Timur Zulfikarov

... Then shall come fire and water. In the valleys, over the settlements and the towns of

sin, shall be water beyond measure. Only the shepherds in the high untouched mountains

with their innocent/locks shall remain.

That is why all prophets have been shepherds.

That is why ever since my childhood I have taken to shepherds...

Just before his death the Prophet Muhammed said:

"Muslims, if I struck anyone of you - here is my back, let him strike me too... If anyone has been offended by me, let him render unto me offence for offence... If I have taken away anyone's property, -let him take it back from me... Do not fear that you will incur my wrath, malice is not in my nature...

...In the X century I unleashed dispatched a craving vengeful bloodthirsty Sarmatian arrow at my enemy

And to this day to this century it has flown coursed whirled sought rushed towards striven after my enemy

And while it is flying singing quivering seeking I am dead I am killed I and not the secret distant enemy

Arrow when you drop fall away falter crash to the ground without finding my enemy Then I shall come to life rise from the dead the slain...

Aiya!

The dervish said:

* Once in the village of Kondara there lived Mirzo-bek Baikara and Tura-bek-luna. And they were deadly enemies and hated one another from the cradle-gakhvora to the funeral litter - tobut

One day Mirzo-bek was wandering in the Fan-Yagnob mountains and the hour of prayeT-namaz found him on the mountain precipice above the river Fan-Yagnob and that precipice was great dark and fathomless

Mirzo-bek as an obedient muslim heard the word ofAllah and falling to his knees above the abyss in holy clouded fervour stretched forward over the precipice

And Tura-bek shadowed slithered after him like a snake in the grass and rushed noiselessly threw himself heavily at the back of the praying man to push him off forever into the seething river Fan-darya

But it was springtime in the mountains and there had passed grassy emerald waterabundant rain and the grass and clay were wet and there were muddy earthfalls and Tura-bek in frenzy and damnation slipped and slid on over the torn unfaithful grass past Mirzo-bek and instead of him went down fell down into the abyss

But so great was his hatred that he stayed alive and at the bottom of the abyss among the cool stones and silken beginning grass he was tenacious of life as a spring snake viper emerged from hibernation

And Mirzo-bek seeing this smiled the smile of the predator and his soul was full of malice as the canyon in spring teems with reawakened amorous conjugal entangled confused cobwebbed life

And in the mountain village ofKondara their savage hunting enmity death revelry lived on

And one day shepherding in the mountains above the Siyema river Tura-bek-luna hearing the word ofAllah on the steep mountain rose saintly blindly as when the

tethered sheep hears the roar of the snow leopard irbis father

Then Mirzo-bek crept up from behind like an adder snake in the grass bringing his furious overripe putrid poison

And he hurled himself headlong and lunged at the back of the praying man to tip him off the mountain into the river

But so great so burning was his hatred and thirst for revenge that he couldn't stop himself and knocking pushing his enemy into the lethal abyss lost his own footing on the wet vernal mountain and slithered unstopably fervidly after him to his bitter end for ever and always

And one hatred bore two deaths as one snake bears two three four snakes but love like the night gives birth to a myriad of galaxies...

Then the dervish said... No! the dervish said nothing

Then the civil war began...

Weeping

...Dervish -what did you run away from your people for when they were in the grip of civil war? I withdrew from my people to weep for them...

My native land! you lie on golden dry autumnal hills mountains And I have come to you in the autumn to taste to take from your sweetest honeyed honey-delirious Rohatin vineyards

To sup from your crystal-bodied silver-flowing springs water-courses But this autumn your vineyards vines have not yielded a harvest and wretched poor-season bunches clusters hang limply like the dried up nipples of old holy wives Native land but great is the harvest of scarlet crimson-fiery grenades and you are all strewn with pomegranate live grenade seeds Oh how many of these commonplace tiny seeds

And the honeyed irrigation channels ofRamit Pamir Gissar Kulyab hardly lived hardly breathed hardly flowed before from the fallen golden foliage And now dead youths and fervently bearded husbands are lying in the channels and they are generously spattered with pomegranate-grenade seeds And ruby seeds are flowing in their curly-tarry unresisting hair and corpse emerald-satin flies are playing - my native land! this is where your satins are... Native land whence the pomegranate-grenade seeds in the apple orchards groves of plane trees poplars turangas and in the deserted cotton fields fields fields Fields fields white-foaming where are your pickers can it be that they too have been strewn with pomegranate-grenade seeds are killed lying beseeching in the cramped irrigation channels and not letting the channels flow run Allah help us! And I look at the faces of my shot killed forgotten people

And here abandoned are lying praying hoping my most beautiful youths and curly-bearded sons brothers my fellow Tajik husbands

My native land you lie on golden dusty wonderful hills and in the irrigation channels your husbands lie tenderly helplessly trusting smiling killed And I cannot bury them in a year

Who will help me eh? but in the near and distant holy mountain villages and my native adobe frail wattle kibitkas they have either deserted or are fearful or dead My native land! you lie on guiltless golden dimly visible ancient hills mountains oppressing and concealing

And I unseeing have come to taste to take from your Rohatin vineyards But the grapes have not come forth but a hell harvest has come forth of pomegranate-grenade killed shot dismembered tormented youths and your fervent curly ruined husbands beautiful even in death

And I am alone in the golden hills amidst the harvest of slain pomegranate husbands

strewn with pomegranate-grenade seed crimson bullet wounds and I alone am the gatherer

of these hellish unburied abandoned harvests of yours

Alone am I in the golden deserted fearful hills among pomegranate mown down shot

fellow brothers sons fathers grandfathers of mine mine mine

Allah help the terrible pomegranate-grenade thickened congealed irrigation channels turn

into their former abundant cheerful flowing crystal

Allah! I was on my way to the vineyard hills but I wandered into the hills of war

...Every people has its limit...

THE KORAN (Ch. Jonah)

The Dervish said:

* Only four peoples on earth have known the holy secret of big wars - the ancient Romans with their legions, the Mongols with their foaming lupine cavalries, the Germans with their clanking geometrical iron divisions and the Russians with their boundless sacrificial infantry

The ancient Romans and the Mongols have fallen in battle given in and gone off into the non being of history, the Germans have now sunk into flabby animaline satiety, and the Russians have withered in drunkenness and destitution and blindness

Nowadays no one on earth knows the sacred mystery of great wars

Lord! Only you!.. But every people - alas! - knows the secret of civil war...

Tajiks!..

Behold the Russians - and they are our brothers by race - they had already stood for a

century, like the holy walls of the Bukharan fortress Arch, between our primitively

feuding clans and not allowing them to kill one another

But see we have chased away rooted out the hundred year Russians and in their place

bloody bullets have arisen between us

For the host people expelling driving out its non native guest is doomed to fratricide

Brother where in the blessed valleys and mountains ofTajikistan

have you seen the host driving out the smiling working guest?..

And behold in the crystal ancient Sogdian settlements ofFan-yagnob was the mountain

village of Sitoran Er and there for centuries wreathing and swirling was the plague -

murine vulpine rodentine bubonic epidemic wanderer but Russian doctors and soldiers

came - and the plague went away under a stone like a scorpion off a lamb

But behold we have driven out the doctors and the soldier plague-defenders - and an

unsleeping plague has come out from under the stone and is coming upon us along the

diseased irrigation channels and goat tracks

Brothers! the plague of fratricide has come to us...

Lord! Save protect me midst the many-rushing many-sounding waters already at my throat...

And only when you die - will you take your leave of your home town of the home cradling nest and your blessed shroud kafan forever

But behold into the town your Dushanbe has come death! has come fraternal war! civil war and people are dying and the living are running from their houses seized by fire and you are standing amidst those running and you have not died not been killed but your town while you yet live is taking its leave of you forever

And you in your lifetime are taking your leave of your home town Dushanbe and your beloved people forever

My God! what on earth is more melancholy than a nest which has been destroyed

Once in my hungry childhood with a stone I destroyed knocked down a sparrow's nest high on a white pyramid poplar arar to eat the milky tiny fluffy nestlings and the nest fell on my head coiled around surrounded my unseeing head and the birds' gentle litter and feathers and down and birds' secret discarded clothing embraced my head and hair and birds' smashed defenceless eggs ran over my murderer's face

And they have continued to run to this day

But now people's home nests are burning before my eyes

And from all the mountain ridges ofGissar and the hills ofRegar flow vernal streams and irrigation channels wild curly clayey seething at my feet...

Standing and weeping in the flowing waters... and among the running people and burning nests... And my childhood was here...

The Dervish said:

* In my childhood in the lean years of the German war we lived in a humble mountain village in the blessed mountain canyon by the river Kondara-darya

And in the summer I would go off into the mountains into the upper reaches of the canyon where the river vigorously foaming misting gaining strength was being bom of the blameless milky glacier

And there wild apple trees grew and their crimson red crimson crisp fruit was inestimably sweet and firm

And there I would eat apples till my teeth were on edge and then I would shake the abundant fruit crimson bounteous branches and the apples would tumble into the foambom newbom waves of the river Kondara and the apples would gaily float flow the length of the canyon and in the translucent waves reach the outlet mouth mountain village where watching out fishing for them were the people of my village where they were fished out by the old men and children, who could not get to the virgin sources of the canyon and the river

And this was a festival of wild crimson river apples in our village

And one day in summer I went up along the cool canyon to the head waters of the river to the wild apple orchard but there were no crimson fruit on the barren branches, for apple trees bear fruit every other year but I was young and didn't know

And so I had come to a fruitless guiltless bare quiescent orchard and the whole lean year orchard had brought forth only one exceedingly crimson scarlet apple as each village brings forth one righteous man and it hung above the very newbom new surging river

And I was hungry like all the children and old men in the war days and I wanted to eat the apple and abundant foaming craving saliva issued as the river issues from the glacier and then I remembered those who were waiting in the hungry village for the apples and I shook the apple tree and the apple in the waves was gone

And alone in the river it disappeared and was gone

That apple was scarlet crimson precious as if it had taken to itself the juice and firmness of all the unborn fruits and it stayed firm and sweet in the raging alpine crystal waters waters waters...

Later I came back guilty and pensive to the village where in our wattle hut my reticent mother Ludmila Mulli-Mualima was waiting for me and is waiting for me now Allah may her crystal eyes linger and glow a little warmer a little longer! Mama I ate too many wild apples and my teeth are all on edge Mama so many apples have come forth in the distant blessed orchard

She looks and like alpine snow in the young spring mountain sun smiles at me And on the table on the linen tablecloth is that blazing red crimson river apple

My little son those apples you ate were sour and left a bitter taste But this apple is sweet -1 found it fished it out of the waves ofKondara-darya You shall eat it my son and the bitter taste will pass as thirst passes from icy snowy water

And she is smiling at me because she knows that apple trees only bear fruit every other year...

Crimson scarlet solitary the apple is floating wandering drawing near in the pearly newbom river...

Dervish what is tenderest of all in the world?

An overripe Isfarin peach?

A newbom milk drowsy baby in its snow pure gakhvora cradle cot?

The lips and breasts of your beloved in the drowsy morning bed?

The wings of pollen dusty pearly living floury lively butterflies awakening in April?

The Dervish said: A mother's touch passing over her son's darkness...

...But the river distant apple tree mother Ludmila enchanting and radiant is smiling at me:

son! that apple has gone has floated away on the river! and you are no longer a boy but a young man now now now...

The sleep of a youth! the sleep of one holy blessed blind!

When the sleeping giving tremulous lips dissolve in honey saliva

And the early wild blood thickened poplar zebb gives forth snowy reckless pearly resin of

humans godly blind futile wax

0 sleep of youth

Two secret streams are flowing drawing out in the night on the crumpled sheets...

...Little son...youth, but the apple in the river has gone

Little son but youths are purer more carefree gayer than the speckled lordly fecundly

gilded trout in the golden sanded beds in the lap of springs waterfalls and streams...

Akmal-jon and Akbar-jon were blessed youths-to/ato-pupils from the Dushanbe Medresseh spiritual school

And they were noble poor and pure as the snowy peaks of the Varzob mountains in winter like the whiteflowing friday turbans of the bukharan sheikhs on the days offriday prayers beyond the clouds

And behold one day they met on the narrow wooden creaky dangerous swaying bridge across the Varzob-darya

And it was spring and the river was full of waves icy and foaming

And spring it was and the time when the river's abundant wave reaches up and laps the bridge

And behold two limpid muslim youths in poor patched linen jackets met on the wooden bridge and bowed to one another and placed their hands on their hearts young and foaming as the wave in spring but meek as a boulder from the deep

Akmal-jon bowing said:

* After you dear godly Akbar-jon Akbar-jon bowing said:

* After you dear godly newly arrived brother Akmal-jon And so ceding the swaying rickety little bridge to one another they stood in respectful deference till the blue grey mountain river evening

* After you dear gentle brother my approaching wayfarer Akbar-jon

* After you dear unexpected brother angel wanderer traveller my Akmal-jon

And so they stood on the bridge over the river

Then blue grey evening came upon the river. And the cold came from the snowy mountains. And the dangerous river cold came from the icy waves. And from the dank river cold Akmal-jon in his poor linen holy jacket began to cough and shiver

And likewise Akbar-jon began to shiver from the cold But from their blue grey shivering holy meek lips only a gentle cloud fell

* After you brother Akmal-jon

* After you brother Akbar-jon

Now Dervish Hoja Zulfrkar came onto the bridge. And he saw the two youths and realised that they would not leave the bridge and would freeze there in the night of icy waves in the night ofVarzob icy star galaxies fierce as porcupine needles

The dervish knew that gentleness gives rise to consumption as the humble irrigation channel in winter is the first to be covered with ice

Then the dervish sighed made a prayer to Allah took off his tattered halat and leapt off the bridge into the river of icy waves

Then the youths instantly silently leapt into the river after him and saved him from the foaming waves and pulled him to the bank of cooling gentle open calflike lamblike innocent wide eyed shifting sands sands sands

Then the dervish shivering from the bygone waves smiled and said:

* May Allah love you - you saved me from river death my brother Akmal-jon! Then shivering from the departed waves said Akmal-jon:

* Teacher mullah Zulfikar it was Akbar-jon who saved you from the dread waves and I just swam alongside... Then the dervish said:

* May Allah love you my river saviour Akbar-jon! Then said Akbar-jon humblely:

* Teacher mullah Zulfikar it was Akmal-jon who saved you from the foaming predatory waves and I just went along

Then the dervish smiled and with joy from the primordial bathing in the icy font began to sob from happiness:

Oh Allah! Blessed and eternal Asia my Tajik homeland while such pure and limpid crystal youths stand on your ancient bridges! while such sons are born and gather unto you mother Asia

Aiya!

...And that was one day before the start of the civil war when even blood brothers began murdering one another...

Allah! don't allow it! But he punished!.. But he allowed it!..

...Salom aleikum! Hassan aka\ my elder brother

It's so long my blood brother since you and I met

Since that day when the civil war began - you and I my elder brother haven't met

And behold we are standing at our own wall at our own adobe kibitka in our native

primeval spring antedeluvian Gissar field field field

Where our mother Zainab Kampir Modar bore us - first you Hassan then Hussein my twin

And behold we are standing at our wall where fresh dung bricks made and shaped as once

we were by our silent sleepless Zainab Modar mother are airing and drying

Hello Hassan hello my own elder brother

I haven't seen you for the whole of the war

Vaaleikum assalom Hussein my beloved younger brother

Hassan but I am first a warrior slave ofAllah and then your younger blood brother

Hassan I am younger and more agile than you

Hassan on your curly karakul greying hair is the red band of the kafir infidel and the green

is on my equally furiously curly gay fraternal hair curls

Hassan but I am younger more agile and quicker to the sword than you

Hassan blood brother I went for my automatic before you and three surefire bullets right

off point blank have disappeared gone away smacked into vanished into you

So near so open is your curly peasant's chest - I can even smell your familiar kindred

sweat my departing beloved supine brother to be despatched

Hussein be quick and shoot boy be quick and shoot nearer quieter so our keen eared

mother Zainab Modar doesn't hear - all through the war she has been standing at the wall

and waiting for us

We wear different bands on our heads but we have one mother but Allah gives a man one

mother

Hussein boy you are younger than I and we always have to give in to those who are younger and I always used to give you my Bukharan halva but now my life is yours shoot shoot before our mother comes while my automatic is cast aside in the dust

And around the cradle adobe kibitka ofHassan and Hussein stand the white foaming blameless boundless cotton fields

Ai what a harvest has ripened in the civil war and there is no one to gather it in Ai how many snow white shrouds kafans have here ripened and are splashed about languishing on the bushes...

.. .The apple went away in the river

The golden speckled trout fell quiescent in the stream's broken silver

And at the wall a smiling mother is patiently waiting

Boys where are you Hassan and Hussein? There's only me here... Hussein...

The innocent leaning half destroyed half forgotten wattle village mosque Hanakan-Hazrat

And a solitary azure traveller on the evening Gissar road road road

Who are you dervish? who are you traveller in the tender azure nomadic dust dust dust

Friend! in the boundless tearful field let's go into our twilight hazy poor holy village

mosque mosque mosque

And there we'll pray to Allah the unfathomable

And be it only for a moment we shall express the deep regret in our hearts and love and

accept one another like brothers brothers brothers

And then we shall come out and part in the somnolent sibylline field beneath the icy

inhuman Pleiades

And once again strangers distant parting unspeaking reckless...

...And in the far off field ofChingis Khan the arrows were soaring

And in today's field cruel bullets are flying

In the immortal field mortal fast are the bullets killing mortal persons...

And!...

Chapter twelve

The arrow. The bullet

And!...

The arrow was flying and singing and making free in the gay springtime sky sky sky

The man was walking and singing in the springtime infant murmuring grass

And then they met

And now they both lie still and the grass is innocently vainly waving waving waving

Lord what was the point of that meeting? of the arrow and the man? of the bullet and the

man?

Lord to whom does the grass now wave? melancholy...

...And in the kind field far away the arrows were flying birdlike chorally But the arrow more often wounded than killed But the arrow is kinder than the bullet...

