Drama of the independence period

Erkin A’zam (b. 1950) called “Tanho qayiq” a “dramatic legend about Grandfather Orol”; the events take place in a deserted village on the shore of the dried-up Aral Sea, where the one who stayed, Grandfather Orol, builds boats and, with his apprentices Amet, Jumaboy, Tilovbergan and Genjamurod, believes that the Aral will fill with water again. His son Qalimbet and daughter Gulxadicha live in the city: Qalimbet offers his father a house and a pilgrimage trip in another person’s place, which the father rejects; Gulxadicha, because of her candidacy for deputy, has her father taken to the city by force with a doctor’s involvement, but the old man escapes and returns. Amet had left the village under his father’s pressure, but at his idea the apprentices scattered the village’s glass toward the Aral so that it gleamed like water; the grandfather, seeing the Aral as if full of water, dies of joy, Amet comes back and puts the old man’s cap on his head. At the end the apprentices carry the boat-coffin, and Grandfather Orol’s voice says, “While you exist, the Aral does not die.”