Selected Poetry / Избранное (англ.)

My father’s parents were long gone by that time and I had no other relatives in our village. I was an unwanted child and an extra mouth to feed in the old woman’s family. She did not care after me and gave me no upbringing, and what was worse than anything for such a small child, she was cruel and unkind to me.

I don’t really remember those years. I must have probably been two or two and a half years old at the time.

The women in our village, some of them old, some younger, who remember me from my infancy, told me recently how badly I was treated by the old woman who was my caretaker.

Here is one episode. I walked out into the yard barefoot one winter night to relieve myself, wearing nothing but my night shirt and then went to the door to get back inside. It is difficult even for an adult to open the door of a log house in winter, to say nothing about a child. Naturally, I was unable to open it and stood there until my feet froze to the ground.

My «benefactress» kept me outside in the cold, reasoning to herself: «I bet you, he won’t kick the bucket, the fosterling.» She allowed me back into the house, swearing, whenever she felt like it.

The old woman is now deceased, may Allah bless her soul!

While I lived there, my mother, was apparently doing well at this mullah’s, so one day she sent horses from Sasna to fetch me.

Those horses drove me to Sasna.

I am actually not writing the story down just from other people’s words.

During these minutes, as I was driven by these horses, even though I was only a small child, I had an insight, a kind of revelation. I still imagine it as a memory how it felt to be in a vast and beautiful world and to see the bright rays of the sun sparkling with color on the road ahead.

I finally reached the village. I don’t remember how and by whom I was greeted in Sasna, but the kindness of my stepfather and how he gave me white bread with my tea spread with fresh comb honey, and how overjoyed I was – all this is imprinted in my memory as a brief dream.

However, my joy was short-lived. My mother’s life with the mullah lasted for only a year or so, and then she got ill – I don’t know the nature of the disease – and died.

I know practically all of this from other people because only rare, special moments could be preserved in the memory of a child that young.