As soon as Emir Nasrullo received this letter, he summoned the senior clerics and Islamic judges to his presence and issued the fatwa:
‘As the head of Islam, any person who is Emir of the Islamic community has a duty to observe and fulfil sharia law. Should any such person turn his face away from Islam in the slightest, they can no longer be counted an Emir. Nauzanbillahi – I seek Allah’s refuge – Madali, being an Emir of Fergana and Turkestan, has married his late father’s legal wife and entered a form of matrimony with her, nauzanbillahi – I seek Allah’s refuge – nauzanbillahi. In accordance with the verses of the Holy Qu’ran, the sayings of the Prophet, peace be upon him, the four sects of Islam, the decision of the theologians and the ulema, he is an infidel. Islamic Emirs and all Muslims have the right to execute this outlaw.’
According to the Khan of Khiva, Emir Nasrullo was ready to attack Kokand. ‘The woman is said to be a peerless beauty,’ Mirzo Rahim had remarked, ‘which might explain Nasrullo’s sudden burst of religious fervour.’ A woman so lovely she sets one Emir against the other; Conolly naturally thought of the Greeks’ Helen.
Just as naturally, he meant in Kokand to see with his own eyes the now legendary Oyxon. This was the curiosity not merely of a man, but of a sophisticated, seasoned traveller. And saw her he did. Conolly had spent half his life with men like himself, explorers and conquerors – and not merely of geographical territory. Four officers only had to get together for their banter to turn bawdy, and a debate to start up on the merits of women of different nationalities. One man would praise the flirtatious French, another the passionate Italians; another would boast of his Spanish conquests, while others would praise the exotic Indians.
But only now did Conolly understand the words of Hafiz:
If you fall in love, no matter whether Turk or Tajik; Hafiz, create sayings for your love,
Write in the language you know.
and Shakespeare:
But love, hate on, for now I know thy mind,
Those than can see thou lov’st, and I am blind.
—
On 1 April, a cruel joke was played on the prisoners. That morning, a soldier had come into the cell, called the names of seven men and told them to get their things together; they’d been pardoned, and were free to go. They bundled their belongings together and lined up behind the door, not even taking the time to throw thicker clothes on over their nightgowns, so fearful were they of missing this chance. When the night warders yelled out, ‘April’s Fool’, the entire cell felt as though they’d been punched in the collective gut.
On that topsy-turvy day, everything was flipped on its head: at dinnertime, they were left not with the usual foul bread and gruel, but with a steaming cauldron of plov. Granted, it had been overcooked, but the rice was fresh, it had carrots, and it was seasoned: in short, it was the real thing. Abdulla hadn’t realised how much he’d missed the taste of it. And this was spring, a time for picnics: when you’d throw your overalls over your shoulder and go to Pushkin Park with your friends, where every one of the Green Ditch teahouses claimed their plov was the best. But who would be there now? Who would have the heart to go out and eat plov in times as dark as these?
In the evening Abdulla was summoned to see Trigulov again.
‘The guards had an April fool’s joke, I hear,’ the Russian laughed. ‘At least you weren’t put on the list of those to be freed, were you?’
If Trigulov had begun their talk in any other way, Abdulla might have kept his usual silence and not risen to the bait. But the moment he heard those words and saw that smile, the conversation got off on the wrong foot. The veins on his temples swelled: ‘I’m a free man anyway,’ he snapped.
‘Yes, if you’re talking about inner freedom. You’re the cat that couldn’t get its tail out of the trap and said, “Ugh, it stinks anyway”. You’d do better to listen to me. Have you thought about what I said the last time we met?’
Abdulla maintained a stubborn silence.
‘I’ve decided I shan’t make my hero a theatre director. I’m making him a writer instead. A spinner of fictions, locked up in prison.’
Abdulla barely suppressed a shudder. It was true that Muborak was next to him in the cell, and heard him raving in his sleep, but where did this man get his information from?
