by Leonid Solovyov (1906-1962)
The people of Khojent have long been famous for their hospitality.
The Egyptian guest was given the best, richly fertilized soil; the lack of warm days was compensated for by the most meticulous care and attention to every watering, every hilling.
With true Eastern courtesy, the guest thanked his hosts. The best varieties of Egyptian cotton ripen beautifully in Khujand, yielding a harvest no less than that of their native land, the Nile Valley. The state pays twice as much for Egyptian cotton as for American cotton. Million-dollar collective farms have already sprung up near Khujand. The Bolshevik collective farm’s income exceeded one million rubles last year.
Now, convinced of their guest’s exceptional courtesy, the people of Khujand would be delighted to welcome him to tens of thousands of more hectares. But there’s not enough water.
Khujand's fields are irrigated by the Khoja-Bakirgan, a tributary of the Syr Darya, which originates in the glaciers of the Turkestan Range. The Khoja-Bakirgan irrigation network covers approximately 16,000 hectares of cotton, vineyards, and orchards. In its current state, the Khoja-Bakirgan is unable to irrigate this large area.
“Look at my head,” says the foreman, Karim-bai Shamsi (“sunny Karim-bai” in Russian), “I have two scars on my head, and my older brother died two days after one of the fights at the watershed. Just ten years ago, we fought for water every spring. We’ve come back from the fields in the evening, sit down; we’re relaxing and drinking tea, a dutar musician is playing, and we’re listening. Suddenly, a horseman appears, his horse all in a lather. The horseman flies up to the teahouse, rears the horse up on its hind legs, and throws his whip onto the ground, into the dust.
“Nau is stealing our water! Nau is stealing our water!”
The entire teahouse rises at once. People run out of the courtyards—some with hoes, some with oxen. The musician drops his dutar and grabs a log. And we all run up the ditch, toward the watershed. A fight breaks out. Brother against brother, nephew against uncle, a stake to the temple. There's no other way: if you run out of water, you'll die of hunger. Look: I have two scars on my head.
I feel his head, round, shaved to a shine.
“You could have been killed, Karim-bai Shamsi.”
“Of course they could. Didn’t they kill enough people?”
Therefore, there was an ancient custom in Khujand: the guarding of the head of the irrigation ditch was entrusted to the strongest person, who, if necessary, was capable of engaging in hand-to-hand combat and protecting the water.
Fights on the watersheds have long ceased, the peasants have become collective farmers, water is distributed according to a strict plan, at precisely defined times, but according to tradition, the head of the Khojent aryk is still guarded by the strongman Abu Nabi Polvan, famous throughout Fergana, a regular winner of all visiting circus wrestlers.
Now, water disputes are resolved in the hydraulic engineer’s office. Last year, two collective farm chairmen actually got into a fight at the watershed: each of them had their sowing plans disrupted due to water shortages.
Khujand’s future lies in Egyptian cotton, and Khoja Bakirgan has set a strict limit on expanding the cotton crop. Expanding cotton cultivation now would mean drying up the vineyards and orchards. Not expanding cotton cultivation would stunt the economic and cultural growth of Northern Tajikistan.
“What should we do now, Karimbai Shamsi? What should we do?”
“Stalin knows what needs to be done. Soon they’ll start building a new Khodja-Baknrgap.”
***
Together with the hydraulic engineer, we arrived at the border of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, to the site of future battles for socialist Khoja-Bakirgan.
The hydrotechnician unfolded the map and placed it on the ground, weighing down the corners with stones. A wind blew in from below, and our map bulged like a bubble.
“I love nature,” said the hydraulic engineer, “but here on the Khodja-Bakirgan, I can’t enjoy it. The whole landscape is spoiled by this pebble riverbed—it hurts my soul just looking at it. Because of this riverbed, the Khodja-Bakirgan, along a thirty-kilometer stretch from here to Khujand, loses up to sixty percent of its water to filtration, and you see the orchards or cotton fields withering on some collective farm. No, I don't recognize such beauty.”
