The following is an extract from MANASCHI, the new novel by acclaimed author Hamid Ismailov. The book will publish 29 July - pre-order before then for an exclusive discount.
On the last day of the third twelve-year cycle, Bekesh had a dream which might have been a hallucination. He dreamt that he had crossed many rocks and hills to see his Uncle Baisal’s yurt on the highland pastures. In one gauntleted or gloved hand, his uncle was holding Tumor the hunting eagle, while in his other hand was a bowl full of fresh or sour milk. When the fierce Tumor saw Bekesh, who had not been very cautious in his approach, the creature grew alert, as if he were about to fly off to hunt; then he flapped his thickly feathered wings and crashed against the door through which Bekesh had just entered. Bekesh greeted his uncle and sat down across from him, his face pallid with anxiety. His uncle proffered the bowl he was holding and said, ‘Drink!’
The drink in the bowl was white, but neither fresh nor sour milk. If it was salt, it didn’t taste salty; if it was snow, it hadn’t melted; if it was sand, it wasn’t grainy. When he was a child, in pioneer camp, Bekesh had had to down a liquid slurry called ‘gulvata’, and this was what he was reminded of in the dream. If he had to sip it, he couldn’t have; if he’d been told to chew it, his teeth wouldn’t have coped with it. As he sat there, his head spinning and his mouth parched, the sharp-eyed Baisal stared at his nephew and ordered him again, ‘Try it!’ Bekesh made an effort and took a gulp of the stuff: he felt a heavy weight in his stomach. The tape recorder he held in his hand and the desire he had had for a heart-to-heart interview were now forgotten.
Just then a loud noise rang out. It was as loud as if hordes of horsemen were bursting in, turning everything upside down. Alarmed, Bekesh looked all around him. The panic-stricken eagle flew through the wind back into the yurt. Together with the stinging cold of the snow, like myriads of sparks, there came what may have been foot soldiers or perhaps horsemen. Something like ice penetrated Bekesh’s heart, it was some strange force that seized his whole being. The lordly Baisal, who was sitting by his side now, instantly had his eyebrows and beard turned white; he dissolved into spinning whirls of snow dust and wormwood. And with a rumbling roar, together with the yurts and everything in sight which was swallowed up in a white blizzard, he vanished…
In a cold sweat Bekesh awoke from this dream. He vigorously rubbed his swollen eyelids. He worshipped a God whom he had never once recalled in his life. He looked all around him. Utterly alone, he saw his walls still standing, calmed down a little and became settled.
In the morning, when Bekesh looked in the mirror to shave his thin beard, his face had turned into a piece of hide, stretched over his skull. Had it always been like this, or had the flesh on his cheeks and jaw thinned? This was how aliens were depicted: had he now turned into one too? Had his Kyrgyz heritage come to the fore now that he was ageing, and had every trace of his Tajik mother been lost? As he was shaving his wispy beard, recalling his dream the fear he had felt the night before, there was a knock at the door. Bekesh took a slightly dirty towel, wiped his face perfunctorily and went to answer it: a postman in a black gown stood at the threshold, holding a single-sheet telegram in his hand. ‘Sign for it,’ he said as he offered it to Bekesh. Bekesh signed for it, took the letter, and without saying even a word of farewell to this black shade, set off downstairs.
‘Your Uncle Baisal has died. Come!’ read the telegram.
Staring through the door after the departing black crow, Bekesh shivered violently, stark naked but for his dirty towel, the flesh on his shoulders sticking to his bones.
That day, when he got to the local radio station where he worked, Bekesh asked for indefinite leave of absence. His boss was uncooperative initially. When he heard of the death of Baisal, the famous Manas reciter, he had his underlings run to the archives to search for dialogues recorded at one time by Bekesh himself. Only after these were recovered did he finally sign off on Bekesh’s request. Bekesh now took the opportunity to retrieve for himself copies of some conversations that had slipped his memory. Then he borrowed a small sum of money from his colleague Yashka, and went on his way.
It was a long time ago that Bekesh had arrived in this town, which was an intricate patchwork of ethnicities. After leaving the army, he had turned to his studies, and then this radio work. He was tethered to a stake here, as the Kyrgyz say, ‘Whomever my elder brother marries, she’s my sister-in-law.’ This place kept him on an even keel, it kept him calm. He’d licked its salt and grazed its grass. He was used to the people, he was recognised by the locals.
So now, as the snow fell, his loneliness hidden under the broad brim of his felt tricorne hat, and as he dashed off towards the bus stop together with the flow of the town’s anxious citizens, he heard on one side a joyful shout, ‘Hey-y-y, Bekesh, man!’, and on the other side, a question, ‘Is that you, Bekesh?’, and elsewhere ‘Hey there, did you see that?’, spoken by yet another voice from a truck passing as softly as if it was wearing felt boots, too.
But Bekesh’s mood was sombre. There’s no dawn for an old maid, as they say, and he remembered a village in the distant mountains: the very village where death had struck his uncle. In this snow, as thick as sawdust, would any bus be going to the mountains? It was just as well that he’d borrowed money from Yashka: if the bus didn’t come, he would simply stop a car or lorry and pay the driver.
Chekbel, the village where Bekesh was born and raised, was in the same Pamir ravine as Chong Alay, in the mountains that straddled the borders of two countries. Half of the villagers were Kyrgyz, half Tajik. This division went right through Bekesh’s family. Those born on his father’s side of the family were pure Kyrgyz from Alay, whereas the relatives on his mother’s side were Pamiri Tajiks. Probably it was because of this split that, inclined to be neither Kyrgyz or Tajik in his village, Bekesh had gone to live in this town as an adult, a place so alien to him and so mercenary. True, Bekesh’s mother, the redhead Zarina, had died when he was a child, so Bekesh was more or less left in the care of his Granny and, after his father remarried, he had remained dependent on her. When his father passed away, he grew up under the supervision of his Uncle Baisal. So now, Bekesh, who had become a townsman, was in effect journeying through the snow to bury his father. Hadn’t the dream which came to him last night been about this? Or did his dream have some other meaning?
Translated from the Uzbek by Donald Rayfield.