The dervish said:

* In my childhood I often went up onto the high mountain Kondara with my village friends - there on the very summit grew the thousand year old sacred plane tree under which lay the ancient burial place mazar of the long forgotten Varzob sheikhs

These long deceased long subdued sheikhs high-mountain high-divine had already been forgotten by living people and had solitarily mouldered in the stony alpine earth and from the rains and landslips their sacred bones sometimes came out of the earth and I would once more consign them to the earth together with the rusted earthy points of crumbled decomposed arrows...

Oh Allah! whence the arrows here? from what centuries?...

And the thousand year plane tree - a green mausoleum monument stood over the deceased sheikhs and hovered gently and sadly like a mother over the fresh grave of her sons killed in the civil tribal carnage war

But the thousand year plane tree grew on the very summit of Kondara over a fathomless precipice and the boys from my village were scared to climb to the top but I climbed up to the very highest most fragile green branch and from there with a sweet sinking shuddering sensation gazed upon the boundless iridescent mountain ridges of Gissar and Ramit and others far distant playing dreamily before my youthful eagle eyes

One day in December there had been a rich fall of mountain snow but by clutching the evergreen juniper bushes (there is nothing on earth fresher and more beautiful than the scent of the high-mountain juniper in newly fallen alpine snow!) I went up to the summit of Kondara and saw my native thousand year plane tree - the mausoleum of the deceased and sadly forgotten Varzob sheikhs

Then over the icy marble branches of the snowy plane tree gliding gripping tightly with my hands and legs I got to the highest branch of the plane tree and there stopped short at the indescribable wonder which opened before my frail eyes eyes eyes

It was early morning it was early mountain youthful blinding sun it was the first pearly diamond alpine mountain snow on the mountains and the endless distant ridges canyons and plateaux glimmered wreathed and swirled from the boundless snow snow snow

Like foam of the first snow there lay overflowing in shimmering diamond white a boundless land of mountains mountains mountains

A snowy brocade of the nearby Regar and Gissar heights shone dazzled unbearably and lead beyond Hi to the distant radiant peaks ofAla-too and further on not of man's making stood the diamond crystal unprecedented pyramids of Pamir and Tian-Shan - brilliant boundless repositories of snowy diamonds

Lord! unprecedented unwitnessed are Your diamond deposits!... yiii...

Verily!... And in the distant secret canyon I could see clearly a smoky black mountain she-wolf licking her slithery grey newborn cubs and a wolf chasing a herd of curly-horned rocky goats-nakhchir across the Tian-Shan glacier...

Verily!...

Morning crystal purity flooded and shone and now as if on the neighbouring mountain, suffused in diamond snows, I saw distinctly beyond the boundless fathomless distant floating mountains young emerald steppe of fresh-grown grass perhaps it was Mongol Xinjiang perhaps Taklamakan perhaps the Gobi and in the grass unspeaking unmoving tormenting stood the Mongol Tiumen endless short cavalry and at the nomad tent of the Khan on a snowy diamond sharp-eared Akhaltekin narrow-visaged wonder-eyed mare seemingly splashed with those fresh snows sits motionless the Great Khan in a crimson halat-del with ruby grassy buttons and his lynx-like swirling wolfish amber eyes eyes fox-like near near! -1 can even feel their pulsating and see the two narrow fires in their pupils! - they are looking at me across all the snows of all the fresh-diamond high lands sparkling from the early native trying sun

Looking at me are the eyes of the Great Khan Chingis Khan! They are beseeching me:

* Boy! call hail me from the thousand year plane tree! and at once I shall move out move off towards you together with my impatient swarming Tiumens and the two sacred fires will leap from my pupils onto the sinful settlements cities onto your lands

and there shall be a thousand fires!

Aikhhhhh! Urrya! Orrya! Urrrangkh! Or do you not see how they have waited too long erred too long stood too long my dashing bloody cavalries?

Give me a sign! an eye! and they shall set off towards you like waterfalls like rockfalls like slithering mud flows my sacred cavalry hot headed liberators

Boy call me! just wave to me from the plane tree! or else I shall let fly my walnut quivering wild lightning-fast fiery arrow and it will drop into fly into you bum you and you shall fly from the burning plane tree into the bottomless abyss and you are not an eagle golden eagle holzan but a human and you will fall into the abyss and not soar into the clouds

And the Great Khan without taking his eyes off me takes his bow into his hands and onto the bowstring places a furious raging buzzing impatient arrow and behold the arrow trembling is already looking at me and behold the arrow is already looking at my youthful watermelon throat craving praying to be released! Ayyyyiiiiiikh! yyyi! Nothing in the world is more impatient than an unreleased arrow!.. Aidykhhh!... like the zebb held hard by the maiden's thighs and fingers at her maidenhead hymen portcullis!.. Oidykhh!.

Boy can you hear the thousandfold neighing ofkoumissy running mares? if they can't chase can't run can't bite - then their tourquoise running nipples will burst! then the fomenting swarming seed will tear their loins! their hearts! their stables! their veins! if my Chagatais Nukers are not to be allowed to kill other men - then with their curved knives and straight swords they will start to sunder angrily hack blindly successively destroy their own! Aikh! how terrible are overripe swords knives men stood too long!.. (ah see where is the source of every war - and civil war too!)

Ai boy my own son no one can hold back stop the slant-eyed running guttural deadly victorious Tiumens! Aikh little son! let the blessed gay long-tailed flags of fraternal war unfold unfurl stream out!..

Boy! just wave your hand call beckon my blood-dulled blood-letting Tiumens!

Else have! admit! take! the final bloodthirsty vengeful arrow

But I don't raise my hand but I scramble wildly over the slippery snowy branches and trunks of the thousand year plane tree and I go down sliding running dashing flying to the ground gasping agonising panicking falling into the virgin diamond crunchy snow forgetting the wondrous swirling fathomless limitless high lands plateaux starry Pamir Tian-Shan towering exultant crystals...

Fifty years later now a snowy old man I came back to my native village and climbed to the summit of Kondara and there stood the thousand year plane tree sheltering the cemetery of the long forgotten Varzob sheikhs.

But a lightning strike had sliced off the tree's heavenly crown. With trembling limbs I got onto the plane tree but I could no longer see the endless high lands swirling in the first diamond snow because the plane tree had lost its height - the lightning had cut off the high branches - and I could only see the heights nearby...

Then silently I climbed down off the plane tree and found decayed from fifty years of rain and snow an arrow with its point rusty and broken and its feathering blackened and perished like old rag.

It lay there helpless and lifeless by the mighty roots swollen as plague stricken veins of the thousand year tree living mausoleum.

There it was. The arrow of the Great Khan the sacred Chingis Khan.

For all that he did fire fling cast the arrow. But I was young and lively then and managed to roll jump off the slippery snowy satin plane tree and the arrow didn't get me.

Only now do I realise who killed the long forgotten blessed Varzob sheikhs buried beneath the thousand year plane tree.

None of them would call the Great Khan and his slaughtering horsemen foaming death dealing Tiumens.

But the blind ungrateful heirs have forgotten their ancient protectors

...And for that reason today in the misty Tajik fields and in the innocent canyons and in the sacred high lands bullets roam freely like thick-blooded malarial raving fever The bullets are flying - and they are finding and they are burying...

* Dervish and did the fast-flying bullets of the Tajik civil war tear into your thousand year poetry too, still and sleep-honeyed as the protected juniper grove on the mountain, where hitherto only dusty arrows and blunt knives have flown? And occasional nearly extinct gentle birds juniper finches?

* Yes, the bullets of the civil war tore into my poetry and into my frail life.

And one of those bullets flew into my life and killed me but I didn't notice didn't know because I was dead and not of this world.

But Doctor Roshkovyetsky saved me from the lethal bullet and I staid on earth restored newbom.

And the dervish said more:

The knife the arrow and the sword fly into a man but give him hope in his death.

The crazy bullet is incompatible with the flesh with the life of a man - it carries within itself hundreds of deaths it tears life to pieces it is hundreds of times larger than life. The bullet belittles life.

Satan created the bullet.

And on the horizon the cloud of the atom bomb is rising - the Devil's summit... Shaitan's Everest...

.. .When all the raging men had gone off to war to battle to the ancient joust of arrows and knives, in some unknown settlement one unformed halting miscreant staid behind with the children women and old men and out of his hatred and longing he created the unholy unseeing bullet, which levelled everyone. When sin had enveloped whole peoples -another hateful miscreant created the atom bomb... for there were too few bullets to punish all the sinful... yes?

The dervish smiled: men warriors when you go into battle - don't leave the crippled the blind the hateful behind your backs! oikhha!..

The dervish said:

* And they gave me a gun and sent me off to the civil war to kill my own native brothers and sisters whom I didn't know

But I didn't kill a single one

I didn't fire at people but at stones although I felt terribly tearfully sorry for the innocent ancient wild-growing stones too

Was it for this reason the Lord left me on earth to live and breathe a little longer?

But those who delighted in killing other people - were themselves later killed with the same thick-blooded sensuality and blind intoxication of murder...

Then the judges tried me and very nearly killed nearly shot me for not killing my brothers

Oh Allah! If everyone had shot like I did - what then would become of holy and unholy wars?.. Well?

Allahu Akbar! Allah is great and man is wretchedly insignificantly small small small...

But!

But the bullets are straying far and my native land is small

And my native land is small - so one of those bullets is mine...

Where are you going?

Twilight tarry balmy hazy mournful doleful velvet has already crept over our native

Dushanbe

Where are you going? Soon it will be night night night

And the nocturnal bullet is unjust blind

Stay here and sleep

My once beloved Leili-Latofat-Zebbo but you don't love me anymore

Better the scarlet living bullet than the chill bed of former serpentine sacred intoxicating

miracle-making caresses

When I fondled you tenderly for your wine like 'goat nipple' grapes and you tenderly

scratched me with your fingernail toenail talons and mingling flowed the sacred ancient

wine of maiden blood and marble pearly cream of seeds

Ai my beloved and did we not then create a delightful curly child but now we are alone

but now love has passed and gone

As the vernal river leaving the clay of the bed the sand and the clayey innocent fish dead

on the bare banks

My beloved and you want our child to be like a fish on the clay abandoned banks

Soon t'will be night and the night-time bullet is blind and the town has already withdrawn

and smoked itself into oblivion scorched itself dropped off flat out with wine or anasha

and only death is wandering the azure avenues alone alone alone

Dervish what do you want with her?

Stay here with me

My beloved better the scarlet bullet than a love which has gone off like the vernal

frolicking dissipating Varzob-darya my native river Aikhhha!..

I leave my beloved and trudge across the town where the hazy streets are deserted save for the swirling strewing golden-edged copious fall of leaves from Dushanbe's silvery

marble-trunked plane trees plane trees plane trees

I am a lone traveller and in silent oblivious enchantment wander among the gold strewing

plane trees

I walk right across town toward my outlying treasured wattle kibitka

I am walking swimming through the whole leaf fall

How many golden fallen leaves around my native kindred ancient plane trees

But the nocturnal bullet is blind

And you don't love me any more my beloved

And behold even my wattle kibitka is floating strangely in the hazy twilight in the Gissar

nocturnal clouds

So slowly sweetly I make my way through the golden leaves

And as the night draws nearer nearer so more thickly thickly fall the leaves leaves leaves

And had I walked quicker and were there no gold splashing fall of leaves she would not

have met me

Were there no golden fall of leaves we would have gone wandered our separate ways like

you and I my beloved

At the very hut at the very hut she met she was waiting perhaps she found me

Then softly serenely stoopingly submissively I sat in the irrigation channel

The channel is packed with golden leaves and flows makes its way murmurs scarcely

Scarcely audible is its serpentine implacable water

The nocturnal bullet is blind sweet not painful I can't feel her at all but she's here in my

belly I suppose and the blood is scarcely flowing through me as in the golden irrigation

channel the water scarcely scarcely scarcely

Ai sweetly drowsily dreamily alive in the golden irrigation channel to depart to set forth

to ebb away to inaudibly let go this crimson life

I look at my legs. They are no longer mine. They are alien.

The bullet perhaps has smashed confounded the nerve-master which rules them

Finally my legs are trembling. So long and so far they have carried me on this earth.

And now they are to be still to lie forever. I feel sorry for them.

Lord! but at the very kibitka right outside my own home nest

Ah were it not for your leaf fall gold-leaved gold-murmuring gold-strewing like my

beloved

There in the kibitka nearby nearby my mother Ludmila Kampir is waiting and hoping

with a pot of scalding green tea wrapped up covered in her ancient bukharan cradling

shawl

Now the tea will forever get cold without me

The nocturnal bullet was not at all blind if it found me the traveller alone in the deserted

town

Where are you going stay here and sleep

My beloved but you don't love me

Oh Lord! One bullet I have taken so she can't fly into another twilight traveller

Yea...

But the bullets are wandering my land and they are legion and they will find others - not only me...

The dervish said:

* All his life the poet Akbar Davlat Abdurazzak Azia Wal' went about with a fresh Shiraz rose in his hand

No one knew where he got fresh Shiraz roses in winter

When six nocturnal gunmen executioners came to kill him he held up the rose and said:

Shoot me but don't shatter don't splatter don't scatter the rose

Let it not be blown away dispersed like me before its time

The dervish said:

* That's the way poets should live and die... If they have to die...

...And beneath the rose he held aloft before his summary death the poet suddenly recalled Tunis in the noonday... And a Carthage for orphaned owls...

...A solitary poet among the ruins of the collosseum listens enchanted to the sound of ancient applause...

...And the poet beneath the raised shot Shiraz rose was either dreaming or dying...

In his lowly little ynrd-havli the dervish cultivated raised the white Shiraz roses which flower till snowy December when the settling December snow blends with the snow of the divine petals

And the dervish would wander among his roses till December and among them he would forget his bygone days and the loves of his bygone days and there were more of them than there were Shiraz roses and more than the cool snowy December petals

And among the young clean-bodied roses the dervish whispered:

* Why did I leave Cheptura my poor home village for the distant dusty roads and towns? And painfully passionately I fancied and fell in love with many people and many fell in love with me and I have lost almost all of them forever to death but I have not forgotten a single one and why did the harvest of the whole fruitless orchard come forth on one tree and the sapling collapse and break under the excessive weight of the harvest like my poor little village soul

Why did the countless flock of jolly passing wood pigeons bring their eggs to the one frail nest of the turtle dove?..

But then the butcher Kassob-Irgash Khan took up residence near the dervish's kibitka and day and night thro' the fragile wall began wafting drawing the smell of deathly raw bovine ovine blood and mouldering untouched hay and the frightened urine of animals with forebodings of death

And these three elemental smells together with the smell of filming smoking shashlik began to envelop the dervish's hut day and night and his nostrils and his white-foaming satin Shiraz roses

And as before the dervish wandered among his roses and wanted to smell to breathe in their spring-water jasmine scent but could only smell the suffocating sour reek of spilt blood and hay and urine and shashlik

And the roses began to smell ineradicably unrestrainedly triumphantly of fresh

shashlik and growing weary of being roses they faded burnt out whithered rotted and hung limply pinky pulpy pastey

Then the dervish said sadly:

* My roses have grown tired of being roses and I have grown tired of being a wise man

And he went to the welcoming and long gently predatorily waiting butcher who fed him fresh shashlik:

* See dervish - once more my wise provider knife has barely touched the sheep's throat and you have already tasted his hot flesh

Oh the first gentlest stroke split incision of the knife across the sheep's juicy bulging throat - oh that first shudder of the still living animal - that's what a butcher lives for! Oh!..

And isn't wisdom a knife with which we carve something out of the living world dervish?

And what is a dreamy dreary dead royal rose of Shiraz beside the boundlessly big rumped big eyed sheep sensing my beloved slinky knife?

What?..

But the smoke of fires and burnings has clouded and enveloped my blameless homeland - a land of roses - in civil war. And now there is not one rose left which would not give off that sickening smell. And there have arisen more executioner butchers than Shiraz roses. And every man has become a butcher executioner And on my wise ancient earth wisdom has been forgotten...

But the dervish did not forget...

The dervish said:

* In autumn every little bush turns golden So too every holy man in maturity utters the golden words of wisdom

Dervish hearken unto everyone on this blessed joyful earth

The dervish said:

* Youth is delirious running along a winding drunken dusty road and the dust swirls far behind you and stays and stays The dust is curly and gay!

Maturity is running along a dusty road and the dust catches up with you The dust is thoughtful

Old age is when you stroll along the dusty road and the dust surrounds and envelopes you

The dust is blind

And where your flesh ends and where your dust begins you can no longer discern discover distinguish Bliss!

And he also said:

* In my youth I composed verse, in maturity - novels, but old age is a parable, an aphorism, a brief epitaph...

The dervish said:

* A great man born in a small obscure godforsaken settlement is like a golden bumblebee among wood ants. They find a path to him, but only when he falls in the golden slumber of death descends from the heavens on to their land and they eat up his former forbiddingly singing body...

And in those bloody weeping willow days the dervish recalled the ever sunny ever smiling silver tongued Hoja Nasreddin also forgotten by everyone in the civil war...

* Dervish you say that a great man born in an obscure impoverished village is lonely and is like a golden flying bumblebee among the lowly wood ants and they will find a path to him and consume him and carry him away only when he falls into mortal sleep and falls to earth! then - when he's dead - they press and crowd around him and avenge themselves upon him for his lofty flights...

And Hoja Nasreddin grew up in the small mountain village of Hoja Ilgar and he was drawn to the Great Silk Road where a great silk destiny awaited him? yes?

Sensing destiny's great summons, away he went, leaving his poverty stricken godforsaken village? yes?

The dervish smiled and said whispered:

* Allah has no poverty stricken godforsaken villages or people! Each village and each person is called into the world for a great destiny!

When Nasreddin had become a fervent fast-growing adolescent he began to feel the torment of ripe dreams and at night his unseeing elm-tree zebb would elevate raise his blankets above him, and it was cold for him to sleep without blankets, and one day he piled ten blankets upon his sleeping body - but woke from the draughty cold, because his wood-like arrow-like zebb had raised the blankets to the kibitka's low ceiling

And then by night and by day the poor adolescent phallus-bearer pushed pressed and dashed his unruly unbridled pole against the walls of the lowly kibitka and a wiseman said to him: 'It won't let you sleep Nasreddin, that horizontal bamboo zebb of yours which rocks and shakes the frail curved walls of your kibitka. What you need, Nasreddin, is big houses and palaces which won't suffocate won't smother that free unseeing rampant poplar of yours but there are none such in our village. Have you seen a sturdy elm or a white poplar or a noble Bactrian mulberry-bush which has grown up risen in a wattle kibitka?.:

Then Hoja Nasreddin went off on the Great Silk Road to the big cities where

there were big houses and palaces for his sacred unbridled tree...

