The bloody veil
The novel-requiem "The Bloody veil" by well-known Uzbek writer Abdurashid Nurmuradov represents a truthful and bitter study of one of the most dramatic pages in our history – the Afghan war. The reader’s attention is drawn to the frank, reckless, but stirring the conscience of every honest man, stories about the day-to-day of this terrible war, about the afflicted Afghan warriors.
The writer is first and foremost interested in the moral side of the problem: war as a consequence of the unclean political game, war and youth, the war and the failed hopes, war and the hardening of the soul....
The book, intended for a wide range of readers, will not leave among them indifferent.
Translation from Russian by Mirigul Palwaniyazova
©Abdurashid Nurmuradov
© PPCH, 2023
Dear Reader!
The book you hold in your hands was written twenty-seven years ago and translated into many languages
A man is great in his memory. And human memory to some extent shapes public opinion, which makes conclusions from the mistakes made by this society, prepares the basis for the tomorrow to be more desirable.
The author called his work a novel-requiem. Indeed, the work from the beginning to the end is filled with great sorrow. It is felt not only with respect to those who died in the Afghan war, but also with regard to the surviving soldiers, who all their subsequent lives are forced to carry the cross of martyrs for their bloodshed.
War and war participants in different times were written differently. The written narrative of the events of the Afghan war cannot be compared to the works written about the Second World War. Soldiers of the Second World War died without thinking, defending and defending their home, their family. For them, war has become the meaning of life. There was no time for reflection here, for them, death in the name of the Motherland was the only right decision. The soldiers who fought in Afghanistan have a completely different perception of the war.
If in the past man was required to serve the faith and truth of the leading social ideology, today this ideology must serve man. Participants in modern bloody wars with a difficult character, it is impossible to write simply and formally.
The expression, "there are neither great nor small wars, all wars require very great sacrifices, they take human lives", which, along the lines of the entire work of the Bloody Flies, is suffered by the author and, one can say, is pacifist. At the heart of this statement lies the idea that nothing can justify the meaningless death of a person in a war.
In "The bloody veil" thoughts and experiences, repentance and protest, images of the most severe scenes of torture, which were the result of a destructive and unjust war, are raised to the rank of a pathos. Social, racial, biological, mental, psychological and psychological characteristics inherent in a person and considered a special product of social relations are correctly represented on the background of military events. There is no main character in the work, as is seen in traditional wars novels. It contains memories of more than 100 Afghan soldiers in the form of artistic narratives. In each of these memories are reflected the indelible terrible traces of this damned war.
The heroes of the novel are young people who, not by their will and desire, found themselves on the path of war. When they remember the deaths, the murders of innocent people, they lose self-control, and this ignorance alienates them from normal social foundations.
There have already been works in literature that told us about the "lost generation". This topic was also addressed by E. Hemingway and E. М. Remark. Abdurashid Nurmuradov in his work gives the image of representatives of the generation of the 80s of the 20th century, who under the influence of guilt before the dead alienate themselves and from society. Relying on the specific fates of people, the author in an emotional form showed how tragic the fate of the representatives of the military generation is.
In Uzbek literature until today did not reflect the fate of the participants of the Afghan war. Readers who lived near people with an unusual military fate were not familiar with the works of art about them. They were in ignorance of what was happening in fates, for them known and unknown people. The work "The bloody veil" is only so attractive that it fills this empty niche formed in artistic literature. Objectively and emotionally, every element, every feat, every tragic death in this war is reflected. In particular, this is the image of the mother's sorrow for the dead son, the death of the father due to the betrayal of relatives, the unrestricted aspiration to life of Kolya, who has no living place on the body, the suicide of Leonid, left without his legs, the fate of Sergey, Kadir, Ahmad, who die from the bomb explosion. This is a personal unique and psychological state and therefore has the all-absorbing power of empathy.
The image of death scenes in a detailed form serves to show the horror of the war: "Two human heads lay in the dust. Yes, they were lying next door. Per they were sleeping with each other. Their faces were turned up. Her hair burned and shed blood. Around the dust lay a hand cut off from the shoulder, in a word, large pieces of human mash. Everything is covered. The falling intestines resembled snakes. The exploding grenade split the human body into pieces".
In the scenes, which are depicted in the work "The bloody veil", the experiences of people whose souls have completely changed the war are revealed. All the tragedy of the war is in such scenes that they get their high purpose to be alarm-bell, warning what war is. Only a mentally unnatural person can rejoice that he has killed a person. Only war can turn a man into a murderer of unknown people. Only war can make a man who has not been able to give his life to someone else think that he has the right to take another’s life. This is the highest point of the spiritual crisis.
The novel retrospectively depicts the life of former warriors who cannot live a peaceful life, they do not have immunity to injustice, sometimes manifested in interpersonal relationships. Why so? Because the fate has taken away these guys today and tomorrow, leaving them only the memory of yesterday. This generation demonstrates the ability to live not according to the rules of peaceful life, but by the laws of war, not by the logic of everyday life, and by the requirements of special feelings flowing across their borders. This is the state of the soul of most heroes of the work.
The confession of one of the characters in Gafurjan Yuldashev is remarkable: "Later I came to the categorical conclusion that man comes to this world in order to fight and mercilessly kill his like." The point of view that war, as a phenomenon, can lead to spiritual collapse by changing moral orientations is of immense importance. In another place, combatant Bakhtiyar Asimov clearly expresses the dynamics of his spiritual collapse with the words: "I, before that timid enough, turned into a ruthless warrior, ready to crush and kill. My heart turned into a stone. This stone no longer felt pain or pity. The kindness, like a light smoke, disappeared from him. It is said that man is not born into this white light of evil. I understood it myself. Life has made me evil. In the face of death, I was constantly cheering and angry". This side of the war, despite its small appeal, is of great importance from the point of view of social morality.
In the novel prevails not the image of battle scenes, combat clashes, but the drama of human souls, caused by war, since the picture of fates of the heroes of the novel is in the form of a memory. The writer in relation to Afghan warriors uses the concepts "basmach", "bandit" from the lexicon of the Soviet soldier. All this adds to the novel of naturality.
The work is also significant by the fact that it convincingly affirms the idea that all cruelty always causes cruelty. If the Afghan soldiers treated the captured Soviet soldiers very harshly, then the Soviet troops treated their enemies no less cruelty. In the words of the soldier Habibula Assatullayev, the horrifying scenes of the war are depicted: "At night, the soldiers of our squadron caught two bandits. When the young soldiers led them to the commander of the battalion, the "old" turned them back, bound the prisoners and burned them. They burned for about an hour, but did not burn completely. We covered the remains with branches. Yes, the former man in me was not capable of that". The tongue does not turn to comment on such a picture. The novel-requiem of Abdurashid Nurmuradov on the example of the fate of the characters uncover the corrupt sides of the Soviet system.
In realistic tones