The mingbeg* official’s residence had lavish gates, a garden bursting with grape vines, and an airy, light-filled house. Ornate and well-oiled lampstands hung on wide pillars. To the left of the gates were a horse field and a storehouse; to the right, another gate leading toward the orchards. Straight ahead was the entrance to the house. Through its two-winged doorway, pine-tree pillars and beams held up a ceiling filled with checkered lattice skylights. A pair of fenced-off mesh windows faced the orchards. To the left was the kitchen door. To the right was a large supa platform. The supa was fitted with a plain black felt matting called kegiz, on top of which were bedrolls, throw cushions, and further up, a small set of stairs leading to the hall. The hall had engraved walls and ceilings, more lattice skylights, a wall cupboard, display recesses, beautiful carpets from Khotan with Iranian and pomegranate motifs, and silk carpets that no one else in this area owned. Nuri scrutinized all of this as he entered and waited in the hall.
_____
When the secretary had read Nuri’s letter out loud, the mingbeg had been shocked.
“Who wrote this letter?” he’d demanded.
“It was written by Nuri, the son of the poor farmer Ziyawudun,” the secretary had said, referring to Ziyak by his full name.
“Find the boy and bring him to me!” ordered the mingbeg, scratching his chin. “Huh, remarkable, isn’t it? The rascal blames the thieves’ lack of morals on the bad leadership of this district!”
He’d become immersed in thought. It was true, the thieves had no morals. Once, Gheni the Thief had shamelessly entered the mingbeg’s own well-guarded residence, drugged his four dogs with poisoned meat, and stolen the Russian cart he had just bought from the city. The thief had dragged it across fields, across Qash River, and had taken it to the autumnal crops of Samiyuz. When the mingbeg managed to track him down, Gheni the Brave, as he was also known, had only just wiped the sweat from his brow.
“Look at the way this vulture tracked me down!” he’d said as he saw the mingbeg. “Look at the swords on his two lackeys! If you’re man enough, then drag the cart back the same way I did!”
The mingbeg was quite unhappy with the nickname “Vulture,” but in front of Gheni that was the least of his concerns. What could he do to the fair-skinned, stalwart man, sitting cross-legged like a demon, his sullen face covered with smallpox scars? He timidly regarded Gheni the Thief’s naked torso, his pecs jumping about like fish in water, his massive rake-like hands rubbing his clean-shaven head, his arms as firm as the hips of an ox.
“Abdugheni,” he said, using Gheni’s full name. “Brother, I came out of curiosity. You dragged this over twenty-two small streams, six large streams, three irrigation channels, and one river. A horse or a bullock can’t even do what you did; you have the strength of ten bullocks, brother!”
“So is that why you brought these two lackeys?” he’d retorted. Then, looking at one of his own men, he’d commanded, “Hey, Jarqin, take our guests’ horses!”
“I’ve brought Nuri,” called out a man in a toadying tone. He was short and plump and had blue eyes and a blond moustache. “I had this effendi ride in on a mare.”
“Come!”
The mingbeg looked at the fifteen-year-old boy that had appeared on his doorstep, barely giving a smile. “Are you Ziyak’s son?”
“Yes, I am Ziyawudun’s son,” answered the boy, standing tall in his blue shirt and blue trousers. He wore a cap and sandals and gave off a sophisticated air.
“Where do you study?”
“In the city.”
“I know that, where in the city?”
“I completed the Roshan School in Dongmehelle, and now I study in the Gymnasiumin front of Aksinir,” he responded, referring to the Soviet flour mill and fire station complex.
“Ah, in front of Damulla the fur trader’s place, I see, on the right side of the road that leads to Noghaygut, that school with a tin roof?”
Nuri gave the mingbeg an astonished look and studied him carefully. He had a thick, black beard, substantial nose, and hair that was visible from an exposed chest. His large, deep, wide-set eyes were slightly reddened, and peered out from under thick eyebrows. This person’s pompous way of talking, his disconnected sentences, and the incorrect usage of names, utterly exposed the uneducated, ignorant man that he was. How did this man, out of this large district of 1,200 officials, control over twenty thousand households of farmers?
