Akylbek Djumanaliev

Страна : Кыргызстан

Доктор исторических наук, профессор, заслуженный деятель науки Кыргызской Республики, старший научный сотрудник института истории и культурного наследия при Академии Наук Кыргызской Республики, автор нескольких монографий, многих научных, научно-популярных статей, Деятельнось – историческая наука, вопросы философского размышления, художественное творчество, эссеистика, переводы стихотворений Японских поэтов с русского языка на кыргызский язык.


Country :  Kyrgyzstan

Chief Researcher of the Institute of History and Cultural Heritage at Academy of Science of the Kyrgyz Republic. Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor and Honored Scientist of the Kyrgyz Republic. Author of several monographs, scientific, philosophical articles and popular science articles, and also engaged in literary creative essays, translation of the poetry by Japanese poets from Russian into Kyrgyz.


Отрывок из малой прозы” The Chinese old man “

  It was late midnight, I was sleeping, suddenly I woke up from a dream and could not fall asleep again for a long time, then started taking my dream to pieces and finally made a conclusion. That was a good dream, being satisfied with it, again tried to continue my sleep but in vain. I am staying in bed, I have closed my eyes but cannot get to sleep, there are still the same endless thoughts in my head. What should I do? How can I pass the time at such long night?

  There is no way out of this situation, except thinking of the past, various thoughts visit my mind, even want to have a talk with the God and ask for an advice, nevertheless our souls were created in the Heaven. A human being is such an interesting creation, some day he/she becomes a pitiful one, the other day he/she feels as the Creation in the Heaven. That’s why a human being is the most complex creation in the world. Who could disclose the mankind’s secret? Which science researched his mind, thinking system and proved it openly? Logic? Psychology? Philosophy or Medicine? Maybe our pets, domestic animals or our domesticated birds know us better, don’t they? A human being is such an interesting creation. We know nothing about ourselves but we dream of reaching the Universe, studying it in all directions far and wide, as for the Universe it has nothing to do with us. However, the mankind seemed to be created and programmed by the nature so a human being has to understand his life and study it among the nature through his intuition during the whole life. I think our life may be good or bad depending on our knowledge about this world, outlook, range of interests, the way we cognize everything surrounding us.

It is too early in the morning. The darkness of the night keeps silence. The endless tickings of the clock let me know about the time passing away, and the clock does not want to stop even for a moment. There are still the same thoughts, dreams in my mind. It is interesting that the thoughts occur to me one after the other and finally I remembered the incident about the Chinese old man. He lived in our village, that incident happened during 1950s.

  The location of our village was very convenient for breeding the cattle and sheep, growing plants, vegetables and etc. It stretched on the foots of the big and high mountains, in summer time the cool winds from high mountains usually cheered up the villagers and in winter time those big mountains always defended us from storms, strong winds, in short our wise ancestors chose the best place for living and working. Our village consisted of locals only, and about one hundred and more inhabitants lived there. But one alien lived there that was a Chinese old man. Nobody had an understanding where he came from, the reason for his arrival at our village. Sometimes we, teen-agers were interested in him and asked our parents about him but the elders usually answered: “Why do you need it?” and tried to end the talk. The villagers never let him stay alone, he was always treated well, if they organized a toi (Kyrgyz party) or funeral repast, or a wedding party, the Chinese old man was always invited and he behaved towards the villagers the same way. I don’t know whether the people in the village felt sorry for him or maybe they thought whether he is a  Kyrgyz or Chinese, at least he is a human being because he left his native land and was the only alien in our area, in short that Chinese old man was always in the villagers’care. We, children were polite to that Chinese too, when we saw him on our way we greeted him and he always answered our greetings with a smile shaking his head. I can remember his image till now: his skin was a bit dark, he was tall and thin. When some touring cinema or theatre actors from the center visited our village, one could never see him, however he never missed the villagers’funerals, tois (parties), ramadans and other events. He used to be dressed in white only and his clothes were always tidy, he was noticeable among the villagers. He was in a habit of keeping aloof during the events being hold in the village. I do not know the reason for that, maybe his Kyrgyz was poor or he had such character, in short he always stood aside  and was in a habit of watching the villagers and smiling. In the Kyrgyz villages people led the Kyrgyz life. Some of recently settled people had arable land, they planted wheat, potatoes. Unfortunetly the most parts of the lands were covered with high grass because there was no weeding. Our small houses were not seen behind high grass in the yards and fields. The people basically were engaged in breeding some cattle and sheep and believed in “kolhoz” (collective farm). Some day we, children had a great desire to eat sweet foods. We made our decision to seal something from the garden of that Chinese man. His house was located at a far distance from the village near the fields and its location was convenient for robbery. We made a plan using our experience and knowledge from watching movies about Partisans during the World War 2nd and the fight between German and Soviet soldiers. According our main plan we reached the outlying of our village, then went down along the stream and crawled through irrigation on canal towards the fields. Finally we arrived at the garden of the Chinese man, then started saying: “You go! No, you go!” and continued  crawling towards the field where the carrots grew and began attacking the carrot field without stop. We were filling our pockets, inside of our T-shirts, at times nibbling at carrots.

