Chapter Fourteen
In autumn of that year refugees from Uzbekistan flooded into Hoit. As a rule they arrived in families, although the families were not complete, since either a father or a brother or a husband had been arrested by the militia and the remaining family members had fled to Tajikistan in fear of further arrests. Many took the train to Dushanbe, where they got into a taxi, taking their scant belongings with them, and the taxi, hung all over with bundles of various kinds, usually arrived in Hoit in the evening. It was met by people who first of all put it through a kind of quarantine, spending a long time asking where the fugitives had come from, and why they had come here, and only when they were finally convinced for one reason or other that the newcomers were telling the tru
