Chapter Fifty-One
I can feel that my work is coming to an end, but not reaching a conclusion. For how can one draw conclusions on a man’s life when perhaps God has not yet drawn his? I look at the piece of paper on which I sketched out ideas as I was just getting down to work, and I see on it the form of a tree which starts from the word “Belgi” and then branches into three parts: “Previous life”, “History of power” and “Life in the IMU”. So apparently I was intending to review the poet’s biography. I gaze at the section on “Previous life”, which is, in turn, provisionally divided into “Symbolic scenes” and “Leading scenes”. Below “Symbolic scenes” there are two little boxes – “Development” and “Uzbekness”, while “Leading scenes” is followed by “Leading to Islam” and “Islam”.
Then these
