Manaschi E-Book

Hamid Ismailov

• Herausgeber: Tilted Axis Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 368

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

In his latest tragicomedy Hamid Ismailov interrogates the intersection between tradition and modernity. A former radio-presenter wrongly interprets one of his dreams and thinks that he has been initiated into the world of spirits as a manaschi, one of the Kyrgyz bards and healers reciting Manas – the longest human epic, consisting nearly of a million verses – who are revered as people who are connected with supernatural forces. Travelling to a mountainous village populated by Tajiks and Kyrgyzs, he instead witnesses the full scale of the epic's wrath on his life. Following on from the award-winning The Devils' Dance and Of Strangers and Bees, this is the third and final book in Ismailov's Central Asia trilogy.

Leseprobe

Manaschi

About-the-author

Manaschi

Titlepage

Dedication

Translator’s Introduction

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Copyright

About Tilted Axis Press

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Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Start of Content

praise for of strangers and bees

‘Learned, strange and charming, Of Strangers and Bees enriched my understanding of history.’ — Marcel Theroux, Guardian (Book of the Day)

‘An alluring, disjointed novel of parables and allegories […] In many ways, Of Strangers and Bees feels like the culmination of all of Ismailov’s works, experiences, and philosophies.’ — Will Harris, Books and Bao

‘Any reader might find themselves with a pen and paper handy, ready to take down tokens of wisdom […] For all its depth and complexity, Of Strangers and Bees remains a page-turner, driven by Sheikhov’s captivating inner monologue.’ — Hannah Weber, Calvert Journal

‘It is Ismailov’s skill to keep us fascinated by the story or, rather, the stories, which are both deadly serious but, in some cases, very funny, as well as to educate us about his culture, his faith and the very real problems of exiles, particularly those coming from a culture that threatens them, their family and their well-being.’ — The Modern Novel

‘I am extremely excited to see this “modern Sufi parable” being published in the UK. This is a magnificent epic […] a must-read for anyone who likes reading diverse literature.’ — Rabeea Saleem, BookRiot

‘Many of the episodes are beguiling. One could characterise the overall effect as Master and Margarita comes to the Uzbek Cultural Center of Queens, NY.’ —David Chaffetz, Asian Review of Books

praise for the devils’ dance

‘A mesmerising – and terrifying – novel of tremendous range, energy and potency. This brilliant translation establishes Ismailov as a major literary figure on the international scene.’ — William Boyd

‘A beguiling tale of khans, commissars, spies and poet-queens […] in a rare English translation of modern Uzbek fiction.’ — Economist

‘Captivating. A rare example of Uzbek literature translated into the English language – in this case admirably so by Donald Rayfield.’ — Times Literary Supplement

‘Might Hamid Ismailov’s The Devils’ Dance open Central Asian literature to the world as Gabriel García Márquez’s novels did for Latin America? It deserves to’ — Asian Review of Books

‘Ismailov shows that even under extreme duress, a writer’s mind will still swim with ideas and inspiration […] Rebellious, ironic, witty and lyrical […] A work that both honours and renews that rich tradition [of Central Asian literature]’ — Financial Times

‘[Ismailov is] a writer of immense poetic power.’ — Guardian

Manaschi

dedicated to the Manaschi Saparbek Qasmambet

Translator’s Introduction

What Is the Manas and Who Is a Manaschi?

The oral Kyrgyz folk epic, Manas, is as important to the Kyrgyz nation as Shakespeare is to the English-speaking world. It was not recorded in writing until the 1870s, and only very recently have full editions been published. Depending on the reciter, the Manas can comprise from 250,000 to 900,000 verses, and is longer than the Finnish Kalevala or Sanskrit Mahabharata. Each reciter adds, deletes or varies the verse, so that the epic has constantly evolved. Researchers date it to the eighteenth century, but believe that it incorporates earlier folk episodes, possibly from the tenth. The eponymous hero Manas may well be as historical as he is legendary: the son magically born to the elderly cattle herder Jakyp, Manas unites and leads the Kyrgyz in the battles they fight over the centuries to overthrow Chinese and Mongol domination and to return from the Altai Mountains to their original (and present) homeland in the Tien Shan. Manas acquires allies, enemies, wives and magical powers, and survives assassination attempts in a series of struggles with virtually every nation of Central Asia.