The wiseman said of the life of Hoja Nasreddin: there is a belief a legend of a great silver tongued orator of Asia Hoja Nasreddin...

And he came to know all the free maidens and women of his village and went to the neighbouring settlements and knew them all there and later carried out similar such doings of his unbridled zebb in all the towns he encountered

During the last days of his earthly life he went around with saturnine stargazing astronomers forlorn as old men's balls and looked at the diamond pulsating Pleiades and would sigh and whisper to the embarassed scientists men who had never known the meaning of a live elm between young legs:

* There is! there is! there! on the countless pleiades stars planets and moons there is life! there is! I can feel it! there are women there and maidens inaccessibly unbroken! Ai it makes me bitter! Aikh ai - now it's really too late for me to get to them!.. they're just abandoned there! because I'm not there! AikhhhL

And the holy sheikh mullah Hoja Nasreddin worldwide zebbhunter ze^frwanderer sobbed and smiled!..

For in my youth I could have gone up got drawn in to the nearest star on my nocturnal unbounded all-knowing zebb-tTee\ but I wandered and rushed about this sweet world of maidens and women like a creeping unbounded sweetly stinging ant!..

The wiseman said:

* It's not the tongue of the immortal Hoja Nasreddin that's great but his zebb...

But then the wiseman Hoja Zulfikar began to have doubts and grew sad... and he recalled his far away fast ripening wife Anor-Sultan and Hoja Nasreddin...

...One day dervish Hoja Zulfikar married his young blind maiden woman Anor-Sultan and went away with her to the distant mountain village of Semiganch and there in a solitary outlying adobe kibitka made a blissful nest and union with her.

And although the night is given for love and the day for reflection and labour the dervish raised himself in sighing frenzy upon his tender passively moaning beloved in the daytime too

But upon his kalyam-quill and Chinese Xinjiang rice paper God's words of wisdom no longer settled but the sickly greasy roadside dust from the forgotten open window.

But now staying and wandering in the village was Hoja Nasreddin.

And every day he turned up at Hoja Zulfikar's kibitka and every time looked through the bull-necked bulging window and saw the Dervish's heaving back and joyful triumphant buttocks palpitating like skylarks in the springtime sky in Semiganch and beneath him the rolling raging snaking alabaster sugary barelegged ripebreasted peachy Anor-Sultan.

Oh!..Ah!..

And many days Hoja Nasreddin came to Hoja Zulfikar's kibitka and looked on enviously at the fathomless coupling, but the dervish only muttered quietly crazily, for love confuses sober words and sometimes the dervish groaned like a fecund crimson springtime donkey:

* Ya,ya,ya...

The dervish was sensing the donkey within himself and rejoicing...And Anor-Sultan was pleasured to fury with the donkey!..

Allah created the night for fathomless sleepless love till morning!

Allah created the day for restful sleep! sleep! sleep! for the zebb drained in the night to fill with juice for a fresh night of love, like a night bucket for rain, till morning! till morning! till morning! aya!

And for that reason true moonlight men of love have never seen never known the sun! have never seen blind boring day!..

At length Hoja Nasreddin could no longer hold his tongue and said at the open bull-necked window:

* Eh fellow Hoja Zulfikar! Allah divided the zebb from the quill!

Whoever sins too much with his zebb Allah will deprive of the godly gift of wisdom!

And whoever rolls in the godforsaken careless dust He will deprive him of his

kalyam-qwW Yii!

It's sad to see a wise dervish change into a hara-yara donkey! Ya... ya... ya... You've become a slave of your blessed pearly speckly spurt Hoja Zulfikar! You've become a slave of the blessed pearly speckly snaky spurt coming out

of your zebb in your young wife's swarming insatiable honey lap Hoja Zulfikar!

Aia!.

Or is your zebb to be your kalyam from now on?.. Aia!.

Then Hoja Zulfikar barkened stopped took in and grew sad but did not get off the silken body of his impassioned soothable submissive Anor-Sultan, for the donkey within him blindly raging like the mountain torrent was not spent.

The next day Hoja Nasreddin stood once more at the azure ardent asinine witless window of Hoja Zulfikar:

* My brother Hoja Zulfikar! Have you taken heed that Allah has divided the zebb and the qwl\-kalyam7 Or will your raging raving zebb drag you to death's door? Has your half-blind foot gone after your zebb - which is always in hell - and your head too?... Aia!...

* Oh Hoja Nasreddin, I am uniting that which for centuries Allah has divided by a blind stone wall! I have united the zebb which leads to hell with the kalyam which leads to paradise! Look! See! And take heart!

And now thro' the window Hoja Nasreddin saw the naked halva-bodied Anor-Sultan tasty as a golden glowing bread-oven-toww on the foam-white kungrad rug, spreading sprawling scrowling her swan-like irridescent ripe buttocks, brow tapping the floor writhing as in the deep prayer of Islam.

And Hoja Zulfikar falling pressing himself to the living sugar of her heaving carnal pleasures, in his trembling hand a quill brush kalyam, and on Anor-Sultan's long satin silken glossy back, satin Xinjiang glossy rice paper and the Hoja at once sweetly frequently pressing cleaving to his love and writing the silent

inspirational mindless words on the paper but because ofHoja Zulfikar's convulsing back Hoja Nasreddin could not make out these words...

And the sheikh oblivious in his flaming transport whispered:

* Hoja Nasreddin I have united that which for centuries Allah divided by a stone wall! I have united the zebb and the kalyam...

Oh my love - my sweet writing table! What wise man has not dreamt of such a table? aia!

Aia! But!.. My beloved! I'm just an abandoned burned bitter smoking bun in your nocturnal golden glowing bread oven-tanur...

Then Hoja Nasreddin went away from the sweet whispering kibitka and out and off in the dust:

* Oh Allah, I would have made my young wife write the verses instead of me!.. Yes!..

Oh Allah but what characters did Hoja Zulfikar trace on his wife's back? Perhaps among them is the nub sense solution of existence? Oh Allah! What did Hoja Zulfikar put down?..

...Hoja Nasreddin wandered went astray lingered and languished in the millenial dust... But the dervish met the great vagrant recently... for the last time...

The dervish said:

* I was flying in an aeroplane through the blue-grey deep swathe of the heavens somewhere above the Aral dying at the behest of godless madmen (I feared to look into the eyes of the innocent confused fish drying up on the land below) leaving my dear hungry mother Asia where a civil war had passed in the rippling mirage behind and below and before me waited my dear hungry mother Rus' to where the plague of civil war was heading on the paws of rats and marmots and in the tractates offalse-prophet-pharisees decrepit in spirit

The aeroplane was drifting along at an altitude meaningless for two-legged wingless man often kilometres and beyond the windows beyond the clouds a bitter frost floated by and the people in the aeroplane with feverish lascivious slumber in their drowsy brains dreamt of long gone naked objects of their desire and the hellish burning wings of crashing planes... God forbid!.. May death not abide with me in the sky! Oh!

And now an aged beggar-man with one hand mutely outstretched appeared entered the aeroplane

He wore a threadbare white Tajik chekmen' and well worn white foaming Bukharan turban and on his bare apricot far travelled exhausted legs ancient kawushi boots dusty from a thousand years of roads roads roads...

And his grey beard bore a lace pattern of ice... for he had come from the frost...

And I was surprised that this beggar-man did not smell like the beggars of all the roads of spicy nomad sweat and sour rags - although his clothes were threadbare they were laundered and clean and he himself was washed and his bare legs were clean and fresh as virgin alpine snow

It was as if he had washed himself in preparation for death as if he was already living in his shroud-kafan...

Then proudly and loftily he stopped close to me with his raised supplicating hand and smiled a childlike snowy-toothed innocent smile - strange on an ancient face

And now I recognised my thousand year brother fellow traveller of my

unending dervish roads and of many millions of other people departed and living

And I recognised him - the hope of the sad and the disconsolate of which there is now a tearful weeping-willow abundance among my people

And he sad and smiling recognised me

...Dervish today in my Asia Azya there is famine and pestilence and blind brother kills blind brother

And no one needs my cheerful parables and songs any more and what's the point of humble crystal springs when streams of blood are running and raging

And what sort of bleating song does the Karakul lamb sing in the arms of the butcher - ai Aziya my curly sheep today are you not in the arms of the executioner butcher! Aikhhha!

Woe has come to Rus' and Asia unbounded as the clayey sweeping choking protean mudslide marauder plague water in springtime in the mountains

Dervish for the first time in my thousand year life on Earth I have become a beggar

But if brother kills brother - then beggar tramples on beggar in my hungry land

And on the earthly roads no one would even give me a bit oflyepyoshka

Then I got thin to the bone and light as a bird from hunger and suffering for my blind people

And now the wind has started to carry me above the hungry land like a piece of the drying sacred Aral

And now I'm a beggar on the sky roads among the migrating birds

All my life I dreamt of touching stroking the head of a bird in flight and now I've stroked whole flocks of them...

And people are kinder and more generous in aeroplanes and now my surprised desert beggar's hand is filling with alms

On Earth people have forgotten Allah and don't give to beggars but in the Heavens my outstretched hand suddenly catches up with them

Is it because here in the sky roads they feel nearer to the presence of all merciful Allah?

But soon the hunger will come to the skies too and I shall go to the stars

Dervish Hoja Zulfikar brother I'm tired of the Earth and of people so I'm roaming the sky paths gathering alms so I can go to the stars of Allah for ever...

And he burst into youthful radiant laughter

See dervish how people are tired of living on Earth - a beggar comes into an aeroplane high in the sky and his beard is sparkling with ice - and no one is surprised...

And I embraced him and began to sob:

* My great and blessed thousand year brother Hoja Nasreddin! Is this to be the last time I see you? Is there really no place no nest even for us beggars? Are you really going away to the irretrievable icy inaccessible stars?

Allah let it not be!

Has the ice in the beard of the divine beggar Hoja Nasreddin melted into tearful water?..

Or has the great vagrant shed a tear upon me after all?.. ...Or in the war has the eternal alpine snow fallen in my soul become the ice of the Pamir glaciers? Or has the winter about my lowly leaning lonely orphan Varzob kibitka come for good? And will there never again be any thawed cheery snow and ice which my salt-marsh throat craves more than anything else? Ah?..

...And suddenly in the December night flat fixed fast came the frost and in the morning the Varzob canyon was all in hoary sparkling crackling frost and the curly mountain streams and torrents froze and the river Varzob darya smokily wildly sharply surprised froze at its banks and the dove-grey smoky ice-crusts over the whole canyon chilled to a slippery icy mantle

And the little streams froze right through to the bed like silver like needles and turned to ice and the river didn't flow didn't run but froze to the bed

And the little streams froze to the bed but the big powerful torrents with living frightened water on the bottom barely icy bed warmed and streamed and stirred and there residually fish lived and breathed.

Then the dervish came out of his kibitka with a bucket and an axe to chop out some fresh wholesome river ice and with his axe he cut out a piece of the azure icy river and gently and neatly placed the ice in the bucket and carried it into the kibitka.

And he put the bucket with the piece of smoky azure dove grey ice onto the oven for the sharp ice to become proper water for tea

And now the dervish noticed that in the smoky ice blades of grass and pieces of bark and leaves of trees had frozen and died

And now the dervish started because there stuck frozen in the lilac depth of the ice lay motionless a little pearly marinka fish and unrousably immersed in the ice its pearly radiant sparkling iridescent mother of pearl scales shone brightly thro' the smoky thick of the ice which slowly softening decomposing was creeping collapsing settling in the bucket and turning to water

Allah Allah Lord Lord! You are all powerful!.. Freeze forever my ancient forgotten useless wasted tormented life in my poor tumbledown unwanted kibitka midst boundless smoky ice

Only kindle care for melt give breath to give back this innocent little fish in the dissolving ice...

...But winter has come

The first winter of the war

The first healthy maiden snows of the war... Warrior! plunge your bloody hands into

the snows and cool them down forever!..

But across the first snows the first guests are approaching

In the mountains blessed and holy is the first guest in the first snows

I am waiting for my guest - and see who is coming - my son Kasymjon who forgot

about me but has remembered me in the war and in the first snows even the most

distant mountain is near...

And behold we are drinking green tea but still I sense the first guests are on their way

across the first snows to my kibitka... yes!..

The first wholesome virginal fresh-formed lamb-like snow has come out fallen and around our solitary kibitka is untouched maiden white white white from the snowy powder but someone is knocking at the door even though the deserted mountain evening of the first snow is near

* Father someone is knocking at our lonely door someone has come across the first snow someone has lost the way in our snowy Varzob canyon

* Kasymjon my son let them in

The two travellers in shaggy shepherds' chapans come into our frail kibitka and immediately it is cramped and stuffy in our poor kibitka

And the travellers smile and say "Assalom Aleikum" and other words in a different language we don't understand

Are they Lokais or Urguts or Karluks or what? but we don't know their guttural language and they don't know Tajik but the gentle smiles on their broad faces are their words

...Then dervish Hoja Zulfikar and his son Kasymjon spread out the festive dastarkhan and all the fruits, cream and hoiplov stored in a blanket for tomorrow and Bukhara sweetmeats - all there is in the kibitka they place before the snow-bound unbidden guests

And the hosts reproach and berate themselves that the dastarkhan is small in the civil war

And they pour the last hidden secret bottle of Bukhara wine into the cups and the guests drink eat and smile

Ah in the first fresh gentle January snow how sweetly the aged crimson Bukhara wine splashes and swirls in the cups!

Ah by the ancient Bukharan custom we must drink a cup of crimson fiery wine and then chase it with a drink of the first melted snow! so that the throat is either fresh white icy or fiery crimson crimson crimson!

And the guests were hungry like all people in the civil war and ate voraciously and their hands trembled from hunger and they thanked their hosts with their eyes and

not with their words for their tongue was obscure and unknown

And then the dervish and his son made up a bed for their guests of the most precious virginal decorated blankets set aside for Kasymjon's forthcoming wedding tho' the blankets were few but the guests said a prayer after an abundance of food wine and tea and took their leave because their nomadic far winding road lay ahead and they didn't stop curl up in the kibitka like the snake in winter quiescent under a stone...

And then the dervish and his son took two large pieces of cloth and wrapped up for each of the guests for their journey a new chapan and a nuptial blanket and halva and the last of the Samarkand sweets

And beyond the door of the kibitka night had now fallen and the blizzard of the first snows had abated had stopped and no longer beat like the wolfhound dog's docked tail stump on seeing the long absent master it loves

And the first snowstorm lay uneasy on the mountains

About the solitary kibitka the virgin snows lay white and gentle and the air of the mountains streamed in a crystal cold lace of wondrous wavering waves

And Kasymjon accompanied the smiling unspeaking Lokais and then returned to the kibitka where the dervish was already in smiling contented sleep on a threadbare blanket

...My boy now we've given away your blessed nuptial bl&vkets-kurpachi -now we'll postpone your wedding... But Allah will give you new blankets - since he's given you a ripe zebb-phnl\us\ Aikhha!

Father father! Out there in the fresh untouched snow there's no trace of our guests!

They've gone without leaving their tracks in the snow!

They didn't let me go with them but I went out after them secretly - and see in the untouched nuptial bridal snowy blankets and sheets of the snows there are no tracks from our guests' feet! Like from a bride who isn't a virgin!.. Yeikhha!..

Did they come by car? .. .there are no tyre tracks

Were they on horseback? ...there are no hoof marks in the snow

Father who are they?

* My son don't tell anyone! This is a real mystery! or has the crimson aged crimson Bukharan crimson intoxicating wine splashed and clouded our heads? Or are we blissfully maudlin and drunk?

* Father I didn't drink any wine! my cup is untouched as the snow about our kibitka\ but I saw! I saw! I saw - when one of the Lokais was eating hisplov his wayward shaggy shepherd's chapan fell open and I saw a snow-white tight-crumpled wing and a wood ant or some sort of creepy-crawly thing go creeping over his wing and the Lokai quickly brushed off the biting stinging creeping ant-like thing with his hand and quickly covered his secret wing once more but I saw

* Son! you're as sharp-eyed as the ever-hungry all-weather vulture-griffon or the lamb-grabbing eagle! Son, that means it's not the fiery Bukharan blood-thickening transient wine but a real ancient timeless mystery!

They were the angels of death Munkir and Nekir... they came for me... so did they feel sorry?.. have they flown away? and did they leave no trace on the gentle maiden first snow?

But didn't you see how voraciously they ate and how their hands trembled?.. in a civil war even the angels are hungry...

But how come our unexpected guests are angels? I know - in the mountain village ofZiddi death herself gipsy mistress of us all appeared secretly to the old pauper Hoja Mufazzal - the final earthly guest was all wrapped up in a bright coloured Kashmir shawl but for her bare bruised unprotected feet...

Hoja Mufazzal didn't recognise her but placed on the dastarkhan every scrap of food in the house - to the last crumb of blessed cake and he was moved to tears at the sight of his guest's shivering nomadic gipsy bare legs and gave her his last pair of charokhi-boots and stayed hungry and barefoot himself although it was winter and a bitter snow lay all around his forgotten abandoned kibitka...

And mistress-death was surprised by the generosity of the pauper Hoja Mufazzal

And she had already experienced the obese hospitality of the emperors and rulers of the world! and now she relinquished fell quiescent faded hung her head

And with the Kashmir shawl she wiped away eased away a tear drop orphaned from the elusive countenance other face

And she ate voraciously old man Mufazzal's poor bread and nibbled at his crumbling stoney panir-cheese and sucked toothlessly at his Samarkand halva and

smiled in gratitude

And she didn't take him with her but went away silent and spellbound with his charokhi-boots on her shivering icy bare legs...

And there are many such generous kibitkas in this poor homeland of mine...All of them!..

The dervish said:

* One day they called me and my son Kasymjon to a wedding in the distant mountain village ofHusheri

What do you want with the cool other-worldly wisdom of a dervish at a wild worldly sweet wedding? You need singers and clowns-maskharbozy and gipsies with their intoxicating snaking strumming. Wisdom and life always have been enemies.

