The Picture of Dawn
Writer: Mekhri Abdurakhmonova
Translator: Khafiza Mukhtorova
Part-2
It was early May. Taurus began with thunder, and the whole month passed with a torrential rain. Just the day before our trip, the sky was clear and the world was bright. As we walked through the alleys of Tashkent, the leaves of the trees, washed in the rain and turned into a wonderfully bright green color, shone in the sunlight pleased us, and our hearts, tired of humid weather, were filled with joy.
Especially, the impressions when we entered the Art Museum were peculiar.
When we entered a room, a young artist with a mustache, drawing a picture attracted my attention. He was drawing a copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. I stared at the almost ready picture and whispered, “Wonderful,” pushing my friend next to me. “Where is wonderfulness? It looks like just a yellow animal, she said. It’s as if a moth has eaten his eyebrows.”
The artist looked at us with a smile. I was embarrassed to think that he had heard us. Fortunately, our teacher called us. We hurried to catch up with others. We also heard a little rebuke from our teacher because we were left behind. “It would have been better if they had converted the store instead of coming here” my friend regretted. But I was very happy. I couldn’t get enough of looking at the pictures in the museum.
For the first time, the capital city was fixed in my memory in the image of a green and cool place. I returned with dreams that if I finish school, I will definitely come here to study and stay in this dear city for a lifetime.
After the school I studied in the capital, but the passion was different, life was different. The wheel of destiny overcame my dreams. As I walked around the photo exhibitions several times later, I would remember those pure moments.
It rained a lot more. The lush gardens shone in the warm rays of the sun, illuminating many more hearts. But my heart was still troubled, and in the ashes of the fire of dreams I could see that the sparks that had not been completely extinguished were able to burn the weeds that had been blown away by the winds of destiny. My life was completely different from life, as I read in books, as I saw in the movies, completely abstract, as if my dark days were passing in my dreams – I was a stranger to myself. A man who is a stranger to himself… A man who loses himself again and again and disappearing more and more – I deprived of myself, crushed by trivial worries, realizing that, chained by invisible bonds, my incertitude ruins my occasionally slow rise in its half way, but with the feeble hope that one day I will break these chains, even though my obligation to Him which so obstinately spends my life, my happiness, my love in vain struggles forces me to live like this, I crawled and waited for a miracle unknown to me.
No, this did not happen immediately. At first, I accepted my fate, accepted the love that was given to me, and tried my best to respond to it. I made an effort that I knocked down any obstacles I encountered along the way and sewed my life for one of his smiles. It had become the purpose of my life to reveal His face, in which my life was spent in endless absurdities and conflicts.
What should I do to make him happy?
What can I do to brighten heart and I feel like a real human?
Maybe it’s better if I go to make him happy. After all, if he lives with someone else, they leave him alone…
Yes, I have endured all difficulties and hardships for Him, even if I beat myself to the ground.
A person who is ready to make such a sacrifice for a person he does not love endures all hardships for forty years, and in his forty-first-year difficulties pass through his life, he shines like a lightning bolt from the sky, a person who has been caressed at one glance towards a miracle and faints. if he leaves, the doomsday will come.
Yes, the apocalypse has come…
I didn’t stop running towards the miracle without feeling the burning of my heels while my body and soul were burning in the middle of a huge fire. I kept running, running…
Strange, I could not understand why I didn’t turn into a handful of ashes with running inside the fire burning. If I caught fire in my dream forty years later, I turned into a burning bonfire in my dream forty-first year.
“Hey…”
As I ran, I heard a scream behind me. I looked back weakly. I hesitated a little.
Shall I return?
No, don’t come back. An inner voice urged me forward. I pushed myself forward again. Now I realized that the scream turned into a weeping and I was haunted by him. I suddenly lost my will and looked behind myself. There was a big fire behind me – it was running…
I can’t tell if my forty years of suffering – whether I fell into his arms or whether he took me into his arms – at that moment I realized that my forty years of suffering was the true meaning of my life.
He – forty years of suffering left this strange world in my arms with his eyes shining with happiness.
He said, “I see you more than my life.” He put me in a coma of separation and put me in worse pain than before.
I agreed, if he leaves me and goes to hell…
I agreed, if everyone lives happily with someone…
I agreed, when the whole world pours its reproaches and curses on me, and his heart shines like the sun, stroking the hair of a happy woman…
I just wanted that he will be alive in this bright world under the blue sky…
The blue sky turned to dark gray one, the bright world to a black dungeon…
He was gone physically, and I mentally disappeared and wandered like a ghost in my dark dreams…
“Mom, don’t go. Don’t leave us.”
Another cry? Why do they always demand me? Why don’t they leave me alone? Why?
I was so tired… I was tired after forty years of suffering by His side. Now that I know, I lived in love with those sufferings, I tried to escape from love and live peacefully. Looking for peace, I threw myself and him into the fire… I want to go to him… I want to go to his grave and talk to him. My dear, I want to see my forty years of suffering. Please, let me go. If he lies underground, how do I walk on the surface of the earth. Tell me, how do I walk? Uhhhh!…
“Mom, don’t go. Don’t leave us.”
I wake up from my forty-first-year dreams… My daughter was crying in front of me…
I thought that I should wake up, stand up for her.
Author of the story
Abdurakhmonova Mehri Qudratovna, poetess, writer, winner of the “Shuhrat” medal, head of the Jizzakh regional branch of the Writers’ Union of Uzbekistan.
Translator of the story
Khafiza Mukhtorzoda, a student of JSPU, laureate of the Ilhom Award. The owner of the state scholarship named after Navoi, Uzbekistan.
