My mind started to leave the small place at my intention. It did not get out of my small ruined place, it was drying under my blanket where bitter smell was coming like meat what remained in sun light and the absentmindedness was pulling me to its chisel harder and harder. It thought time what was blowing like sand hadn’t gone.
I wished the pains in my soul would move to my body and thereby my soul would be comforted. Soon, in insanity or idleness, I involuntarily scratched my head with my fingernails, intentionally injuring it, and then developed the habit of puffing my hard, red scalp, which was stuck between my fingernails, into my mouth. This habit, which looked disgusting when viewed from the sidelines, began to seem delicious to me.
In fact, it was an excuse for grief, and my rebellion was facing the other thing – life. That life knew only flowing in one direction. No one had satisfied with it yet, nor would they. If you said it was life, you would waste your time. I could assure you that it was a complete hoax.
As I made my hair tousled, I whispered, “Wherever he went, he was sitting in the arms of his beloved wife, listening to her sighs.”
He was a married writer, and although he had not been in the creative world for long, he was best known for the publication of his first book. He was of medium height, broad-shouldered, about forty years old. Although his gait resembled that of a bear, he was some kind of salute. His eyes … Oh! These piteous cat-like eyes had completely enchanted me. In short, he had special warmth that overwhelmed the human will. For this reason, a large part of his audience was women. The romance between us became more and more abstract, like a mountain of melting ice.
In the end of day , the doorbell began to rang incessantly. Blood rushed to my brain and I ran to the doorway. I’m sure this was he, because no one could ring the doorbell without taking his hand away except he. Before opening the door, I arranged my hair on the doorway and unlocked the door, but I did not open the door. For showing that as if I was not noticing him I went into the kitchen and picked up one of the bottles of beers that filled the fridge. He didn’t hurry to enter, his head bowed thoughtfully behind the door, his eyes stared at the ground, his hand still on the doorbell. He stood there until my neighbor Tatar Aunt Natasha got up and shouted. After a while he went into the kitchen and came to me silently and give my parched lips an involuntary cold kiss. His forehead twitched for the smell that coming from my mouth. He opened the windows for ventilating house where was filled with the smell of tobacco and alcohol and he stared out the window at the playground below. Half an hour passed and we were both still silent. At all times, no one spoke when the last word was reading. For some reason, this situation demanded it. We just needed a third person – a judge.
“I’m leaving,” he said when I didn’t answer. “I visited a doctor, my stomach ulcer is serious. I need to be treated during the summer. I also take a break from this mediocre Uzbek literature. Beggar’s enemy will be the beggar, they became jealous of me.”
He turned to me. And I, in that carelessness, in that silence, stared at him and sipped my beer.
“I have appeared in magazines of eight country in this month. Did you hear, eight?” he said pointing to the number eight. “All of them are famous publishers. I need peace to work harder on myself,” he said, getting hotter and hotter, “And you’re distracting me from my mission,” he said.
He finished his words, shuddering at my glare, and took a deep breath like a soldier preparing for his next battle.
“I spat. To you and your writing. Wouldn’t you say in short, “My wife found out about everything”? I smiled sarcastically, and I wondered how I had found the strength to do so.
He slowly sank to the table next to him.
“Yes, she knows everything. That’s right, I don’t love her. Maybe she’ll never be able to have a child with me, but I can’t leave her like that,” he said, putting his left hand on his forehead to express his regret. “If I did, it would be a real disgrace, you know?”
“You are a scoundrel. You are a coward who cannot live for himself even when he is forty. You sacrifice yourself for things, for people. You realize that any creature is not valuable for sacrificing, but the dirty veins in your body still want heroism!”
The anxiety inflicted on him by Creator began to show itself. It seemed that my last words hit his pride so he begat to trow his word what he hadn’t told me.
“You are a devil who is in the stranger and insurmountable darkness, lost, unable to find your place, your environment. I’m just interested in your devil. I have used you as an argument to better reveal the image of a woman in my works so far.”
“I can’t understand the purpose of this world and I can’t share in its joys. But I am alienated into this world with all my feelings and thoughts. But, who are you to break into my heart and now escape from its open scene?”
At the same time this man who had always overcame his personal dreams was a spiritual idiot in a whirlpool of hesitation, not knowing how to respond to me. He became happy for the answer he had suddenly found and came under my nose with a sharp motion, his hands with a fist.
“I am a lucky writer. You are in your mid-thirties, a mediocre literary critic. You clung to my skirt because I was a good writer. Every day you started to become jealous of me too. You have never been kind to me about creativity. A nihilist literary critic does not need a lucky writer like me.