But off we went my son and I up the springtime Varzob canyon to the wedding.

And at the kishlak festive people met us with beating doiras and the noise of the doiras drowned out the noise of the vernal white foaming river Varzob-darya.

And they seated us on carpets where the oldest dearest and closest guests were seated and they gave us their best wine and pungent smelling plov and they presented us with newly sewn quilts and cushions and decorated halccts... Although I saw the momentary flashes of hunger in the childrens' eyes... because there is civil war in my homeland and war and hunger always keep one another company...

But!..

Ah the honeyed levity of the wedding by the river in the village ofHusheri, where for the first time our feet have trodden the curly many-voiced crystal riverside grass among one's own unknown unknowing curly village people who are meek and smiling

Ah Allah nothing on earth is sweeter than the caress of strangers who have suddenly become one's own! Aikhhha!.. Lord You ordain and smile in heaven

Then thick rich blue-grey evening came upon the river and burdened in the flesh and exultant in spirit we went away from the village

And the dervish embracing one of the drunken dwellers Gulmamad-mullo said:

* Brother! How sweet an innocent motherly milky nipple is your village Husheri! It's true what the Great BookKitob Ul' Umma says: "And do not forget about hospitality to strangers for in the guise of strangers may come God's angels! Allah's Angels!"

Then bashfully lowering his drunken curly cheery head Gulmamad-mullo said:

* Our village is Kondara... Husheri is much further on... up there in the almond mist at the pass of Ziddi!..

And that was in the civil war when there were more bullets flying out of automatics than lyepyoshki out of hot ovens

And there are many such villages in my native land. All of them!

But!.. So short in the Tajik mountains is the blessed melting flowing winter!

And see already a bush of the first walnut gives forth playfully telling the future by

the seething curly clayey mountain stream!

February! All two hundred and forty eight of my raw bones have been immobile too

long and are aching and praying and creaking... But even with that deathly creak I am

not tired of living! not tired of hoping...

Ah February! my decrepit but sweet tasty daughter-hunting antedeluvian primal

brother month! You are forever infirmer and wiser than I and have lit up beside the

stream a bush of young pearly walnut!..

And!..

And the springtime maiden with the bee on her knee comes to me to me to me to me

And the springtime maiden with the bee on her knee comes to me to me

And the springtime tree with a bee on a bee is in bloom in bloom in bloom in bloom

And the springtime walnut tree is in bloom

And the maiden with the melting eyes of February snowdrops I see and she comes to

me to me to me

And I calm my hands 'midst the flowing newformed ice 'midst the streams currents

and springs

And I calm my lips in the waves of springs

The maiden leaves with the quiet early 'wakened February golden golden bee

The maiden leaves with the quiet February bee goldenbee

LeiliL It's you!..

Only the still cool walnut tree above my head just blossoms blossoms and lives

Only the tree with the bee on the bee at my lips just sings and sings and sings

But! but! but!..

ut!..

February snow has fallen in my native Varzob canyon and about my solitary kibitka it is snowy light light but the early mountain evening is approaching and its inescapable evening sadness will envelop my orphan existence

Beloved friends and wives of mine long-passed holy-passed once like honey but now poison gone forever to wander among the ruins of the Russian empire to disappear without trace now come feverishly sickly wailing with the approach of nightfall to my poor dwelling into my desiccated heart into my snowy soul which no longer accommodates them - and there is not! not! not! enough snow not enough mud rush not enough rockfall to pile over them freeze them flood them drift them fatally forever

They are standing and mutely rendingly wailing about my snowy kibitka they have surrounded and enveloped my tumbledown kibitka and the lowly life of mine within like wolves around a flock of doomed sheep - and I am afraid to go out to them but even more afraid to lose them...

But someone knocks at my door - some evening snowy guest comes into my kibitka.

* Assalom Alleikum dervish Hoja Zulfikar! I am Enerat-Sho... I have come from the Pamir... And you are from Gissar... But between the Pamir and Gissar there is fire death carnage slaughter war... Between the Pamir and Gissar the ancient bridges-owwgy are burning and streams of blood are flowing and they will soon be rivers... Dervish I have brought you Pamir Badakhshan /a/7-rubies gifts sweets...

In his tenacious young burning earthy sinewy fingers is a little bundle of highland gifts

But his young hands are trembling and it takes him a long long time to untie his bundle and I already know what's in his bundle because his hands are trembling

Enerat-Sho my brother from afar! I love you tho' you and I have never seen each other before on this Earth... don't hurry...

And first he takes out decorated Pamir juraby-stocidngs and then whips out from the cloth-bundle an automatic and the barrel with a tulip-bud muzzle is looking at me drilling up against me from three paces and because my kibitka is so small and he can't miss I feel with joy that I'm going to die and at once those beloved of my former days and years will stop tormenting me

* Enerat-Sho my brother! what a pity that you and I are seeing one another for the first and last time brother... I could tell at once by your eyes and hands what sort of present lay languishing concealed in your cloth... You were so long untying it I could have ripped you taken you with my double bladed karatag knife but you are a guest in my kibitka... so you have first go my brother... you're the guest and it's your go first... and the first is now the last brother...

Then he sobs he's just an adolescent boy milky lamb in the May grass Then he throws the unspeaking automatic on the clay floor of my hut

* Enerat-Sho beloved brother... my boy... sit down... we'll have some green Samarkand tea... And then we'll cross the first snow to the Varzob-darya... It's warm there from the water... There from the streaming primal warmth of the river the first walnut bush has come into bloom...

The dervish said:

* But it saddens me that there are now a great many murderers and executioners among my people and they have fallen in love with and cherish automatics and not hoes and they are not keen to throw down their automatics and come to the walnut bush by the river...

But there are there really are other blessed men among my people. They are like golden trout in the diamond impetuous stream! Behold Akhmajon-cfeAMaww godly saintly slave! Eternal is the people among whom all-seeing Allah creates such men! Allah Akbar!..

Early one blue-grey morning Akhmad jon-dekhkanin went out on his own to the cotton field where the boundless white foaming cotton harvest was floating in a snowy cloud of abundance

And alone in his native cradling Gissar field gathering the unprecedented harvest he quickly filled his sack-kanar and carried it with a smile to the bare and empty hirman - the storehouse resting place for the cotton

Then amid the snowy alpine field a scarlet nomadic bullet lashed silent as a horsefly juicily meatily deathly tore his right hand with which he had swiftly stuffed and gathered up the heavy kanar with overripe flying cotton

And at first from the sudden blow of the bullet he fell humbly longingly onto the soft kanar as into the bed made up by his dear distant mother Zainab-bibi and thought: "Behold I shall die fall to sleep pour out my crimson blood into my soft snowy kanar. And my kanar shall be my shroud-kafan like the white foaming turban of the Bukharan sheikhs."

But then Akhmajon quick-witted peasant slave of the land saw that only his blood-pouring scarlet hand had been touched by the bullet and his body unhurt did not bleed

And then with a smile he stood up leaving a slight stain still forming crimson on the kanar and set off for his home town Dushanbe which was not far away and which he fed with fennel onions radishes carrots and apples from his meagre but convivial /?ov/?-allotment-garden

And he arrived at the outskirts of Dushanbe and knocked at the door of the first house he encountered so the people could tend his wound and tie a tourniquet because he could not tie it himself and stop the blood which was becoming more abundant and generous and warm and sweet and gay

But no one answered the door at the first house even though he could see the people through the window with their big-eyed rosy morning faces

Then he went to another house and knocked gently at the pear-wood door but they didn't open the door there either. Only the dogs barked on their yelping twitching chains.

Then he went to other houses but nowhere did they open the door to him. And at first he was calling for help but then whispering because his blood was running low and after it his voice too and his very life was growing shallow

And on all the doors and gates he left the meek submissive scarlet trace of his broken hand

Ai Allah ai my generous Master! so much blood you have given to one man that Akhmajon went round half the town and left his beloved humble silent scarlet mark on many doors and gates

And offended tidy housewives washed the crimson trace of his living vitality off their doors and gates with water from the irrigation channels

Akhmajon could no longer whisper but he could smile and he smiled and thought:

* How beautiful is my native Dushanbe in the morning dew!.. Glory to You Allah, that you gave me so much blood that I've gone around half the town... there wasn't enough for all of it... my native town is big... but my blood is little brief...

I'm just sorry about my kanar full of cotton left an orphan in the field - blissful rain will come and wash away the blood I've left on other people's doors and gates so they won't be reminded, but my kanar will get soaked and there's enough cotton there for three quilts and seeds for a bottle of cotton-seed oil

Allah don't give any rain while bullets are flying in the blameless Tajik fields and the peasant providers are afraid to go out and fetch my kanar...

Allah it's not good to die to depart on a sunny morning For the dusk of evening and the blessed womb of night are for death... yes

Ah would there were enough of my sweet blood to reach the Pleiades!..

But

AllahuAkbar!..

Allah is great and man is small like my cotton sack-kanar rainwashed orphaned and forgotten in the field...

The dervish said: war creates great and blessed men

Behold Eshniyez-khan...

Eshniyez-Allauddin blessed vine grower behold the azure evening twilight in our native orphaned murdered Dushanbe is drawing near and darkening and soon killers with automatics will take to the deserted streets to kill those who can't sleep who roam the enchanted sapphire lilac azure streets

Oh my evening native former town where the people hurry to their solitary burrows nooks caves homes and don't recognise one another on the dangerous dwindling streets

Eshniyez-Allauddin! but you are the very best vine grower in my makhalla you are the true usto master of the vine and this autumn no one's vines have yielded a harvest and the blessed azure ruby bunch of "toy/a" or "goat nipples" has not grown heavy and hung low but a harvest of pomegranate-grenade killed youths and husbands has come forth in my native land my homeland...

Oh Allah! Oh Lord! Where? in which kishlaki on what goat track did they transgress? What are they taking such bloody punishment for? Is it perhaps my fault? for not loving everybody? because I didn't give something to every beggar wanderer?.. And is that why brother gleefully kills brother and the unseasoned son rises blindly against his father?.. And is that why my vine is poor and hasn't ripened hasn't become juicy?

But in your vineyard Eshniyez-Allauddin vine-grower the juicy bunches of grapes have come forth in abundance and your vineyard winds high above your lowly house and entwines the roof of your house

And each evening you seem to be hovering and flying in the azure dark of the sky now turquoise over your lofty vineyard and you cut the tight honeyed bunches and present them to the many neighbouring children who since the afternoon have been awaiting the copper-bronze vineyard evening and your generous smiling honeyed berries

Behold today too I am walking past your vineyard and you are hovering in the sky above your house and in your hands is a knife for cutting your taut tourquoise berries and beneath your vineyard already clamouring is a flock of other people's

children although there's no such thing as other people's hungry children And you are smiling at me vine-grower:

* Dervish! Brother! aka Hoja Zulfikar, I wanted to crush and oppress the fulsome ruby amber grapes for wine and entertain you but no grapes have come forth in these parts and in all my native land and children can't drink wine - they need their grapes vigorous ripe glowing crimson

Dervish! instead ofapiala of wine take catch a bunch of"to7/a"! For they have already overripened and fermented and you will feel their golden intoxication because silvery dervish you are old and an old man needs not wine but its forerunner fulminating forebear first apostle the unspeaking grape

Silvery old men need golden grapes!.. yes!

And Eshniyez-Allauddin's rueful smile delights me:

* Hang on I'll cut offtake off the juiciest most radiant bunch for you aka brother

Now he lies down lowers himself on the vine gently skilfully ripely and reaches out with his knife for the kindred distant curly bunch for me

* Take a look brother this bunch this cluster has overripened and is already leaking dripping crimson droplets and this bunch is yours

Eh brother open your mouth and close your eyes like you did as a child and let the honeyed droplets fall into your now sadly toothless mouth mouth mouth

And I close my eyes and part my lips and open my mouth to greet the honeyed droplets

And the droplets from the overripe aching bunch fly into my mouth

And at first they are sweet sweet sweet nectarous as the mountain honeycomb ofRamit and then then then salty as shepherd's cheese "panir" like the Aral saltmarsh

Then joyfully I open my eyes and close my mouth:

* Eshniyez how did you manage to grow grapes which mix honey and salt? heaven and hell? Water-abundant Ramit and the dried up Aral?.. Eshniyez-Allauddin I feel joy when I look at you

You're already lying asleep having stumbled and sprawled right across the

whole vineyard dreamily taking the whole vineyard in your embrace you have already left and gone away stumbled and shut yourself off forever Eshniyez my beloved brother

Eshniyez where did such a high unfair sky bullet come from

And at first it was the blood of the grapes and then it was your own salty blood...

Or he who wanders in the azure heavens at evening time - one day Allah will take him and keep him in the heavens?.. AiaL Yes?..

Who will feed water and cherish your vine now gentle brother vine-grower? Whose two strong wise hands will bring on and hang the thousands of "few/or" and "goat nipple" bunches clusters above my quiescent makhallcfl

And from the high azure vineyard my blessed blue bunch ruby cluster hangs uncut and your two limp lifeless deeply furrowed wrinkled kindred hands hang heavily above me

And the twilight has already changed into night and the azure of the vineyard has already changed into agate

Blessed is the evening vine-grower finally fatally like a virgin embracing her nocturnal passionate pillow spread across his vines

But!.. Allah!.. The azure of twilight has become the agate of night Lord! And I saw clearly blessed departed Eshniyez arise and cast himself across to the neighbouring vineyard and thence like a turtle-dove to other vines And from them he went up on high to your eternal vineyards Allah

Behold his procession from vineyard to vineyard in the heavens!.. Allah! May the holy vine-grower make his way across the blessed vineyards across countless vines into paradise paradise paradise

And I shall remain in the myriad dust

Allah! where is my azure evening vineyard stretching away to the heavens

And where is my blessed bullet so long awaited

How long do I have to wait

I'm tired of waiting

Eshniyez brother! why? didn't? you? take? me? with? you?

...The dervish lowered his head grew sad and said: Love on Earth is a fish flung

'midst the raging unreasoning springtime river - and who knows its path?

Only Allah but He does not speak because in his mouth is the sand of all the deserts

and the water of all the seas! Yes!..

But behold spring has come and the mountain has come down thawed into the river

and the river has turned tarry-clayey and the fish in the river is languishing choking

and its gills are full infused with sticky suffocating clay...

And what is love in the midst of war? A fish in clay with choking gills?..

But! there are there truly are those sacred blessed blindly in love even amidst the

recent all-seeing bullets...

Vika and Java!..

The dervish said:

* My mother Lyudmilla is Russian, my father Kasym - a Tajik. A civil war went on in Rus' for seventy years and the Russians massacred one another in a fratricidal frenzy

And my Novgorod mother Lyudmilla weeps endlessly for her Rus' and for her people

And now after the collapse of the Russian empire the Tajiks are massacring one another in a blind frenzied family civil war slaughter carnage

And my long dead slain father Kasym weeps endlessly for his people

And then there will be and already is war between the Russians and the Tajiks

And so are my mother and father to kill one another?

But the people driving out massacring innocent minority guests living under its cover after driving out the alien faces is doomed to massacre to poison itself to create suicide

And so am I doomed to endure three bitter cannibalistic wars in my one frail broken life?

Lord isn't that too much? or was it not You who said that it is the fate of every man to endure only as much suffering as his soul can bear?.. And the springtime clayey blindly raging river can't find space in the puny village irrigation channel...

But the wiseman says indifferently: "The fruitful nocturnal muslim mothers have brought forth an abundance of surplus sons and the earth cannot feed and sustain them and war will return them once more to the earth thro' murder..."

But I am not an indifferent otherworldly wiseman but a troubled and transitory sufferer of this world

And behold the autumn gold fall evening in my yard and approaching drawing near across the golden leaf-fall Viktoria my adolescent German neighbour - Vika -and her maiden body exudes primal first fragrance in her white nuptial dress

The cool of her virgin skin and body always wafts from her and she walks in a cloud of freshness and in the soaring summer heat of Dushanbe it's cool fresh and

comforting in the maiden cloud of her untouched body and in the heat I would take refuge in that cloud

And behold an evening of the civil war familial fraternal carnage in my deserted home town Dushanbe

And I had come out with a waste bucket to the abandoned refuse tip covered in a golden abundance of incessantly fallen leaf

And then I caught the scent of maiden skin and caught sight of a white cloud of white nuptial dress and adolescent Vika in the alpine cloud other primal first-snow body

And in her cloud stood the curly adolescent Javohir - Java - in an emerald chapan - the robe of a full grown bridegroom

And they were tightly tangled 'twined in a muddle of arms and legs and sweetly teasing kneading pawing one another with fingers lips and teeth and her joyous little scarlet watermelon grape like the slender wild Afghan pepper-pod flickered and flirted with his tongue ardent as a blade flashing in the mouth

In the course of love a woman is always blindly darkly oblivious but her man senses danger even in the thrall of surging foaming passion and Java tormenting making the frenzied crimson of Vika's little pepper-pod grape flutter in her mouth heard the rumble of a tank along the narrow side street and heard it stop rooted malevolent in our motionless yard

Then fearing to startle her sweetest island petal grape Java carefully moved his beloved Vika and screened her from the tank with his emerald bridegroom back

And I stood blissfully holding the bucket where golden leaves were silently falling cov'ring it up with gold fallen and damp

And I stood aware of naught save the smell of golden fallen foliage and the wellspring scent ofVika's maiden body

Then a machine gun sprayed spewed spattered a blind burst of fire from the tank and the flock of bullets passed over my head and hit my gold-fall plane tree and a little flock of unfledged leaves not golden yet came falling fluttering onto my bucket and onto my head

Now unheard for all the fallen leaves a Muslim gunman stealthy noiseless catlike in the white head band of the true believer pushed through rushed through the

yard and stood up behind my plane tree and opened fire on the tank and then inaudibly across the frail slippery foliage crawled slithering over the wall of my yard and hid disappeared without trace in the leaf fall

But Vika and Java with their arms legs and tongues entwined didn't hear the tank or the gunman but Java's innocent emerald back was shielding Vika from the tank

Then again briefly but profusely scarlet flames and burning coals were flung and spattered from the tank and the tank roused itself and rumbled off dragging its reptilian body down the narrow alley and its miscreant dread slithering clattering waterfall roar was a long long time dying away in the deathly lanes and houses shaking the lives frightened to death and the souls of sleeping children and old folk

Vika and Java lay side by side on the soft gold-fall sprinkling foliage head to head caringly inseparably indivisibly inevitably irrepressibly

Java was screening Vika with his back and so the bullets found him first

One was flung into his heart, another into his liver, and a third into his throat -three bullets three deaths at once went into him alone and he immediately fell where he lay flat fatally supine on his back and not on his chest and so Vika lost her screen protection and she too was exposed to the bullets

And then in joyous boundless rapture she cried out:

* And me! and me! and me!.. I beg you!.. take me with him!.. take me too!.. And the happy girl cut down where she lay beside Java laid back swayed back in smiling submission...