The epic itself varies from lyrical and mystical episodes to evocations of battles, betrayals and intrigues – from heroic grandeur to, on occasion, shockingly patriarchal lewdness. The Manas is usually linked to epic poems of Manas’s successors, the Semetey and Seytek. It is not only a retelling of centuries of history in legendary, sometimes mythical form, it is a moral work that dictates codes of behaviour for Kyrgyz men and women. Translations have been attempted, but few succeed in rendering the quality of a poem that demands a musicality and stamina lost to modern cultures. For an English-speaking reader by far the best experience comes from the translation, with original text and extensive commentaries, by A. T. Hatto of a particularly fine episode, The Memorial Feast for Kökötöy-Khan, Oxford University Press, 1977.

The epic’s performer, the Manaschi, was (and still is) a special individual in Kyrgyzstan: he has to be endowed with a phenomenal memory, an ability to induce a trance-like state, and with musicality (the Manas can be chanted or accompanied by a stringed instrument). Almost always, the Manaschiinherits his knowledge and his genius from a close male relative or mentor: frequently the Manaschi is credited with shamanistic powers (which is why Islamic clerics often regard the poem and the Manaschi with suspicion) and magical abilities to move through time and space, even to prophesy. In this novel the hero Bekesh inherits from his Kyrgyz uncle and foster-father Baisal not just a horse and an eagle (as important as any human family member to a traditional Kyrgyz), but the vocation and knowledge of a Manaschi, which he is reluctant to realise. At the same time, Baisal’s schoolboy grandson, Dapan, also has a miraculous memory of the Manas, a gift that is to prove disastrous. To be born a Manaschi can have a tragic outcome.

Ethnic Conflict

One main thread in this novel is the complex web of ethnic relations and conflicts in what used to be Turkestan and then Soviet Central Asia. Ever since Turkic tribes started migrating from Siberia in the fifth century AD to a Central Asia dominated by Iranian peoples, an uneasy symbiosis has developed: the Kyrgyz and Kazakhs remained nomads and cattle herders, while the Uzbeks integrated more closely with neighbouring Tajiks, who are Farsi speakers. Bekesh, the hero of Hamid Ismailov’s novel, has a Kyrgyz father and foster-father, but a Tajik mother. After a period of Mongol domination, Turkestan split into Emirates and Khanates, sometimes at peace, sometimes warring with one another; under Russian and Soviet rule, new borders were established. Today’s republics (the ‘stans’) have old borders which leave Uzbeks stranded in Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyz in Tajikistan, Kazakhs in Uzbekistan: an endless source of violent clashes. People are aware of a common identity, and many remain bilingual in an Iranian dialect and a Turkic language, but ambitious local politicians, as well as ‘alien’ influences – Russian, Islamic (Central Asia traditionally has a tolerant version of Islam, which Wahhabi clerics militate against) and Chinese – disrupt what was once an enduring, albeit uneasy symbiosis. In Hamid Ismailov’s novel there are good people and bad people of all nationalities, but sudden incursions arouse ancient enmities: the Chinese, now arriving with bulldozers instead of swords, building ‘belts and roads’ instead of (or as well as) a multi-ethnic empire, remind the Kyrgyz of the Imperial China that oppressed the Turkic ‘barbarians’ with such ferocity centuries ago, in a resurgence of hostility which leads the Manaschi to a violent end. Hamid Ismailov’s novel is not just an evocation of a traditional culture, but an alert to an unfolding disaster.

On the Translation

Hamid Ismailov has, one might think perversely, written a novel in his native Uzbek about Kyrgyz and Tajiks (Uzbeks have only a marginal presence), and the novel sometimes reads as if written in an Uzbek that a Kyrgyz would write. The two languages are closely enough related to be, with care, mutually intelligible. But Uzbek has lost half the Turkic vowels preserved in Kyrgyz, and Kyrgyz has lost four guttural consonants preserved in Uzbek, which gives the translator a challenge in identifying from the Uzbek form the Kyrgyz word that should be consulted in the dictionary. Whereas Uzbek borrows unstintingly from Iranian and Arab vocabulary, Kyrgyz is much more homogeneous, just now and again admitting Mongolian or Chinese words into its lexicon. Fortunately, the Soviet tradition of lexicography has left us with superb dictionaries of Uzbek and Kyrgyz. But the linguistic wealth and diversity has made an English rendering a kind of linguistic triathlon that strains the translator’s every muscle, an experience which I do not complain of, but look back on, dazzled and grateful.

