After Yura and I were finished with the names and contemporary definitions of the qualities of plants, we got busy with "The Canon." That also proved to be difficult. I won’t tire readers with all the details. I would only like to point out that Eastern medicine considers the curative effect and properties of herbs considering their natural qualities. They are determined by two out of four qualities: dryness or moistness and heat or cold. On top of that, each of the qualities of a plant has different degrees. For example, chamomile is hot in the third degree and dry in the second. Over 800 herbs and minerals were described in "The Canon," and not only their properties but also their impact on different organs. It’s not difficult to imagine how closely it was necessary to read and reread the lines of "The Canon" while seeking out the properties of each of the herbs.
You may call me a queer bird as Yura did when I put the herbs in plastic jars and attached cheerful colorful stickers, as well as a drawing showing each herb. I arranged them alphabetically on the shelves. “What’s so funny about it?” I was indignant. “Look how beautiful they are.”
Though Yura had always liked to make fun of his cousin, he himself took a very active part in it all. Our pharmacy wasn’t just a storage place, and my cousin and I weren’t just keepers of supplies. We were pharmacists. After sorting out the herbs, it was necessary to prepare 150 herb combinations according to Mukhitdin’s prescriptions for his New York patients as soon as possible. We had to buy everything necessary – a centrifuge, an apparatus for grinding dry fruits and seeds, a big mortar, a scale, measuring spoons… It’s hard to enumerate everything.
We got down to business right after the doctor’s departure. We spent all our days off and early mornings on working days in our pharmacy. It was brightly lit by a floor lamp and other portable lamps. On the washer, which served as a table, there were notes and empty little packages in front of me. I would read the relevant note, write a patient’s name on a package, get the necessary herbs off the shelf and hand a jar to my cousin…”Strawflower, corn silk, sage, senna, saffron.”
It was a challenge to find the needed herb fast enough out of 150 of them while keeping in mind the names of the other ones we needed to find after that… Soon, my memory began to learn them, and my hand would reach toward the place where a required jar stood. Yura hardly managed to keep up with me – now he needed to chip pieces off of a fruit with a tweezers, next to grind a combination of herbs in the centrifuge and put it in one of the small packages I had prepared, and, God forbid, not to add a wrong amount. That was what I supervised.
“Less saffron, just one pinch.”
“I know that,” Yura would mumble.
It felt as if we were at a conveyer belt, and we were as tired as factory workers. After making ten combinations of herbs we would be exhausted. We sweated, and there was ringing in our ears from the clatter of the mortar and the centrifuge. Our hands and faces were covered with dust from the herbs. The spicy smell of herbs, at first so pleasant, would fill our throats and lungs, and we would begin to choke. Yura was sneezing so hard from the dust and smells that he had to put on a mask, and that was with the door to the street open! But the patients needed their medications. The patients were sick so we couldn’t afford to rest. We prepared 20 to 25 combinations every day.
Of course, we got tired but the work in our “pharmacy” gave us more and more satisfaction and knowledge every passing day. After all, we consulted "The Canon" and checked the doctor’s notes all the time. The desire to give up everything, to go to school, to become Eastern physicians and to deal only in herbal treatment was growing and growing.
Yura had wanted to become the doctor’s pupil long ago when he, an 18-year-old youth who had inhaled toxic fumes at the Institute's lab, was healed by Mukhitdin.
“I couldn’t make up my mind,” Yura sighed. “Pulse diagnosticians weren't recognized as physicians in the Soviet Union. Besides, I wasn’t ready to drop out of the Institute.”
This time there was no reason not to be ready for it – he had been laid off. They were cutting back staff everywhere, and Yura had lost his job as a computer programmer. He had been trying to find a job without success for a few months. He was gloomy and anxious. One day he came running to me, merry and smiling, his eyes sparkling. “Valera, I’ve signed up for the school of Eastern physicians!”
Just look at him! That was a bold step, a change of fate… I looked at Yura with respect and even envy. “That’s my man!”
“Valera, how about you? Let’s study together.”
That would certainly be good. It would be wonderful, but what about my business with David? It had just begun functioning. It was 2000, and we had been able to afford to buy a new house for our company.
I rushed to David to seek his advice. I told him that I would work at The Summit during the day and take classes in the evening. David threw up his hands.
“Do you want to sit in two chairs? No, you’ll have to leave the company, though I won’t be able to cope with it alone.”