* Java! Java!.. the last happy bullet was for me! for me! I took it under my unscathed nipple under my pyramid breast erect in farewell!.. Java... together... You've fallen gone away killed but right away! in a flash! I'm killed and I've caught you up...

...That's love when she is killed and catches up with her man who is killed... not leaving him alone even for an instant in the other world...

In the civil war there is no one to sweep up the abundant fallen foliage - the yardmen fear stray bullets - and the dense golden leaf fall is bestrewing covering

enshrouding the earth, the homeless dervishes, the frail and rickety outlying kibitkas, and the irrigation channels where those who've been killed in the night fighting languish unburied...

Let the golden leaf-fall be their shroud until the first snow arrives...

An indifferent wiseman said:

* In the nocturnal fighting and in the life of this world victory goes to those who attack first

An indifferent wiseman said:

* Oh virgin maiden! Even before your bridegroom's ardent sudden crimson phallus a scarlet bullet has known you laid you dropped you

Bashful bridegroom so you didn't knock off your beloved before the bullet But in my town in the grip of war I haven't seen happier faces than these two

thoughtful smiling other-worldly saintly reposing departing...

And the indifferent wiseman began to sob like a simple shepherd and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed...

But the nocturnal leaf-fall covered both the earth and the indifferent wiseman with his golden bucket...

...Dervish dervish what is the ancient secret of love?

And the fish weaves and lives and streams rejoicing in the brilliant iridescence of its

scales in the thick muddy oily river river river...

And the river breaks shatters and crumbles the boulders in its bed but cannot crush the

gentle fish...

Dervish what is the ancient secret of love?..

...In civil war people either kill or die or drink no end from fear of dying being killed or smoke anasha to quit the earth infested with killers and rife with killing

But what of love in civil war in fratricidal slaughter? Who is capable of love in carnage abundant with hot hasty bullets?

But the autumnal streets of my native Dushanbe are deserted - everyone is hiding from death and death alone walks the streets but! behold! suddenly! solitary in pitch black stockings you are traipsing through the town and Fall'fiya-Flora-Flyoora-Orda-Orrya-Oorya your ancient Tatar name from the cradling steppe falls flies from your startled lips when suddenly we meet

Fall'fiya-Flora-Flyoora-Orda-On-ya it's still hot languorous and sweaty on Dushanbe's deserted streets and yet you've covered your firm smooth apple-blossom long long legs with thick black stockings

And it's deathly deserted on the streets and you're alone in black stockings and don't fear the bullets

Dervish Hoja Zulfikar I ran from my home because a sniper has occupied it and when I came home -1 found three cool bullets in my cool bed - the sniper had been firing from my house at others and others had been shooting at him but he was alive and three cool bullets were lying in my bed where once my hot-breathed nervous virgin grooms had lain with me - before our marriage I would tease and torture them with my naked all embracing body but I never opened never yielded it

Fall'fiya but why did you put thick black woollen stockings on your fervent passionate mother of pearl sheeny long long legs -1 feel that's what they are I feel they don't obey you they're not yours

Dervish only I know the mysteries of ancient steppeland chasing foaming koumissy Tatar love

I used to come creeping to the blessed nocturnal Tiumen sentries' tents and the Great Hakan would wait for me feel me and no one could embrace him ride him have

him but I did

I know the chase of love! the fever of torn bleeding and scarred love! the languor of love's lethargy! the love chase holy scar of the saddle-sore and dissolute

I know the primitive pungent mystery of Tatar love on lying mounts on galloping mounts where the biting koumissy mare's aching trickling swelling heady honey bud has burst in bloom twixt foaming lathering legs yayayaya

Fall'fya but why are you walled up in pitch black thick woollen stockings which hide your legs

Dervish that sniper is a blind man but the sniper is a butcher killer of men for he's not a free warrior shooter but shoots for sure and on my maiden bed he raped me ruined me reft me and since that day I haven't returned to my house and since that day a relentless crop of countless curly hairs has risen raged and rampaged on my legs and there is no way I can kill offtake off this raging hair on my blameless legs

Hair tarry wild predatory has taken has seized my milky-white legs

I have gained the legs of the hairy lynx and the shaggy Gissar sheep or the Varzob goat and the thousand-year dormant venomous viper snake has stirred and awoken within me too and the soft-bodied coiling Mongol desert lizard emerald reptile agama

Since that day when the sniper murderer executioner butcher of men tormented me I've left run away from my native home and into the distant steppe to the tents ofChingis Khan Hakan my primal prehuman hairy legs have carried me me me me m...

Dervish you are afraid of me you are afraid of my hairy animal legs you are afraid of my primal secret sore spot of love of fever of malarial delirium of dark heat twixt my hairy legs and your bare ones

Dervish you are afraid that from the ancient secret fire heat my raging hair will catch fire and scorch you

Fall'fya I do not fear the bullets of civil war I do not fear the heat and stench of burning hair I do not fear but crave your lynx's your sheep's goat's your snake's your crazy raging elusive azure agama paws paws legs legs legs

Fall'fya-Affya I want to lick to bite into you there in the marble of your bare

legs where your hairy animal paws become your silken naked maiden maiden maiden's thighs

Fall'fya Orrya Urrya all the women on earth have eyes that live and flow across their face but your lynx-like wolf-like flowing emerald orbs stand upright in your face and glow like those of nocturnal predatory beasts those cravingly flashing malachite eyes of yours

Your wonder-struck eyes are roused and raised and seething like the she-wolf like the lynx in the chase in love in the pounce

Dervish my wilful unblinking eyes rose up and cooled down after the sniper executioner butcher of men wrecked me raped me ruined me

Dervish you have seen how the dark boundless mud slide flows fouling its way off the mountain and the split boulder ofunmoving stone rises up into the air - so my eyes rose up and chilled in my face

Fall'fya Orrya I do not fear the bullets of fraternal slaughter I do not fear your chill wonder struck eyes I love your firm rounded reckless legs in thick tarry stocking walls where the bestial hairy paws become the smooth maiden thighs

Fall'fya mossy-legged let's go to my far off outlying kibitka There no one will find us there no one will kill us

Dervish wait for me when night like the spiderweb of death comes down upon the town for I like to wander along with death and I like to wander in spiderweb nets when the broken spiderweb summons killers to come sliding upon the spinning fly victim

I am!.. Fall'fya Orrya!..

And the night came and the spiderweb of death came and enshrouded and entangled my native Dushanbe

And I put out the lights in my kibitka so the bullets like moths like fireflies wouldn't come but then I lit a light so Fall'fya Orrya would see the light and come

Oh Lord! Let F-All'fya come before the bullet

Fallfiya Flora and in the night too do you wander in tarry nocturnal stockings

Ah? Aikh! AifP Fall'fya I'm so cravingly so ruinously so wretchedly so

tearfully so painfully ripely overripely agonisingly waiting for you that all my tatty dervish clothes have fallen to bits at once have come off me flown off me like snake skin and now I'm naked or did I rip them off myself

Then you come smiling quiet meek obliging into my kibitka my Fall'fya Aikh! You're holding ten white foaming chalice shaped Shiraz winter roses on

long emerald stems all in fierce prickles like torn out lynx's snake-fang predatory

talons

Aif! and she takes off her saffron Kokand chekmerf and is naked like me but

she is all naked whiter than white like the Aral salt marsh which the camels lick but

she is in savage pitch black stockings but I am ready like the waterless camel at her

saltmarsh to lick tear and bite

Aikhh! And dewy freshness wafts from the roses and rosey freshness wafts from Fall'fya Orrya Urrya from her satin alpine snowy body from the camel's craving white bodied saltmarsh AikhhaL

Aikhhh! dervish have you forgotten that I know the mystery wellspring of the feathergrass steppeland's ancient Tatar salt marsh love and with this pistachio mystery I went in I crept into the tent ofHakan Chingis Khan and alone alone alone conquered subdued him! which not one host on Earth has been able to achieve aikh! ai! aya!..

Fall'fya but I'm only a dervish I'm not the Hakan and my lowly lonely adobe kibitka is a long way from his boundless cavalry and from his golden tent

Dervish! Oh how sad is the love chase call of the mares in the deadly close cavalry of Chingis Khan Hakan!.. How sad is love in the days of civil war when bullets fly even in beds... Dervish why did we have to meet at such a time?

Then she throws all ten long white roses on the clay floor of my kibitka and lies down supine on them naked with her marble back on their hellish thorns talons

Dervish I throw myself naked lie down on the roses on the thorns and you lie

down on me

Fall'fya F'ya and is this the steppeland grassland love secret beloved of Chingis Khan Hakan?

Dervish this is the beginning of the secret

Dervish lie down on me as I lie going glowing flowing on the roses on the savage thorns and my sweet back takes them in and tears them off AikhhhL Aifff!.. F-All'fya Orda OrryaL

And I lie upon her submissively sinuously full ripe and then she bleats mindless as the docile Gissar sheep like the hairy legged goat and tosses in torment moves heaves gives fierily wriggles beneath me in the snowy roses and in the shifting bloody talons thorns

Dervish I am your sheep your goat and that is the start of the ancient secret but you want to know the whole secret of Chingis Khan Hakan and you see how the sheepy roses are turning pale crimson and the thorns are rending my creamy back Aikh! Hya!

Dervish don't you want to go on with the ancient secret don't you want the sheep goat to change into the snake and the snake into the lynx Aif! Fya! Don't you want me to wipe offtake off tear off these raging raving stockings?

Fall'fya my sheep I do! Aikh!

Then she entwines entangles me tightly mortally hotly naked naked naked with her tarry hairy animal legs

Then like a snake she writhes wreathes rises off the roses now crimson off the bloodied thorns now flowing crimson comes away from beneath me and her crimson clever serpent silent snake's viper's adder's tongue envelopes engorges entangles entrains and torments my zebb and now she twists and moves and hovers between my legs and now I'm lying tossing turning on the roses and the thorns sweetly blissfully enter and pierce me and many thorns I tear with my craving back off the stems and

the stems are becoming smooth but many thorns remain on the stems aikh! aikh! aya!

And on my back beneath my left shoulder blade lives an ancient mole but I tear it off on a thorn and it bleeds generously hotly... AikhyaL

Dervish you are in the secret of ancient Tatar nomadic love on the hoof or do you want to turn back are you in love not Hakan Chingis Khan?

Or from the snake do you want the foaming lynx to arise to appear are you not afraid of my lynx's shaggy legs and searing paws paws paws?

Aikhhh!Khhhia!..FyaL Fall'fya lynx I burn for you

Then she snarls and bites and gnaws and rends me slaps and tears and sunders me extends her sudden nails claws and I roll in the roses and many more thorns are torn off taken off their long stems and my foaming body is all in blessed joyful blood and all the snowy roses now are roses of garnet and I am rapt and all my body is giving forth like an irrigation channel onto my rough native bloody floor

And my body was like a white boulder but now it's like a nomad bloody stream

And now! Now!..

Fall'fya sheep goat Fall'fya snake Fall'fya lynx see now I've torn I've ripped all the thorns off the stems - so sweet so long - and the unmoving snow of petals has become a wet stream of blameless garnet

Fall'fya is the ancient secret of Chingis Khan all done? FyaaaL

I am lying on the flowing garnet roses on the long bare stems without thorns and then Fall'fya is leaning lying naked unmoving kindred and hot upon me and wailing moaning suffering HyayayaaaaaL

Dervish see I shall wash your wounds in the steaming breasty koumiss of thoroughbred mares Aikh! And blissfully joyfully cleansed you shall fall to sleep and you shall sleep three days and wake up happy and on your body there shall be no sweet scarlet wounds but I shall already be far away

But first I shall bathe your joyful body freshly ploughed by thorns in the maternal young mother's nourishing steppeland koumiss milk of high cheeked fine bred mares oflssik-kul' Aikhha! Aifffa!

And she presses close upon me naked with her swelling almond nipples now maternal and splashes spills spatters sprays me with warm abundant milky streams and the babies' milk flows over my body and over my scarlet wounds... AiaL

Dervish that sniper killer violated me and I became fruitful and fraught and my nipples have filled prepared for motherhood but a killer can only reproduce a killer so I did an abortion and poisoned my unborn son with mustard seed but my nipples know naught of infanticide but my nipples have blindly wildly filled with milk and behold I let it flow upon you on your sweet wounds already healing

AifrfL Hakan I love you you you... I am Orda Orrya running mare for you and your steed

Fall'fiya some ancient fathomless well sleep of the poppy sleep of the opium smoker shanakur is stealing upon me I cannot get up from my cool clay floor and dead and alive I keep falling falling falling asleep and from those endless nipples she is pouring disgorging milk smiling upon me

Hakan!.. I love you!.. I am your milk spilling milk strewing mare Oh longing of the chase mare with no steed and the steed of the cavalry burns

not to mount me but to leap and crash to death in battle in carnage beneath a warrior

bakhadur

Fall'fiya stay with me forever where is there for you to go - in our native land there is war everywhere fraternal bullets are flying

Fall'fya Orrya but was the secret seen and shown and spent on the bare stems on the garnet roses on the flowing streams of first formed baby milk healing my wounds?

Dervish the secret is still not spent but the last hour has come the hour of the silent regal parting procession ofAgama

Dervish there was Fall'fya sheep goat there was Fall'fya snake there was Fall'fya lynx and now you sleep deeply three days and your wounds will be pacified and Fall'fya will softly silently depart forever as the sacred ancient Buddhist temple lizard agama...

Now the thick low delirium dream reverie smoke of poppy kuknor anasha comes upon me and I am flying bathing in the fathomless well of sleep like the newbom suckling camel fleeing the huge arid Kizylkum seething sloping sand hill barkhan

Fall'fya Urrya stay with me forever! I shall awake in three days and then we shall never part till we leave together in our beautiful muslim kcifan-shrouds as one as one as one!

Fall'fya and we shall fly away together wrapped in our sepulchral shroud-cocoons

Dervish my beloved! now you too know the ancient secret of the steppeland love of the sheep the snake the lynx and the agama

Dervish and while you are in your wishful dead sleep I shall pick ten young white Shiraz roses with bloody thorns and go away forever to the Tiumen tents of the blessed Hakan Chingis Khan

Farewell my beloved blessed dervish-Hakan Farewell Fall'fiya my sheep goat snake lynx agama...

Aikhhhffyaiya!.. FyyaL

...And then the dervish deserted and orphaned recalled his meek and beloved Leili who (thanks be to Allah) knew nothing of the great love secret and so did not go back to the tents of the immortal Hakan Chingis Khan...

Leili! Where are you?..

...My beloved!

Early in Spring

When the saxaul - rosy nipple of the sands - flowers in the desert

When the snowy curly first cherry lives and flowers and sways in the wind and scatters

flying pearly petals by the river

Early in Spring

We shall set off from Khiva to Bukhara barefoot on foot

My beloved...

Aya...

Ayi...

And I shall carry care for and cherish in my hands your silent silent saffron slippers -

emerald patterned kawooshi

Still enchanting free and gay with the warmth of you

Ayi...

Leili! Leili! Leili!

...And one day at the heady springtime bazaar in Dushanbe where people hunger after the fruits of the rich earth the dervish stirred for a passing curly karakul maiden Leili-Khatshepsut-Nefert and sought and chased her like an autumn-ripe Bukhara stag

The maiden whose breasts were pyramids erect and firm against her frail breezy dress spoke tormented and sighing from the pull of wayward wild and wanton wishes:

* What are you chasing me for? Go away you trumpeting autumn stag it's springtime in the bazaar! You're too early stag! too early!.. It's a long time to chasing harvesting golden zebb gold phallused autumn...

* If your father hadn't chased hadn't fondled your mother in the heaving tearing blankets if your father hadn't been a roaring foaming stag - you wouldn't be here on earth at the bazaar and your silent wild-standing pyramids wouldn't be tearing your innocent clothes...

But he grew sad and drew back

And she with hatred for his meekness carried off forever her unsurpassed unchanging wayward melon pyramids unsatisfied from the many fruited market which suddenly seemed to the lonely dervish to be wildly many-breasted...

...But Leili with the coral band on her head and a fresh hyacinth in her tarry hair

seemed to the dervish to be a maiden of paradise about which it is written in the

Koran that if one maiden of paradise were to appear on earth her head band alone

would be worth all the beautiful women in the world...

Maiden of paradise! Maiden of paradise on what land do you set foot maiden of

paradise?

Maiden of paradise you are not meant for me...

One day in spring dervish Hoja Zulfikar was wandering solitarily along his native Varzob canyon where also flying and wandering were the unseeing bullets of the Tajik civil war

It was the blessed season of the curly furious streams running off the wet mountains

Running streams off running mountains!.. Oh!.. It's fresh in the flowing newbomclay!.. Oh!..

Now from the mountain Kondara came a thick dirty mudslide and an abundant crushing rockfall came leaping down the mountain and the dervish barely managed to hide behind a nearby basalt cliff and from behind the cliff he eyed the slithering mudslide and rockfall enraptured and was ready to die joyfully and at once among the rumbling native rocks!.. Oh Allah!.. Where is my rockfall? Where is my final stone?.. I've grown tired of life and death by a nomadic stone is so sweet!..

Allah! How many stones do you have suspended in your springtime canyon? Can't one take me off with it?.. To your lands Allah?.. Long have I wandered in my native cradling Varzob canyon and awaited that stone with secret yearning...

