Abdulla Qahhor: “Dahshat”

The story begins on a windy autumn night. The eight wives of the dodxo (a local official of the mingboshi level) Olimbek have gathered in the room of the senior wife Nodirmohbegim. Nodirmohbegim tells a story she heard as a child: a man went at night to stab a grave for a bet of one sheep and died there. The youngest wife, Unsinoy from Ganjiravon, who has lived in this house for five months, whispers that one sheep is not worth such a thing; the dodxo overhears and mocks her. Unsin says she wants not wealth but her freedom – to be released to go home. The dodxo agrees and sends her to the cemetery to boil tea, telling her she is divorced once now and will be fully (three times) divorced when she returns. Unsin overcomes her fear, gathers fuel and boils the tea, loses a shoe, a monkey leaps onto her shoulder, and she returns home and faints. The dodxo thinks she is dying and flees; Nodirmohbegim, who begged him to call Unsin back, has been beaten by him. Unsin dies before noon; as Nodirmohbegim sets out with her body, the servant sent to Ganjiravon is only just coming back. The writer calls the dodxo’s house the “graveyard of the living”.