The hydraulic engineer sat facing the Turkestan Ridge. The wind dropped a stone and noisily twisted the corner of the map. The hydraulic engineer recounted:
In its upper reaches, where the Khodja-Bakirgan River cuts a narrow gorge through the mountain range closest to Khujand, its channel will be blocked by sluice gates at the entrance to the gorge. It will overflow and form a huge reservoir lake in a natural depression. In winter, when there’s no irrigation, all the water that currently flows uselessly into the Syr Darya will accumulate in this reservoir. Thus, by the time irrigation begins in spring, the Khodja-Bakirgan River will have a huge water reserve.
But this is only the beginning. It has been decided not to let the Khoja-Bakirgan flow downstream into the pebbly riverbed, where it loses much water to seepage. In the future, the Khoja-Bakirgan will only irrigate the upper reaches, while the lower reaches, near Khojent itself, will be irrigated by the Syr Darya, raised by the same Khoja-Bakirgan. Three hydroelectric power plants will be built on the Khoja-Bakirgan, below the reservoir. But since there won’t be enough water to power the turbines, it has been decided to compensate for the shortfall by using the force of its fall. A canal will run from the river. It will stretch along the mountainous bank parallel to the riverbed. When the difference in horizons reaches 100 meters, water from the canal will be thrown down from a height of 100 meters onto the turbines, and through them, back into the river. Three power plants will be built one after the other using the same principle. Their energy will rush along wires thirty kilometers away, to the banks of the Syr Darya, to the electric motors of powerful water pumping stations; the pumps will lift the Syr Darya water and irrigate the fields near Khujand.
The foaming Khodja-Bakirgan River, escaping from the turbines of the third and final hydroelectric power station, will be immediately captured in a new, concrete channel and diverted over hills and rocky ridges far away, before being distributed into separate irrigation ditches. The old, pebble-lined channel will serve only as a discharge channel for excess water.
The area irrigated by Khodja-Bakirgan will more than double.
The hydraulic engineer handed me a pair of binoculars. Light smoke from shepherds’ campfires curled over the site of the future power plants. On the golden sandy shallows of Khodja-Bakirgan, gudgeon stood, their fins lazily flapping, their heads all pointed in the same direction. A woman emerged from the yurt, mounted a horse, and galloped away beyond the hills.
“Everyone here is waiting for the preparatory work to begin,” said the hydraulic engineer. “You see, the yurts have already appeared here. I myself wanted to quit this year, but I heard about the work starting and stayed. I want to wait until all the roads in my Khujand lead from garden to garden."
On the way back, we stop at the Bolshevik collective farm. Here, the millionaires, somewhat relieved from the worries of sowing, are discussing the new charter. A gray-haired collective farmer, Dada-bai Sarkaor, makes a proposal:
When Khodja-Bakirgan gives us new water, we need to plant a large garden and gradually move all the houses there.
In a teahouse on the Syr Darya, I meet again Karim-bay Shamsi, the sunny Karim-bay. He is a nobleman of Khojent, and the teahouse owner serves him tea out of turn.
“I was at Khodja-Bakirgan today, Karim-bay Shamsi. I saw the sites where the power plants will be built.”
“I’ve already been there twice,” he replies. “And I wrote a song. Now my whole team sings it:
And the cotton fields are in bloom!’,
And on the slopes the vineyards bloom,
And in Khujand there are white roads,
Because all gardens are in bloom.
You lay dry, earth,
You were barren, earth.
You moaned with thirst, earth,
Stalin thought of you, earth!
He sent engineers to Khujand.
He sent cars to Khujand,
So that happiness blossoms on collective farms,
He I sent my heart to Khujand.
You will receive water, earth,
You will swell with strength, earth,
You drive the shoots, earth,
I will kiss you, earth.
Khodja-Bakirgan...
Khodja-Bakirgan...
Khujand
[1450 words]
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