Chapter Forty-One
I learned from the Japanese geologists’ interpreter, Omurbek, who spent almost two months as a prisoner of the mujahedin, that among the guerrillas in the first Batken war there was a certain taciturn young man whom everyone addressed by the name of Yosir. I haven’t mentioned yet that Yosir, or rather, Belgi, or even more accurately, Belgi Abutov, had been a professional soldier – an officer in the tank forces. At the age of seventeen, having grown up in a rural district, during his work experience training and the time he spent hanging about at the local Machine and Tractor Station, behind which he lived, he had learned to drive all kinds of tractors, from the three-wheeled Belarus to the Vladimirets, with its caterpillar treads. At the army recruitment office they reco
