“Aidim!” Nazar called to her.
The girl walked up to Chagatayev.
“Give me a drink,” he begged.
Aidim pulled the dead bird to him and, kneeling down, placed its throat next to Chagatayev’s lips while she began to squeeze the wet feathers so the blood would drop into Chagatayev’s mouth.
“You go on lying there now, as if you’re dead,” Aidim told him. “The birds will fly down on you, and the jackals will come, you kill them all and we’ll have something to eat…”
“Where are the other people?” Chagatayev asked.
“Here they come,” Aidim told him.
Chagatayev asked her to bring some water, if there was any, and wash his wounds. Aidim examined them, pulled away from them the wool of his clothing, and then licked them with her tongue, since she knew that saliva can heal a wound.
“Don’t worry, you won’t die, your wounds are little ones,” she said. “Now lie back quietly, or else the birds won’t come back.
Aidim dragged the dead bird behind the sand dune where her people had set up a new stopping place in the quiet of a deep depression in the sand. They ate the bird at once, and if people far away, who eat every day, could not have felt any slaking of their hunger from the tiny piece of shredded meat which Aidim gave to each person’, this insignificant morsel of food almost filled up a person with this great hunger, and in any case it gave the body hope, and comfort.
It grew dark again. Sufyan dug down to a wet level in the sand with his hands, and started to chew it against his thirst. Some of the people saw what he was doing, walked up to him, and shared his supper of sand and water. Nur-Mohammed was afraid of the cold, and came back to the tribe in the night so he could lie down somewhere in their midst, and warm himself.
Early in the morning, Mohammed woke up Aidim, took her in his arms, and walked off with her toward Afghanistan.
Chagatayev was lying where he had been before, like a dead man, keeping watch for the birds. He had counted his bullets, there were only seven left. He was sure the birds would come back again, for it was the male he had killed, and the female with the colored feathers had flown away and would come back again, and not alone, to finish off the man who had murdered its first, and perhaps its favorite, mate.
Aidim jumped out of Nur-Mohammed’s arms and ran to say good-bye to Chagatayev. He kissed her, stroked her face with his thin hand, and smiled. It was still not light. Nur-Mohammed was waiting for the girl a short distance away.
“Don’t go away, Aidim,” Nazar told the child. “We’ll soon have some luck ourselves.”
“I know,” Aidim answered. “But he ordered me…”
“Call him,” Chagatayev said.
Aidim beckoned to the tall Nur-Mohammed with her hand.
“You still dying?” Nur-Mohammed asked Chagatayev. “I thought the birds had eaten you up a long time ago.”
“Why do you take the girl with you?” Chagatayev asked him.
“It’s necessary, it must be,” Nur-Mohammed said.
“Let her stay with us,” Nazar said.
Aidim sat down on the sand next to Chagatayev. “I’m staying,” she said, “I’m still a little girl, and I’m tired to death of walking. I don’t have to go!”
Chagatayev leaned his elbows on the ground, and pulled the girl toward him. Dew had fallen, and Nazar quietly licked his tongue along Aidim’s hair on which there were little drops of moisture.
“Go away by yourself!” he told Mohammed.
“It’s high time for the dead to shut up!” Nur-Mohammed declared. “Lie back on the ground and sleep!” He kicked Chagatayev in the face with his foot in its canvas shoe.
Chagatayev fell backwards. He noticed that Mohammed’s official briefcase was still hanging around his neck; Nur-Mohammed thought of his whole life as just temporary assignments to distant places, and perhaps the only pleasure he took in his own existence was in being able to leave one place and move to another: let those who were left behind perish by themselves!
Without thinking, Chagatayev got quickly to his feet. Now he felt empty and light, his body had become free, and he swayed like a weightless man. Aidim put her arms around his stomach, to keep him from falling. But Nur-Mohammed grabbed Aidim around her body, and walked away with her. Chagatayev started after them, but fell down, and then stood up again, trying to summon all his strength. His weakness made the whole world swing in front of his eyes: first it was there, then it wasn’t. Nur-Mohammed went on walking away, without hurrying; he was not afraid of a man already half dead.
“Where are you going?” Chagatayev said with all the strength he had.
Aidim was crying in Nur-Mohammed’s arms.
“Keep me here, Nazar Chagatayev… I don’t want to go to Afghanistan, there are bourgeois living there….”
Where had she learned about bourgeois?… Chagatayev did not fall down again, some triumphal force of life came back to him, he raised his revolver in his stiffening arm and ordered Nur-Mohammed to stop. The latter saw the weapon, and started to run. Aidim had noticed a sore on Mohammed’s neck, and she dug her long fingernails into it. Nur-Mohammed cried out in a terrible voice and struck the girl in the face, but there was no way for him to swing his arm, and his blows did not hurt her much. Aidim did not take her hand away from the sore and was swinging now around his neck, and he stopped holding her so that he could manage to hit her harder.
“Look, how it hurts you!” Aidim said. “We told you not to steal, that you mustn’t. But you stole, you bandit! You suffer now, go on and suffer!”
Thick blood began to ooze out of Nur-Mohammed’s sore. By now Aidim had pulled the dry scab completely off the sore.
Nur-Mohammed gave a loud groan, and finally managed to drop the girl. Having glanced at Chagatayev, he picked Aidim up and ran with her again; he didn’t want to have worked for nothing. Chagatayev could not shoot straight at him for fear of killing Aidim whom Mohammed was now holding in front of his chest, so he fired at his legs. The bullet hit him. Nur-Mohammed was lifted off the ground like some strange and useless object, and he fell in a dive with his shoulder toward the sand, and he might well have crippled Aidim. But she managed to jump away as he fell, and she picked herself up and ran to Nazar. Chagatayev wanted to fire again, to destroy Mohammed, but he had too few bullets and he needed to save them, to hunt so he could feed his people.
Nur-Mohammed lay on the sand for a few seconds and then jumped up and ran away, scrambling up the steep slope of a sand dune like a strong and healthy man. He was crying with pain as he ran, because the movement had torn his wound open wider, but he did not hear his own crying. He vanished behind the sand hill and his voice was silenced forever for Chagatayev. Aidim stood there in amazement, looking after Nur-Mohammed. She was wondering if he would die quickly or not.
Then she walked back with Chagatayev.
“Go quickly!” she said. “Lie down on the sand again, before the birds come back, or we’ll have nothing to eat!”
Feeling weaker and weaker, Chagatayev walked back to the place where he had been lying, and fell back on the sand again. Aidim went back to the tribe at its stopping place. The day was still young, but all the people were already lying down, to hoard their lives in sleep, wrapped up in what was left of their clothing.
Chagatayev found himself alone in his sandy pass. He tried to think only about what was absolutely essential to the life of his people and their salvation. The eagle had flown away again, alive and unhappy. If he had killed its mate the first time, then what had he shot the second time? Probably a second mate… No, with birds it doesn’t work like that; this meant it must have been a friend or relative of the first male, perhaps a brother summoned by the female to help in wreaking vengeance. Now that the brother was dead, too, where would the female turn for help? If no other bird could be found now, beyond the horizon or high in the sky, to help in the fight, then the female would come back alone. Chagatayev was convinced of this. From childhood he had known the feelings of wild animals and birds. They cannot cry, to find in tears and in exhaustion of the heart both comfort for themselves and forgiveness of their enemy. Instead they must act, seeking to wear out their suffering in struggle, in the dead body of their enemy or else in their own destruction.