The paradise apples.
(The story of a former Afghan)

I do not like black. I do not like Afghanistan.
You all remember what Shevarnadze arranged with our army. Per anyone has forgotten, but not us.
Berlin, the drunk EBN director...
Such a disgrace is never forgotten, never washed away. What to say there. We were thrown out in full.

“Served like dogs – breathe up like dogs,” not literally, but it was exactly how the red-red captain in the military command meant to me. "I did not send you there!" was the answer when I turned to the military commander again for... No matter.
I got out.
Friends in Afghanistan, of course, helped survive the devastating 1990s. Our brotherhood is not comparable to the bandit. Yes, and we passed Afghanistan not in the parade, under the sounds of the brave march. Some afterwards, Transnistria and Chechnya were enough.
This shit, the bandits, we have always heard. And they didn’t come to us. They knew who they were dealing with. We were in parallel with them. On the line of fire, as they say, did not cross.

Poor and rise up. Black is used again. The case understandable.
In our republics everything was ruined, they came to us to gasterbatch.
Well, we were already here, at home, smoking over them, not counting people.
They are black and they are black. Let them say thank you for being still alive.
I have always taught my children that they are not people, they are black. The dogs.

Life gradually improved, the grievances smoothed. I decided to take one of them into my country house. In the garden, and in the farm.
People are non-drinkers and executives.

In Russian, neither Belmes, as the name did not ask what the difference to me. Someone on his fingers explained what to do. I took it out of pity. Almost an old man. It is better, I thought, it will die, no one will look for it.
The tomb is arranged. We are not animals, in fact.

I kept strict. He didn’t bite dogs, but sometimes bite them. How without that, so as not to take away the soul, if in the business, what a mess came out.
He has served me for four years. I am accustomed to him. He did his job correctly.

On the New Year, my granddaughter was born. I am alone in Dacia.
The wife went to her mother, sick aunt, age. I decided to do this with a bubble. I do not drink alone. Here is such joy.
I don’t understand, I think, but I’m not alone drinking.

I drank with him. He is silent. He poured out the glasses again, and then again.
It took me a little. The day was difficult. We sit and silence. Rather, I tell him, I share joy, and he is silent and only sneezing.

Suddenly he spoke Russian.
As I heard, I was pierced like lightning, the gift of speech almost lost.
He thought like Gerasim.

“Remember, Volodya,” he tells me, “who dragged you wounded for four days in the mountains of Afghanistan and brought you half alive into the sandstone?” You were with a broken stomach. In the mining field, our group got there. We were on the task. We two then stayed with you, under a mortar fire. Come have gone. A piece of mine stomach you then uncovered. I managed to tie you over then so that the intestines didn’t fall out. It was in Kandahar. My mouth is yours.
Mahmoud is my calling.
Reminded me?
We are in trouble, Volodymyr. Bad people fight for power, the people fight their heads. On the blood of ordinary people, one criminal power replaces another. We are tired of fighting, Volodya. There are no more men in the cages. In fact, there were only those who were able to go to Moscow. But there is no peace here either. You are not a hospitable people.

Why are you holding people for dogs, Volodya? Was this the way we met you when you, the Russians, fled from the Germans in 41 to evacuate to us in Tashkent?
We gave you everything we had. Yes, we lived poorly, but no one ever humiliated you with these words, “black,” and many other offensive words. We all lived in one large and friendly family. Maybe that’s why we won.

I noticed that he barely drank. He spoke, he spoke. Recalled fellow employees, funny stories from the life of our part.
And I remembered. I remembered how lonely I was in the hospital, how Mahmoud came and brought paradise apples.
The paradise, pale pink apples I remembered for the rest of my life. He pulled me out of that world, carried me on his arms, pulled me on himself, and did not give up. Four days.
For four days he carried me under the burning sun, and over the night he warmed my body with his warmth. To save me, with my broken stomach, and to get this from me, this is such a black ungratefulness...

and long. We stayed with him for a long time that night that passed into the morning.
“Why didn’t you admit to me right away, Mahmoud, but I asked him in the morning.
I wanted to look at you from the side. I have never seen you in peace. Several times when you beat me, I had the thought of killing you.
It’s easy for me, you know. But I took that thought away from myself. We are men. To suffer pain and become stronger, this is laid down in every real man by nature.
And then then. (He is silent )
In those four days, I became different. You became my child for me.
How could I kill my child?