“A lucky writer?” I didn’t realize that I said that inwardly or outwardly.
He didn’t even wait for me to come to him, slammed the door and left.
I had only one fault with him – I did not praise him for what he wrote. As he wrote something, he ran to me and waited for my praising. His wife didn’t understand such things, everyone around him had become her enemy. So he looked for me. And I said repeatedly, that there were reiterations, synonyms were used improperly, plot was fragile and etc. I thought that if I praise him, he would cool down. I fear it. I never wanted that one day he wouldn’t come to that doorway. Small things were increasing more between us. He was so selfish and he only wanted everyone around him to applaud him.
Now I was no longer interested in anything, and the social needs were completely forgotten. I looked like someone with an incurable disease, my lips were dry from lack of blood, and they were as white as lime plaster on the walls of an old room. Not only my old clothes, but my underwear were too big for my body, which was becoming thin day by day. At first glance, I had a nose with holes that reminded an owl’s nest, shaggy breasts.
The summer was passed frying in the flood of sunshine. I didn’t hurry to wake up in the morning, exhausted from hunger. At that moment I felt the shadow of someone in front of me. In white scarf on her head. First of all I whispered:
“I think I’m dead. Interestingly, the notion that heaven and angels do not exist was at the forefront of my denial.
“What a heaven? For now, you are a man-made hell, mad. The unknown angel tried to pinch me, but it did not catch my body. I rubbed my eyes and looked at the ‘angel’ carefully.
“Muqqi?” I said, imagining my gentle sister Muqaddas who walked in our old yard and put on the clothes I had left. Naturally, she hadn’t changed now. Her sunburned face, her cracked heels and palms, her bruises under his eyes … From all this it was clear that my father’s wealthy son-in-law, a merchant was already bankrupt and was taking his pain from vodka and my sister. And the poverty had crushed their shoulder considerably. As I stared at her from head to toe, I wondered how Muqaddas had left her two children in the village and her abusive husband and she had come to see me more than why she was dressed in white.
“You’re still pressing your teeth though you’re big. Your saliva also made the pillow wet.”
She pointed to the pillow with a broken look. I grabbed her skirt and tried to stand up. When I couldn’t do that Muqqi helped me. As I tried to hug her and I scattered my hands and a foul odor of sweat came from my armpits. She pulled away in disgust.
“Take it, here it is. Go to the bathroom and wash.”
She threw a towel in my face.
“Well, you live in the city, hot and cold water is under your nose. What would you do if you heated water as I did?”
“Oh, I wish my Muqqi. I wish I could stay in the hot ovens and bake bread. Maybe it’s my fault that I didn’t deserve the “female” mark that stamped on our foreheads when we were born. Or is it our father’s fault that he sold you, your love, your dreams and marketed your life, buried me in my life?”
“Leave my father alone, let him sleep peacefully in his grave.”
I was stunned for a moment, like a child woken up. Apparently, she was ready to comfort me, as if she thought that I would cry when I heard about my father’s death. I laughed. Not slowly, but until I calmed down, I laughed with all my might. Muqaddas’ face blushed with anger and she slapped me. As I knelt beside him, I fell at her feet. Even then, I laughed. She kicked me. Suddenly my stomach began to sting, and I began to scream like a snake. I tried to vomit, but I couldn’t because there was nothing in my stomach. As my movements intensified my sister became confused. She sprayed water on my face. She ran to aunt Natasha with a light motion, knocking on the door with both hands. Aunt Tatar opened the door and started to curse my sister in Russian. When my sister didn’t let she to go, Natasha went into the house with her. As she saw my condition, she hurriedly called the doctor. Before they arrived, I fainted from the pain.
When I open my eyes, I am in the ward. The same white ‘angel’ was standing beside me.
“Are you all right?” she said.
When you looked at her worried eyes you might know easily that this simple girl was frightened.
I just shook my head as if to say “I’m fine”.
“You’ll be happy now, aunt.”
As soon as she enter the ward, the doctor’s voice was heard, “your sister is pregnant. Exactly two months.”
She smiled frowning. I was silent in this case as well, as I had lost the ability to judge based on a particular incident. Muqaddas did not know whether to laugh or cry. She took a handkerchief from her chest, her hands trembling as she looked at the statue of me, the doctor in a sigh. Inside the handkerchief, she folded four layers, clung to each other, took a few small coins of value, and put them in the woman’s pocket. The doctor motioned to my sister to come out.