Nuri constantly read books and journals. He kept up to date with the ongoings in the Soviet Union, and of Military Governor Sheng Shicai and the current workings of his state bureau. He and his friends had sat in on the lectures of professors who had studied in the Soviet Union, of Hekimbagh Ghoja’s son Pasha Ghoja, of the intellectual Tiyipzat Khelpitim’s talks on history, society, politics, and geography. The linguist Heyderoff had also taught them the roles, rules, and meanings of language, how to speak and write with propriety and with grace. According to him, speaking improperly equated to a lack of culture, and a lack of culture equated to savagery.
“Hmph, why’re you smirking?” the mingbeg asked suspiciously. “Was I wrong, city boy?”
“No, you were right, sir. That is where the school is located.”
“Do our people teach you, or the Russians?”
“There are Uyghur, Tatar, Uzbek, Kazakh, Russian, even Chinese scholars there.”
“What? You speak that many languages?”
“They can speak our language.”
“Is that right! So, you wrote that the increase in thievery is due to the bad management of this district. Who taught you that?”
“I learned it from books.”
“Who wrote those books?”
“They were novels from the Soviet Union.”
“Do you know Russian?”
“No, they were Tatar and Uzbek books.”
“What? Why do you speak with such complicated words, boy? By Tatar do you mean Noghay? By Uzwek do you mean from Andijan?”
“Yes.”
“Is their writing like ours?”
“No, they use the Latin script.”
“What? Is Latin the same as Russian?”
“They are similar. It is the most commonly used alphabet in Europe.”
“What? You’re speaking with even more complicated words. What did you say—by Eurpa do you mean Mascow?”
“Moscow is also in Europe . . . which is one of the six continents . . .”
“Bah . . . it’s become more complicated. Enough, speak in our language! So, what you said earlier was written by that continent, wasn’t it?!”
Nuri barely held back a laugh. He imagined the sour-faced man sitting in front of him as one of the bandits from the Thousand and One Nights. How could this man ever resolve the suit put forth by the villagers, or express their concerns? Suddenly he felt sorry for the farmers of his village.
The mingbeg gave a mighty yawn and let out a belch. These two actions were enough for Nuri to feel deep disgust for this man. His teachers had always scorned this sort of behavior. One time, Nuri had accidentally yawned next to a female classmate. The fur trader Bey’s daughter had been startled, and with narrowed eyes had said, “Cover your mouth when you yawn.” Nuri had wanted to bury himself in embarrassment. Now he could properly observe how detestable these two actions were. A sudden thought popped into his head. How many more disgusting habits could this person have? At that moment, the mingbeg began to scratch his armpit with his right hand. Abruptly he furrowed his brows and spoke:
“Why’re you just standing there, huh? You’ve got to admit, there really are a lot of robbers here, not even counting the Kazakhs. Just from our people alone there are over ten famous thieves. Sapar is the leopard of the jungle near the river. Gheni is the lion of the riverbank. Amat, Hoshor, Imramza the Wild Boar, Sidir the Hound, Ibrahim the Bitch . . . bah, everyone’s a thief, most of them are Taranchi, and their eyes are on the rich folk. The cows of the poor lie around in public and, sun or snow, the thieves don’t come. The rich folk hammer their gates shut with nails, set guard dogs, and hire watchmen, and their things are still stolen. These thieves even mess with the government banks. There’re a lot of thieves! Is this because of my incompetence? That’s what you wrote, you son of a whore. Tell the truth, it was probably Mukhtar the Boar or Mira the Fire Poker who made you write this, wasn’t it?”
“No, they did not make me, I wrote it myself!”
“Then why’d you slander the government?”
“I was not slandering the government. I simply implied that the yuzbeg and mingbeg should do better at their jobs, Mingbeg.”
