Zemfira Maharramli (Azerbaijan)
IT IS A SMALL WORLD, AFTER ALL
Aghgul sat on the sofa, leaning against small mattress felt unburdened. It was Sunday and she didn’t go to work, she's busy around the house all day. She cooked, cleaned the house, and tired a little bit. The fridge didn’t work, so they called the repair person home in the morning.
The beginning of February was harsh. Hard frost of the grey month gave no rest. She didn’t even think to go anywhere with her family and find a place to enjoy. Despite the whim of the weather her daughter Gunel and son Azer were on their way to visit their fellow students who were in the hospital.
It was already midday. She opened her cell phone which was quiet since this morning. She was just starting to look through the news on social media.
“Oh my God, there’s a lot of stuff on the Internet right now!” she whispered.
In this cold northern city she’s been living in since long years, she was highly sensitive and responsive to events and people around her, and tried to understand everything or to follow somebody's example. When she lived in her native country she went to Russian school and now, knowledge of Russian made her feel better. She had received her higher education in Moscow called “a big village” by the people of former republics during Soviet times. She was married to a fellow villager who also studied at a university in the capital. They had two children, her husband was a university teacher. But she herself worked in a literary publication in Moscow.
Somehow they got used to the life of a strange city, but they were missing their native land and sometimes they come to the village. Maybe living in a strange country made Aghgul a poet. So, she kept writing gentle poems, harrowing lyrics about Motherland. His poetry appeared in newspapers and magazines, she was known by her signature.
•
Aghgul heard the doorbell ring and her dreams flied away. “It must be the master” she thought. She was usually right about her guess. She walked up to the door, and looked through the peephole of the door.
“Who's there?” she asked and opened the door without waiting for an answer.
A man of about forty-forty five, in a black jacket entered the room. By removing boots that were wet from the snow, he asked:
“Did you wait for the repairman?”
When he heard “yes” he put his iron box on the floor and gathered the courage to speak to her.
“I am so sorry that I'm late, that was snow became heavy, and frost too…and buses, it was like they'd been vaporized.”
His cheeks were red from the cold. Stretching his cold hands, he added:
“Let me see the fridge!”
He followed her and walked into the kitchen. Aghgul turned to her husband who was reading newspaper, said:
“This is our repairman, just came”, she opened the fridge, then added:
“It doesn’t work since yesterday! It doesn”t almost freezes”.
“They say that the best blaze brightest when circumstances are at their worst,” said her husband, checking the master out through his glasses. Then he came up to him, added:
“My name is Sarvar. Our neighbors and my workmates call me Sasha”
“And I’m Dmitri, just Dima”
They shook hands.
“It must be freezing out. It's a winter with storm, complete with violent wind and snow...with icicles. We just get fed up with them… We won’t be able to get used to this cold, even though we’ve been here a long time. How good our heat is! I mean our homeland – Azerbaijan!”
The master’s attention was at the owner of the house, though he opened the lower part of the fridge, and then assembled it. Dima liked this grey-haired and welcomed man, his Russian dialect was a little bit felt, but it seemed good to him. He also paid attention to their talks in their native language sometimes. And when he heard the word “Azerbaijan” he only turned back for a second and stood up, saying in Azerbaijan:
“I love your country too. Baku is my home town, too”
The husband and wife looked at him with surprise and they asked how he learned the Azerbaijani language. Dima sighed and thought for a while. Then he said:
“It is an old-fashioned talk. It’s connected to the story of my childhood”
He finished the repairing and packed his things into the box. Aghgul brought cups of tea. They invited the master to the table.
“You should drink tea with lemon and jam in a snowy and frosty weather like this,” said Aghgul. “That's a totally different taste”.
All three were just speaking in Azeri language. Dima started to tell them his life story, it seemed he was so close to this kind and sincere family.
•
“Most of my best memories of growing up are from this place. They are so alive now. I was at a children’s home in Ufa. I was in this house from an early age. I kept looking at the door and waiting for someone, even though we were surrounded by very nice and so eloquent nannies and educators. When I was six or seven years old, I was thinking: when will at last this sad heavy metal door open? When will my parents come to me? Alas! As a child, I realized that it was impossible to realize my dream.