I was left alone. Five minutes ago, when my mind began to submit to my will, the ward, which seemed like hell to me was now surrounded by the walls of a fairy-tale paradise, which our mullahs who used to visit in the mosques described. The song of the bird, of course, was nothing more than a good news. This piece of meat in my body was the fruit of wonderful moments I had with my lucky writer. Just as I was rejoicing, I remembered that He was not with me, and I shuddered. This good news must be conveyed. But I clung to my bed, shaking my head at what to say. Now I tried to clear my blurred thinking. I began to pass each idea that came out of my mind through the prism of my heart one by one. To what extent will this message affect someone who has not justified himself, or even has no destiny of his own?
The nurse came into the room, dusting off my confession. This little girl, in a white robe, asked me how I was. As soon as she asked if I needed anything, I said, “Paper and pen. I just need a pen and paper.” The nurse quickly took what I asked out of her pocket. As she left the room, she did not even notice that the door was tilted open.
“Sister, your sister’s fetus is in danger. Not only the fetus, but her own organism was in crisis. As a result of regular alcohol consumption, blood composition was impaired. In this case, we are all surprised that her fetus has reached two months. But it is clear that this will not go far. It is not possible for her to have a child now. Explain everything to the patient with the bed.”
“I see, thank you.”
My sister couldn’t come to me, she sat on one of the seats in the hall thinking about how to tell me what the doctor had said. However, I had listened the doctor’s words with an intuition, not an ear. She came in with absentmindedness, like a chicken with broken legs.
“Muqqi, I’m hungry.”
“Right now, I’ll bring you something from the kitchen downstairs. Can I have some hot soup, please?”
“I want it.”
I kissed my sister on the forehead. I wanted him to take it as an apology for everything. Before leaving, she gave me a smile as sad as our mother’s. It was a sign of forgiveness, of course. When I was alone, without much thought, I began to write on a paper. As I sat down to write, it was as if my ancestors over my shoulder were staring at this letter and whispering sadly in my ear that I had been cursed. When I finished writing, I listened innocently to the open window.
There is an indelible mark from everything. I thought I had also left my feelings for him behind the door that had been slammed shut that day. His charming, soulful looks, his heat, his stormy feelings… I knew I couldn’t find any of them, no one, but I didn’t have the strength to admit it. More and more, my whole being – the memories that excited my interior and exterior were rippled in my boiling blood. I couldn’t believe that memory is so necessary to man.
Whether it was because I had a sensitive heart, I was quick to anticipate the impending troubles. As I was drinking coffee in my usual creative room, the doorbell rang. I looked up at the hanging clock and said to myself, “The postman is ten or fifteen minutes late than usual.” Shortly after, my wife came in through the door, holding a newspaper and three or four envelopes. Fearing that she would disturb me, she slowly put them on the table and disappeared again like a thief entering the house on tiptoe. I watched her from the room and said, “This poor woman has suffered a lot. She is paying for my sins.”
I sipped my cold coffee and glanced at the envelopes. As I saw “To the Lucky Writer” was written on one of them my heart beat fast. I tore the envelope in a hurry. I read the letter with tears in my eyes.
To the lucky writer
Today I wanted to crack for you like a pomegranate left in the rain. It was today that a broken heart was saved. My days without you have been spent trying to figure out how much you have contributed to each and every moment of my life, to each of my feelings.
My heart, my soul, my whole body, everything about a lucky writer like you is more precious to me now. As I wandered around the questionable comments, I was suddenly greeted with the good news. A piece of you fell on my body. The bond with you is broken, but instead of it our navels are tied with a piece of meat.
Do you remember sitting at your desk, hugging my slender waist, sitting in front of you and making plans for our future children?
“The first will be a girl. Her name will be Shahrizoda. Yes, yes it will be Shahrizoda,” you said becoming happy. An d I frowned.
“Why Shahrizoda? Usually when a man names his daughter, it turns out to be the name of his former lover.
“Are you crazy?” you pointed to my forehead with your index finger, “our daughter will be as beautiful as Shahrizada in the fairy tale of “A Thousand and One Nights”.
As much as I was happy to be born a woman at that time, my joy now is even greater.”
But life is a different kind of suffering. I thought that our daughter would see the sufferings we saw here, and all my courage slipped from my palms like water. I thought a lot about how to save our Shahrizada from the absurdity of this fanciful world, which smells of filth. My decision is that we will leave making this world weep.
Your Masuma.
After reading the letter, a sad look fell on my face, and as I had been crying, my nonsensical gaze fell on the article on the front page of the newspaper in red letters, “The woman who threw herself out of the hospital window.”
Maftuna Umrzoqova
Uzbekistan
