1931.11 В Шерганских Песках - In the Fergana Sands

 

1931.11 В Шерганских Песках - In the Fergana Sands

by Leonid Solovyov (1906-1962)

In Khodji-Yagon. — Khodji-Yagon — about Kalinin. — Sand fortification. — They cut down the tugai. — Sands —Scourge of agricultural farmland.

A plain white with salt marsh. Here and there it rises up in clumsy, stumpy ridges. Round, dense bushes of yantak and kara-barak are scattered across the plain like enormous gray mushrooms.

A road winds through the salt marsh in an intricate pattern. The arbakeshi (mountain horse roads) are laid it out in winter, when the steppe floods, and, choosing drier spots, they wove the road into intricate loops and patterns.

They drove about 10 miles from Melnikovo station. The Darya River glimmered ahead. Not a single village, not a single person...

Only the gloomy dunes loomed like yellow hills, dimly outlined against the gray sky.

Three miles away, on the steep bank of the Darya, the village of Khodji-Yagon was visible.

The village had only recently recovered from famine and the Basmachi revolt. Now, little by little, it was getting back on its feet. "They were worse than beggars," says Baygut (Uzbek), " and now they've brought in camels and horses again..."

They seat us on brown felt mats with white stripes and begin questioning us. Soon the memankhana becomes completely crowded: the entire village comes running here.

"Is it true that Kalinin came to us?"

"It's true."

"They say he's simple, he accepts everyone's petitions himself..."

"He accepts them," I reply.

"With his own hand?"

"With his own hand."

Baygut is speechless for a moment, amazed, and then slaps himself:

"That's what he's like." And before, you couldn't even submit petitions to the bailiffs themselves. You had to go through a Cossack, but the Cossack demands 'silau.'" A Cossack is called "silau," a police officer is called "silau," a police officer's marja is called "silau"...

They ask about Kalinin. Whose son is he... How old is he... Where did he live... What did he do before, what is he like...

I take out a newspaper with Kalinin's portrait and give it to them.

The newspaper passes over dozens of tanned hands.

“So that's what he's like... Lenin's right hand...”

* * *

A cruel enemy is advancing on this area—the sands.

God's punishment, the residents say. - We're still okay, but Andarkhan, Potar, Yanka-Tirak, Kana-Yanga are perishing. It's a little better now, though. They're securing the sands. Over there, on Sary-Kamysh Island, Urtak Belyaev lives; thank him, he's saving us little by little. He's the commander of the sands here. The headquarters of the sand-protection district. European-style houses firmly planted in the ground, a pile of stacked yantak, prepared to protect the land from the sand.

Two newly renovated houses. A bathhouse, storage rooms. Everything is whitewashed and cheerfully gleams with new window glass.

A brilliant crimson-yellow moon lazily emerges from behind the dunes. A fresh breeze blows from the Darya River. High in the dark sky, geese fly past, cackling.

A soft knock comes from the tight place and is drowned in the dense evening darkness.

“They're cutting down the tugai again,” says Belyaev, head of the sand protection department. “Nothing can be done; the farmers are cutting down the tugai, and the result is bare, unprotected sand.”

“Catch them.’

“We’re catching them. But is that really helping? We need to explain that the tugai is the main defense against the sand. They say the sand is Allah’s punishment, and so there's no point in defending ourselves.”

In the morning, we set off for the sand stabilization work. The enormous ruins are covered in a thin crust of ice. The horses are stuck in the liquid, sticky salt marsh. A fine dust of sand hits our eyes. The distance has turned a dim white.

“It’s from the sand,” says my companion.

The sky is thick with damp, dark clouds, their edges piling up on top of each other. A tiny spot in the sky, just beneath the sun, is barely visible.

“We’re working in Potara now,” says Belyaev, “we’ll go first to the sands, and then to the village.”

We soon enter the sands. We come across several sheltered dunes.

“Our work from last year,” Belyaev says proudly.

The reed barriers on the dunes stand firmly erect, not leaning at all, holding back the mighty onslaught of sand and wind.

And nearby, as if by way of contrast, are the dunes protected by the railway: sparse, weak, timidly and hastily erected protections, leaning to one side and gradually being covered by sand advancing onto the rails.