Donald Rayfield

Part One

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 hiswalls 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 Jewish 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?

—

There was indeed no bus going to the mountains. Bekesh caught a lorry that was travelling halfway there. He was the third passenger crammed into the cab. Once they left the town, the road became hilly; the snow had covered the road, and by now it was dark. If it weren’t for the chains on the wheels, no force could have kept them from skidding on the slippery tarmac. The half-drunk driver, who was aware of this, constantly engaged his passengers in conversation as if to distract himself, and the passenger next to him seemed to be equally loquacious. Nobody else could get a word in, which suited Bekesh. Ignoring the unending flow of the conversation between a bird-brain and a chatterbox, he remembered his uncle, recalling his pleasant figure and noble turn of phrase.

Once the lorry had climbed the first pass and had begun the easy section downhill, which wasn’t so steep, the driver had had an earful of all this chatter. ‘Now, man, let’s hear from you too!’ he addressed Bekesh. Bekesh was reluctant to be torn from his inner thoughts. ‘What can I say, then?’ he mulled, and the passenger sitting next to the driver suddenly blurted out, ‘A thousand flowers!’ Bekesh unexpectedly cracked a smile. For nearly ten years Bekesh had been broadcasting a programme on the local radio called ‘A Thousand Flowers’. These lovely people had recognised him from just five words he had spoken. Bekesh unburdened himself in all sincerity, explaining that he was going to Chekbel and that his Uncle Baisal had just died. There was a general expression of sorrow, as everyone touched their faces with their hands in prayer.

This was something which his interlocutor couldn’t let pass: ‘Do you mean the great Baisal?’ he asked, showing off his knowledge again. Without waiting for an answer, he continued deferentially, ‘They say he stopped reciting the Manas, but why?’ Bekesh had always shunned such questions. But, as it happened, the lorry screeched, and suddenly swerved on its path, the load in the back compartment rumbling loudly with a bang. With one wheel completely jammed in a great pot-hole in the middle of the road, they came to an abrupt halt.

For all the talk about the lorry’s getting stuck, thank God it hadn’t overturned. In the blink of an eye the bewildered driver sobered up; and the trembling passengers, including that idiot of a chatterbox, all got out of the back of the vehicle onto the side of the road. The engine had stalled and there was absolute silence all around. The only audible sound was of snowflakes falling gently onto their faces. There was not a star in the heavens, nor a glimmer of light on the ground: just a deep blue darkness. For a moment everyone was stunned, then the driver switched on a Chinese torch and inspected the wheel that had plunged into a pothole. Fortunately, there was no sign of any puncture. Stretching their limbs, the passengers all followed the torch and walked round the lorry. Everything seemed to be all right. ‘Let’s get a move on!’ said the chatterbox; the driver agreed and dived into the cab. After a call of ‘One, two, three!’ they pushed the lorry. The wheel sent out a flurry of snow, which had turned into muddy slush: the vehicle was still stuck in the deep pothole.

The driver got down again. ‘Put some juniper branches under it,’ he said. But while searching for his hatchet, he came across his dinner, which he’d tied into a bundle. ‘It’s dark now, let’s have a bite to eat!’ he said, inviting everyone round the lorry’s headlights. The others now took their bags and sacks out of the cab: some had doughnuts, some sweets, some bottles. Bekesh filled his chest with a deep breath of the mountain air; the day was now virtually over but he felt neither hungry nor thirsty. Besides, he hadn’t taken any provisions for his sudden journey. So he did the decent thing by grabbing hold of the axe in the lorry’s ladder-rungs and announcing that he’d cut some juniper while the others ate. His fellow passengers wouldn’t agree to this, ‘Let’s each cut a hundred, that will be something to do!’ There was no alternative: Bekesh joined in with the rest of them.