And now with the mudslide a part of the mountain had come away and a crimson wound was opening as when you carelessly tear off a wet bloody bandage

So from the deep secret belly of the mountain to the astonishment of the dervish there appeared a fresh wild crimson garden

There unfamiliar trees of crimson crimson lilac which the dervish had never known never seen in all his distant wanderings were in bloom - they were like flowering almond apricot peach trees but different

There dressed in crimson crimson gossamer and sitting smiling on the young emerald riverside grass were men and maidens holding piyali-cups of foaming crimson wine and from behind the cliff the dervish looked upon them cautiously lest they should see him

And from the crimson garden came winging the delicate delightful crystal sound of maidens singing and the river Varzob could not drown out that singing

The dervish also saw some dancers with bare beneficent bounteous pyramid

breasts wearing only crimson hazy satin pantaloons and they twirled and swayed like water fronds around those who drank from the crimson cups and they too were drinking from cups stooping towards the men and dipping their blessed delirious tourquoise nipples in the cups and other men were drinking from them and from their nipples

And the waft of cool crimson freshness from the crimson garden exceeded the cool freshness of the vernal Varzob-darya and permeated passed inaudibly into the dervish's soul

The dervish began to view the people with the cups carefully and thought he recognised one of them - it was the long deceased beloved friend of his youthful days the blessed Israelite Yan Ebner Ben Eir whose sudden death had long saddened and bowed him

And the dervish recalled the words of the ancient Sufi: "In the last days people long deceased and those yet unborn shall appear on the earth and the times shall change..."

And in Yan Ebner's hand was a cup of foaming splashing wine and he was smiling and it seemed to the dervish that Yan Ebner had sensed someone's gaze and turned to look in the direction of the cliff and the dervish hid so as not to be seen and the dervish was alarmed and frightened but now he saw that the hand of one unknown was trembling with a cup of wine and the cup tipped and overflowed

And hidden behind the cliff the dervish whispered:

* Oh Lord! Are you punishing or rewarding? I know not...

Then boundless slithering slug-like the mudslide slid over spread over sealed over the sudden crimson garden and its inhabitants

Only the singing only the maiden air singing still still still was audible to the dervish though the Varzob-darya dashed and raised and dashed and moved the bottom boulder stones at his feet

Then no longer afraid the dervish came out from behind the cliff and over the mountain unexpected unheeding from a place unknown a blind hunch-backed wanderer drew beside him on a donkey

Now the wanderer opened his infirm eyes and the dervish saw that he was not blind but had been asleep

* Dervish I hardly managed to get myself out pull myself out of that baneful mud - see how my donkey's legs are all in the flowing clay and my legs too are caught and covered in mire

I always sleep like the dead when the vernal mountain torrents and rock-bearing rock-dragging mudslides rage but my donkey knows all the tracks here - and so saying his heavy eyelids swollen from sleep and from want of sleep closed - but my donkey carries my eyes my dervish Hoja Zulfikar...

And now dervish Hoja Zulfikar shuddered seeing that the donkey had the long flowing human eyes of the wanderer as if they had gone from the face of the sleeper and thrown themselves fixed themselves settled themselves attached themselves to the visage of the donkey and begun to shine there

* How does the wanderer know my distant name which I barely remember myself?..

Perhaps it's the angel Azrail

It seems the thousand year sacred protector of wanderers Hizr-Hoja floats flows draws near before me and his donkey is swimming all twisting raging shaking in the flowing clay and Hizr's thin legs are covered in holy vernal dirt and his feet have already turned to stone

Dervish have you forgotten that the lands of paradise and hell are thousands of times greater than the land of the living? Yeikhhhhhhhh!

Dervish the secret virgin crimson outskirts of the gardens of paradise untold and unwitnessed have looked out and shown themselves

Sometimes Allah uncovers them reveals them for a moment to pure or to lost souls

But only for a moment! so that transient mortal eternally grieving man should not have time to see to make out to recognise those eternal blessed unforgettably departed ineffably dear faces!..

* Old man! But I recognised one of them!..

* Tsss!.. Yeikhhh!.. Be quiet! Beware! keep it to yourself! keep out of sight!..

All in the chasing mountain diamond streams the dervish blissfully endlessly

crying in the creeping mudflow stands trusting and praying

And the Israelite beloved and deceased looks at the dervish with a smile and waves waves waves in earthly farewell And he waves but does not beckon

Dervish dervish my dear earthly and otherworldly friend you are standing by the silver streams but we are leaving leaving leaving this sorrowful land...

...And behold we are leaving this sorrowful land...

And behold Doctor Rashkovyetsky is talking to the dervish whom he saved from the deadly bullet:

* 1 live near Dushanbe airport and behold on the day of the most bloodthirsty bloodsplashing bloodletting fighting there was a flight to Israel and the throng of men women old people and children dashed silently with their sacks and cases to the rescuing plane although all around the aerodrome a battle was going on and abundant predatory bullets were flying over people's heads and even flying into people's heads to come to a stop thrashed out in the abundance of blood

And some of the Jews were thrown down gunned down on the way to the plane but no one helped them and bleeding unspeaking they crawled away meekly to the white autumn Shiraz rose bushes so as not to delay the living getting to the plane so as not to hinder the departure

And I looked upon my nomadic people

But then the flight was cancelled and the fleeing crowd set off running from the aeroplane back to their distant homes and again some of my kin were cut down knocked off their feet by bullets from the fighting nearby and they too crawled off to their silent submissive death in the careless dusty rose bushes so as not to hinder the departure

My bloodied bowed Israelites in another's cool white parting roses

And I looked at my people rushing about under the bullets and thought that for several thousand years now my people have been rushing about tormented by bullets knives arrows bombs losing their living among other peoples

And behold the Bukhara Jews have lived in Tajikistan for two thousand years and behold for the first time in two thousand years they are running away and forever from a people seized by bloody family slaughter. Christ said: "The enemies of a man are of his own household..." And now a man's enemy is his own people?..

How painfully bloodily wrenching how inescapably endlessly wretched to flee

your thousand year nest! ah?

And behold the disciple elders of the Talmudic wisemen - the Hakhamim taught us to save up goods silver gold - and so am I to go to the Wailing Wall with my miserable goods? encumbered with my sacks and cases? And what does a nomadic people want with sackfulls ofworldly belongings?.. I've never ever seen a bird flying with sacks of old clothes on its wings

But I'm just a quiet wandering Bukhara Jew of the era of the Jews' departure from the collapsing boundless Russian Empire...

And behold my nomadic people are wandering under the bullets towards the heavenly ark of salvation which is to take them away to the land of their forefathers but the aircraft is not going to fly and among my people wandering back under the bullets I see many kind-faced blue-eyed Russian people

Two great peoples have wandered the earth - the Chinese people wandered and then stopped and settled in their nest behind their sacred Great Wall

"You should hear the crowing of your neighbour's cock but not visit one another..." Otherwise there will be envy hatred war slaughter... So says a Chinese wiseman

The Jewish people my unfortunate migrant people wandered for centuries and then stood at the Wailing Wall and found God's peace

...Hi! Hi! lama savakhvani?.. My God! My God! Why have You left me behind?..

And only this only this call constantly resounds over the abandoned Russian villages and towns and their people...

Ai the Russian empire is vast and boundless but now the Russian people too are rushing about in torment searching for the shore and they don't have a Great Wall of China and they don't have a Wailing Wall and they don't have a thousand year temple nest

And the combined ardent peoples who once called themselves your sons now tear at you and plunder you like foaming aphids robbers big brothers like wolfhounds biting the lonely lost wolf

And the lost sheep becomes a wolf and behold the sheep devour their humble

unwarned shepherd

Doctor Roshkovyetsky my lost Israelite brother so why aren't you going to your Wailing Wall away from the Russian empire where the Russian people are rushing and reeling like a stoat in a cage? Because you can't live in a cage only die

Ai dervish Hoja Zulfikar! my Muslim brother! now gold-fall grapevine Autumn reigns in Dushanbe

Now there is civil war and the fighting slaughter of murderer gunmen in Dushanbe

And alone among the abandoned ancient holy books I sit and I wander in Dushanbe's enormous library like the mummy of a pharaoh in the womb of the cold deserted pyramid

Alone I blissfully read linger wander amidst thousands of forgotten books 'midst the cemetery of the deceased wisemen and poets with whom no one speaks in war

And if I go away to my Wailing Wall then the thousands of books in the deserted library covered in the cold of golden gold-fall foliage will be all alone

And alone too will be the ancient wisemen and poets covered in the relentless funereal leaf fall of Dushanbe

Doctor Roshkovyetsky keeper of thousands of forgotten books you touch them with your gentlest loving touch and fathomless eyes

Are you not the last reader in the library filled through the bullet-broken windows with a wild gold-fabric gold-flying leaf leaf leaf fall

Elokhim\ Oh Lord! YHWH\ Adonai\ Let one distant Dushanbe tear not be accounted at the beloved Wailing Wall!..

...And I am crying even though I'm far from the Wailing Wall

But from the tears of my Tajik mothers wives children and husbands vast flowing

walls - clear waterfalls - can be created erected

Allah! and are walls of tears more enduring than walls of stone?

And in the flowing walls I recalled my distant brother poet Du Fu who also wept at the Great Wall of China...

...When I eat I leave food for the mice And I don't light a torch in the night so as not to bum the blind moths...

You are crying at the wall my brother but in my town my Dushanbe again there is nocturnal conflict...

At the walls of my frail sleepy house a nocturnal battle of gunmen is going on

My mother Lyudmila is reading Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' and says hazily smilingly: 'Son, listen to the way the great writer described the battle of Borodino...'

My mother is deaf from old age and many worldly woes hopes and sufferings and can't hear the fighting in the dark outside our house - here a thick profusion of automatic fire there shouts shudders sobs groans elsewhere the spit and blood of death is being swallowed there they're falling into the autumnal irrigation channel where the golden fallen foliage and the killed and wounded are piling and no one helps the wounded in the night and by morning they are dead

Mother dear! put the light out - we've got Borodino right outside our windows... I'm so glad you can't hear!.. The whole dark town stands hidden though it doesn't sleep but fears that bullets will fly to the light - they fly to the light like blind condemned moths

I can hear you my son! submissively she puts out the light and my blessed deaf one sleeps

Do you remember the ancient Chinese poet?: 'I don't light a torch at night so as not to burn the blind moths'...

And I lie there in the darkness within the walls at home and fiery close bullets don't hit me don't know me in my torment

But!..Oh God!..Oh!..

But then they are hitting flying into other people but they are sundering smashing slicing spreading shredding the same flesh the same stuff as mine

Allah! Lord! But then You did make us all out of one clay out of one dough you formed us loved us kneaded us

And why do the bullets thrash and spin without touching me but they fly into my fellows my brothers

And I lie there covered from the head in my thick Bukhara quilt but the quilt can't keep out bullets and I can't sleep but within the walls bullets fly close over my

poor quilt and don't touch me but they fly into other people and tear the same flesh as mine

Ai Allah! how am I to sleep lie breathe when bullets are flying into people? Then I tear myself from beneath my tattered quilt and then I turn all the lights

on in my house and they bum fiercely midst the aspen Babylonian satanic darkness of

the town where a seething cauldron of bullets is flying and then I run out half naked

onto the balcony and shout into the dark:

* Eh! that's enough shooting! That's enough killing... go to sleep! go and love

your wives and children! Or shoot at me!.. at me... Let all your bullets fly here...

I'm standing in my white Bukhara nightshirt in the darkness on the balcony flooded in wild solitary light from my three windows Soon my bullets will come Lord! I'm so glad my mother is blissfully deaf and can't hear me!..

...I don't light a torch at night so as not to bum the trusting moths...

...Then begins vast vanquishing vernal many day rain rain rain... And oblivious and blameless it washes away carries away the blood from those abandoned killed (like the nameless timeless anointer of the deceased) and carries away the frail holy honeyed pollen fabric from the wings of fluttering moths... Funeral rain... for bald wet moths too...

...In my springtime town there is night and endless rain and the roof of my adobe kibitka is of clay sagging and fearful and soon it will not withstand will leak will soften and let in the downpour on the poor rickety beds where my mother Kampir Lyudmila and I sleep

My son my son can you hear how the river has swollen risen spread river river and the downpour is washing through breaking through the roof which we have long neglected to make good to mend before spring and it is thin as the ancient flesh of my finger and the river has waxed and is lapping plundering the banks and the houses and our solitary outlying kibitka and in our native Dushanbe civil war slaughter carnage reigns and bullets are flying near thro' the rain and finding those who are doomed

Mother sleep

Mother the rain won't win won't wash through our roof Mother so sweetly distantly cradlingly deeply in the heavy downpour you want to sleep to drift to dream

In heavy rain the human soul ascends the downpour to the eternal heavens

My son my son can you hear? - there are voices out there on the boundless curly clayey mindless night-time river the voices are muffled but their language is ancient primal forgotten pre-Aramaic

My son it's for me! It's the nocturnal boat the sacred nocturnal golden galley waiting wallowing on the clayey river where the drenched crumbling rapids precipices ridges peaks endlessly earthy savage swirl

My son can you hear the beating of the oars on the thick tarry clayey waters?

Such a vernal river carries off drowns the riverside mountain villages and those asleep in their warm quilts turn into the earthy icy drowned and such a river stuffs the gills and mouths of trout with suffocating deadly clay and they throw themselves on the banks to die whence the fishers have been washed away carried off to their death

My son at the appointed time such a river brings the nocturnal golden boat

My son can you hear? - the oars are splashing beating against the endless waves

It's for me

Lord but I've been ready a long time but your golden boat has only come today

My son behold I've prepared my final funeral god-pleasing god-loving sepulchral death linen

Lord!.. My son!.. Unbeknown to you my death shroud grave linen has long been prepared

And she takes out her long snow white old nightdress from under her pillow

My son!.. My sepulchral nightdress is threadbare like my flesh!.. Lord!.. My son let's get out of the kibitka and go to the golden boat! Hurry! or she will set off down the river

Otherwise the river will recede from the bank become shallow and the galley will fall back run back down stream grounded

My son take my golden crucifix and I shall put on this simple tin one instead

There's no call for gold it isn't valued in those parts

And she takes the golden crucifix from her neck and hands it to me and in its place puts on the final tin one she has put by

My son let's run let's hurry out of the kibitka or else my golden boat my dear holy hereafter requiem galley will leave

My son can you hear the impatient beating of the oars at our poor pearwood leaking crooked door in the clayey waves and streams...

She has left her false teeth in a glass of spring water and so her hollow bird-like mouth is whispering and I am sobbing but in the downpour there are no tears...

Sleep mother dear... it's a dream from the rain and the clayey river... it's a dream the rain and the raging clayey river dream dream have inspired conjured for you

There is no nocturnal galley boat on the river

Put your golden cross back on and keep your futile death linen under your pillow till the distant day...

Son hurry... open the door... take me to the boat before the river recedes returns from the grieving banks banks banks

I smile and open the door and raw earthy river freshness out of the night out of the near near frenzied river blows and blows and blows

Ai how fresh! how good! the smell of the reservation grass and trees and the cups of hawthorn spicily drunkenly fragrantly blossoming in the rain!..

For some reason I recall the ancient dictum: 'At the appointed time even the tree growing in the river shall dry up...' But my kibitka is all awash with rain and the raging river

Son let me go to the river to the boat...

Right in front of the kibitka glowing shimmering golden in the dark on the furious river is the ancient boat the many-oared galley trireme

And twenty oarsmen ardently urgently endlessly thrash their oars into the river to hold the galley hard at the kibitka

And not let it slip away go away down the river

Son let me go

She strives to pass me but I don't let her leave the kibitka for the river for the boat

Some dark guttural man in a long glistening wet tunic or coat stands in the storm at the lofty stern and shouts in an ancient unhuman birdlike language

It could be Kharon the ferryman of the dead with the golden bough from the groves of Persephone but Kharon only plies the subterranean waters and not the earthly ones and Kharon is old but this one has the vigour of youth

It could be Anubis other-worldly jackal-sovereign of the ancient Egyptians but where is his feverish fang?

But he is master of the boat

My son let me go to the river to the boat

But I don't let her

Then the master Kharon-Anubis hiding his face from me in his tunic suddenly shouts in a tired voice guttural and hoarse from the wind on the river - in Russian:

* Let her go... The boat must leave now... When will there be another such storm for this little river to swell up rise up and admit my boat from so far awayayayayay!

Ai dervish if you did but know from what lands and waters we have coursed and rowed

Wooiyeyowawww!..

But today we're picking up both the living who are destined to come to rest and those long dead who have been carried out carried off from their shallow graves by the uprising of the water...

Son let me go my son... wawww...

Dervish let her go... Can't you see - the storm is abating... the swell is receding... we have to leave... Can you hear - the oars are already catching stones and not the waves!.. Ai the saddest thing in this world is when the oars are hitting stones and the boulders of the river bed... when the time is up and someone doesn't want to die!.. Dervish hand her over to us... When's the next time there'll be such rain? when will the boat be on the river again? and your mother is she to suffer repent and wait?

Mother! I know about the time about the boat!

But!.. Ai lord... take me instead!..

Mother I won't won't won't won't won't give you up I won't do it I won't do it

I can't bear to come back to a deserted kibitka and see your empty abandoned protecting bed still warm rumpled unmade where you!.. will never!.. ever again!.. be!.. dearest!..

Lord! Ruler of all worlds! It cannot be that the earthly love of a transient mother and her fleeting son has no extension astral-eternal gaiety in the heavens in other worlds

Lord! You can't have such a punishment in store!

The river fell back

The river returned to its banks

The gilded boat went away over the waves and over the stones

Mother in your emerald robe of the grave! It's so cool damp and deathly! It's so fresh as we stand on the shore...

And I embrace her blessed sobbing fallen startled shoulders

Look - the storm has abated and the river's gone down and the boat has left Let's go to sleep... ...And behold the storm had gone and the Varzob summer night had come...

...And on one such sultry night I placed a jug of thoughtful swirling river water by my grieving foggy lonely tourquoise wattle kibitka receding into the boundless mountain night night night By morning the stars of night had made the water cooler and cleaner

During the night a snowy wind came up from the river and I slept blissfully and even

covered myself with my well-worn peacock quilt from Bukhara

Ai Lord! One threadbare cover sleeps on another carnal cover

But early in the morning I saw that the water so silent so sweet in the jug had been a

little disturbed had gone down a little

A star had come to shine and cool the night time water

A snake had come to drink from the jug

She didn't want to drink from the river but wanted to drink from my jug

You too are lonely you too love the starry silvery water from the jug

my silent serpent sister wife daughter friend

And I am drinking from the jug after you and I scent your gentle kindred mouth

The following night I placed the jug of water once again by my kibitka Come to me my sister...