The village of Potar is surrounded by mighty, enormous dunes reaching 10-15 fathoms in height. People crawl across the dunes like bugs, digging in reed shields.

“Our task,” says Belyaev, “is not only to strengthen the sands, but also to plant a forest in their place.”

We’re going to watch the dunes bury the fertile soil. A colossal dune has already entered the jutar field with its horns. Its roots stick out sadly from the sand.

"The work is colossal. We need the full support of the authorities, otherwise the farmers in the surrounding villages will lose their land entirely. We have limited resources."

— And how do the population feel about the sands?

“Everything is Allah. Now, however, some villages are defending themselves. Interesting phenomena are occurring. For example, the leeward boundary of the sands in the Yakka-Terek village lies above the lands of Andarkhan. The dunes are overgrown. The Yakka-Terek people are using the vegetation for fuel, and for Andarkhan, this threatens the destruction of their lands. As soon as the dunes become exposed, they will immediately move and bury the lands of Andarkhan.

This is the source of centuries-old feuds. There have been fights. Complaints are filed constantly. Sometimes Andarkhan against Yakka-Terek, sometimes Yakka-Terek against Andarkhan.

We’re heading to Potar. The so-called ash pillars catch our eye. These are pillars, sometimes up to a fathom high, formed by soil weathering. The weathered soil formed dunes.

We spend the night in Potara, a small village. In the evening, we chatter, mostly about sand. Sand in this area is the bane of agriculture.

[1000 words]

[Keywords: Syr Darya, memankhana – a guest house. Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin was a prominent Bolshevik leader and the formal head of state of Soviet Russia and later the USSR from 1919 to 1946.

1931.08 В камышах - In the Reeds

 

1931.08 В камышах - In the Reeds

(Fergana Region)

by Leonid Solovyov (1906-1962)

The reeds stretch for tens of miles. Among the reeds, scattered in sparse patches, like enormous, frost-whitened mirrors, are swamps, lakes, and streams.

We move cautiously, feeling our way with our poles. The one in front is tied down with ropes, just in case.

A small clearing appears. In the middle is an artificial hill, and on it, like a reed cap, is a hut.

"Nema-kiryak?" comes from the hut, and through the low opening, lazily, on its belly, crawls the occupant of this dwelling.

"Ah! Salamat! Come here."

The owner of the hut is a small, red-bearded Uzbek. He lives here, in the wilderness, alone, and catches fish with snare traps and ducks with snares.

"I catch some and then go back to the village, and the villagers sell them in the city."

"How much do you earn a month?"

"About 20 rubles."

Half an hour later, we see this reed dweller struggling to survive.

Undressed, he begins to wade through the icy water, covered with a thin film. For half an hour, he watches for fish in snare traps and ducks in snares.

Walking in the water, he shouts to us:

"Make the fire hotter! I'm going to warm myself..."

His legs are wounded by ice and reeds. Blood oozes from his wounds in a thin stream, mixed with drops of water.

He cauterizes the wounds with ash. The bleeding won't stop. I give him iodine.

“Here, light it.”

“What is this?” he asks.

"Don't be afraid. It will hurt at first, but it won't hurt afterwards."

He cauterizes, winces, but then, seeing that the blood has subsided, he is surprised:

"How fast! Life is easy for you Urus. You have everything. You're not afraid of disease or anything. But we, the peasants..."

In the evening the fisherman is in the water again.

Afterwards he timidly asks, pointing to the bottle with iodine:

“Master, could you give me some?”

I give it to him. He's as happy as a child. He wants to dilute it with water so there's more...

It's getting chilly. Evening freezes the water. The water rings distinctly. A bloody, molten sunset falls quietly into the reeds.

"My father was a fisherman, too. And I'm a fisherman. It's hard, but what can you do?"

At night the owner coughs dully and lingeringly, whispering in between:

“Allah... Allah...”

The cough drowns out dully in the dense darkness.

In the morning, before dawn had even broken, the fisherman was already in the water again.

A cloudy steam rises from the water, enveloping the tops of the reeds in whitish stripes.

There was a frost last night. There was frost all around.

At sunrise we leave the hut along an inconspicuous path, known only to one inhabitant of the reeds.

 

[500 words]

1931.05 Khoja-Bakirgan

 

1931.05 Khoja-Bakirgan

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]