It was a special pleasure to be lit up by two columns of light from the headlamps in the nocturnal darkness, to gaze out at the gradually fading shadows of the mountains around, the heavy clouds pouring down on the land their load of snow, the peace and quiet not broken by a single sound… The driver passed some vodka for Bekesh and a piece of Kyrgyz sausage to bite on. Out of a kind of forgetfulness, Bekesh swallowed the food and drink he’d been offered without being aware of doing so, so distracted was he, and he once more recalled that he was in fact in mourning when his lips felt the sweetness of sustenance. Trying to wipe away the fat with a greasy hand, he said grace, grabbed the hatchet and hurried off into the pitch darkness.

—

One part of the route followed a bottomless abyss: it ran along a rapid, burbling stream that now crackled under ice and snow; on the other side was a mountain which seemed to have eroded to a mere hill. If you strained your eyes in the dark, the snow which had turned blue seemed to be mixed with blackish patches. Bekesh took note of one of these patches and began to climb towards it. His spirits were beginning to rise. Perhaps the vodka he’d drunk had got into his blood: he couldn’t feel the snow getting into his socks, nor was he afraid of slipping in his city shoes and tumbling down over hillocks and rocks. Finally, he reached that black spot underneath the snow and was satisfied that he could feel the crooked branches of a juniper bush. Sitting sideways, holding on to its craggy trunk, he regained his senses.

Life was like this journey, he unexpectedly thought to himself. After passing smoothly, it’s broken up with a thump, and you never know who you are, where you are, or why. As Uncle Baisal used to say, when one’s mouth touched the plov, the nose hit a stone.

Bekesh remembered his uncle and shuddered. He needed to move a bit faster. He grabbed the drooping juniper trunk with one hand, and with the hatchet in the other he aimed a downward blow at the bush. The tree shook and shed its load of snow, the axe bounced off its trunk and struck Bekesh’s knee. In the pitch darkness Bekesh howled and swore. When the pain abated, he stood back a little and once more struck the juniper with the axe. The juniper’s core, as hard as a leather strap, threw the axe back again. Bekesh grabbed the axe with both hands, stood with his legs apart, and struck its core at an angle, rather than straight. The axe now penetrated the juniper trunk. As if hacking with a pickaxe, Bekesh swung the tool from the shoulder and once more slashed the juniper’s open wound. He struck again, again he hit it!

Bekesh’s head was spinning – perhaps because the inner sap of this unsightly juniper, rigid in the cold, perfumed the air. Apart from the wind, coming from the mountains and rocks, the juniper had to endure the snow and rain, and risking a rush of water or an avalanche, it had to use all its strength to cling to its little patch of earth and to life itself. Bekesh’s hands were covered with blisters, all the worse now they were lacerated. The juniper’s resistance roused Bekesh to a drunken fury, seething and unbridled and wordless.

—

After crushing the juniper and forcing it under the wheel, they set off again on their uneventful travels and reached the small town, their destination, at midnight. The mountain Kyrgyz are good-natured folk, and the driver was suddenly concerned for Bekesh. ‘I’ll take you to your village, I can relax there too,’ he said, after he’d unloaded his lorry in three different places, taking care in the darkness. Treating Bekesh as a bosom friend, he set off over the ruts and potholes towards Chekbel. Night passed, so did early morning, and they reached the village before noon.

Bekesh was wondering whether they would keep his Uncle Baisal’s body for three days, as the Kyrgyz do, waiting for kith and kin to come down from the mountain pastures so as to hold a wake for the departed. Walking sticks would be propped at the threshold of the house so that when the mourners came, they might lean on their sticks and emit loud wails. But because his uncle’s family was descended from mullahs, they may well have been in a rush to bury him before sunset.

When Bekesh got to the house, he noted the absence of any sticks, and he caught the sound of his uncle’s widow Rabiga reciting verses of the Qur’an. So they had buried his uncle without waiting for him. Bekesh’s heart was filled both by resentment and regret. In his bewilderment, he had even forgotten to wail for the dead at the threshold before coming inside. Leaving his lorry on the road, the driver followed Bekesh in, too. In the living room were Auntie Rabiga and, sitting next to her, around a tablecloth modestly laid for dinner, three elderly Kyrgyz and two Tajik women.

