And that was true – it was difficult to put up with Father. Only Mama managed to do that, but at what price…
She was a loving woman. She got upset, she suffered, but she invariably forgave the man she loved, the father of her children. On top of that, she was an Asian wife. In other words, just like every wife in any country in this part of the world, she had to endure all of her husband’s whims without complaining, all of his caprices, quibbles, derision, even beatings. Love may have ended, may have been exhausted, but patience, endless patience, remained inviolable.
The Bukharan Jews unfortunately adopted that custom, along with other centuries-old customs of their new countrymen. I don’t mean that it was like that in all Jewish and Uzbek families. Of course, it wasn’t. Take Grandma Lisa – no one dared to hurt her. Grandpa Yoskhaim was somewhat afraid of his wife. And a wonderful harmonious and loving Jewish family lived in the house next door. I often heard their merry voices, their laughter and jokes. It seemed that not only their voices, but the atmosphere of friendliness and peace reached me. Did I envy them? I don’t know, I don’t know. Certainly, I did compare our families from time to time.
There were six beds in the ward, located along the walls in two rows, three on each side. Father was in the one to the left of the door.
Mama sat down on the edge of his bed and put her hand on his forehead. Father opened his eyes slowly.
“During the night… there was… another… attack. They… gave… injection. They… gave… me… oxy…gen…,” he said very quietly, stopping to catch his breath.
I stood at the wooden bedside table at the head of the bed, looking in bewilderment at the dark red dots, many of them, that covered his arms from his elbows almost to his palms.
“I’ve brought you some broth. It’s still hot. Have some,” Mama said, taking out a glass jar wrapped in a cloth. She poured the broth into a bowl and began to feed Father, lifting the spoon carefully to his lips. The aroma of the broth, a very tasty aroma, spread throughout the room.
Frightened, Emma was examining the ward. She couldn’t understand – it was clear from the look on her face – why her papa was here, far from home, in this unfamiliar room with many beds. She was eyeing her father warily – she’d grown unaccustomed to him.
For some time, the intervals between asthma attacks had been growing shorter.
An accidental cold was the reason for that misfortune. Father used to go swimming in a mountain river with his friends. Once, in spring, after bathing under an ice-cold waterfall, he hadn’t dried himself properly before biking back home with his friend. He got bronchitis, which turned into a bronchial asthma, and the healthy person, the athlete, became an invalid. Asthma attacks are a very agonizing thing. During the day, Father would sit on a small chair in the courtyard with his hands resting on his knees. During the night, he would suffocate in his bed just as he was doing now in the hospital ward.
“My little girl…Let me touch your pretty curl,” Father said tenderly, trying to smile. He loved Emma very much. He used to beckon to her as he was sitting on his little chair. He pulled gently at her chestnut curls, hugged and tickled her, repeating a line from a rhyme he had once heard, “My little girl… let me touch your pretty curl.”
Emma smiled, embarrassed, clinging tightly to Mama’s knees and pressing her head against them.
It had grown livelier in the ward. Other patients were awake, some of them making their beds, others shaving. The rustling of newspapers could be heard.
“Doctor’s rounds have begun,” one of the patients announced.
Two women in white gowns entered. I recognized one of them right away. She was a registered nurse who attended to the patients in the ward. We often saw her when we visited Father. The second woman wore a stethoscope around her neck. I had already met her too. They both walked from bed to bed, stopping longer at some of them. Then they approached Father’s bed. Emma’s face shrank as if she were about to cry. White gowns reminded her of injections.
“Oh, we have most of the family here today,” the doctor said, sitting down by Father’s bed. She began examining him. Unfamiliar words could be heard, names of medications. There were many of them. Mama sighed quietly, standing at the foot of the bed and holding the scared Emma by the shoulder.
Chapter 3. Old Town
From the hospital we went to visit Grandpa and Grandma, Mama’s parents. We reached Koltsevaya (Circle) by trolley. It was near Starogorodsky (Old Town) bazaar. From there, we had to walk.
I liked Old Town with its narrow unpaved lanes, low clay adobes, ariks (watering canals) in which water could be heard constantly gurgling. I liked the women’s colorful silk ethnic dresses, the chaykhana (tea house) at the corner of Sabir Rakhimov Street, not far from Grandma’s house. Unlike other tea houses, it wasn’t noisy. Usually, there were only a few regulars sitting on the veranda sipping tea. We knocked hard on the gate since Grandma Abigai’s hearing wasn’t great. Besides, the courtyard was big. Grandma opened the gate. As always, she wore a long dress, slippers and a scarf wrapped around her head.
“Ah, Ester, byee (come on in)!” she exclaimed merrily upon seeing us. “Valera, oh, Valera!” And she covered me with kisses.
Grandma, like all elderly Bukharan Jews, spoke a dialect of Tadjik, sprinkled with words in Hebrew, which had become the native tongue of Central Asian Jews and was considered by some scholars to be a separate language: Bukhari.
Emma and I stayed in the courtyard to play. Just two apple trees and some poplars were growing in its clay soil. It was scarcely lit by the sun. A section of the outer wall constantly collapsed and needed to be rebuilt every year.
The gate slammed loudly, and Grandpa Hanan appeared in the courtyard. He was carrying his big sharpening machine on his shoulder. He was tall but skinny, and that load wasn’t easy for him to carry. On seeing us, he smiled and put the machine down.
“Your mama ai!”
Every time we visited, that joke was his greeting. Ai means “not good.”
“No, no!” I shouted hugging him and kissing his greyish beard. “Let’s sharpen your knives! Let’s get them sharpened!”
Curly-haired Emma stood aside sucking her thumb and enjoying the familiar game. Grandpa picked her up and kissed her, “Duhtori Bobo! Duhtori Bobo!” (Grandpa’s little girl), and he carried her to the house. I stayed behind to examine the machine. It was taller than I was. Two wheels, one on top of another, were connected by a belt. When you pressed the lower pedal, they began to rotate. There were several grindstones attached to the upper crossbar.
Grandpa returned with knives and a jar of water. The wheels began turning merrily. A knife was jumping from grindstone to grindstone. Showers of sparks shot out from under the blade. Now and then, Grandpa cooled the blade in the water, then checked its sharpness on his nail. Grandpa Hanan rocked back and forth, back and forth, pressing the pedal. The pedal tapped gently – tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap. The grindstone produced its piercing tune – v-zh-zh-zh! v-zh-zh-zh! Emma and I joined in the concert, imitating the sound of drums, “Toom-ba-le-ka-toom! Toom-ba-le-ka-toom!” All that noise didn’t irritate Grandpa in the least. His tired face brightened up and he began singing something quietly.
Grandpa liked to sing when he was among friends, when no strangers were around. He sometimes sang something very sad. Perhaps he remembered the war in which he fought from the beginning almost to the end and lost many friends. When he returned home, he was sick. First, he had a bad case of bronchitis, then asthma. But he needed to feed his family. He who defended his homeland was given a medal and a small pension. He tried to earn extra money in different ways. He got himself mixed up in some shady business and ended up in jail. His son Avner and the son’s wife Sofia did their best to intercede on his behalf and succeeded in getting his sentence reduced. Grandpa spent two years in jail. When he was released, he had tuberculosis. He continued to do his best to earn a living and walked around town with the heavy sharpening machine.