‘Everyone gets on well with him. The prison officers, the prisoners in his cell, the interrogators, they all treat him politely. A prisoner’s ordinary daily life. He senses some current at work under all this, but can’t get to the bottom of it. What is actually going on? What sort of process, what sort of game? The prison chief arranges a meeting for him with his beloved…’ (Is he alluding to Vinokurov? Abdulla wondered.) ‘And more scenes like this… The writer’s only link with the outside world is through writing.’ (Does he actually know? Or is he just guessing, and waiting to see what might hit the mark?) But nobody pays him any mind. Ordinary life goes on, but the underlying process – if you like, you can write it in capitals, PROCESS, nobody can makes any sense of the PROCESS – gradually it sucks him in, like a storm, like a maelstrom, like a sinkhole.’
As Trigulov spoke, his lips dried and sweat broke out on his forehead.
‘What do you think? I’ve thought it out pretty well, haven’t I?’ he said, eyeing Abdulla; but his expression changed when he saw the prisoner staring him straight in the face.
‘Do you think you’re a puppetmaster and we are just puppets?’ Abdulla’s voice was shaking with anger. ‘You’re counting your chickens before they hatch. When the cow drinks water, the calf licks ice – that applies to drivelling errand boys like you. You’d do better to lick the arse of the cow that gives you milk.’ Holding nothing back, Abdulla spat into his pale face all the humiliation that had accumulated inside him. Trigulov slammed his fist onto the desk and yelled in Russian:
‘Take him away to cell 42! I’ll see him rot!’ he said. Two soldiers grabbed Abdulla from behind, twisting his arms behind his back, and dragged him out of the room.
The soldiers flung Abdulla into the familiar cell 42, and set about giving him a beating. Then Vinokurov himself came in: ‘Leave him, I’ll sort him out myself,’ he said, ordering the soldiers to leave.
Abdulla was badly beaten, but not completely crushed; he gathered all his strength: ‘Now my hour has come, for what happened on New Year’s Eve,’ he said, readying himself to go for Vinokurov’s throat the moment he got near enough. Two or three minutes passed as dusk thickened. When the soldiers’ footsteps had faded into silence, Vinokurov spoke from the far corner of the room: ‘Abdulla, it’s me…’ His voice sounded friendly, but Abdulla had no faith in this comradely approach. These devils tried to lull your vigilance, as if you were a lamb, with their April fool’s joke, and then they flung themselves on you like wolves.
‘Abdulla, it’s me. Calm down…’ Vinokurov was repeating.
No, Abdulla thought. They’re all the same! They’re not to be trusted.
‘Here, wipe your face,’ said Vinokurov, passing him his own freshly laundered handkerchief, folded four times. Abdulla paused. When I go to take it, he’ll kick me, he told himself; slowly, he stretched his hand out for the white object. Vinokurov did not move. Abdulla brought the handkerchief to his face without unfolding it. The perfume of attar of roses struck his nostrils: it was what he had used every day when shaving. For some reason, it brought tears to Abdulla’s eyes. After all this, he thought, feeling himself go to pieces, he’ll beat me to death. But one instant passed, then another, and still, Vinokurov did not make a move.
In the semi-darkness Abdulla could not hold back the tears provoked by the attar of roses. Tears for his lost faith that some small scrap of goodness might be left in the world.
—
Or was it because of the April fool’s joke that Vinokurov had refrained from kicking him and staving in his ribs? All these things could not be a dream, for Abdulla still
had in his pocket the handkerchief folded four times. The men around caught a whiff of the scent and asked in amazement, ‘What’s that smell?’ As the hour for dawn prayers approached, another prisoner was taken away. Jokes aside, in the most professional demeanour, the wretched victim made a gift of his glasses which were held together with thread to Professor Zasypkin, thrusting the glasses at him like a souvenir, before groping his way towards the door.
Several days passed uneventfully. Then one day, towards evening, Abdulla’s name was called in the usual way, and he was taken down the long corridor; this time, though, he was ushered in to an office far more magnificent than Trigulov’s. Under a portrait of Stalin, holding a pipe that looked like an Uzbek boy’s pissing pipe, sat a major with bushy eyebrows and an Armenian aquiline nose; Trigulov sat next to him. Abdulla could see his file, an even bulkier folder than before, lying on the table.