When his aunt spotted Bekesh, she hurriedly closed the book she was holding, said a brief final prayer, stood up and began to weep:

My true moon in moonlight,

You’re as beautiful as the moon,

We couldn’t stay together in the world,

God has separated us, alas.

If an eagle should flutter in the net,

There are scissors for that.

You set off for the other world,

Who, then, will stay with me?

When Bekesh heard this lament, he couldn’t help but hug his aunt. To his surprise, he himself suddenly howled out:

My father gave me a horse to ride,

My father gave me an eagle to hunt with.

How sad! My father is no more,

Father, there isn’t enough to shoe even one horse.

How sad! My father is no more,

Father, there’s nobody to care for the eagle.

Quite unexpectedly, these words had burst forthfrom within as Bekesh was wiping tears of misery from his eyes with Aunt Rabiga’s black-dyed handkerchief. After the sobbing and weeping, the old women ceded the place of honour to Bekesh and the driver, and Bekesh recited the Qur’an’s first sura, the Fatihah, and the 112th, Qul huwa Allahu ahadun (He is Allah, the One), which he had learnt only recently. Everyone said Amen.

‘This is our townsman,’ said Rabiga, introducing Bekesh to everybody, then looking inquisitively at the driver.

‘He’s my travelling companion…’ said Bekesh, giving the driver an apologetic look. They’d had such a great journey together, and he hadn’t had the foresight to ask the man his name!

‘Joomart,’ said the driver, to put an end to the embarrassment.

‘Yes, Joomart,’ Bekesh repeated after him.

The hostess moved the pieces of bread closer to them. The youngish Tajik lady next to her poured the men bowls of lukewarm tea, while Rabiga began the conversation: ‘He’s the favourite son of my husband.

‘My Bekesh, when he was a child, he slept right through when Baisal was reciting the Manas to the people. I shook him awake, but my husband made a sign to say, “Stop, don’t touch him!” He was allowed to lie there sleeping. When he finished reciting the Manas the people slaughtered a sheep, and Baisal gave the “sleepy boy” the sleeping side of mutton. He was so utterly fond of this child,’ she said, and began to weep again. Hearing this story for the first time made Bekesh tremble. No, not at the thought of a greasy slice of mutton at this early morning hour, but because for some reason his dream from two nights ago came back to his memory.

—

Bekesh was like a much-indulged son of his foster-father Baisal, and he considered Baisal’s other three sons as his younger brothers. None of them could find work locally, so they had left for Russia. Baisal and Rabiga were left in sole charge of Bekesh’s sisters-in-law and the infants in their care. Although Bekesh stayed away, every month he posted some of his earnings to his uncle and to a certain extent he compensated his younger cousins for his own failure to find them work in his town.

After suddenly ceasing to recite the Manas about ten years ago, Baisal had followed in the footsteps of his own father, living as a hunter and mullah. But once Shavvol, the offspring of one of Bekesh’s paternal uncles, had come to these parts after pursuing his Islamic studies in foreign countries, Baisal’s simple daily life as a mullah pretty well came to an end too, and he had only the hunting eagle Tumor and the trotting horse Topon to care for.

As he swallowed his cold tea Bekesh wondered what would become of them all.

‘How did my father die?’ he asked his aunt.

‘He was as sound as a bell. In the night the eagle was suddenly restless, it started vaulting off its perch. Then the horse started whinnying. They must have woken him: he said, “I feel thirsty.” I got up and brought him a bowl of sour milk from the larder, he took a mouthful and for some reason he called for you and fell back onto the pillow with a thump. The sour milk was spilt…’ After beginning to tell this story so grimly, Auntie again lost control of herself and, once more she began to sob, clutching the end of her handkerchief to her swollen eyes:

If there is no moon in the sky,

Then what is there in the darkness?

If Baisal is not coming back,

What is there for me on earth?

Early the next morning his aunt gave Bekesh a slice from the sleeping side of the sheep they had slaughtered. Together with Joomart the driver, Bekesh went to the cemetery and once again recited the Fatihahand Qul huwa Allahu for his foster-father Baisal and for his own mother and father. Step-mother Rabiga put the same slices of mutton in dough for Bekesh to eat.

‘He kept asking for you these last days,’ his aunt told Bekesh. ‘The others were a long way away, you were not far, but did you come?’ she said regretfully. ‘He was about to go hunting. It was the season for foxes, you could have flown the eagle together.’ Bekesh was chewing the tender meat, when his heart felt a pang.

