The Road to a Mother's Embrace

In the air of a room where the light of the cold moon of the winter sky threw its reflection on the white wall, a familiar voice rang out for an instant:

"My so-o-on."

And it vanished. That instant was enough for him to hear the owner of the voice and, more than that, to know her. But it was the heart of the night and sleep had carried off his mind and his senses, and he had no chance to consider what the appearance had been or where it had gone.

He heard the telephone ring and started up out of the warm bed; the sound of it seemed louder than usual.

"Yes," said Shuhrat, his eyes not yet used to the dark. He knew the quiet voice of his classmate. And he asked:

"Is all well?"

"Mm. Your father asked me to get this to you: your mother's condition has become grave. Tell your brother's household yourself."

Shuhrat understood the meaning of the call. For some years now he had been waiting for this moment. And here it had come; he only grieved that it had not been granted him to hold his mother's hand at the last breath.

Together with his brother and his brother's wife and their eight-year-old son Qobus, he set off toward the pass. That road into the sky had been closed a month earlier, since so much snow had fallen and had taken its summit entirely under its own dominion. But the mountain people, when they had business, found some means of crossing on foot and on horseback, as by the old custom. The place they reckoned hardest of all, the one they called impassable, was Shodmondara. Beyond it there is nothing to fear.

A little way was left to the skirt of the pass when the smell of snow reached them and the sharp cold of it was felt; the sky above the pass grew darker and darker. And the car went forward with difficulty. Inside it were four more fellow travellers, with bags full of warm clothes and provisions for the road.

Qobus said he was hungry.

Shuhrat gave him bread and an apple. His nephew settled.

They were hungry too, but their hearts sought nothing; as always, once they were over the pass, they would eat their morning meal toward midday.

The car climbed a long way up; the road twisted like a snake; from the head of the pass the village below shone as though it lay on the palm of a hand. This time Shuhrat did not look long, only cast a single glance, because his mind was bound to his household.

The night of the wedding, he and his father sat at his mother's pillow.

"Old woman, look, your youngest son has put on the bridegroom's robe. You used to wish for it, and you have seen it. We have no longing left unfulfilled."

Shuhrat carried his mother's blistered palms to his lips and kissed them. And it was as though the light in the old woman's eyes grew, her lips inclined toward a smile, her face went looking for the strength to open like a flower.

After the forty days were over, the bride and groom came to the city. Two months later Dilafruz said to Shuhrat:

"I am going to the district."

"Has something happened?"

"No, I only want to be with your mother, to receive her blessing."

"My mother may be bedridden, but she isn't alone."

"I know. The old man is a man; his hands are tied."

"My sisters come often, they look after her."

"Don't deceive yourself. They have many children, they are bound up with the cares of their own families, they live in other villages."

"Well, if it gets very hard, the neighbour women help."

"Until when? Until when is a mother to wait, at every moment of need, on their goodwill? And then who is to go and call them?"

Dilafruz, who had grown up in a village, knew a great many of the fine points of living, and for that reason she showed foresight.

And Dilafruz every day kept the bed of the bedridden old woman soft and clean, combed her white hair, washed and rubbed her strengthless, stiffened hands and feet.

She delivered his father from his shame before people. Dilafruz was the keeper of the table and the warmth of the household.

And her hour came, and Dilafruz brought the old man's grandchild into the world.

"There is no possibility of going further," the driver brought the car to a stop. "I don't want to put your lives in danger. Let the snow stop, let the sun come out, and then —"

On all four sides it was under snow, and in the air too the flakes were dancing.

"Now we can't go back either," they heard the regretful voice of the owner of the car again.

"Surely there must be some means," said Shuhrat's brother.

Nobody made a sound; they had given themselves over to waiting.

But they, Shuhrat and his people, were in haste.

And just now, it seemed, in all the world there was no thing and no creature stronger than the pass. The bitterness of it was that the pass did not eat the grief and sorrow of these four travellers. The pass was dumb and deaf and cold; it did not know that on the other side, further down, the body of Shuhrat's mother was expecting her children. The pass stood without mercy and without feeling.

The day turned to evening, and the dark night came down.

The grown people, in the dull glow of the dim lamp inside the car, ate what each of them had. But Shuhrat and his family put only a few mouthfuls to their lips with difficulty. For the first time he understood to what degree a piece of bread can sometimes be bitter.

The thing had gone past doing. Fate had sent down its judgment. They were left deprived of the last sight of their mother's cold and deeply lined face.

