"They're not prescribed without chemo and radiation," he said, twirling a pencil in his hands. Then he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes tiredly. I could see. I knew that he had been tormented by us, by our stubbornness, and that he was possibly blaming me for that. I was playing with a human life, the life of my own mother. I had refused the recommended course of treatment, which was recognized as necessary all over the world. He had insisted, had tried to convince me.
"We’ll check her bones in four months," the doctor said, sighing. "And meanwhile, try to distract your mother. Have her get engaged in something besides her usual chores. Encourage her to socialize more."
I nodded. It wasn’t worth explaining to the doctor that there was no need to engage Mother in anything new. She had already found what to do and it took all of her time and attention, made her more vigorous, instilled hope in her. It may seem that there was nothing special about it. Put a teaspoon of herbs into a small pot with cold water, place it on the stove, bring it to a boil, and your tea was brewed. It was like that, but there was more to it. With Mama, this simple procedure turned into a kind of sacred ritual.
"Where’s my enamel pot? Have you seen my measuring cup?" When Mama brewed her herbs, her face looked like that of a medieval alchemist as he waited for a philosopher's stone to appear in his vial.
"Mama! What are you doing? That’s not a spoonful! Look!" And I would take the spoon away from her and put it into the bag of herbs. "Look! It should be a heaping spoonful!"
"If I brew them like that, I won’t have enough herbs for a month." Mother would take a spoon from my hand and brush the extra herbs off into the bag. Then she would close the bag and put it on the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet, away from grandchildren, just in case.
Then her sacred ritual would continue. Now she had to start watching the pot – it was written in the instructions “bring to a boil” which meant not to miss the moment when bubbles began to appear on the brownish surface of the herb-filled water.
Yes, I was absolutely sure that this “magic process” had a beneficial influence on Mama’s psyche, giving her more strength to fight her disease. It seemed to her that recovery was very near, as soon as the bag of curative herbs was empty.
Four months later, Dr. Pace summoned Mama for a test on the condition of her bones. The procedure took a long time, twice as long as usual. After leaving the hospital, Mama broke out crying. "They must have found something again… It took so long."
I was silent. That was what I thought too. I was even afraid to call the doctor. But Dr. Pace himself called in a week. His voice was vigorous, almost cheerful. "Imagine, the result is negative! The bones are clean, do you hear me? Clean! Six months after the surgery, without radiation, without chemo… I can’t remember anything like that in my practice. I don’t know what you do to your mama, but you can be proud of yourself, Valera!"
What a blessed state is the feeling of relief! Just a short moment, and neither the burden of worries nor the earth’s gravity itself press upon your shoulders. You feel as if you're soaring, weightless. “Oh my! Thank you, Tabib! Thank you, Dr. Mukhitdin!” I mumbled. And I rushed home to make Mama happy.
Soon after that we set out for Namangan once again. The tabib had warned us that he would need to see and examine Mama once every three to four months. Looking back on it now, I can say that we made eight trips in three years. So, our life was predominantly spent on the road, the road of hope.
The second trip was particularly joyous. We were going there with good test results, in a good mood. Of course, we worried. But the tabib, who welcomed us like good old friends, confirmed that we had grounds for hope.
"The liver has improved," he announced in his less-than-impeccable Russian after feeling Mother’s pulse. In other words, during our first visit, Mukhitdin had said that it was already in the liver. Now her pulse showed him that the liver had been cleaned, and it was possible to hope that there wouldn't be further metastasis.
It was wonderful news. The tabib himself was truly pleased. He knocked on wood, repeating “Ptui, ptui, ptui.” Words couldn’t express what we were feeling!
It seemed to me that it was that second trip to Doctor Mukhitdin that made us real friends. In us, he saw people who sincerely believed in him, who felt at ease with him, who enjoyed his company and found it extremely interesting. (I can certainly say that for myself.) We found in him not just an amazing doctor, but also an extraordinary person – unpretentious, kind, open and not vain. We were finding new evidence of those qualities with every new encounter with him.
He welcomed us like relatives, and the famous Asian hospitality was not the reason. We could feel it in many little things – his radiant gaze, his broad smile, his joy upon seeing us. He also always examined me and precisely determined my ailments every time, explaining the reasons for them and, of course, prescribing medications. He spent long hours with us, now asking us questions, now telling us about himself, smoking cigarettes nonstop. Doctor Mukhitdin was an incorrigible smoker, and, perhaps, he dissembled a little when he assured us that he couldn’t find any harm to his health in smoking.
With every trip, my interest in the science, with the help of which Doctor Mukhitdin brought people relief and often cured them, was becoming quite burning and nagging.
During our second stay, I became familiar with the work of the institution called the Center for Eastern Medicine, headed by Doctor Umarov. There was no reason to doubt the popularity of the Center. I saw how many patients there were. Many of them came from far away. And they all waited for him, Mukhitdin. Even though he had pupils and assistants, he examined each patient himself. By the way, we met one of his pupils, Timur Umarov, a skinny guy of 30 who had a master’s degree in botany. He had come to see the doctor three years before, and not for studies. He had a kidney disease which doctors had considered hopeless. Mukhitdin Inamovich cured Timur, but this grateful person with the same last name caught another “disease” – he badly wanted to become the tabib’s pupil. And he became one…
"How much longer do you need to study?" I asked.
"It generally takes about ten years," Timur answered, "but I hope to graduate in five."
I must admit I envied him. What a pity it was – I used to live not far from here, but I never suspected what a miraculous spring of knowledge I could have drunk from, what I could have learned. Alas, now I had no opportunity to correct that mistake. But I had become one of those who was eager to learn. That’s evidently how life is organized – hiding something from our view, then opening it up for us much later, calling forth our regret, but, at the same time, our thirst for knowledge.
And I tried to quench that thirst as much as I could. My trips to Namangan were like visiting the Ancient Library of Alexandria. Doctor Umarov was a walking encyclopedia. I never stopped asking questions, and he was willing to talk to me when he noticed my interest. Little by little, I began to understand some things.
It all started right before our departure on our second visit to Mukhitdin. We were saying good-bye at the front door as Mama and Yakov went to the car, and I asked the doctor the same question once again.
"Do you think you’ll be able to cure her?"
The doctor raised his thick eyebrows, "I hope so, but you should understand. Look here…"
He turned to the door and began to make an invisible drawing on it with his finger like on a blackboard.
"Look. This is the liver… here’s the spleen… here’s the uterus… and this is the heart. And up here’s the brain… and its cortex."
It was an old door of light-brown wood that had not been painted for a long time. There were swollen wavy lines of paint running all over its surface. They looked like arteries and veins – at least that’s what they looked like to me. Perhaps that’s why I could see clearly everything the doctor had drawn on it.