The Railway by Hamid Ismailov Page B

– had happened upon an old woman repeatedly wailing the words: “The Lord save us from Yormuhammad! May his blood pour from his throat and may he die young!”
    It is not for a warrior to correct an old woman, but there were people in the village able to explain why she was wailing: Yormuhammad’s basmach had supposedly knifed her two sons and seized her husband, together with all his cattle. It took Yormuhammad only from the sunset prayer to the mid-evening prayer to find out who had been abusing his name: Makhsum-Kulluk, a Sart elder from a nearby village who had recently sent his youngest daughter to become yet another of Yormuhammad’s wives. Yormuhammad accepted such gifts as gestures of support for his struggle and did not so much as glance at these new wives, who now occupied a whole mountain village near Shokhimardon, exciting the envy of the local Soviet poets. No one guarded them; they needed no protection beyond Yormuhammad’s reputation for showing no mercy on or off the field of battle.
    Yormuhammad’s treacherous father-in-law was brought to Chachma-Say towards midnight, at the same time as Obid-Kori. Yormuhammad said not a word about his tie of kinship with Makhsum-Kulluk, nor did he even show the man to Obid-Kori. He merely asked the mullah what punishment the Sharia decreed if two innocent men had been knifed and their father, seized together with all his cattle, had met his end in a mountain ravine. Obid-Kori thought for a moment, then quoted al-Marginoni 71 from memory, adding, admittedly, that blood is never washed away by blood, only by tears.
    â€œWrite down what is written in al-Marginoni’s Hidoya ,” said Yormuhammad drily. When Obid-Kori had finished, Yormuhammad asked, “Now, how can I be of service to you?”
    Obid-Kori shrugged his shoulders, raised his hands in prayer and said, “May Allah lead you along no path but the True Path!” Yormuhammad did not try to detain the mullah but simply ordered a horse to be saddled for him and an escort to be provided. Obid-Kori, however, had no need of horse or escort – this was his native land and everyone knew him – and he set off on foot for his village, which lay dark in the valley… dark in the valley…
    That morning, in the most crowded part of the bazaar, where eight smooth-cheeked boys were selling flatbreads and four grey-bearded men were selling cream cheese, Makhsum-Kulluk’s head was discovered on a tray, along with a page bearing a quotation from Burkhanutdin al-Marginoni’s The True Path . The page was wet and swollen; blood was still oozing from the severed head.
    â€œO Allah, why have you made your justice so harsh – and me, so ignorant, so ignorant?” Obid-Kori whispered during his midday prayer, as he prayed for everyone, both the righteous and the unrighteous, but most of all for those who are confused, who in the confusion of their souls and aspirations attempt to amend the pattern preordained by Allah… preordained by Allah…
    Yes, life turned out this way and no other way. A week after this, to warn and edify the local population, the Bolsheviks exhibited the heads of two of Yormuhammad’s basmach with the judgment of the Revolutionary Tribunal pinned to their throats. In reply, in the course of a single night, the entire Bolshevik leadership of Mookat was done away with as they slept – from Agabekov the one-armed Chekist to Kuldash the District Party Committee butcher who had bartered away his faith for the flesh of large-horned cattle. The response to this was the “Red Terror”: every local male between the ages of twenty and forty was exiled to the far North. Those able to move fast joined Yormuhammad in the mountains; those who moved too slowly were shot; and an entire regiment of Red Army soldiers under the command of Chanyshev-Tatar was stationed in the area to carry out the duties of the male population.
    The apricots