Every time I asked what and why my parents wouldn”t come, they cheered up me and I have been told:
“Your parents will come for you some day, get you back home.”
Dima looked at an uncertain point and kept quiet, then continued:
“Months and years have passed by, but that snub-nosed Russian child was looking forward to the arrival of someone and languished in the waiting for parents, like those abandoned and forgotten children around him. Though we were full sometimes they treated us like an animal. They called us “orphans” or “skag” and “rogue”. It was hurting us. We haven’t understood these phrases since we were little, but we knew that they were bad words and more or less when we realized it, that was a hard blow for us.
A bit later a boy Ruslan by name had been brought to our sorrowful house. He was a pretty child, but a little gruff and didn't light up. Seeing him so sad employees of the orphanage as well as children tried to cheer up him. I felt sorry for Ruslan too, and I used to cheer up him, I almost forgot about my grief.
One day I walked up to Ruslan and hugged him, and patted him on the head. I said:
“Can we please be friends?” He got fragile and started to weep. To calm him down was impossible. Our nanny Aunt Manya came up to us and she warned me not to ask him anything. “Because if you ask him anything he starts to cry.”
Later we heard that this poor boy has no father, no mother. They both died in a car accident. When I heard about it I had weeped myself. I cried for Ruslan, even though I didn’t have any idea of my parents either. I often asked myself:
“How does he take this terrible loss? How can you forget your parents that you know and love? This pain is intolerable!”
Turns out it was true, his parents died in a car accident when they visited their relatives living in Ufa. So, Ruslan had to come here to stay with us when he was orphaned.
•
That was a long time ago, but as if she’d seen this painful tragedy with her own eyes, and Aghgul used to enquire Dima about everything.
“You must have been really very little, helpless, right? Probably you didn’t know it was time to teach you to forget all your grief, at least partially. Everything needs time. Well, and what was the fate of your friend Ruslan?”
“Our greatest dream was to live among our families. Our unapproachable dreams never left us. It was already time to go to school. We were taught and studied well. My friend learned Russian and I learned from him Azeri language. When we were ten years old Ruslan and I decided to run away from the orphanage. It happened like this: after many years Ruslan’s uncle Niyaz in Ufa found out that he was at orphanage, he had come to orphanage.
After an interview with Ruslan, his uncle gave him his address and that kind man even offered to live at his house.
The next day after a walk in the yard without warning anyone we went outside and left the house. It’s a good thing we left a letter and indicated where we were going. Before that, Ruslan told me he couldn’t go anywhere without me, and I couldn”t let him stay alone, he was my best friend and he's also a friend in need.”
And somehow, in that moment, something changed for her and Aghgul felt so sad, she just couldn”t handle it for a second. All three of them were sad. All's well that ends well, it's better late than never, they felt confident in their future, uncle Niyaz met them warmly.
“The late Uncle Niyaz loved us, raised us and gave us a chance to survive. Due to his blessings we have been brought up”. Dima used to turn the next pages of his life story. “We never forgot his wife’s concern for us. Aunt Masuma took care of us like a mother. Ruslan studied, received higher education, he is now an economist engineer. And I graduated from vocational school for the specialty of the repairing on household appliances.”
When we were teenagers and young we have visited Azerbaijan many times together with Uncle Niyaz. Baku is so beautiful! How I loved your language! I have even taught my son your language.”
When Aghgul and Sarvar found out that these friends in need were married and living and working in Moscow, they were happy. At this point, Dima stood up and said:
“Well, I should go, first to the hospital, and then home. For three days now, my son has had surgery”
At that time Gunel and Azer entered the house, they were smiling and very joyful. And her cheeks went red, she was like a snowbird, her hair was pure white from the snow. Gunel was delightful and told her mother happily:
“I never imagined that my classmate Igor was so good at Azerbaijani”. Then she saw her father and mother are going to say goodbye to a guest, said:
“Iqor told me that it was his father who taught him our language”.
Upon hearing these words, the guest was excited and joyfully asked in a trembling voice:
“What did you say? Igor is your classmate? Did you go to the hospital? Emergency section?”
Gunel shook her head, that meant “yes’.
“He is my son!”
Everyone was frozen, looking at each other with wonder.
It is a small world, after all!
Translated into English by Kamran Nazirli
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