Late pigeons

BAKHTIYOR SHARIPOV

Late pigeons

(a story)

“NAVRO’Z”

Publishing House

Tashkent – 2018

A story of vivid and sorrowful love

…The pigeons, spinning and dancing around the dome of Bibikhanum Mosque, don’t rest for a second, rolling like acrobats in pairs, one after another, and again they land on the dome. The next pair begin their dance. Their greyish and turquoise feathers, the emerald and sapphire ones on their wings and necks, sparkle in the rays of the sun, blazing the eyes.

But, Otabek, who saw Raykhona here for the first time, where he used to observe the pigeons’ dance with pleasure, not far from the stalls of bread in the bazaar, lost his calmness and his whole body was wrapped up with the fire of love, and he became crazy of her…

Now, “Majnun, who wanders in the lonely deserts, being thirsty, wants to drink, and drink and drink from the spring of Layli’s love…. Majnun consents to any difficulty of being thirsty, but being alone, without Layli, was driving him mad and sorrowful. Majnun desired Layli from the bottom of his heart, and his love was not far from him. His lips were thirsty of love, wanting to get drunk from their meeting. Everything was forgotten, everything was covered with astonishing easiness around, and there were only Layli with Majnun,left alone, in the universe.”

May this story, of vivid and sorrowful love of Bakhtiyor Sharipov, be blessed to all of us!

Yakhyo Togha

A member of Uzbekistan Writers’ Association

ISBN 978-9943-381-98-8

FOREWORD

Abdulla Kodiriy, a tremendous writer once wrote: “Since we entered into a new epoch, we follow the novelties of this new epoch in any direction, and thus we change in writing of stories, novels and epics, we feel the responsibility of introducing modern epoch “Takhirs and Zukhras”, “Chor Darveshs”, “Farkhads and Shirins” and “Bakhromgurs” to our people.”

This story tells about two hearts full of pure love, who struggled to reach their dreams decisively and born after independence of our country. And along with this, we have to mention that there have been a lot of illegal cases, eyewash conditions due to activities of dishonest and self-seeking people, who care for their welfare before those of others in society, being engrossed in gathering wealth with no respect to constitutional rights and human safety, guaranteed by law.

Otabek’s love, his other half, becomes a victim of this sanctimony in the story. Raykhona, with her name resembling her beautiful body, had a lot of dreams and plans in life.

Raykhona was a beauty of Samarkand, the only child of Masturakhon, her mother and Mansurjon, her father, a beloved daughter-in-law of Kimyokhon and Yusufbek, from Tashkent. Exploiting DAMAS as a public transport, a minivan model of car which doesn’t correspond to passenger transportation safety requirements, was the only factor of putting an end to not only Raykhona’s life but to many other innocent people in the late 20 years. This was the result of unlawful situations in the sector, executive negligence, indifference and irresponsibility for their duties.

After having realized that Raykhona, his wife, was the victim of this injustice and feeling responsibility before her soul Otabek decides to fight by himself against this unlawfulness in order prevail justice.