“I will send you to the yamen prison, got it? I’ll send you off right now and you can finish your studies in the yamen, you son of a bitch!”
“I have not committed a crime, and I am still only fifteen years old. By law I cannot be tried as an adult.”
“What? Law? Isn’t my word law? You whore’s—” he was cut off before he could finish his sentence. A woman had burst into the room. She had fair features and wore a blouse that was pleated at the waist.
“Don’t act irrationally, Mingbeg!”
She was the mingbeg’s second wife, who kept residence in their city house and used his money to provide her two daughters with an education. “What the boy said is reasonable. Sabiha and I heard everything. He’s right. If possible, you should send Gheni the Thief to prison, not this boy. Catch that Thief Sapar who stole away your daughter-in-law right in front of everyone!”
“Enough, Asiyah!” he conceded to his second wife, whom he had fought four other Beys for, and barely won over with five hundred sheep. “I was just playing with the bastard. Don’t go off in a huff and leave me, woman!” he beseeched.
“Sabiha knows this boy. He’s not just the top of his school, but the top of the entire city. He’s the gem of your district. You have thirteen sons from four wives, but none of them are literate. Your precious son Qamirdin studied for four years at the madrasa and couldn’t graduate from the preparatory book for reading Quran. Look here, a boy should be like Nuri. You should make him a role model for your children. He’s unstoppable in arithmetic, he can write poetry, draw, play dutar, and sing. An outstanding boy. Like Pushkin, or Abdulla Toqay, or Nava’i . . .”
“Ha! He’s outstanding, isn’t he!” said the mingbeg, laughing sarcastically while straightening himself. “Come up to the front, my son, be my guest. Your Noghay sister has talked you up to Prophethood status! Hey, slaughter a lamb and pour some koumiss, a very important guest has come!”
_____
The mingbeg’s orchard was emphatically blissful. It was thick with elm trees, and it seemed like all the crows in the world had gathered on the large poplars scattered throughout. The beautiful songs of orioles and cuckoos hung in the air, and wild rabbits could be seen hopping about. Being in this orchard felt like stepping into the magical forests of fairy tales. A stream ran through its center. The calabashes growing on its banks extended from one side to the other, creating both a bridge and a natural swing. White mulberries grew from under the hollowed trunks of poplar trees; they had probably been fruiting there for hundreds of years. The meadows among the thick brushes of apple trees were even more heavenly; to sleep there was to be blanketed, to roll on the ground was to roll on down feathers, to lie there and look at the sky was to be in an enchanted world . . .
“Even the city doesn’t have this sort of orchard,” said Sabiha. She was a beautiful, slender girl who had recently turned fifteen; had two long, thick braids glittering down her back; and was only just showing signs of womanhood. “I love this orchard. It looks just like a charbagh.”
“True,” said Nuri, looking longingly at the girl’s cute, red lips. He half-jokingly went on, “This orchard is a charbagh. This is what they must have meant when they said, ‘Senem, my dear, I had not been aware that you were of the gardens of Eden!’ ” he said, quoting a line from the recent theater production of the classical Uyghur romance Gherip and Senem.
“Oh my!” Sabiha looked down, turning red as a pomegranate seed. “I’ll leave if you talk like that!”
Embarrassed, Nuri looked away to the nearby stream. The bending willow tree branches, filled with blossom dew, were forever kissing the frolicking, pale gold water. The flurry of birds fluttering up from dense thickets competed in song in front of the branches of an old elm tree. The cuckoo’s legendary lover, Zeynep, tired from calling out to her love, sighed an exhausted “cuckkook ka . . . ka . . . cuckkook.” A stallion whinnied with nervousness from a location unknown. The shrikes, sparrowhawks, and falcons began to clamor from the highest branches of the poplars, and pigeons soared into the depths of the blue heavens in formations of flowers. It was as if all the splendors of July had made themselves apparent in that second. Venerable Nature, who had devoted itself to giving peace and comfort to humanity, for reasons unknown, applauded its children with an all-encompassing love. The blood in Nuri’s veins was no longer blood, but fire. His heart in that moment had turned to ember and his spirit shook as if struck by a bolt of lightning. He faltered in the unprecedented whirlpool of excited emotions; his tongue was no longer his own, his eloquence, his courage, his bravery turned to ash. He looked at the ground and stuttered like a child who had just begun to speak:
“Don’t . . . Sabiha . . .”