The major gestured him to sit.
‘Accused Qodiriy, the investigation of your case has been completed. Do you have any complaints?’
Abdulla froze for a moment. If the mulla has no tricks, the congregation’s in trouble, he reflected. What kind of trick was this sly Armenian playing? When the world was on fire, was this the time to dry your trousers?
‘Silence implies consent,’ said the major, translating a Russian cliche into Uzbek. ‘If there are no complaints, then sign here.’
Abdulla signed the paper without even looking: he was in a strangely querulous state of mind.
The major took the signed document back and gave him another sheet of paper.
‘Here’s your indictment. If you want to, read it here, or if you prefer, take it with you.’
Abdulla stared at the document:
Indictment. In the case of the accused Abdulla Qodiriy, who has committed crimes, as specified in articles 58, 64a and 57 of the Uzbek SSR criminal code.
As has become clear in the course of the investigation of the criminal activities of the bourgeois-nationalist anti-Soviet organisation operating in Uzbekistan in agreement with right-Trotskyists, the accused Abdulla Qodiriy has been an active member of this organisation. For this reason Abdulla Qodiriy was arrested on 1 January 1938 and has been held accountable as an accused person.
Abdulla read the printed words, but he could not process their meaning into his brain. Hadn’t that scheming Tatar said, ‘Everything is as usual, but underneath it is an abstract essence of a PROCESS’?
True, there’s something here about the October revolution and his participation in the satirical magazine The Fist; the novel Past Days is mentioned, too, as are The Scorpion under the Altar and Obid the Pickaxe, also noted on this sheet of paper. It’s all familiar, but distorted somehow, made to sound like some official decree. There’s a paragraph about Past Days:
This novel, approved by the leaders of the anti-Soviet bourgeois-nationalist organisation of Ikromov and Xo’jayev, was widely distributed among the population of the national republics. Furthermore, the novel was sent to eastern countries on the instructions of Xo’jayev.
But the book never came out in Kashgar – the intermediary never even went there!
Before being detained, he gathered anti-revolutionary elements around him and took part with them in anti-revolutionary activities. He made contact with foreign countries.
Accordingly, the indictment, composed of charges against Abdulla Qodiriy, is presented for the consideration of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR.
Assistant Chief of IVth section of IIIrd administration of the NKVD of Uzbekistan, Lieutenant N. Trigulov.
“Agreed,” Chief of IVth section, Major Apresyan.
Well, now I know his name, thought Abdulla, and raised his gaze to look at Apresyan.
‘You’re free to go,’ the Major said, and then smiled gently. ‘No, not in the full sense of the word.’ Switching to Russian, he ordered the guard in Russian, ‘Take him to the cell for the indicted.’
After that, you could expect only death.
Chapter 7
Criss-Cross
When Abdulla woke up the next morning, there were only two other prisoners next to him in the cell. At first sight they did not look like Uzbeks. The smaller and more sinewy one was Russian-looking, but he had a goatee. The other was snoring: giant, reddish, rather like the Tajiks of Badakhshan who dye their beards with henna. They must have been given a ‘deregistration voucher’ from the Soviet Supreme Court, Abdulla thought to himself, which is what they call a ticket to eternal freedom. Waiting for death, as Abdulla was.
On that note, he began to study his cell for ‘the indicted’, for those ‘of no further importance’. It was very different from the one he’d known just yesterday. The walls were wet, made of peeling mud, and were plastered not with cement but with hay: more like an earthen pit than a concrete bunker. Is it supposed to get us accustomed to the grave? Abdulla wondered. Breathing was easier – the air here was rather cleaner – but the smell of damp was stronger, too.
The smaller, slightly jaundiced prisoner turned over in his sleep, chattering about something in a strange language. Could he be a Latvian?
