Mukhitdin and I had our last heartfelt conversation in New York during that visit. And I am glad that my ability to retain “memory pictures” allows me not only to hear but also to visualize how that friendly conversation, filled with memories, went.
Early in the morning before sunrise I came to the kitchen to brew tea. When the stairs creaked, that was the doctor walking down. Everything had been set up for breakfast in the living room. We didn’t sit down at the dinner table. We sat on the rug at the chess table. The tabib, when he felt at home, preferred that ethnic pose – on the floor with crossed legs and hands on his calves, palms up. I was glad that the doctor had taken on a healthier color and was looking better. As I was pouring tea into tea bowls, he was peeling a pomegranate, and, as with everything he did, he was doing it beautifully. First, he made a round cut in the hard rind of the fruit, then a second one perpendicular to the first. Oval segments of the rind became separated from the fruit one after another. Then the naked pomegranate was divided into four parts without losing a single glowing aril. When finished with the pomegranate he switched to tea and drank it with pleasure, one tea bowl after another. At the same time he was looking at the chess table covered in granite mosaic. He liked the table (Daniel’s recent work).
"It’s beautiful except the corners are too sharp. Someone could get scratched. Here, give me a handsaw and a file." (Mukhitdin meant an injury not just a scratch. He told us about injuries he had witnessed).
He put a newspaper on the rug and began to adjust the corners. I was alarmed for the doctor wasn’t well, but it was useless to argue with him. No matter how hard I tried to convince him that I could do it myself, he only grinned.
We began to talk about my son’s future profession. Svetlana and I dreamed that he would become a physician specializing in pulse diagnostics like Mukhitdin. But Daniel, though he took lessons with doctor Maria Yakobova, was attracted to mathematics and physics. However, none of Mukhitdin’s five daughters followed in their father’s footsteps. When I asked him why, he shrugged his shoulders.
"Don’t forget that I studied for 15 years. What young woman would endure that? The main thing for them is a family, not a profession." He sighed and lifted his empty tea bowl, signaling for more tea.
The conversation about our families brought back memories. I must admit that I always wanted to know how his friendly feelings toward our family, toward Mama and me, had arisen. We could have remained just a couple of his numerous patients. And I asked him whether he remembered how we had met. It turned out that he remembered, and in great detail.
"One glance was enough for me to feel respect and sympathy for your mother. She was so reserved and quiet, so dignified and patient. I wrote in my diary, 'This woman has suffered a lot.'”
“I wrote in my diary”… We had been friends for many years. Every time we got together, I learned something new about him… like now about his diary.
"Tabib, I was astonished how Mama had a deep feeling of trust in you… right away. She… we were both so desperate. The doctors insisted on chemo and radiation. They predicted her rapid demise…" I remembered those horrible days and my voice trembled.
"Do you think I wasn’t afraid after I felt your mama’s pulse?" The doctor nodded. "But I couldn’t let her see it."
I was well acquainted with the tabib’s principle. I knew that he considered the custom adopted by contemporary physicians of informing patients about their diagnosis and prognosis to be stupid and dangerous. He didn’t use too many words with patients. He didn’t use such words as cancer, tumor, or cirrhosis. He simply explained that one’s stomach should be treated or that the rear wall of the heart should be strengthened. I remember once when Mama asked him, “How is my oncology?” “Oncology? What is that?” The doctor was surprised. “I only know that I am going to treat your liver.”
A good physician has to be a good psychologist. I understood it when Mama and I visited Namangan the second time. He was holding Mama’s hand by the wrist, yet I also felt the warm touch of his fingers. Then his long fingers began to move slowly and smoothly, now pressing on an artery, now letting it go. Mukhitdin smiled, nodding slightly. Then he tapped the table with his fingers and said, "Ptui, ptui."
Both Mama and I felt relieved. It had been three months since she had begun drinking herbal brews prescribed by the doctor. She felt somewhat better. Did it mean she was on the path to recovery?
The doctor’s face, his smile confirmed our hope. And she needed that hope, for without it she wouldn’t be able to cope with the disease. Hope brought to life the forces of her organism that couldn’t be awakened even by the strongest drugs.
The doctor didn’t conceal the state of Mama’s health from me. Just as it would be impossible to stop a heavily loaded dump truck with no brakes rushing downhill, it was impossible to stop the destructive force of a difficult disease of many years in a woman who was no longer young. To slow down its effect, to make her feel better was what Mukhitdin tried to achieve. The herbs helped, along with Mama’s confidence in Mukhitdin’s power. I will never forget the expression on her face when Mukhitdin said “ptui-ptui,” his smile, his sparkling eyes. Mama’s shoulders straightened up as if a load had been taken off them.
Our friendship with the tabib sprang from that belief and admiration for him. Our attitude, which obviously went beyond the limits of the usual gratitude, didn’t leave him indifferent either.
That conversation at the chess table turned out to be our last one in New York. Mukhitdin didn't feel up to trans-Atlantic travel anymore, but he did travel to Moscow twice a year, in the fall and spring. Svetlana and I naturally went there a few times to see our friends and also to seek his medical advice. I remember how glad we were during our first reunion there after we saw that the tabib had regained a healthy color and was even cheerful. We got together at Galina Feodorovna Solilova’s house. The doctor had cured her daughter Olga of leukemia many years before. That disease was so dangerous that doctors had feared for Olga’s life and forbade her to have a baby. But after the tabib cured her, Olga gave birth to a healthy baby girl. There is no need to explain what Galina Feodorovna’s family’s attitude toward Mukhitdin was.
When he visited Moscow, he always stayed with his friends. We were usually invited for dinner. There were other guests too. I remember meeting Mukhitdin’s friend and colleague Pyotr, with whom he had worked at the Institute of Physics and Geochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He was the only person I knew who addressed the doctor by his first name. He exclaimed now and then, “Do you remember, Mukhitdin?” And the doctor, usually a man of few words, would join in the conversation.
“Do you remember the man whose life you saved who filed a complaint against you?”
“Yes, I do… I saw a man lying on the platform, people crowded around him… I naturally approached him and felt his pulse. It was clear that he was close to a heart attack. I began to massage his heart… At that moment, an ambulance arrived. I gave my business card to the medics and left. That man called three days later and said that I had injured two of his ribs…” “But he forgot to say thank you for saving his life. What a strange man!”