A star has come to shine and cool the night time water The snake has come to drink Leili has come to love Leili

To my distant brother Martial

The sultry murmuring of the noonday July poplar at my window Leili Leili

And you are secretly rousedly gently naively naked naked at the window shimmering

hiding half asleep Leili

And my zebb phallus thoughtless twixt your silken satin thighs waves and wanders

and touching sensing your lap surges and swells

And my poplar twixt your thighs at first of roses roses like the flamingo in flight and

then like the white weighty heron like the white stork like the crane the staff 'tween

your thighs seethes and simmers sprinkles and strews your boundlessly sweetest nest

with soothing mother of pearl Leili Leili Lyee Lyee Yee Ee

And more ancient than man the wine of coition mingling purling unfathomably

pacifies and intoxicates

But coition quietens and the flamingo and the heron and the stork and the staff weakly

fold their wings in the lifeless deserted creeks thighs deltas nests and laps Leili Leili

And again the sultry murmuring glassy mayhem mirage of the July noonday poplar

floats on thro' my wet windows

Ai demon! ai how swift sweet how transient are your carnal frolics

And God's poplar branch like a mother's touch through the window fondles my hair

and your unsurpassed unprecedented bouncy curls and cools chills and shames your

sugar satin thighs and the wondrous white marble snow-dreamy unroused rounded

beauty of your knees

* Dervish do you know which is the most ancient powerful and intoxicating wine?

But which you can't drink?

* It is the wine of coition - the sacred primal dough of primal being! The seed of the human race...

It is the most ancient wine - it is older than the human race for it came before them and the Lord fashioned the first people from it and he is doing it still

It is the strongest and the headiest - for it sweeps two people off their feet at once in one go and they beat against each other on the ground in fathomless inseparable intoxication

Oh most ancient sweetest immortal wine! Oh!

Leili whatpiyali is it drunk from?

Leili but it all began in spring... And that ancient wine pulsed and poured...

It was spring when first having dropped off thrown offcast off her uncomely uncomfortable Kulyab satin clothes and ancient muslim village shame and maiden youth pomegranate ripeness the wildly curly Leili-Vyetyer-Sultan-Halva-Haniffa came to Hoja Zulfikar's secret outlying kibitka

It was spring when they were left alone in the kibitka and the dervish had his fill of walnuts and dried apricots and drank three piyali of serpentine Samarkand sparkling wine to forget he was old for his sudden zebb to be an arrow-like poplar to be a rampant fleshy Chinese elm and not a sloppy shakily sunken sleepy willow

But Leili drank tow piyali of wine to forget she was young to forget about her clothes about her maiden shame to forget about her maiden seething swarming fruiting ripeness

It was spring when by themselves in the kibitka drunk and naked their bodies got entangled muddled and misplaced and they drank so much wine that they didn't realise couldn't make out where was his body where was her body where was his salt marsh and where was her river and they cried out bit and chewed tore moaned and wailed laughed bellowed tormented and trumpeted like deer-hanguls in the foaming autumn love chase fraught spattered with mindless holy chase waterfall boundless gurgling seething flying flying seeds

It was spring in the outlying kibitka when coming together for the first time such were their cries and their foaming groans and moans and their frenzy that they suddenly saw at the window of the kibitka somebody's pulsing velvet night-time eyes and a noble visage with diamond horns

* Look Leili - said the dervish not stopping not stalling not falling not withdrawing from the plundered pomegranate fruit -

It's the trumpeter hangul-stag bukharan deer the tsar of his flying herd

It's he who has come from the flowering heady mountain groves to our meanings

It's he who's looking at us amazed and astonished with velvet orbs quiescent till autumn

* Dervish for you for people the chase the moan is in spring but for us for deer the chase is after you in autumn

Allah first created man and after him as slave he raised released and placed on Earth the beast

And from the window of my kibitka the stag-hangul removed his lofty head all studded with diamond stars

Aia!

And after the deer came the eagle

Oh!..

Whenever my beloved Leili-Sultan-Hammurappi-Hatshepsut-Begumma is sauntering along the bank of my beloved river Varzob-darya always following her by the flowing crystal riverbank in the icy blueing translucent waters is a lordly male trout

He is in love with my beloved

Whenever my beloved Leili-Sultan-Kamish-Archa-Gorlitsa-Kunitsa is making her way along my beloved mountain goat-track over my native mountain Kondara always in the lilac lapis millenial mountain celestial blue reigning reigning drawing near following her is a glorious malachite eagle the lord of the Varzob eagles

He is in love with my beloved

When Leili first came to my kibitka forgetting all her names and all her clothes and stood alone with me wildly humbly fathomlessly mindlessly drunkenly naked the lordly male trout was watching from the nocturnal waters when blindly burning enraptured she was coming coming coming to my kibitka

And the lordly trout as in a foaming fatal spawning threw himself upon a rock where a nocturnal fisherman was dozing and hoping

When Leili first came to my kibitka and stood naked naked naked - my frail curved kibitka shook as from an earthquake and I heard the heavy dull crash and thud of a boulder stone off the mountain Kondara on my roof

And Leili and I naked and in terror gathered up hitched up cuddled up grouped up ran out of the kibitka into the night while over the mountain there rose a Chinese red blood-bringing shelter-bringing moon

And on the clay roof where I had planted my azure oozing Afghan poppies and holy heady honeyed hemp from Issyk-kul we saw a pile a handful a little hill of wondrous divine bloodied feathers smashed as if smeared as if still heaving still breathing still stirring wondrous wondrous beautiful and out of them are they bird's? are they human? the eyes of a man? an eagle? wondrous far seeing now now now drying up dying overrun by the wall-eye of death

But in love! but spellbound! but reverently trusting! Why did Allah give the eagles such eyes boundless even in the night

Leili it was your eagle who saw you slipping stealthily to my secret nocturnal kibitka

Leili it was he who fell and dashed his wings against our roof now like a living stone

Leili why are you crying

...Like the tree I fear the autumn leaf fall

I am terrified of the indifferent bullets of the damned civil war (the arrow is not indifferent the knife is not indifferent but the bullet is)

I'm afraid of dying I'm afraid of losing you like my eagle lover my dervish in the season of autumn leaf falls of August star falls in the month of the sickle gustar murdad... But!

..But Leili Leili let's go out on the paths of our forgotten abandoned botanical garden where we alone wander the endless pathways

Leili Leili it's still early autumn and the great thick golden leaf fall has not yet begun but the first golden dewy leaf has already fallen on your curly tarry locks my beloved

The first cool golden dewy breezy leaf of the leaf fall on the forgotten deserted paths has blown Leili onto you

Let me wipe and chill my face always burning whenever I see you my beloved

And suddenly unexpectedly a flurry of golden falling leaves has broken off and fallen strewn itself upon you my beloved

Or has the great golden leaf fall arrived appeared begun and on the forgotten pathways will it bestrew us enchant us engulf us

Dervish so fleet so easy so near is death

Dervish it was a swarm of dying bullets which whirled above our heads and hurt the branches of the plane trees splashing gold splashing foliage

Behold an unseasoned untimely ungolden leaf fall has started scattered happened

Dervish and how many bullets to undress to shoot strip bare the autumn leaf fall plane tree before its time for the plane tree to let flow let fall its burthen to the earth till spring

Dervish but a man needs only one bullet to fall to the earth forever

Allah why is a man so transient so tearful so burning so blessed 'mongst the golden gold splashing kindred leaf fall plane trees plane trees plane trees

Ai...

...Ai Leili Leili my beloved let us go out into our autumn twilight sad home town Dushanbe where fraught in the belly of the age-old primal kindred saffron dusk only thousand year muslim arrows bullets play

Let us go out into the saffron desert dusk dusk where only sudden bullets and fierce fat ginger tomcats roam - in the town there is no one to clear up the golden leaf fall in the town there has fallen a great abundance of damp deciduous mouldering leaves and there is no one to clear them up and they have filled blocked and choked the town

The yard men fear stray bullets

And there is no one to take away the town's rubbish heaps and now they've grown higher than the houses and there fantastic cats have bred and there the cats have fattened and grown relentlessly from the surfeit of thrown out food and the town cats have already changed regressed into wild marsh cats and are dangerous to solitary persons

And other cats have run wild off the rich remains of food and become like snow leopards and are greedy for people and behold they roam the deserted secretive deathly town and crave humans like cannibals and fall upon children

Leili Leili but I do not fear the predatory serpentine marsh snow cats but I do not fear the native deathly twilight but I do not fear the flying bullets ancient muslim arrows knives because a bullet has already tried to kill me

In Asia the arrows have always soared have always held sway and the secret silent knives have flashed and now the bullets reign but I do not fear them

My beloved dervish Hoja Zulfikar I do not fear the dread native golden autumn twilight and I do not fear the muslim bullets and I do not fear the saffron snow leopard-like cats which stalk my native Dushanbe and crave the blood of people and behold an enormous orange peachy overripe saffron quincey snow cat or leopard comes fawning and twining around my legs when I come to you in the smoky cloudy fleeing twilight

And behold the play of the too ripe cat 'tween my too ripe maiden legs when I come to you dervish...

Leili Leili you have flashing eyes of iridescent wolfish living emeralds Leili Leili you are a lynx maiden on firm free feline legs and the marsh cat has always longed for the lynx and behold the cat pushes weaves and moves between your legs and I envy him for he sees and senses from below from the ground the kindred milky heights and sources of your lap and your legs but I cannot see them

Dervish I do not fear the serpentine stalking cat that craves the hot fleet spotted speckled lynx and looks from the ground at the maiden heights of my legs

But I dread the raiment of autumnal invisible cobweb which comes down on the town with the twilight and entangles enshrouds it - a web that's been woven in mosques by godless mullahs who don't know the Koran and the all-forgiving words of the Prophet on kindness - and we are going out into the cobweb and it's quivering imperceptibly from our bodies and our breathing and somewhere killer gunmen have already sensed the unholy rustle of this ancient web and are running towards us to kill us and stop the tremor of the primordial web for only we in love are roaming the town which is hiding

And we are like fish thrashing in a net like late emerald flies in a cobweb and the evening cupola of death stands tolling over the town over the early sleeping houses and kibitkas and over us and there's no way out

But I love you dervish

And behold we are roaming the pathways of the abandoned botanical gardens on the outskirts of Dushanbe

Perhaps the killers and the cobweb of their godless mullahs won't come here

And the golden inaudible leaf-falls come down and settle on the paths and the solitary keeper of the gardens Gul'rnamad-Baltassar has smoked his fill ofanasha has smoked himself black and dozed off dropped off till morning in his shed of straw and clay

Leili Leili the copious tears are flowing in wonderment pure in the golden leafy streaming hazy twilight of the pathways in the far botanical garden garden garden and on the dim forsaken Tajik pathways we seem to encounter the thoughtful curly Lyceum student Alexander Pushkin or in his white foaming chalma

Omar Khayam or the sad king Solomon in the favour of the crimson prophet

And are these the pathways of hell? And are these the pathways of paradise?..

Here they are! behold their swaying shadows and they do not fear the bullets but the sacred student has already had his sudden solid godless bullet but behold they are drifting gently hazily towards us on the shrouded abandoned paths in the gilding twilight

And I recall two of my old sayings: 'it was snowing in paradise and springtime in Hell...' and: 'Hell is heaven fallen...' But!..

Leili Leili who will track us down on the delirious leaf-fall pathways of the botanical gardens?

Dervish dervish but the cobweb over the town is quivering and spiders murderers with automatics are abroad and drawing near

Dervish unlike the lyceum student the blessed poet Alexander you have still not had your final bullet and I have yet to know mine

And behold along the path it's not the immortal spirits approaching but three seething machine gunners with snow white or crimson bands on their heads - you can't tell at night

And these are no longer the pathways of paradise but the pathways of hell

Then one of them whispers like a falling leaf from a plane tree:

* What are you doing wandering about the town? Don't you know it's illegal to wander the streets after nine and it's already ten o'clock Then Leili whispers:

* Here on the leafy paths time flies faster than the golden leaf pouring off the strewing plane tree

Then the dervish says:

* Son my lad if your father and your mother hadn't wandered the nocturnal lanes or pathways - you wouldn't be here... Blessed are those who wander the night time trackways roadways pathways beds!..

Then remembering their fathers and mothers they grew sad and even on the sombre gold-strewn pathways were seen to fade as they went away from the dervish and his beloved and began to dissolve like ghosts like phantoms like spectres languid

among the hazy pathways

Dervish you were kind and caring to your killers on the sacred gold-strewn pathways... yes...

Then the saffron snow leopard tomcat rushed at the gunmen rustling the fallen leaves and one of them turned and deftly stealthily jerked his weapon to aim at the gross outlandish snow leopard marsh cat and Leili rushed forward and threw herself noiselessly trying to save to shield the cat and started to babble and protest blindly absently indistinctly:

* Don't!.. Don't hurt him!.. He's a tame cat a house cat... Cats grow big in civil war... The marsh cat cares for me he thinks I'm a lynx...

Too late and a fiery fearful shuddering shattering bullet-burst tore through shot through the cat and tho' it's hard to kill to slay to do a cat to death he fell at once becalmed in the gentle golden brocade of fallen leaves and fell and showed his wanton feline grin

The bullets bullets shot through the light sinuous body of the cat and away without turning scarlet but killing him clean in their flight

Leili Leili don't fret my beloved

Let's sit on the rickety bench damp dewy half decayed imbued with the autumn rains ere we borrow a spade from Gul'rnamad-Baltassar and bury consign to earth the golden fallen leaf-fall tomcat

But she cries because she's sorry for the cat

Dervish let us sit for a while be strange for a while revive on the rickety bench on the boat of the leaf-fall and then we shall bury the cat

And she cries and feels sorry for the cat and doesn't feel doesn't know about herself

Dervish let's sit awhile on the bench lets float awhile on our boat dervish

'midst the boundless golden botanical gardens 'midst the boundless blessed weeping leaf fall and then we shall bury the golden tomcat

Dervish forgive me for weeping for feeling for the cat that felt for the lynx

And we sit on the bench on the frail vessel ark 'midst the golden abundant leaf fall and she leans upon me not like a tree in the wind but like a tree from the axe AiaLYouLAllahL

Dervish I'm sorry I don't like to tell you but there's a bullet here... I got it... by accident... he didn't mean to... it's not his fault... he's not a killer... The bullet was meant for the cat but it went into me... And the bullet shot thro' the cat but it just didn't go thro' me... It's there... It's here in my gentle heights where my legs begin where the cat looked up from the ground where your sudden knowing gentle patient hand has never been... There flows a silent swirling sanguine stream 'twixt the maiden shores of my legs...

Dervish I feel sleepy dreamy and the flow down my legs is warm warm warm...

Dervish dervish you took care of me but the bullet was careless

And she smiles:

* Dervish let's sit on the golden bench boat in the sea of fallen golden leaves and then we shall bury the golden tomcat and then in the golden leaf fall we shall sweep up and bury me

Only don't forget me in any thick golden looming leaf fall...

Allahu AkbarL

Great is AllahL

And in this whole goldenfall world there is no one left for me to trust...

It was snowing in paradise and springtime in hell Hell is paradise fallen...

The broken dervish said:

* 1 met my beloved wife Leili Jillikull' Mastrubba Kok Sultan Ann in hell and on her head was a coral band and in her tarry hair a hyacinth flower and she rushed towards me sobbing submitting stumbling: 'My husband here we shall be a pair irrepressible inseparable forever! No one shall part us - here there is no death no parting...'

And she spoke as if we were in heaven and not in hell

But she had three zebbs - one forbidden between her buttocks, another proper holy - in her lap in her holy nest, and the third forbidden in her mouth

And in hell she was carrying three zebbs like three burning eternally stinging arrows of living fire in her body

And they were the alien sinful zebbs of other husbands and I had thought that on earth Mastrubba was faithful to me and my zebb alone.

But she was sobbing in hell and I forgave her and said:

* My grieving sinful wife let us go together...

But now a poison bearing noisome nuclear mist perhaps ofChernobyl perhaps other worldly came on from the valleys and the foggy all consuming marshes and obscured her and her voice and the zebbs secret on earth but manifest in hell

Then I cried out into the mist:

My wife! I'm a hundred times more sinful than you my beloved Leili Dzillikull' Mastrubba Kok Sultan Ann mine mine mine! And is it for me not to forgive you... I forgive you...

And then in the end I heard in final farewelll her voice carrying softly like that almond cherry peach petal little voice when she was my innocent untouched bride:

* My beloved husband eternal groom Hoja Zulfikar! I am your eternal bride most pure... You were not aware in the mist - all three zebbs are yours... I never betrayed you my eternal beloved husband... I was always faithful to you on earth... and I've come to you for a moment from the well-spring gardens of paradise... to see

you for a moment my beloved... and I took the three zebbs like hell's sinner so the angels would send me to hell so I could see you my husband my dear raging Hoja Zulfikar...

Without you even heaven is hell

I was the only one to flee from heaven to hell... because of you... And I don't want to go back!

And she sobbed and groaned until the mist mist mist became impenetrable pitch dark

But on her mutely extended wondrous shining palm smouldering and shimmering was that bullet which had killed my innocent on earth And she went away still limping from that terrible hidden wound

And she went away forever into the mist and she became the mist Lord Lord why why have I outlived you Are we condemned to meet no more? I want to die so I can see you

* Dervish you've got thin and sickly in your old age yet there's no deadly ailment in your agile body and all your two hundred and forty eight bones are sound and make no sound

He gave a melancholy smile:

* 1 want it to be easy for my frail few remaining dearly beloved kindred friends ever intoxicated with wine or anasha to carry me to the forgotten cemetery-wazw in my close shroud-kafan

And such are the saints I have left at my parting

Ai my earthly friends! dear darling stooping and shaky from wine? from anashcP. from my death? does it upset you? make you cry? unhappy? But it's alright in my kafan\ At last I've found the easy inaudible eternal dress for my mortal remains

Good! And!

