Ester

Chapter 9. The Healer from Namangan

The day was breaking. Our Zhiguli rattled down a concrete road. The healer had come back at last. Yakov had arranged our visit, and we set out for Namangan immediately. I mean, we rushed there… we were flying along as if we had wings. But that would be an exaggeration since we had been driving for over an hour and were still within the city limits. The suburbs had flashed by. Now there were fields, mostly cotton fields on both sides of the highway, or meadows with cows grazing here and there. There were also gardens and orchards. Even though the soil here was clay, it was, as they said, rich, very fertile. The republic was famous for that. Out of all the people who had settled on this land, only the Uzbeks, a very industrious people, truly enjoyed its fertility. Love for the land was fostered from generation to generation. Everyone, from children to adults, worked on the land from sunrise to sunset. Bent over with hoes or shovels, old and young worked in the fields or in their gardens, digging up the beds, turning up soil, sowing, planting seedlings… I saw them toiling, those hard-working people, many times as a child. It seemed that they didn’t get tired. Being able to grow things was the main joy of their lives.

The road climbed, and we were in the mountains. We were driving directly to Namangan – via Angren and then over the Kamchik and Pungam Mountain passes in the spurs of the Tian Shan, then down into the Fergana Valley. It was an almost five-hour drive, longer if anything happened. The road over the mountain pass had never been easy, and now, in this time of troubles, this era of collapse, general mistrust, feuds among the republics and growing terrorism, it was even more difficult. Who knew what might be in store for us there? Explaining why we were going there to border guards and passport controls would be all right. But what if we bumped into bandits? People said that extortion of gas had become a normal practice. We had prepared as well as possible for such unexpected encounters. The second car followed us. We preferred to travel as a group. Yakov, our patron, sat next to the driver and supervised the itinerary. So far, everything had gone fine. Even the road, contrary to my expectations, was in good shape – not too many holes and bumps.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the window. For me, a city boy who had grown up in Tashkent and Chirchik, this was the first time I had seen the Tian Shan, except when I attended the institute at the Husman Sport Camp. I had to cross the ocean to visit my native mountains. How beautiful they were. The mountain spurs could be seen far ahead for many miles; they seemed to go on endlessly. The narrow road wound around like a huge snake. Now it was hiding behind a sharp turn, now it was plunging down abruptly, now it was becoming wider, only to narrow again beyond the next hill, and it seemed that heavy rocks would squish the sides of the car. Now and then, the road would suddenly become almost vertical, like a rearing horse, and our straining engine would rage and roar. It was a hard and beautiful road, carved through the mountains as early as the 1920s, making this land accessible to people. The road would become blocked around the passes only during bad snowstorms.

I was looking through the window without a break, eagerly, with a feeling of sweet pain. Mama sat next to me in the car since we were on our way to see the healer in Namangan, and our misfortune was riding along with us. Still, this road and these mountains were doing something for my soul with every passing second, every passing hour. One could say that they distracted me from my somber thoughts. No, that's the wrong way to put it. They didn’t distract me – the pain was inside me – they filled me with something else. And the road was streaming, whirling, falling, hiking rapidly up and up, now almost running into a rock, now heading for the river bubbling among the boulders, now receding from it and reappearing somewhere far down below, at a bend or in the valley, so calm and peaceful, somewhere in the endless expanse, beyond the haze of the hills.

One of those little valleys, green and inviting, appeared in our path, and we stopped for a short rest. It was time for Mama to take a break, and we also needed to fill the tanks with gas from the extra fuel can. Here, we naturally wouldn’t find any of those gas stations we were so used to on the highways in America. Even if we came across a gas station, gas there was worth its weight in gold. Though we could see other things, fondly remembered and cherished from childhood. Trees, as tall and slender as ship masts grew on the sides of the road. A row of half a dozen stands could be seen in their shade. It was a small roadside market, a pleasure for travelers when they reached the pass. Here one could quench one’s thirst with kumis (mare’s milk), buy fragrant honey and freshly toasted sunflower seeds, feast on kurt