‘Where is Tumor?’ he asked.

‘He hasn’t let anyone come close since yesterday,’ said the lady of the house, pointing over her left shoulder to the next room. ‘He won’t eat a thing now,’ she complained.

Bekesh hurriedly wiped his hand on the edge of the tablecloth, thanked God for the meal, took a piece of the meat he had been eating, and went off to the next room. If Baisal needed anything for hunting at any time, it was all was laid out for him here, beginning with an iron horseshoe and ending with leather jesses, from a quiver of arrows on a belt to an Izhevsk 58 double-barrelled shotgun. Every time Bekesh came to the village, he was sure to spend whole hours in this room with Baisal, listening to his uncle’s stories of his past life while the older man wove hemp bird nets by hand and fashioned whip handles from sticks.

Very gingerly, Bekesh opened the door to the hunting room and entered. Tumor, who was tied by a leather strap to his perch in the corner, ruffled his feathers and fixed his sharp eyes on the interloper. Bekesh had known the bird since it was a fledgling. But that was another story. As he did every time he came, he greeted the eagle in a sweet voice by its name, ‘Tu-um! Tu-um!’ The bird shook its ruffled wings and averted its rolling eyes from Bekesh, as if to say, ‘No, no!’, twisting its head sharply right to left. Bekesh considered throwing the bird a piece of meat, but he knew this might only scare it. He held back. Once again he drawled in a soft voice, lamely, as if in apology, ‘Tu-u-um! Tu-u-um!’, tentatively stretching out his hand towards the bird. Thereupon the bird suddenly flapped a wing and hurled itself in Bekesh’s direction. After being an urbanite for so long, Bekesh had perhaps lost his courage around animals! He flung the meat at the bird and rushed out.

—

Bekesh recalled how they had come to keep Tumor. It was not so long ago, when spring was turning into summer. Bekesh was fed up with work and had come to the village to drink kumys and unwind just as his foster-father Baisal was getting ready to go on an excursion with his hunter friends. They had taken Bekesh along, mounting him on Topon, as he was skinny and agile, stopping at the nearby summer pastures on their way to Asqarqoya, which was also not far away. Baisal had suspected there might be an eagle’s nest in the area and, judging by the behaviour of the parent eagles, by the way they swooped up and down, he’d realised that there must be fledglings in the nest, on the point of flying off. As they had enough time to get to Asqarqoya just before noon, they dismounted, tethered their horses and discussed what to do. Baisal pointed out a patch of twisted juniper on a mountain slope that he knew well. On top of the juniper-covered hill was a passable gap, and it was through this gap that the hunter’s piercing eyes spotted a nest that looked like a woven basket.

Above the nest a stepped rock, the size of a two-storey building, rose vertically, and Baisal and the sharpshooters Janish and Topoldi would find a way up over it. A man called Chokmor would fling a goat carcase on his horse and, with the help of a tame gyrfalcon, they had planned to lure the eagles to leave their nest. Heading for the river that went around the rock, Chokmor would fling the goat into an open space and take cover himself, leaving the gyrfalcon to hover over the carcase. The eagles, taking flight and seeing both the carcase and the gyrfalcon, would hurl themselves down, challenging the gyrfalcon for this sought-after carrion, and the latter would let the eagles rob him of it. Meanwhile Baisal would climb down to the nest, put the fledglings in a thick hemp saddlebag, after which Janish and Topoldi would pull him back up onto the crag.

Had this sleight of hand worked, even if the eagles returned to their young, Jiparbek and Sattor the Tajik would scare them off by firing their rifles. If the eagles took no notice of that, then Janish, Topoldi and Baisal would use their guns. Bekesh, however, was standing by, watching over the horses who were tethered to rocks. Everyone had a job to do.

Now Chokmor galloped on his horse towards the ravine, while the three strongmen slung their rifles across their backs, and then crawled on all fours towards the crag and the nest. His rifle by his side, Baisal tied a four-metre-long stick to his waist to act as a balancing rod. Jiparbek and Sattor the Tajik now picked up their guns and headed off on foot for two sides of the crag.

