Said Ahmad’s “Qorako‘z majnun”

According to the textbook, Said Ahmad (Husankhojayev) was born in 1920 in the Samarkand Darvoza quarter of Tashkent and died in 2007. He worked at the magazine “Mushtum”, the radio committee, “Qizil O‘zbekiston” and “Sharq yulduzi”; his first story collection “Tortiq” came out in 1940. He wrote the novellas “Qadrdon dalalar” and “Hukm”, the “Ufq” trilogy, the novel “Jimjitlik” and the play “Kelinlar qo‘zg‘oloni”; during the repressions he was accused and held in a camp, and from this time came his “camp cycle” of stories. The story “Qorako‘z majnun” (1999): Saodat aya is a widowed mother nearly eighty years old. Her eldest son Bo‘rixon went to the army, married in a far land and stayed; for fifteen years there has been no letter at all. The mother’s only companion is a small dog with black eyes, Qorako‘z; her daughter Qumri is unlucky, married twice and returned home. When her grandson Anvar finds his uncle and says he has forgotten Uzbek, the mother is broken in spirit. Later Bo‘rixon comes home: he seems another person, does not know his own language and speaks Russian to the mother’s relatives. When she learns he has taken another faith, she turns away from him, burns his childhood clothes, and the son leaves. Soon the mother dies, after first calling her children and grandchildren and giving her last will. Qorako‘z hears the mother’s voice from a tape recorder and barks without stopping, and one of the neighbours, annoyed at being woken, shoots him.