-The old man! – somebody among us bawled. We glanced back and saw the Chinese old man in his usual white clothes approaching towards us, he was in a great hurry. The children immediately ran away except me. I could not move my legs, they seemed to get crossed, my knees were shivering as if I were afraid of lightning, I was standing with no moves, full pockets and T-shirt filled in with carrots. Among huge and wide vegetable field there were the Chinese old man and me only. He approached me. I saw the way he got angry, his dark face was more dark, his small eyes became smaller, he slapped his thighs. Heh, Kyrgyz boy, you are a thief. It’s bad! He was shivering and me too. The area around us was covered with lots of small carrots which were not yet ripen. What could I say? I could not say anything and was just standing neither running away nor crying.

– Let’s go!– the old man said and was going towards his house. I followed him keeping silence. I could run away from him, he would not be able to catch me but some unknown force made me follow him. We entered his yard. It was similar to the Kyrgyz yards with no fence, open on both sides. The floor of the entrance was put with straw so well that it was glittering.

Everything around us was clean, there was no garbage. On the other side of the yard a covered stove was seen. Along the pavement going inside the yard, one could see lots of blooming flowers of different colors. Behind the flowers there was a huge field filled with various ripen fruits, vegetables which I had never seen before. The surface of the field was alike the aly-kiyiz (Kyrgyz carpet) made by our grandmothers. We, villagers always thought why this Chinese old man spent his time in the field all day, the reason for that was clear now. The old man entered his house and came out with a bucket, then poured some water into the bucket from the stove and said: “Let’s go”, I followed him and entered his house. I felt relaxing because of the old man’s kindness and was not afraid of him. I started looking at things around the house. I looked into the room next to the entrance and saw that the floor of the room was also put with straw, it was as clean as the old man’s white clothes. In the corner of the room there were pitchforks, shovels, rakes, axe, picks and other things which I had never seen in my life before, all of them were sticked accurately to the wall, and each of those things was brightened to brilliance, they were shining, maybe because of being used very often or cleaned much. The old man poured some water to the wash-basin and told me to take off my T-shirt. While I was taking off my T-shirt lots of carrots fell down, in a hurry I began gathering up them in one place. The old man told: “Wash away!” I thought he was telling me to wash carrots but he touched my shoulders and said: “You boy, wash yourself!”. I started washing out my shirt then shook it up and put on. The old man washed all small carrots that fell down from my shirt and put them into the small bag. He came up to the wooden buffet, opened it and began taking out something like sunflower seeds then wrapped them in small pieces of papers and put all into the bag with carrots then he gave the bag to me and said: “Give it to your father and mother. Spring will come, plough the field”. I do not remember the way I left his house holding that small bag very firmly in my hand, then I found myself on the big road where my runaway friends were hiding behind the trees along that road showing their heads and waiting for something unexpected. I was running, at times I walked bowing my head, and my mind was busy with feelings of shame that I was caught as a thief, that the Chinese old man was kind to me in spite of his field was crushed by halves. I was still a kid who had no understanding of this world’s bad and good sides, but I felt something happened in my inner world, holding my small bag firmly I continued my way towards home. My friends stared at me, they felt guilty because I was left alone in that field so none of them could come to me and ask questions. After having passed near by my friends, I stopped and turned back, my friends were still standing there and looking at me, suddenly began running towards me as if I told them to follow me. I still think of that Chinese old man and cannot yet understand his quiet living way without leaving any descendant. He himself only could know the secrets of his life philosophy. I am the person who was brought up by nomad traditions and it is not clear to me.

The sleepless night. The clock that does not stop ticking will surely let me know about the dawn.   

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