The Bloody Veil

Nurmuradov Abdurashid

But it was more and more difficult for me to get rid of this compulsion, of my obsessive thoughts.

As an obsessed man, in search of Afghan soldiers, I wandered through the distant corners of the country and disappeared for months. I came home shocked from meetings, stories, pressed, like a madman, the button of our apartment.

"Go there where you have been overnight", – I heard the angry voice of my wife, and the door before me closed with a whisper. Not to forget the days when sad and tired, I turned back from the door of my home.

Muhammadrahmat from Khodjent told me that he involuntarily pulled his head into his shoulders and covered his face with his hands when the shells exploded in the cinema. At first I was surprised, but later I realized that there is nothing worse than war and there can be neither winners nor losers. Because both of them and others carry blood, tears, death. I began to understand why so many writers turned to the subject of war. L.Tolstoy, A.Barbus, E.Hemingway and Y.Bondarev… War brings unbelievable trials, countless miseries and suffering to man, and there can be no justification for it.

Now, when I think about war, I see my real heroes with wounded bodies and souls passing by. And once again I assure you: the warriors are those who sacrificed their lives to an unknown monster – to war, are my brothers, my relatives, my friends.

Sabir came to me, my cousin. I was very pleased. I know him from childhood. He was a simple, straightforward guy. With his father Muhammad once in childhood I pasture sheep. Then Muhammad-aka became ill and went to the hospital. He seemed healed, but soon the illness returned. He was treated again, but the disease never receded. He is still in the hospital. The mother was left with ten children in her arms. She raised them for her salary of sixty rubles herself. I brought Sabir to the army from Tashkent. He arrived in Afghanistan. It was not long before I received a letter from him. In the letter a few words: "Rashid-aka, I am in Leningrad. And I am injured. Be healthy". He spent a year in Leningrad. He returned crippled.

When he crossed the threshold of the house, my face was distorted by pain. Those long-standing memories came back to me again, my mother’s bloody shirt, my father’s silent cry in the middle of the night when he was known about his son’s injury, my brother’s whisper at my mom’s grave.

…A year passed.

Sabir said that he entered to the preparatory department of the law faculty of the university. His joy also calmed my heart. I hugged him, greeted him and filled my soul with tenderness.

At the table I asked him:

– Well, Sabir, tell me about it. Was it hard to take the entrance exams?

He strangely smiled:

– You know, Rashid aka, it turns out to be doing that to put your chest under the bullets. I passed literature and history, and at the exam in social sciences the teacher took and asked, "Say the truth, how did you pass the other exams? Who helped you, who asked for you?"

Who can ask for me? I had a stick in my hands, and I pointed to her, "With it, – I say, – I came." Then he "drawed" a deuce on the examination sheet, without changing his face. I look at the exam sheet and hear a teacher at the next table taking the exam from a girl:

– Your knowledge is even worse than your brother warned me, well, I will put you three, – he said in the tone of the debtor.

– Yes, Rashid aka, he had to. At that point, I felt that money was involved. Well, and my couple through the rector turned into a three. Yes, through the rector. Those teachers have neither shame nor conscience.

When in Termez, before sending to Afghanistan, a soldier offered to leave me for a thousand rubles and then I scolded him. And that teacher, who put the pair, stood up on me and said:

–You will come in spring.

Then I calmly, without raising my voice, said:

– Give me your health, I’ll feed the sheep at the village. – He was afraid.

Classes start tomorrow. I will come to you, Rashid aka. When I see you as if I was born again, I remember the house, my father, the desire to live.

I went to the village and my heart was shaken. And now, I never go through the streets again.

I have time. Be healthy, – he said, raising his hands for prayer. I wish him health. He asked to visit me more often. He has gone. It was like bringing joy with you. The four walls of the room, among which I was left alone, pressed on me. In front of my eyes passed the faces of people with similar fate, whom I met over the years. Sabir was one of those people I was looking for to meet, whose sad confessions I listened to with pain in my heart.

I remember Ravshan from Bekabad, I remember how he told, holding his head with both hands:

– It has already been twenty months I went from one hospital to another. Unfamiliar people think I’m perfectly healthy. But day by day I get worse and worse. Recently I met an experienced doctor. "The shell that protects your brain from external influences is dried out. Therefore, a little noise gets on your nerves" – he said.

I asked him what I should do, and he replied, "Try to forget those days".

But how can we forget? As I start to become a little anxious, in my dream, people start to suffocate me in bushes. In horror, I jump out of bed and can't recover for weeks.

Where is the declared publicity, democracy? There is still a strong mechanism, the parts of which are connected with one blood, soul and money. It will take a long time to divide this bureaucratic mechanism into pieces, to throw it into a burning oven. My brothers, Abdurashid, Sabir, Ravshan and other men who were born with me, were the victims of this machine.

Unfortunately, we all often have to deal with people who do not step without benefit. Sitting in luxurious chairs, they gather from their subordinates. They filled their stomachs at the expense of sacrifices, and still shouted at every step:

– We are rebuilding! We are rebuilding!

In fact, these “reconstructors” actively “rebuilt” everything for themselves. The military from Termez, who demanded a thousand rubles, is probably also in some part engaged in rebuilding.

To prevent new misfortunes, new wars, new evils, we must separate ourselves from such Chameleons. As the saying goes, "what comes in with breast milk, comes out with the soul". Those who luxuriated in featherbed in those years, and now drink our blood. Let us be careful. Let us save our younger brothers who have not had time to walk, but who have already sat down.