Selected Poetry / Избранное (англ.). Gabdullah Tukai
handed the teacher two whole loaves of bread and one or two small coins, after which both of them and all of us, students, prayed for a long time.
When my mother went away, leaving me at the school, I, along with the girls, began to read in a loud voice without a moment’s hesitation: «Elep, pi, ti, si, zhomykyi.»
After a few days of reciting «elep, pi, ti, si», I was given the «Fundamentals of Faith».
The syllables and verses of this book kept me busy the whole winter. That winter, I circled around these short «Fundamentals of Faith» and didn’t progress any further. Right after the «Fundamentals of Faith», I heard these naughty verses from some mischievous girls when abystai was not at home: «Kalimaten tayibaten, our mistress is rich, money she’s got a lot, and her nose is full of sn…»
Since anything you hear or see for the first time already constitutes knowledge, I memorized this ditty at once, naturally, and liked to amuse with it those boys who were less «enlightened» than me.
My first winter in Kyrlai was gone. Spring arrived and the snow began to melt. The fields and meadows around the village looked black once they had freed themselves of the snow.
A little later came the Sabantui festival10. On the day of the holiday I was awakened very early and given a small bag, slightly larger than a pouch.
I went around the village, carrying this bag. Village folk always rise early, but today on the occasion of the Sabantui everyone got up particularly early. Kind words were spoken in every home, and there was a smile on every face.
Whatever house I went into, I was given not only sweets and a couple of honey-cakes, like the other boys, but each owner gave me – an orphan and the son of a mullah – several colored eggs.
That’s why my bag quickly filled with colored eggs, and I had to return home. I think the rest of the kids were still out collecting their treats.
My father and mother were surprised and delighted that my bag was filled so quickly.
I don’t remember whether I drank tea that day or not. I gave the bag to my mother and taking with me a few eggs, I ran outside.
When I ran out into the street the sun was already high up in the sky and the entire village was bathed in golden sunlight. The village lads and girls, perhaps pulling on their white stockings more smoothly and wrapping their puttees around their feet more diligently under their bast shoes, were already out on the street.
From the opposite end, the head of the Sabantui with a flag in his hands (a stick with cloth tied to it) went from house to house collecting headscarves, cotton cloth and other similar items. We, barefoot boys, ran after him, not lagging behind.
After the scarves and fabrics were collected, all the local folk – women, girls and kids – gathered on the meadow. A wrestling and racing competition followed. There were dozens of carts with nuts, sunflower seeds and gingerbread, white with red stripes, standing across the meadow.
Of all those things, the favorite gift a girl could get from a lad was, of course, the white gingerbread with red stripes, because there’s even a song about this gingerbread:
An eagle landed on the meadow
He’ll scare away the geese.
A striped white gingerbread from a fellow
For the girl would never go amiss.
There were also horse races and races in sacks. The headscarves were given away and the Sabantui festivities came to an end.
I can’t recall now how many days that holiday lasted. I only described one. Even if it lasted three or four days it seemed like one day to me.
I also have to add that I couldn’t run around and play that summer like I did the one before, because right before the beginning of spring a boy was born in uncle Sagdi’s family, and when mother was at work I always had to babysit the infant.
Yet another harvest season was here. The previous summer, when the whole village was at work, I played with the kids without a care in the world, but now they made me go out into the field with them to ride Sadri in the carriage (the baby’s full name was Sadretdin). This explains why I spent this entire summer doing strenuous chores – and for someone who loved playing as much as I did this was a true ordeal.
After the birth of this child, my adopted father continued to be affectionate with me, but my mom seldom spoke to me now except when she instructed me do some chores or work. This was how I lost the little love that has fallen to my lot.
And as if that wasn’t enough, the lame one caressed Sadri all the time, repeating deliberately to upset me: «My own brother! My real brother!»
Autumn arrived. When I finished my usual work on the potato harvest, I was sent to a madrassah (not the one I attended together with the girls at the abystai’s house). After I learned the lines and verses of the «Haftiak» very fast in school, I turned to the ayats of «Badavam» and «Kisekbash». And since I coped with this assignment quickly as well and I sat around for a long time doing nothing, they began to ask me to tutor boys who had fallen behind.
One of these boys was the son of a rich man from our village, and he invited me to his house sometimes as his tutor for some tea and cake with spelt flour.
On the one hand, I was a good student, on the other hand, I wasn’t so bad with house chores either. In the morning I opened the valve of the stove and I shut it later; I made bundles of straw to get the fire going; I took the cow out to join the herd and went out to meet her in the evening. I was quite good at all these things.
My father and I would sometimes go to the bazaar in Etna during the summer. I watched the horses while he made the rounds of the marketplace on his business.
The esteemed Fatkherakhman, our village mullah, was probably my late father’s friend or studied at the madrassah with him, I don’t know the real story, but for some reason he would give me five kopecks every week.
I spent the money buying white bread at the bazaar in Etna and would eat the bread along our return trip home.
As I sat behind him on the wagon, eating the bread, my father would turn to me occasionally and say: «Leave some of your bread for mother!» «All right», – I said. But even though I pinched off and ate it in tiny pieces, I can’t remember it there was anything left to give to my mother.
Since the Kyrlai village was the place where I opened my eyes to the world, I felt I had to dwell on these memories a little longer.
That is why I will write several paragraphs about the changes, which took place there and about some other things preserved in my memory, and I will then leave Kyrlai.
Sazhida apa suffered from tuberculosis for a very long time. She was in such a bad way that father had to carry her on his back to the bathhouse or wherever else she needed to go. In the end she died. My father was also struck by a sudden disease one evening, after returning from another village, while he unharnessed his horse. There were different speculations about the nature of his illness, such as: «He was struck by the horse devil», «hit by a falling star» and the like.
My father didn’t stop working despite his illness, but he became lame in one leg.
One autumn day, after dinner, my father and mother were in the barn, and I sat by the side window reading the «Message to Hafiza», when a cart pulled up by our gate. The stranger tethered his horse, entered the house and asked me: «Where are your father and mother?»
«At the barn», – I answered. The man said then: «Go fetch them then.» So I ran to the threshing floor and said: «There’s a man at the house and he wants to see you.» My father and mother immediately came home.
Soon after, father and mother walked inside the door and greeted the stranger.
They prepared tea. This time, with a guest being present, they poured me some tea, too, and they even placed a piece of sugar in front of me, which they didn’t normally do.
When my father asked: «What business
Sabantui literally means ««The Plough Festival»», since the time immemorial it is being celebrated in early summer. Sabantui has been included into the UNESCO Immaterial Heritage list.