Half an hour or so later, the fat man woke up and, surprised to see a new prisoner in the cell, rubbed his eyes and drawled, ‘Salaam aleikum!’ ‘Aleikum,’ Abdulla replied. The fat man woke his companion and told him something in their unintelligible language. The latter didn’t bother to wash his face before greeting Abdulla.
As a new arrival, the onus was on Abdulla to introduce himself first. His new neighbours each shook his hand, but neither gave their name.
‘You don’t speak Farsi, by any chance?’ the smaller, older, man asked.
‘I speak a little, but I understand it better,’ Abdulla explained.
‘I expect you speak Turkish better?’ the giant asked in Ottoman Turkish, and when he saw Abdulla nodding, said: ‘We’re English.’
‘Oh my God, what a disaster! What are the English doing here? Are you explorers? Or naive Communists from the Communist International: “came to flirt, ended up hooked and married”? How long have you been here?’ They shrugged, so Abdulla repeated the question in Farsi.
‘Here? In this place?’ the older man pointed to the hay in the cell. When Abdulla’s gesture confirmed that he was understood, he replied, ‘Four months.’ The bigger man added in Turkish, ‘Four months here.’
‘In December?’ Abdulla asked in simple language.
Both nodded.
‘How long have you been here? I mean, in Uzbekistan?’ Abdulla asked in several languages.
The giant pointed to the other and said: ‘He three years, me six months.’
Had they not managed to learn a little Uzbek in three years? Had they not even been outside Bukhara? Not that any of the arrogant Russian nightingales who’d been eating the bread and drinking the water here since the Revolution had ever got round to speaking even a word of Uzbek. At least one could be grateful that these two spoke good Farsi.
‘Why are you here?’ the sinewy one asked.
‘Nationalism,’ Abdulla replied. The Englishman raised his thin eyebrows: he hadn’t understood.
‘I am a lover of my nation,’ Abdulla put it in Farsi. The sinewy Englishman raised his eyebrows again.
‘I’m a nationalist,’ Abdulla said, in Turkish this time.
The burly man tried to explain something to the older one and seemed to get it across, but the smaller man’s pale eyebrows were still raised.
‘How about you?’
‘We’re said to be spies,’ the red-head replied, first in Farsi, then in Turkish.
‘Well, how about that! In my indictment it says ‘organised connections with foreign countries’, so now they can put ‘shared a meal with English spies’ without any need for written evidence. Or is this just another one of Trigulov’s tricks? A clever twist for the novel he thinks he�
�s writing? No, he hasn’t got the authority for something like this, much less the imagination: it has to be someone a bit higher up the ladder; probably that Armenian major.’
Noticing a wave of anxiety cross Abdulla’s face, the older Englishman carefully told the giant something in his own language. Are they planning to kill me? Abdulla wondered, casting a worried glance at the red-bearded man. He wasn’t strong enough to tackle him, let alone strangle him. That red-skinned monster could deal with Abdulla one-handed. What’s more, if he was a spy, he must have known ways of killing people with just one finger. On the other hand, Abdulla reassured himself, if he’s such a professional, why did he let himself get put in here? ‘Who’s your interrogator?’ he asked.
At that, the Englishmen again raised their eyebrows, and Abdulla racked his brains for the Farsi for ‘interrogator’.
‘Who carries out your inspection? Who’s your inspector?’ he asked in Farsi.
The older man seemed to have understood: ‘Ameer Nasrullo,’ he said.
Just then, while Abdulla was pondering, their fragmented conversation was interrupted by a hatch in the ceiling opening: as if into a well, a container was lowered by rope from the hatch: a brass tub holding three loaves, and a brass jug of tea. Abdulla was amazed. Who’s up there? he wondered, looking up, but the hatch had slammed shut, while the red-haired giant reached out for the tub.
—
Abdulla was taken aback by the sight of these infidels reaching for the bread without having washed their faces. He looked at the corner where there were usually two buckets: one empty, to use as a latrine, and one with water; this time, though, he could see only the one empty bucket. So those warders weren’t even giving them water to wash with!
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