How understandable it was! Even the titles of the chapters evoked my interest: The Mode of Origin of the Fluids of the Body; Agents Causing Obstructions of Channels; The Influence of Perturbations of Mind. The lines, even the words by Ibn Sina sounded like poetry, like music. I wanted to repeat them over and over. I admired the translators who had managed to render the peculiarities of Ibn Sina’s language, to preserve the style of the medieval language.
Those feelings didn’t hit me right away. It happened after many months of study. I was also proud of myself – I had achieved what I desired. I delved into the essence of Eastern Medicine, understood its basic laws. Even though I couldn’t use my knowledge as Yura did, it became something very important for me as a human being. Perhaps any serious knowledge changes something in a person, adding new features, calling forth interest in one’s surroundings and yearnings to learn even more… I hope this is what has happened to me.
Chapter 23. The Second Candle
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
Emily Dickenson
I’ve never been an orthodox believer who adheres to most Jewish religious customs. However, my people have traditions that are dear to me. Before Saturday comes, on Friday evening, Jews light candles to remember the deceased. I’ve been doing it for twelve years to remember my mama. This little candle, this little flickering light lights the bright fire of her nearness to my soul, and something like an encounter occurs. Every time I lit a candle for twelve years I whispered “Mama,” feeling that she was by my side. But on that evening in February, after lighting the first candle, I lit another one. Another flickering light blazed up, and I whispered “Tabib… Mukhitdin”…
Yes, I lit the second candle in memory of my close friend Mukhitdin Inamovich Umarov who wasn’t a Jew, who was an Uzbek, a Muslim.
In this book I have written a lot about Mukhitdin, about how he prolonged Mama’s life, fighting her mortal disease for three years (six years), about my endless gratitude to him, about how we became friends. Now he is gone. I light a candle in his memory, but I still cannot believe it has happened…
Mukhitdin Inamovich’ s heart stopped beating early on the morning of February 12, 2011. It happened in the E. R. of a public hospital where his nephew Abduraim had brought him. Heart massage didn’t help, and they didn’t have a defibrillator at the hospital. It’s hard to count the number of human lives lost to such criminal “technical deficiency” in the healthcare entities of my far-off homeland.
Mukhitdin… What had happened to him? He was such a strong person, both physically and spiritually. He was a brilliant pulse diagnostics physician who could identify diseases and their causes even at very early stages. He was an expert in ancient medieval science. He was a healer… And this person who had prolonged the lives of thousands of people had to die at the age of 64. How could it happen? Why couldn’t he identify his disease and help himself?
I remember how, when we saw each other in Tashkent last May, he repeated merrily, “Even 20 years from now we’ll continue to see each other.” I remember how I congratulated him on his birthday only a week ago… “Tabib, how could it happen?” I whispered looking at the candle.
Yes, it seemed that he was healthy and strong, though Yura and I had been noticing changes in his appearance and state of health over the last five years. We knew – he had told us himself – that he had high blood pressure and was treating himself with herbs and even took pills. “I get tired,” that’s how he explained his indisposition. “I have 100 patients a day, after all.”
“That’s wrong!” Yura and I expressed our indignation. “You should ask your receptionist to make appointments for no more than 50.”
The doctor grinned. “They will come without an appointment. And if they come, I won’t be able to send them home. I have to help people. I have to help sick people.”
I am convinced that these words should be considered Mukhitdin Umarov’s motto, which defined the qualities of his soul and the purpose of his life. His appearance was proof of that. His dark-complexioned face, open and friendly, was always amazingly calm. It seemed he couldn’t get angry. And the gaze of his hazel eyes (evidence of the saying that the eyes are the mirror of the soul) was always kind and radiant.
“I have to help sick people.” Yes, I am sure that only that could explain the doctor’s enormous workload. He, with his fame, had more than enough money. He could have seen four times fewer patients. He taught and treated his students free of charge; he even supported some of them. No, Doctor Umarov didn’t forget his Hippocratic oath, which required “Art, if they want to study it, should be taught free of charge.” Well known was the case where Mukhitdin didn’t demand the money an airline owed him, big money. In a word, he wasn’t a businessman. He was a physician, through and through, a wonderful physician who had profoundly mastered the ancient science of healing.
“I have to help sick people”… As he was saying it while helping people, he ignored his own ailments. He didn’t want and didn’t know how to spare himself. Moreover, I was struck many times by his other feature. He tried hard to protect people from worrying on his account. I remember how once when he was in New York we were riding bumper cars in Luna Park. I was in a car behind him. I miscalculated the distance between our cars and bumped into Mukhitdin’s car. He hit his back against the partition of the seat. After that we walked in the park for a long time. When we returned home, the tabib sat down on the bed and asked me to help him with an exercise. I was holding his legs and he was bending the upper part of his body to the floor and bringing it back up. Only then did he remind me about his old spinal injury, which the impact in the car aggravated. A bump appeared on the spot of the impact. I was terribly upset. Why hadn't he asked me to take him home right away? In response, he only chuckled, “It’s a trifle.” But I understood that he didn’t want me to worry about him, to be upset.
‘Tabib, Tabib,” I whispered, looking at the candle. How much this man had given me, how much good he had put into my soul.
I remember a morning in South Carolina, which we visited together. It was before dawn when we set off for a walk on the beach. We sat down on the sand and watched the intense blue of the sky grow lighter, dark-gray clouds like a mountain range appearing on the horizon, getting lighter and losing their ominous appearance. A sparkle could be seen in their “belly.” It was growing and growing and turned into a fiery arc, and following that, the sun rose from beneath the ocean. It was an unforgettable moment.
Everything came to life as the sun rose. A flock of pelicans was flying over the water, seagulls were dashing about above the ocean’s smooth surface, the fin of a dolphin was cutting the water not far from us. No people were to be seen except the two of us.
And then the doctor (he was sitting next to me, pouring sand from hand to hand) said, as if he had read my thoughts, “Every living thing in nature welcomes the sun, everything but a human being.”
Yes, it was that pure gift in his soul, a harmonious perception of nature, a need for its beauty. It seemed to me that I learned to feel that incomparable beauty on that day, thanks to the tabib.
After we had become friends, we saw each other quite often. Mukhitdin visited New York twice a year for 13 years. Many patients awaited him here, old ones as well as new ones, whom Yura and I would find, and we would make appointments. As I already mentioned, it had been five years, starting in the fall of 2006, since we had noticed that the tabib wasn’t well. That fall, as usual, we met him at the airport. He looked tired, which was understandable – the 15-hour flight, with a connection and jetlag. Anyone would be tired. We put him to bed, but neither rest nor herbs helped. Fatigue and headaches continued day in and day out. Our old friend talked with difficulty and reluctantly, his radiant gaze through his narrowed eyelids grew dim. We only learned much later that his blood pressure had been over 200 after the flight.