziz, whose incessant chatter used to irritate him. With these people Abdulla now sat talking for hours on end, for it seemed as though he was preserving their transience for all eternity, all the wisdom and intuition they had to offer.
Spring was now nearly over, and his soul longed for other things: to witness the bees toiling without end, buzzing around the blossoming trees in the orchards; to walk out into the open fields and be swamped by tulips and red poppies; to take deep, deep breaths. But every cell of his nose was saturated with the smells of this dark, airless, stinking cattle shed, and the only possibility left was to indulge in idle conversation.
When Conolly left Kokand for Bukhara, Oyxon was heartbroken. She was not consoled by noisy excursions to the countryside with the harem ladies to celebrate spring; she was not comforted by the gardens’ regal flowering. It was during this period that she found solace in an unexpected corner: from Uvaysiy, a woman old enough to be her grandmother. Until then Oyxon had not let her come close, for she considered Uvaysiy to be Nodira’s disciple. But when she looked at her with clear eyes, she saw not a scheming rival but a woman who, like herself, lived a lonely and precarious life. Uvaysiy’s husband had been killed in one of Umar’s senseless wars, her son had been exiled to Kashgar, her daughter had died in childbirth. Uvaysiy had neither a home of her own nor any independent wealth; she scraped a living from giving private Qu’ran recitals and from teaching at houses which she visited with her three-year-old granddaughter in tow. Later this was no longer sufficient, she had no choice but to move to the palace, with all the miseries that entailed.
Walking with Oyxon in the gardens, Uvaysiy recited one of her latest verses:
When you shoot arrows at your rivals, don’t kill me who is already dead,
The people have set my life on fire, don’t burn me who is already burnt
‘You’re the same age as my daughter, your highness; when I see how you grieve, I myself grieve. People of passion must expect to have suffering souls. But if you do not open your heart to someone, that heart will eat itself alive.’
Oyxon responded by quoting the older woman’s own words back to her:
If I ask for a token of love for my lover, she’ll kill me: if I don’t ask, I will die.
If I open a love shop for sufferers in love, she’ll kill me; if I don’t ask, I will die.
Don’t torment me with jealousy, death, if my beloved talks to a stranger.
If I bark like a dog in her mansion, she’ll kill me; if I don’t bark, I will die.
I have no choice but to be patient, whether I wish it, day or night.
If I wander through the streets like a vagrant, she’ll kill me; if I don’t, I will die.
I am withering from separation, but she told me: stay away,
If I visit sweet as a flower, she’ll kill me; if I don’t, I will die.
Uvaysiy herself chimed in, summing up:
She’s ashamed of me, she debases me; and this vain world banishes my spirit.
If poor Uvaysiy remains a beggar, she will kill me; if I don’t, I will die.
From then on, the two women understood one another perfectly.
—
In prison everyone harbours doubts and suspicions about everybody else. Anyone might be an interrogator’s informer, willing to sell someone else down the river, just to save their own skin. Prison life makes men keep their mouths tight shut. I won’t let my heart be burnt because of my tongue, is what prisoners say about themselves when they avoid saying too much. But in prison, being prison, there are times when a man feels bad and can’t stand being in this situation: like shouting ‘The Emperor has no clothes’ down a well, he can spill all his unspoken secrets. So it was, when Professor Zasypkin and the Party activist Laziz were arguing about what the Russians had contributed to Central Asia.
‘All right,’ Zasypkin bleated, ‘suppose the Russians hadn’t come to Turkestan. Wouldn’t Central Asia then be the same sort of place as Afghanistan? But now we have universal education and a health service, factories and plants, collective and state farms…’
Another prisoner overheard them and broke in: ‘Look at Iran or Turkey. They haven’t been under the Russians or the British. All the same they are developing! Take India which has been an English colony: poverty and ignorance.’
‘I’d say the same,’ said Zasypkin. ‘The English brought backwardness and ignorance, but the Russians came and gave culture and civilisation a head start.’
‘But do you call what the Russians brought civilisation and culture?’ Laziz put in, shaking the two tufts of hair over his ears. ‘I’d like to say that as well as progressive tendencies they brought negative phenomena into life here, including diseases like alcoholism, female depravity, immodesty in the life of local people…’
‘You should read your literature more carefully!’ Zasypkin moved to the attack. ‘Read the memoirs my colleague Professor Fitrat wrote before the revolution. Or read Sadriddin Ayniy’s The Old School. Then you’ll get an insight into what was going on in people’s lives before the Russians came here.’
‘The Russians can’t take the credit for that,’ the third prisoner contended. ‘In the Middle Ages, when Russia and Europe were still in the dark, the Islamic world already had universities; medicine and other branches of science were advancing, there were new discoveries every day, and everything was progressing.’
‘Karl Marx talks about development having a spiral form,’ said Lazi, anxious to give this discussion a theoretical basis. ‘The law of antithesis…’
Abdulla was listening to this argument from the sidelines. Laziz-zoda’s Party said, ‘Truth emerges from argument.’ But in most cases, on the contrary, truth died
during the dispute. Truth was many-sided, it was richer than the false information that you got from a book or a newspaper, which you swallowed undigested. More often than not, truth wasn’t fastened to a single word, like a fish hanging securely from a rod. In fact, a flash of truth might perversely emerge in a tone or an unfinished phrase. But the moment you seize on it, that flash vanishes like sunlight glancing from the mirror to the wall.
—
Riding across mile after mile of the waterless Jizzax steppes on his way from Kokand to Bukhara, Conolly was absorbed by his thoughts. After arriving in Kokand, what was his goal, and what would he have to show for it when he returned? At first sight, everything seemed to be as it should. He had managed to instil into Madali what the English wanted, by praising the Emir’s pigeons and drums. He had explained in detail that the Emir of Bukhara was the main obstacle in getting the Uzbek khans to stand up against the Russians. ‘The Emir of Bukhara has singled you out as an infidel! That’s what the Khan of Khiva told me.’ Then Madali lost his temper, proving the success of Conolly’s efforts. But something else was bothering him.
The Khan of Khiva had told him how, on learning of this Madali’s marriage to Oyxon, he had written a letter to Emir Nasrullo: ‘My elder brother Madali, considering his father’s widow to be a permissible bride, has married her. The holy city of Bukhara is the capital of the clergy. What decision would they take on this matter? You are the greatest ruler of Transoxiana. What do you say to this revolting action?’
The Devils' Dance Page 24