I Will Miss You
I am so sorry to see that neither your existence as a human being nor your dead body is worthy of something in this country. What an earth you have come to this world, poor man! Anyway, did you not deserve tactful attitude towards yourself, at least now? My heart shrunk when they turned me upside down and kicked me to the mess. Moreover, one gets sick of the smell of the rags I have been wrapped up. Or have I started to smell bad in two days? Oh boy, the bus trunk became a shelter for me to take me home when I died!
My friend barely persuaded a bus driver, since none of them agreed to take the dead body. It looked like this driver was with good heart, or he just assented out of desperation, seeing swollen teary eyes of my friend. “OK, but you pay for the usual passenger, not the luggage!” the driver said. Otherwise, in addition to my humiliation, my body would rot in these lands…
I remember my past life. What a happy youth I had! Or the first years of our wedding and times when I scented my wife’s handkerchief while waiting for her to come from cotton fields very late in the evenings. Or hot summer days when my wife’s little nephew and I swam in the small river of a remote village, where we resided temporarily to take care of my old parents-in-law…
The bus is flying fast. From time to time the trunk door opens and I see the lanterns of border guards. My face was exposed in the movement. As we go, suddenly I feel the banana box next to me shake. There’s another big bundle on top of the box, you can’t tell what’s inside, but it looks like something very heavy. As the banana box is moved with effort, the bundle slides down. I notice someone lifting his head from the box.
One can hardly accommodate himself in this trunk, sitting or lying, or you can take a dead man like me, but I can see in the flashlight that the thing that has just raised its head is a 12- or 13-year-old boy! When the trunk opens for checkup, he lies down wrapped in a fabric with an effort not to be seen. I think, when the light came on, the little boy saw me… It seems that he came to work to this country, but failed, so without a penny, he agreed to be a “luggage” to go home in this trunk. I can feel him shivering from the cold. Or is that out of fear? But he felt a little relieved that someone was around. However, as he slides towards me, he tries to rub my face; he strokes and pulls my mustache, my stiff mustache! My frozen body! Sensing my death, he screams, Voy Dod! Luckily no one hears it in a good noise, but who knows if there is any screaming in the ears of some sleepy, drunken, cold men and women sitting in the passenger compartment of the bus. The boy, going side by side with a corpse like me, may be thankful for his survival, but it is impossible not to endure it. We have been driving for 3 days together. It was as if the boy had stuffed a loaf of bread in his pocket, and from time to time I heard a squeaking noise.
Again past times come to my mind. Oh, I remember my daughters! My princesses! They work in the evening shifts in black sweat for a pittance to help the family! Your dad went to work to bring a bag of money, but how are you going to meet me now, my dears?! Wouldn’t I see these days if I had a son? Ah, strangers will take me to my tomb now…
The bus stopped. A familiar Uzbek voice is heard from the radio: “News from Heaven! Thousands of jobs have been created! Millions of young and old people are satisfied with the just policy pursued by the leader of our country!” The messages are accompanied by songs and melodies: Yallama yorim yallo-la, yallola-shaylik, yallola-shaylik! Let’s split into three or four and chat and grieve!!!
My sobbing relatives take me through the pass to a remote village three hundred kilometers away.
My wife Samira, my orphan Samira! I indeed missed you so much! I wish I could wipe your bitter tears off. I want to caress your face, I want to kiss your callous hands – do you feel it too? My lips can’t move, only my mouth is stiff, and my body has already started stinking.
Fortunately, it snowed today, and the weather is much colder. But there was still no gas, and the corpse-washer was washing me with the water boiled on the fireplace. Well, such water is very sweet, isn’t it? Just let me take a bath in fresh sweet water and wrap my whole body in white cloth…
The snow is playing and falling on my shroud. It is crying and falling on the velvet cover and I’m not cold anymore. And my lips don’t blush anymore. I just miss you, Samira! We will see each other in doomsday now, my Samira! Be safe until the Day of Judgment! I miss you!
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