«Do you want to live, Rollan?» Kenje asked suddenly.

Puzzled, I looked at her, not comprehending the meaning of these words. Patches of light danced on her pale face, her long lashes were half-lowered and tears flowed from her eyes. «Don’t cry,» I said. «I know that’s inviting misfortune, but I can’t help myself,» she quietly sobbed. «Tomorrow they’re going to explode a bomb! I’m scared!» She could not stop shivering and I wrapped her in a fur coat over the blanket. «Do you think dying is terrifying?» she asked and then replied herself, «Death comes in all forms – difficult and easy… A terrible death awaits me…» «What are you saying? You’ll never die, Kenje,» I objected. «You’re a good person, a very good person,» she touched my hand with her timid fingers. To me she was like a thin Teed which swayed in the merciless wind. Gloom. Darkness. Was it possible that Kenje and I would never be able to escape this dark gloom and that Death stood guard over us, greedily waiting to embrace us? Death… The word flashed like lightning and I shuddered. «Did the wing of death also touch you?» asked Kenje, but I remained silent. I was shivering. Suddenly I began to pray and for the first time I began to repeat the words I had heard grandmother say: «Oh, Great Merciful Allah! Save and protect your son. Don’t let me disappear.» I thought for a minute and then added, «Don’t let anyone disappear, then I’ll believe that you exist! Then I will always pray to you, forty times a day.» Again, I pondered and corrected myself. «Five times a day, oh Merciful Allah. I have faith in you!..»

I had not noticed that Kenje had fallen asleep. I put a saddle under her head and joined the old men who had settled themselves at some distance at another camp-fire and their voices only reached me in snatches while I had been talking to Kenje. I approached their fire, added several dry branches to it and sat down next to my grandfather. The old men were carried away by their discussion and did not take any notice of me. «Somewhere here, in a well, lies the unburied body of Shakarim,» said Arkham and everyone fell silent.

I knew a great number of poems by Shakarim by heart, but my grandfather had forbidden me to recite them. «Learn them, but be silent until it is time,» he instructed me. «When they rehabilitate him, then you will speak. The time will come…»

At that time it did not occur to me that even at the mention of Abai and Shakarim, people were sent to Siberia, to the land where, according to a Kazakh turn of phrase, «they ride on dogs». Just for mentioning their names…

«Our Otegen knows where that well is located. But he will remain silent, after all he is a man of the government,» said Duisekhan.

«As Allah is my witness, how could I know this?» swore Otegen. «I don’t know anything.»

«Perhaps it is true that he doesn’t know anything,» voiced doubt the other old men.

«Indeed, perhaps you, too, don’t know anything. Perhaps you’ve forgotten how he served in the local NKVD and would not part with his ‘cannon’!» said Duisekhan angrily, once again turning to Otegen. «And at that time, I suppose you thought – murder the old man, and that’s the end of it? Oh no, the spirit of the great poet is haunting to this day these ravines at night like the shadow of a snow leopard…»

Otegen, offended, got up, tightened his lips and disappeared into the darkness. The old men broke into smiles. And to this day I fail to understand why they were not afraid to hold such discussions. Or… or did they live in the hope that their old age would serve as an excuse?