Actually, I have not expressed what was happening correctly. They were not leaving. They began to change. The outfits they changed into were very strange – pants stained with paint, the same for the tops, some of which had burned spots, boots covered in clay… Some of them put on skullcaps, others wrapped kerchiefs around their heads… Right in front of me, future doctors had turned into construction workers, laborers.
Seeing my perplexed face, Mukhitdin said chuckling, "Yes, we're all going to the construction site."
And then I remembered Timur’s words: “We can finish our conversation at the construction site.”
Chapter 16. Stars on the Dome
We crossed the courtyard to where the new building for the Center was being erected on the open construction site. The second floor was already being built. And though the construction looked quite large, I could see neither cranes nor bulldozers, nor any other construction machinery. Everything was being done by hand. That I could see right away. People were working on every wall of the building. They were laying bricks, assembling steel reinforcing bars, welding things. A blinding white flame was spewing sparks in all directions from one of the window openings. People were constantly walking up the ramp carrying bricks on litters. The ramp would sway like a springboard – up and down, up and down, and it was scary to watch the people carrying those heavy loads. It seemed they would be thrown off the ramp, but no, everything was well calculated, and they passed unharmed. I breathed a sigh of relief. They had passed, and someone on the wall was already laying those bricks.
By the way, I was quite surprised to learn that they were using the bricks from the old building for the construction.
"Why was so much time spent taking the old building apart?" I asked. It seemed that the American time-is-money mentality had taken root in my mind.
"What do you mean, why?" Mukhitdin asked, perplexed, as he picked up a brick. "This one is pre-revolutionary, its durability rating is 130. And a new one’s is only 60. Watch!" The doctor picked up a hammer and hit the center of the brick. The hammer bounced back, the brick remained undamaged. "This is the old one. Now let’s take a new one. Here we go… " One blow with the hammer and the brick fell apart. "That’s how it works," the tabib summed up the experiment. "It’s been 80 years, and they still can't figure out the secret for baking them."
We approached the ramp and were about to walk up, but the tabib halted. A worker had just finished mixing a mortar, and Mukhitdin bent over to examine it closely, as if it were not a cement mortar but rather a medication prepared for a patient.
"Wait, wait, my dear man," he said. He picked up a shovel and added some more cement to the mortar with a dexterous and familiar gesture. "Otherwise it will be too watery," he explained to the worker, and to me at the same time.
We walked up the ramp and found ourselves near those “knights of fire,” whom we had seen from the ground. They removed their helmets to say hello… Oh my, they turned out to be Abduraim and Makhmoudjon. I had just seen them in class. And the tabib was already ushering me farther inside. No matter where we stopped, he found something to do. Now, as he took a writing pad from his pocket, he discussed the details of the work being done there that I didn’t understand anything about. Then he would climb to the top of a wall and, lying flat on it, would examine the brick masonry. Then he would show a welder where exactly a bend should be.
I was amazed. When had this healer and herbalist, this expert in Eastern medicine, had time to learn all about construction? It was true that he had a degree in hydro-technical engineering. But a construction engineer was something quite different, a profession that required quite specific and very thorough training. I didn’t dare judge professionally, but the way Mukhitdin behaved on the construction site spoke for itself. He was the same as he was at his doctor’s office.
Now and then, Mukhitdin talked to people I didn’t know. It turned out that, apart from hired workers and his students, the doctor’s friends worked on the construction. Besides, there was a wide circle of participants in the construction, a very wide circle, I would say, and some of them were from far beyond the limits of Namangan. I was interested in learning how they managed to get construction materials, which I knew were hard to obtain.
"We find a way," the tabib answered. "For instance, marble for the façade was sent from Germany, and from Saudi Arabia…"
"How is that possible?" I gasped.
"It’s very simple," the tabib said unflappably. "There are many patients in different places, so they help… without compensation, straight from the heart."
At that moment we were standing on the second floor near the main staircase, above which there were plans to build a large hall with a dome over it. As soon as we began to talk about the dome, I saw yet another Mukhitdin – an artist, a dreamer, a poet.
"Imagine a firmament above us," he said. "And the Universe… stars, planets on it… and over there the Milky Way like a wide ribbon… and there comets streaking…"
The tabib's eyes sparkled, his hand with its lit cigarette moved along the imaginary trajectory of a comet traveling from star to star. And perhaps he already visualized patients sitting in the hall to whom the night sky above them, the twinkling stars, the feeling of eternity would whisper something soothing and wise, would help rid them of fear, would help them believe that a cure would reach them.
I don’t know what else he saw there, but I admired him and was proud of him.
"Well, it’s time for me to go," the tabib suddenly remembered. "My patients await me."
No matter how interesting it was on the construction site, I had long wanted to attend his consultation
with student participation. He gave me permission and soon I went to his office.
Chapter 17. The Scent of Herbs
When I entered the office, the doctor was already seated at his desk. One of the students was with him, that same Makhmoudjon who had traded a prestigious profession as a surgeon for a difficult apprenticeship, and whom I saw that day for the third time. All the students at the Center practiced pulse diagnostics under the guidance of the tabib three or four times a week. Today was Mukhmoudjon’s turn.
This is how it went. The doctor felt a patient’s pulse, asked questions that would help to make a diagnosis and establish the primary causes of a disease.
He would give all his conclusions, everything he had traced while feeling the pulse and learned during a conversation with the patient, to the student. For example, “The interconnection of liver-colon-stomach has been corrupted. Frequent constipation.”
Then a student would take over the consultation, feel the patient’s pulse, and compare it with what he had overheard of the diagnosis determined by the tabib. In other words, he would try to draw a picture of the disease for himself. And after that, while the tabib was putting together a list of herbs necessary for the patient’s remedy, the student would take notes and make some sort of outline, as detailed as possible so that when he went over the material at home, he would be able to recreate the case history as precisely as he could. I noticed that Mukhitdin worked calmly and thoughtfully. He even managed to take notes as he was feeling a patient’s pulse. His experience as a physician was evident, along with the concentration and composure typical of a surgeon.
As the teacher and his students were working, I watched them from my seat by the window. There was something unusual about the atmosphere of this office, beyond the absence of any diagnostic apparatuses. I couldn’t figure out precisely what it was right away. But suddenly it dawned on me: there was none of the habitual irritating fuss that occurred in American hospitals and doctors’ offices. Mukhitdin didn’t run between his office and examination rooms. No one brought him results of recently completed tests. Telephone conversations couldn’t be heard; there was no telephone in his office. Life bubbled outside his office, in the reception area, in the hallway, but here it was quiet. Here the atmosphere was utterly calm so that the examination would yield the most precise results.