Холдор Вулқоннинг ижодий саҳифаси.

           1. Childhood

It is winter in Bishkek. As my children and I sit in the balcony of our rental home, I lean back and watch as the snow falls to the ground. Sometimes it falls in a rush, sometimes it drifts lightly. These days my hair is coarse, my beard has grown, and I have lost weight. As a stork makes its way through the gusts of snow, I sit quietly, and think about the insanity of my life. If I were to meticulously draw you a picture of my life, you would see an image of a canoe, about the size of a pistachio shell, ceaselessly riding the waves of a Polanesian ocean in the middle of a tropical storm, struggling like a fisherman trying not to drown.The tragiocomedy that is my life is full of both laughter and tears. When I think about it, it seems like I was born a dissident. I remember one evening when I was a kid playing football with other children in the pighouse by the shores of the Qoradaryo and my father became furious with me. That is to say, I was chased from my home. I asked for political asylum from my grandfather, the neighborhood stableman and mullah Abdusalom. Luckily for me, Grandpa and Grandma were no bureaucrats; they granted me political asylum despite my lack of visa or proper documentation.My grandfather lived a long time. He was a man with a long face, a broad forehead, and a short moustache particular to the Islamic madhab of Imam A’zam. Even though he was a stableman, he was also a scholar of the Holy Qur’an. As for my grandmother, she was short and squat, with barely any teeth, but she prayed regularly, and was a kind old woman. Although they were mismatched in the style of Don Qixote and Sancho Panza, my grandfather and grandmother lived together amicably. Because our small home did not have a floor, we would write on a piolos above a thick layer of hay. A man standing over the piolos filled water to drink like it was from a great bit hot-water bottle, in the house there was no radio or TV and silence reigned over the room. In this silence even the sound of a lizard scuttling about sounded like the ticking of a clock.My grandmother spread out soft bedding for me, and as I would lie in bed I could see the full moon gently rising over the enormous poplars near my Aunt Ko’ki’s house. My grandmother would work, mending my grandfather’s robe. My grandfather for 30 years had worn eyeglasses like round discs, a fact blamed on his reading of all kinds of ancient books written in Arabic script, leafing through pages yellowed with age. I began to think about Aunt Ko’ki, whose husband had never returned from WWII, she was an old widow, built as lean as a fish, small in size with a head like a goose, a bad hand, and one blind eye, which would wink like a pigeon egg in a hole of eyes, her thin face having almost no chin.I would pray to God, wondering what the reason was for her husband not having returned from the war. Ko’ki was not the standard name for my aunt, it was more like a pseudonym. The name fit her because she loved her husband greatly, in any case, she did not marry again after her dear husband had passed. She was cheerful to her children, pure of heart, beautiful in spirit, a woman of strong faith who prayed five times a day. In my memories I will forever cherish her. Sometimes an image of Aunt Ko’ki from the window springs to my mind, busying herself in the evening in her hovel, polishing the cotton gin. Some of my poems and stories are written about this old faithful woman, who lived her life alone, unmarried due to the disappearance of his husband in the war.I was thinking about Aunt Ko’ki, how my grandfather would look at her through his thick glasses and say, "Hey, you look familiar, rag lady!” It’s true, these amusing words were among the first I heard. I would end up laughing, but I would try to restrain my laughter saying I was going somewhere even though it was dark. I would turn red, straining my face from holding in the laughter. In the end I did laugh, and seeing me do this, my grandfather laughed too. When I look back on it, my grandmother was also laughing as she polished the cotton gin, showing her toothless gums like those of an infant.The three of us laughed happily. Tears came to my grandmother’s eyes. My grandfather held back his laughter, asking for forgiveness. Eventually our laughter ceased. I listened to the weary voices of the night dogs barking hoarsely, echoing like they were inside a vessel. I gazed at the infinite stars shining like diamonds in a cloudy sky, the bright moon lifted above the poplar trees. I can see this neighborhood as if with my own eyes. After breakfast in the morning, my grandfather again deported me to my home like the captured dissident I was.