"We all flew out of the truck," Mukhitdin Inamovich told me. "On top of that, I was hit by the edge of the side. I could have been sliced in two, but there happened to be a small hole where I had fallen. That saved me. Of course, I was unconscious for a long time. They did an x-ray at the hospital. It showed that my spine was broken in three places and there was a crack in my pelvis. But I was grateful to Fate. One of my comrades had such a head trauma that he died a year later.
The doctors at the Andijan hospital had little hope of saving Mukhitdin. The most they hoped for was that he would survive after a complex and difficult surgery, but he would never walk.
Mukhitdin remained unconscious for many days. That’s why surgery was postponed. When he regained consciousness, his father, Umar-ugli Inam, asked the hospital to discharge his son and took him home.
Umar-ugli Inam was a wise person. I would like to write about him at least briefly.
He was an agronomist, but he also studied other natural sciences and had a perfect knowledge of history. His home was filled with bookshelves. Among his hundreds of books were many Arabic ones – works by scholars, philosophers and theologians. The Soviet state deprived Umar-ugli Inam of all his Arabic books. One day, Red Army guards in pointed hats with big red stars arrived in the village. They searched homes, took away the Arabic books and burned them right there. From that time on, Umar-ugli Inam, a true believer and a very kindhearted person, had no good feelings toward the Soviet state.
Mukhitdin’s father was a very strong man. He was 60-years old, yet he could carry a sack of flour in each hand from the market, each sack weighing 60 pounds.
Umar-ugli didn’t trust the doctors at the Andijan hospital. What could doctors who considered his son's case hopeless possibly do? That wise man was familiar with the Asian medicine pioneered by Avicenna. He took his son out of the hospital because he had learned that a wonderful Asian healer lived not far away in Jalalabad. He was Tabib Abdukhakim Bobo, an old Uighur from Xinjiang, exiled from China. He needed to take the motionless, half-dead Mukhitdin there, so he put him in the back seat of his Volga.
"Do you remember how you got there?"
"Yes," Mukhitdin Inamovich nodded. "I remember how an old man with a long gray beard ordered me to be carried into the house where they laid me on my stomach on a board. He examined me for a long time. He listened to my pulse, and then he got busy with my legs. He pricked my knees, calves, and thighs with needles. He asked me whether I could feel anything, but I couldn’t feel a thing. After he finished the examination, the tabib brought herbal brews. He asked me to smell one of them and to drink another. I fell asleep and didn’t wake up for two days."
Later his father told him what had happened while he had been fast asleep. What happened could be called a miracle – the old tabib manipulated his vertebrae with his fingers. He connected the broken parts of Mukhitdin’s spine in a way that allowed them to knit together correctly.
When Mukhitdin came to his senses, he was lying on his back. He felt no pain, but it seemed to him that he had no body below the waist. He could feel neither his thighs nor his legs.
"Days passed, but I still couldn’t feel my legs. Then suddenly, it happened on the eighteenth day. Pain flared up like fire, and along with it, I felt my legs. They were covered with perspiration as if water had been poured over them, and then they began to jerk violently. My father, who had stayed by my side the whole time, called the tabib. The old healer was very satisfied and laughingly told my father, 'Your son will not only live, but he’ll be able to walk.' As you see, Valera, the tabib told the truth," and Mukhitdin Inamovich grinned. "He gave me my legs back."
In response, I could only shake my head. It was impossible to imagine that doctors had considered this strong solidly built man with straight back and springy gait to be hopelessly incurable and forever condemned to a wheelchair. A real miracle had occurred!
"When did you begin to walk?" I asked.
"About two months later. I lay on a board for the first month and in a bed for the second. The tabib gave me a drug – pills composed of 68 herbs. They were called hap-dora. I still had pain in my legs and spine, but I also felt more and more sensation. I began to feel what was going on in my bowels, my rectum, my bladder. The day arrived – I think it was the fifty-fifth day – when the tabib and my father lifted me, and then suspended by them in midair, I took four steps. Then I walked with two crutches, and in a month with just one. One day I heard, 'Now try to walk by yourself.' And I walked, walked on my own, swaying, touching the walls, but I walked.
"That must have been a happy day," I mumbled.
"It certainly was!" Mukhitdin Inamovich nodded. "It was good that on that day I didn’t know how many hard and heavy things lay ahead, hard and heavy, literally heavy. The tabib began to make me carry heavy things. Two small sacks of sand – one on my back, another on my chest were hung over my shoulder on a rope, plus a sack of sand in each hand. I don’t remember how much they weighed at the beginning, but eventually it was up to 60 pounds in each hand. Just imagine walking like that! But I walked. I was happy. And I pondered something as I walked.
"In half a year I was able to walk quite easily. Then one day, the tabib said, 'It’s time for us to part.' That was when I dared to say, 'I don’t want to part. I would like to ask you, Tabib, if you would kindly allow me to be your pupil.' The tabib didn’t agree right away. First, he tested my memory, then the sensitivity of my fingers. That was very important for a pulsologist. And, at last, I heard, 'I'll agree to teach you under one condition – you won’t drop out of the Institute. You’ll need to have lessons on the weekends, and I’ll give you homework for the rest of the week.'
"What could I do?" Mukhitdin Inamovich sighed. "I couldn’t argue with my teacher. I had to agree. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know why Tabib Abdulkhakim Bobo had made that decision. My studies at the Institute plus weekly trips to Jalalabad, plus homework every day were a heavy load for this pupil, particularly after such a terrible trauma. But, perhaps he considered such a load useful for developing industriousness and a sense of responsibility."
Mukhitdin Inamovich endured that load courageously and with honor. After graduating from the Institute – with honors, by the way – he began working as an engineer in his field. And he moved in with his teacher. The learning took 15 years.
"Was it difficult? Did you get tired?" I asked.
"Of course, I did. But learning from such a great teacher was a real joy. He taught me the old Tibetan-Asian medicine, pulse diagnostics, and how to cure with herbs. Apart from medicine, he was perfectly knowledgeable in biology and astronomy. But the tabib’s wisdom came not only from his knowledge. I constantly felt the influence of his kindness, fairness and nobility. Let me tell you what happened when I went to the Andijan hospital to see the doctor who had decided to operate on me. I greeted him, and right away he asked, 'How is your brother? Is he still alive?' 'Why my brother?' I said. 'It was me in this hospital. I was in trouble.' The doctor laughed, 'Are you kidding? That can't be true. That guy was a hopeless case.' 'What do you mean hopeless? I’ve been cured.' 'Who cured you?' 'An old doctor.' Then I began to demonstrate that I was well. I squatted, lifted a chair with one hand…
"The doctor only waved his hand, 'Don’t try to fool me. I still don’t believe that you're that same paralyzed guy!' I got angry and left. I complained to the tabib. 'Oh, I said to myself, I want to spite that stupid doctor!' The tabib answered me, 'Why are you hurt? Think a little about the chain of events. If that doctor hadn't told your father that your case was hopeless, but they would operate on you anyway, your father wouldn’t have brought you to me. That means you should be grateful to that doctor. And please, do it before you see me next time.' The tabib was generally convinced that one should look for good in every single person and be kind to them. He used to say, 'Even if your enemy approaches you with a gun, tell him that first of all you want to feel his pulse, and then he may shoot.' That was the kind of person my fate took me to."