His voice had become effused with the hopelessness of youth, the slow destruction of his destitute desires, a silent lament. Rich girls and poor boys could not share happiness, only tragedy. The hopes of the poor were foreign to the spirits of the rich, and sweet fantasies were a fruitless tree. I’m used to being content with my imagination. Sabiha and I can never be together in Mingbeg Abdumar’s orchard, but perhaps only in the orchards in my dreams, Nuri thought. He wetted and extended a prematurely fallen flower.
“I should leave,” he said at last.
“It’s still early,” said the girl, twirling the ends of her braids. “Come, let’s eat some mulberries, and I still want to ask you some questions.”
He timidly followed the girl to the foot of the ancient mulberries. The branches were thick with the sweet fruit, and the surrounding floor was covered with it. They picked the cleanest, juiciest ones from the ground and ate.
“Why don’t we climb up to the top and pick them from the tree? Look, the starlings are eating them straight from the branches for all they’re worth!” the girl laughed.
Her laugh was as lovely as a tambur, beautiful and melodious, like the ring of fine porcelain, yet mysterious, like a riddle.
Nuri distanced himself from her, as if accidentally touching her would burn him, and climbed up the tree. The girl followed suit, going barefoot to climb up next to him. Nuri sat himself between three branches and gathered the juiciest-looking mulberries. But he couldn’t simply eat such titillating, pearl-like berries. Ever since he was little, he would give the best fruit to his mother or younger brother. Out of habit, he glanced below and caught her eyes. He looked at those blazing eyes and smiling lips with infinite pleasure, fear, and yearning. Blushing, he extended the mulberries to her. She opened her mouth, since her hands were filled with branches. Nuri carefully placed the mulberries, one by one, in her mouth, and his entire being shook with joy, like a single twig being tossed by the wind . . .
That evening, Nuri headed back toward his village. Never in his life had he been this agitated. He took in the white peaks of the mountain ahead of him, the pine forests on its lower slopes, and the infinite open country and wilderness on the opposite banks of the Ili River with a feeling of hunger and sentimentality.
“What does one desire most? How does one achieve it? Is it to become a person like Lomonosov, Darwin, or Pushkin? Lomonosov entered school at fourteen and toiled for years to become a scholar, in seven subjects, no less . . . Newton never married . . . Neither did Nobel. A person who gives in to romance and pleasure will be ruined . . . That’s right, I should forget her, I shouldn’t look back at that neighborhood . . .”
And at that point he sobbed. Sabiha appeared before his eyes, and he remembered her tearfully recounting a story her mother had told her:
“Your father was an innocent man, wrongfully executed in Almaty. He was an intelligent, beautiful Uyghur man who was fluent in Russian. I met him in Moscow and we married in Almaty. The Bolsheviks hunted him down because he married a Bey’s daughter, and later on he was shot in the name of the provisional Kazakh government, the Alash Orda, or the Sheikh-ul-Islam. He had insisted that I take our two daughters to Ghulja and educate them. Would an educated and cultured Tatar woman like myself ever become a second wife to this boorish mingbeg, if it weren’t to educate my children? My body is alive, but my soul has died. You need to study well and become capable people.”
Nuri cried and hugged the shrubs to himself, and thought, Goodbye, Sabiha. Love is a steep obstacle for you, too. If fortune is in our favor, we may meet again in a big city the way your parents did. I will promise you this, I will live this life only with my first love: like Newton, Nobel, and Nawa’i . . .
And so, he bid farewell to Sabiha.
_____
*Mingbeg: a type of local Uyghur government official during the time of the novel’s setting
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