"Kin and relations, the people of the village, will all have gathered by now."

"That goes without saying. They will not have left the old man alone," Shuhrat answered with confidence. "Only, from watching for our road, they will have come to one conclusion."

They had gone back and forth by way of the pass dozens of times, and it is the first occasion on which this lifeless and indifferent summit has taken them captive into its own embrace, and there was no knowing when it would grant them the writ of freedom.

Once, at the very height of summer, he had telephoned to say that tomorrow, at such and such an hour, he and three colleagues would be arriving in the district; he had a journey on official business. But the word spoken at home did not hold true at the market. They set out two hours late, they rested a little longer than they meant to on the road, and at the moment when they entered the village of Dashti Qozi, Shuhrat saw his father from a distance, at the bend before their courtyard. The old man was standing upright at the edge of the water channel.

Only in the evening did Shuhrat learn from his wife that his father had sat waiting in the street for more than four hours, without lifting his eyes from the road his child would come by.

In the evening Shuhrat and his colleagues came into the courtyard, washed their hands and faces and sat down at the cloth. After the saying of "Welcome, dear guests" and the bringing of hot tea, Shuhrat and his father excused themselves and went out.

Together they came to visit his mother, who had a small room of her own. Every time he came, Shuhrat would kiss the cheeks that had once been so red, and carry her bloodless hands to his eyes.

"Old woman, your youngest son has come with his friends to look in on you."

Tears ringed the mother's eyes.

"Thanks be. My little Shuhrat has become worthy of the kindness of friends, and I cannot rise from my place to pay the guests the honour and respect that are theirs."

"No, no, don't take it to heart, everything is ready. Does she bring your granddaughter now and then and show her to you?" he asked his mother.

The old woman blinked, and it carried the meaning of "yes."

"We've killed a sheep, old woman," said the old man. "The bride will bring the broth in a moment."

When he came back to the cloth, one of the guests asked:

"Is your mother not coming out to us? Is she in health?"

"Who?" Shuhrat did not follow.

"Your mother, I mean. Is she well?"

"Yes, she went to my eldest sister's house two or three days ago; perhaps she'll come today."

Shuhrat felt no shame in it, but on that day he did not want his friends to be made uncomfortable over bread and salt.

Half asleep and half awake, the hours went by, and the morning of the new day broke. "If we were at home, this morning we would be going to the grave of my late mother." And he set his teeth together. The driver was smoking.

"Thank goodness, the snow has stopped falling."

"The road is blocked all the same."

"On the other side of the pass, if there's a tractor, it'll clear the snow and come on, opening the road stretch by stretch."

"And if it doesn't come?" his brother asked.

"To tell you the truth, and you ought to know it, this is not the season for opening the road over the pass. And besides, has the bulldozer man had a dream that we are stuck here?"

"No," said Shuhrat. "It is foolishness to expect grace and mercy from this weather. For us the only road is to go on foot. We'll carry Qobus on our backs, turn by turn. Pull down the flaps of his cap, sister-in-law, in case the cold gets at his ears, and tie his scarf tight as well. Beyond the pass there'll surely be some car to be found, or at the very least a tractor. After all, the old man knows that we have packed for the road; if we do not arrive, what will become of him?"

The snow was knee-deep; on the summits of the pass it came to the waist; and on the far side it went down little by little to the knee again. The author strives to imagine the hardship of these hours, but the pen is helpless to describe or to express it. Though the feet of one of them were swollen and of another frostbitten, and they dragged them like logs, still they could not believe that they had come free of the siege and the claws of the snows of the pass.

As though they had come free.

They sat down at the edge of the road to get their breath quietly and to come back to themselves; after all, they had put the impassable stretch behind them.

The roar of an avalanche, sweeping down from above, threw them all in a single instant into terror. His brother and his brother's wife sprang up and ran from the mouth of the disaster. Shuhrat could have done the same, but he saw that his nephew Qobus, running for his life, had stumbled. And he, who was the nearest of them all, stopped and turned back. He lifted Qobus and pushed him forward, hoping the speed of the boy's running might increase a little.

He straightened his body. There was no time left to take a step.

The avalanche mixed stones and gravel and every living thing that stood in its road, and swept them away. It threw Shuhrat too into its maw.

For a second he heard clearly, close beneath his ear, that voice which had been familiar to him since infancy. And then the treacherous waves of the avalanche mingled a man, a world, a beloved voice, and crushed them together.

The silent mountains facing him, the dark high sky, seemed to have fallen into astonishment at this game of living and of nature.