On the left, the sun broke over the mountain slope, so that the snow on the summit was dazzling. Nevertheless, the three men crawling towards the nest were clearly visible, appearing to Bekesh like a line of ants. They took a detour round the ledge where the nest had been built, and made for the top of the hill, where they took cover. When the pair of eagles flew off to hunt, however long it took, the men would be ready to strike.

Perhaps the sun’s rays had agitated the eagles, or they sensed the commotion all round them: the great birds, first one, then the other, now suddenly rose up into the sky. The trio of hunters on the crag froze. One after the other, the eagles swooped over the ledge and started to veer, not to the somewhat distant mountain and the three hunters, who were now utterly motionless, but towards where Bekesh and the horses stood. Bekesh was anxious, and on the verge of panic. He had neither gun nor stick. He hurriedly glanced around him: there was nothing he could use to defend himself—no stones apart from the huge rocks, which were too heavy to lift. The eagles were getting closer and closer to him. Bekesh unbuttoned the leather jacket he was wearing and waved it around his head, making as much commotion and noise as he could to frighten the birds off. The eagles retreated, apparently put off by the screaming, but then rose up to the skies again, surveying the horizon. Sweating and feverish, Bekesh emitted a groan.

Once the eagles had become just two black points in the sky, they had apparently spotted the carcase, which Chokmor had laid down, and the gyrfalcon over it. Passing through Asqarqoya, the bird had flown to a ravine some distance away and was by now out of sight. The three hunters scurried like spiders to the ledge around the nest. In a minute they had gathered at a clearing over the ledge. Bekesh couldn’t take his eyes off them, his heart pounding; he was aware that the eagles had just now gone behind the mountain. Uncle Baisal, with one end of a lasso tied to his waist, was about to descend. Janish and the strongman Topoldi had twisted the rope two or three times and tied the other end to a rock, and they were holding on to the remaining twists.

If the eagle came back, which hand would they use to shoot? Bekesh worried. Perhaps one man could hold onto the rope and the other could shoot: after all, the rope was tied to a rock. Baisal put a foot onto the narrow ledges on the rock, hanging on by one hand, and began to descend towards the nest, using the rope to help him down. At this point Bekesh understood the secret of the four-metre rod. Baisal had tied this rod diagonally to his waist, and it stopped one end of the rope from twisting at any time, so that the other end struck the vertical side of the crag, and held Baisal in place.

In no time at all Baisal covered the height of two storeys, reached the nest and, with the saddle-bag in one hand and a gauntlet in the other, he took something whitish from the nest. The eagle-eyed Bekesh had recognised it immediately, ‘A fledgling!’ At this point Baisal’s horse Topon began neighing for some reason. Bekesh’s heart had been reasonably calm, but now it was fit to burst. He shifted his gaze from the nest, he searched the sky. But his eyes, after being trained for so long on another distant object, warily searching far off, began to fill with tears. Bekesh rubbed his eyelids hard. As if crucified to the ledge on the crag overhanging the nest, a blurry figure was very calmly emerging upward, then he vanished, so that his being there was just a memory to be turned into a story. And the story turned into this memory.

After this, Baisal slaughtered a horse for his friends to celebrate capturing Tumor in this way.

—

Separated by force from his father, mother and siblings, for the first few days Tumor had tempered his stubbornness and defiance. Baisal showed Tumor an extraordinary tenderness, such as he had never shown any other bird. Bekesh was a witness, for he was studying the secrets of caring for this summer bird. The eaglet’s obstinacy and resistance, however, had not dimmed, even now. So Bekesh tried his hand at a trick from those past times. He went out onto the veranda, took from his aunt a piece of raw meat from the slaughtered sheep, stuck it on the end of that very same four-metre stick and quietly opened the door to the hunting room.

Tumor’s mood had not improved: he was sitting, his feathers ruffled, on the perch. Under it was the slice of meat which Bekesh had flung at him earlier and which the bird had left uneaten and ignored. Bekesh retreated to the door and proffered the eagle the raw meat on the end of the stick. The bird ruffled its feathers, clenching its big talons, prepared to attack. It stabbed towards Bekesh, narrowing its two cherry-like eyes. Bekesh felt he detected in those eyes some kind of demonstration, a cry for help.