...Leili I'm coming to you

The war has stopped but I want to die

But before my death I shall tell you about the present passing godless choking day

which is like night without lights

I shall tell whisper to you about the empire which I hated but thought would outlive

me and my children

But behold I have outlived it but remain within it

And behold it is dying and in it I am like my astonished and helpless people like a baby

in a cr&d\e-gakhvora washed away by the vernal river while the baby blindly sleeps and

is not aware that in the fatal flexing waves it is drawing near near near...

.. .But above all, make sure you prophesy.. St. Paul

In the Kremlin there is discord - on the outskirts there is war. The cauldron is boiling over...

The dervish said of the present babylonian troubles-uprisings among the nationalities imperial discord-events:

* An ancient wise man said: 'He who hardens his heart shall know misfortune'...

How many are hardened now! They are people of salt and boiling water. And pepper.

A man asks you for comfort and you pour drop salt into his fresh scarlet wound and it writhes stretches and tears.

A man asks you for a glass of spring water and you eagerly hand him a glass of boiling water

And you throw pepper into nostrils hungering for the scent of the beautiful snowy Russian plains.

Where are the priests the pastors the mullahs the rabbis - the true fathers-teachers of the peoples? Why are they silent? Or when the peoples lose their minds do the wise lose their words? Or do the elders love the gushing young blood of strangers? But there is no alien or strange blood. All blood is your own.

And behold evil is abroad wildly and unjustly - foaming hyena-leaders rage and shout and old ladies in innocent patched up house coats are being killed in Baku and in Yerevan and in Dushanbe and in the other towns and villages of the babylonian godless empire.

Or have too many wild men been bom who finding no war seek war and slaughter?

But the elders aksakaly and wisemen are silent and the blind blundering power-hungry leaders are sowing the wind.

Then people will be thrown from the rooftops (and it's already happening) and then a storm will carry away the very roofs.

Then shall come fire and water. Only the shepherds shall remain with their sheep in the high mountains. But in the valleys over the villages and towns of sin there shall be water beyond measure. That is why ever since my childhood I have loved shepherds. That is why all prophets have been shepherds.

The land is orphaned and empty. Having grown brutish without work on the land people are ready to kill one another with their own empty pining hardened hands orphaned and atrophied without the tools of tilling and harvesting.

Toil on one's own sweating soil prayer in the tranquil temple setting out setting off for the native land out of the sick swollen megalopolis - this is what can save our country from human foul blooded carnal chaos and God's flood.

But will it come to pass?

The surging restless sightless godless peoples are drunk on blood and have a death wish.

But!

People will run away run away from the hungry sinful towns to the orphaned providing land and will sweep the godless from their path...

And the dervish also said: 'In Rus' either a tsar or a tyrant rules. And there is no other. And behold the tsar-loving thousand year people killed the tsar and then came the tyrant and he wants to kill exterminate his people. The tyrant is the murderer of peoples with his great raging executioners. And the tyrant kills the people and in their stead builds a dead empire like a tombstone mausoleum.'

And the dervish also said: 'The more the empire is evil hungry and stupid - the sharper are the knives bullets and bombs in the hands of its executioners! But of secret and manifest executioners there is now a boundless legion. And now everyone is either an executioner or is desperate to become one.'

And on the streets of the megalopolis the dervish said: 'The more the empire is evil and hungry - the more furious accessible transparent beggarly agitated wayward is the dress of its wives and daughters! And I am sorry for these innocents... Sorry for them...'

And the dervish also said: 'I want the present leaders to spend a few nights away from the gilded resonance of the Kremlin in the damp huts of the drunken Pskov ploughmen providers of my Rus' and in the impoverished adobe kibitkas of the Gissar shepherds in my Asia. And there I want them to pick up some of the forgotten earthly earthy wisdom and holy lice. Might these huts and kibitkas make the bitter tears of

mercy issue from their cold eyes? Yei! yei!' The dervish said:

* Faith is higher than peoples and tribes and tongues. The prophet Jesus said:

'There are no Greeks and no Israelites'... The apostle Paul said: 'I was a Jew of Jews but with Christ that was all as dust'...

When they kill the faith - then the peoples nations and tribes come forth naked like the sharp slippery stones which cut your feet on the bottom of the shallow autumn mountain river - and there is nothing to pacify them in the days ofbabylonian discord and people are terrified of the variety of evil and kill one another in search of a monotony of evil consensus.

Only faith - the sacred water - slakes and covers the baneful bottom stones and nourishes the people.

And the believer swam into the blessed river of faith and forgot who and of what line tribe language and people he was just as he forgot the harmful bottom stones...

The dervish spoke about false prophets false artists false poets false teachers of the crowds but not about the prophets of the peoples.

The dervish said:

* There are false prophets of the crowds and prophets of the peoples. False teachers are a quilt covering a skeleton which seems to be the hot sinuous body of a maiden. It is a trick of the facets curves of an empty bukharan peacock quilt under which no one is sleeping. A trick of the traceless nameless crowds...

Dervish for whom do you write do you create those fragrant parables of yours?

For your blind belly-loving blethering contemporaries don't know you or your parables, do they?

He said:

* I write for those long dead and for those who are yet to be born in the far far future. And they are one and the same people but no one will recognise them. But he grew sad and whispered:

* Pearls come to life and shine when they are worn on a tremulous sweet

scented neck. Alas my pearls with no neck to adorn! Allah help these lonely word-pearls of mine...

Leili I'm coming to you, even though the holy day of war's end has come...

The civil fraternal family neighbour war in my native land has ended fallen quiescent

has it

But can a civil war end

A hundred thousand killed dead

Tens of thousands missing

A hundred and fifty thousand homes destroyed

And of this little mountain country of mine only seven percent is land and all the rest

is mountains mountains mountains

So little is the blessed beneficent fecund feeding land for the cotton for the orchards

for the vineyards for the gardens for the yards for the villages

And so much is the land needed now for new and tearful graves

I shall go off and die in the mountains 'midst the stones the crags and the distant

fleeting rockfalls

I shall give up my grave in the cemetery for the killed the slain unburied unmourned

The war is over is it

No shots to be heard in my native land are there

Or will my ears no longer give them ear

And behold the first day has come with no need to look behind to be alarmed at

sudden stray bullets bullets bullets

And behold the first night has come when you can fall into fathomless sleep like the

baby in its mother's womb

The night is all peaceful all undisturbed in my native land

Only the sound of the Lokai mare amazed unscathed on the Gissar hill as she milkily

grazes the heady vernal yielding youthful curly grass

And in the charmed night silence dead brothers sisters fathers sons husbands

unmourned unburied ungathered in the nocturnal fighting come wandering in search

of their graves

And behold the unburied are seeking their graves and the buried remember their

earthly almond kibitkas

And behold the nameless missing dead are searching the night searching for their

razed kibitkas mazankas homes burnt to the ground

And behold a hundred thousand slain killed dead are searching the night for a hundred

and fifty thousand shattered homes and cannot find them

Leili Leili and I am coming to you alive

But I shall go down to my native Varzob-darya for a moment to sigh to weep in

Farewell

* Dervish why do you go to the river so often and sit there lost in your distant thoughts on the curly welcoming gently wafting breezy riverside grass?..

* There in the near noise of the foaming fiery-diamond ever newbom waves my sobbing goes unheard

And the tears on my dried up face are as splashes of flowing diamond from the waves breaking flying falling on the bank of sweet grassy emeralds

River friend river defender river my healer

I am silently weeping and crying on your watery banks

From joy from joy from joy...

My Lord!.. creator and bestower of my joyful tears...

My river!.. defender bathing consoling taking them away...

If only for a moment I wanted to be there in my clay adobe home by the river to drift off to forget myself to be myself to recall my father mother wives children beloved smiling friends and those heady long past wond'rous long gone days and years of mine mine mine

Yet many could wait no more no more no more for this clay house and have left the earth forever and many distantly tracelessly fearlessly sleeplessly have parted wandered off got lost like fish in the ocean - have they gone far?.. have they gone for long?.. have they gone for ever?..

And is there no such place on the land by the river Varzob-darya? Only in other eternal settlements by other rivers? Is that right oh Lord?

That dream house is really quite small...

Lord! I'm going... I'm weak... Is there to be no earthly reward for me even as a parting gesture?..

And!..

...And in a day of spiritual troubles or a night of frequent naked wakefulness Hoja Zulfikar implored

* Oh Allah where is the reward for my consuming secret labour for my eternal parables? Or did I not spend my living days and fragrant nights on them? And behold I am leaving and where is my reward

Where is the wealth? the fame? where are the young wives of my curly nights? where is even a sturdy donkey with four legs for the winding mountain paths and roads? Instead of my two rickety wretched shaky ones?

Is my reward my punishment only to be sleepless in my poor adobe kibitka?

Then in the empty night someone's voice whispered said:

* Dervish arise early in the morning and take the Varzob road in the direction of your home town Dushanbe

And your reward awaits you in the very first village kibitka

In the morning the dervish arose and washed himself in the icy pure clear native newborn stream

And having said his pT&yers-namaz he set off along the road looking forward to his reward

Fame? money? a young wife? a sturdy donkey instead of the two worn out legs beneath my bony nomad back?

Then the dervish saw a solitary kibitka. Above it morning lilac karakul smoke had gathered hovering languishing - there someone awaited the dervish

And the dervish trusting hurried quickened his step

And suddenly as the dervish was approaching the kibitka with its wondrous native thoughtful peaty smoke - a rockfall broke away moved down the mountain and one stone struck the dervish and he fell on his native cradling earth and lost consciousness from the pain and was deprived of thought

But when he came to - it was already evening and there was no smoke above the kibitka and the kibitka was deserted

Then the dervish knelt on the grassy riverbank and prayed to Allah:

* Oh Allah the high stone off the mountain was a punishment for my lowly sins. And that's less than I deserve. All the stones of this mountain should have fallen on me for my many sins instead of just one. Lord how glad I am that You spared my life... for me to sin again?..

Many years or days passed but the dervish did not ask for any reward for his dismal and wretched little labours

But one day in the night someone's voice whisper like his mother's niggled at him awakened him:

* My son, go to that kibitka - there the reward for your labours awaits you

And in the morning the dervish obediently arose and washed himself in the snowy babbling stream prayed and set off for the kibitka

And on his way to the kibitka he no longer thought about money or fame or a young wife or even about a sturdy donkey

But he thought about how the rockfall had not killed him for his sins

And then he saw the azure morning lonely mountain kibitka and the azure smoke above it drew him on

The dervish went up to the kibitka

And then from within came a dark browed young man in a huge black shaggy shepherd's chapan and the white foaming chalma of the Bukharan sheikhs

And he gave the dervish a wondrous unspeaking smile of alpine snowy teeth and gently handed him a hot fire-breathing sesame lyepyoshka as if straight from a red glowing oven-tanur and npiyala of icy sweet spring stream water

And he said:

* Blessed dervish Hoja Zulfikar! here is your blessed reward...

And the dervish fell to his knees in the dewy morning sweet sacred dust and wept at his blessing:

* Oh Allah! Your reward is beyond counting And then he said:

* Angel Azrail messenger! I recognise you... Has my time come? why don't we finish by sharing this golden lyepyoshka and silver water half each!..

But the Angel only smiled and retired to the kibitka. And the smoke over the kibitka faded and disappeared...

And then with joy the dervish realised that he was still to live in this world and to breathe the pearly roadside dust and drink the silver water and chew the golden lyepyoshka...

Allah!

...In the year 605 the blessed Koreishis rebuilt the temple of the Kaaba.

When the construction work was completed it was necessary to hoist the black stone to its high place. At this point an altercation ensued among the Koreishis over which of the four clans of the holy tribe should raise the stone of the Kaaba.

The men of two of the clans, plunging their hands into a vessel filled with blood, swore to die sooner than give way. With the prospect of unavoidable civil war a meeting was called in the temple.

But then into the temple came the Prophet. He ordered that a cloak be spread on the ground. Then he selected the four most respected members of the four main tribal clans, and ordered them each to take hold of the edge of the cloak, on which the Sacred Stone had been placed. As soon as the cloak was raised, the Prophet took the Sacred Object into his own hands.

The Sacred Object had been raised from the ground.

Civil slaughter did not break out.

The hands of the warlike Koreishis were meekly withdrawn from the vessel filled with blood.

Dervish Hoja Zulfikar said:

* I was bom in Tajikistan in the blessed land of three thousand earthquakes a year... And where else does Allah remind people so frequently of the frailty of this fleeting world?

And behold as well as earthquakes mudslides and floods the sorrow of civil war came to my humble peaceful land... And many of my Tajik brothers lowered their unseeing hands thirsting for murder into the vessel filled with blood

Allah but is a man not a vessel filled with blood? And behold we crave to smash it...

Oh my native blood brothers ofKulyab Badakhshan Khojent Gissar and Garm!

In the hazy springtime field let us spread the ancient Bukharan carpet and place upon it our little homeland Tajikistan with its mountains rivers irrigation channels canyons villages towns valleys cotton fields gardens cemeteries bazaars and gokhvora-CTad\es...

And with care and with a smile let us all together take the edge of the carpet and quietly blissfully raise our sunny morning Tajik land shrine mother like the Kaaba Kaaba Kaaba...

Great and boundless is Allah and our morning native land is only His blessed crystal diamond teardrop teardrop teardrop...

...Leili I am coming to you And I am going to the Varzob-darya to say goodbye

...That cimson scarlet apple of my distant mother is floating wandering in the quiescent sentient river

That gold-speckled golden-sandy trout is rising in the silver stream

Lord! let me finally sit a while dreamily speculate on a sturdy sunny riverside boulder

Here blows the healing balsam river breeze than which naught on earth is sweeter

Lord! And have you already prepared this breeze for me there...

Not for me?

Then what for me?

But I shall go down to my native river Varzob-darya

And there the abundant emerald-fresh riverside grass leans in waves in the wind

Twilight has already come down upon the grass fronds waving among the riverside boulders and the grass rises and ripples and reminds me of my distant merry stooping friends coming to my nocturnal sleeping kibitka quietly stealthily not to wake me not to cause alarm

My God! is it a dream grassy vernal bad coming upon me?

But there is the hellish smell of overheated fuming cotton seed oil about the waving bending riverside grass!

And on the grass stands an enormous red-hot cauldron and beneath the cauldron a fire has been left to burn

Now?..

Lord! the boiling crimson cauldron for my sins? Now? Here? On earth by my native river?

And in the cauldron the cotton-seed oil is churning swirling boiling burning smoking smeeching but there is no one by the fuming fire

Is it a dream? About the crimson cauldron only the earnest emerald blades of grass move and twirl..

But now I see lying spread and sprawling in the grass them! them! them! the nocturnal gunmen from the botanical gardens! they are the ones! who killed the golden apricot autumn-bom tomcat and my beloved Leili

And now they've come to kill me... Or have they themselves been killed? and the fire is burning for nothing? and the oil is burning in vain?..

Leili Leili I'm coming to you... It won't be long now... Soon!..

Then they wake up amidst the waving grasses and rise to their drunken predatory wolfish bloodthirsty unsteady feet

They are not dead...

Aikhh!..

...Dervish dervish we grew tired from blood! and wine! and anasha\ and faded fell to sleep dead and alive 'midst the waterabundant grass stems like the apostles among the trees ofGetsemane

Aikh!.. Dervish!..

We wanted to cook to create plov but fell asleep and the oil lonely and orphaned has been fuming while we went off into the unwakeable grass like the two thousand year apostles under the trees ofGetsemane!

We prepared onions meat rice and carrots for the/?/ov but fell asleep in the grass...

Dervish dervish! they were killing us starving us frying us in boiling cauldrons burying us half alive in secret communal graves and with their blood-abundant knives they opened up the bellies of our fraught pregnant wives sisters and mothers and our kindred slithering little ones appeared! in a flash! before their God given time

Aikh! dervish can you imagine? the feelings? the smile? the expression? of the unformed babe in the womb got out from the sundered protecting walls of its innocent

mother before its time? when it looks on the bright world with milky almond unformed eyes? aikh! dervish and so we fell into a dead sleep in the grass and the oil in the cauldron forsaken and forgotten is boiling into suffocating sickening pitch swirling in the emerald grass

Dervish dervish! and you say we should forgive our living breathing enemies and forget our wives with their sundered bellies and the boundless secret seething communal graves...

Dervish! teacher! wise man! The Prophet Jesus Christ was fatally finally forever crucified but we'll just chuck you into the good old crazy honeyed oil! Aikhhha!

Is this a dream in the splashing riverside poppy grass?

But they grab me tightly by the arms and suffocatingly even though I'm not running away from them in the dim grass fronds not escaping...

...I'm going into the cauldron by myself... let go my arms! my innocent unseeing nocturnal gunmen brothers

Perhaps my blind people will bring me to mind and be jolted to their senses and let go drop throw their guns of darkness after me into the seething oil?..

Oh Lord! And in return I shall give my life by my native river - it's not much!..

Then obediently they let go my arms and walk away into the grass and there they calm themselves subdue themselves and sleep by the grassy roots foreseeing the grave which awaits them

Where are they from - Badakhshan? Kulyab? Garm? Khojent? Gissar? you can't tell at night - but in the end I am moved to blessed fervent tearful love for them! for they are all my blood brothers...

I take off my chapan and white worn out Sassanid shirt

What's the point of them stewing in the oil

Dervish dervish you are bare thin dried up awfully scraggy like fish bones chewed clean

Then the dervish smiled:

* Death is a toothless old woman and won't be able to cope with my bones so she'll walk away from me as from the tough stony marble-fleshy Varzob walnut. And then the Lord will send me a young maiden of death with pearly white teeth! Let the young craving maiden bite chew dismember me! as in my sinful youth!.. Verily my Lord!..

Leili my beloved do you forgive me?

Leili I'm coming to you

I'm coming naked and smiling to the cauldron

The cauldron is crimson crimson in the smoky emerald grass but through the cauldron I shall ascend to the heavens Leili on my way far far far

Lord when you burn me blind me have mercy on my unseeing people and bring peace to them

Bliss!..

END

(c) Mel Dalswell, English Translation, 2000

(c) Timur Zulfikarov, 2000

(c) Ëàçîðåâûé ñòðàííèê íà çîëîòîé äîðîãå, 2000