Chapter Fifty-Nine
When I had almost completed this attempt at the biography of a poet and was already seeking a publisher for the work. I started giving public readings of it to gatherings of my friends in Tashkent and, more often, to groups of specialists on Islam in Moscow since, naturally, I realised that I could not publish this book in Tashkent. Then one day I received a strange e-mail message, inviting me to the chaikhana, or teahouse, in the Samarkand Darbaze district, including meticulously specific instructions on the time and manner of the meeting. My first thought was that it was from the special services, especially since, following the explosions in Tashkent in March, everyone was expecting renewed persecution of Muslims, and the special services had been put on alert. Apart