Yura didn’t approve of my intention either. “Have you looked at the curriculum? Just the practical studies are hundreds of hours. No, Valera, you need to choose between them.”
I was plagued by it for a long time, but my sense of responsibility prevailed. How could I abandon my partner and friend? A week or two during the doctor’s visits when Yura and I were busy with him was a different thing. Even then I felt uncomfortable seeing how overburdened David was.
I never entered that school. But I was determined to study on my own. I did not peruse "The Canon" as before. I studied it comprehensively, and I found time for that because I wanted to do it.
…I wake up. It’s still dark outside, but I know without looking at the clock that it’s close to 4:00. I’ve been getting up at that hour for many months. I can see a thick book on the bedside table in the reflection of the electronic clock. It’s "The Canon of Medical Science." I stretch out my hand and run my fingers slowly over its rough cover. This touch helps rid me of my remaining drowsiness. Carefully, so as not to wake Svetlana, I get out of bed, and in half an hour, after washing and dressing, I am sitting with the book in my hands in the recording center. I’ve read somewhere that written materials are remembered better when recorded and listened to. That has helped me a lot. In the morning, I record "The Canon" on a disk, and in the afternoon while I'm driving, I turn on the player and listen. I drive a lot every day, not less than an hour.
I made two dozen disks. I treasured them and made copies – one for Yura who had also begun to study "The Canon," the second one to keep as a reserve in case something happened to the ones we were using. I dreamed of recording all six volumes of "The Canon," and of course people would hear about my recording, the only one in the world. They would call and write requesting a copy… In a word, I had always been a dreamer and I remained one.
…Making myself comfortable on a low chair, I turned on some quiet piano music, picked up a microphone and began to read. “The influence of the Changes in the Quality of the Atmosphere… A hot atmosphere disperses the breath and has a relaxing effect. A moderate degree of heat induces redness by drawing blood to the surface of the body. A great degree of heat results in a yellow color because it breaks down (the components of) the blood which has been drawn to the cutaneous vessels. It also evokes sweating, diminishes the amount of urine, impairs the digestion and induces thirst."
How understandable it was! Even the titles of the chapters evoked my interest: The Mode of Origin of the Fluids of the Body; Agents Causing Obstructions of Channels; The Influence of Perturbations of Mind. The lines, even the words by Ibn Sina sounded like poetry, like music. I wanted to repeat them over and over. I admired the translators who had managed to render the peculiarities of Ibn Sina’s language, to preserve the style of the medieval language.
Those feelings didn’t hit me right away. It happened after many months of study. I was also proud of myself – I had achieved what I desired. I delved into the essence of Eastern Medicine, understood its basic laws. Even though I couldn’t use my knowledge as Yura did, it became something very important for me as a human being. Perhaps any serious knowledge changes something in a person, adding new features, calling forth interest in one’s surroundings and yearnings to learn even more… I hope this is what has happened to me.
Chapter 23. The Second Candle
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
Emily Dickenson
I’ve never been an orthodox believer who adheres to most Jewish religious customs. However, my people have traditions that are dear to me. Before Saturday comes, on Friday evening, Jews light candles to remember the deceased. I’ve been doing it for twelve years to remember my mama. This little candle, this little flickering light lights the bright fire of her nearness to my soul, and something like an encounter occurs. Every time I lit a candle for twelve years I whispered “Mama,” feeling that she was by my side. But on that evening in February, after lighting the first candle, I lit another one. Another flickering light blazed up, and I whispered “Tabib… Mukhitdin”…
Yes, I lit the second candle in memory of my close friend Mukhitdin Inamovich Umarov who wasn’t a Jew, who was an Uzbek, a Muslim.
In this book I have written a lot about Mukhitdin, about how he prolonged Mama’s life, fighting her mortal disease for three years (six years), about my endless gratitude to him, about how we became friends. Now he is gone. I light a candle in his memory, but I still cannot believe it has happened…
Mukhitdin Inamovich’ s heart stopped beating early on the morning of February 12, 2011. It happened in the E. R. of a public hospital where his nephew Abduraim had brought him. Heart massage didn’t help, and they didn’t have a defibrillator at the hospital. It’s hard to count the number of human lives lost to such criminal “technical deficiency” in the healthcare entities of my far-off homeland.
Mukhitdin… What had happened to him? He was such a strong person, both physically and spiritually. He was a brilliant pulse diagnostics physician who could identify diseases and their causes even at very early stages. He was an expert in ancient medieval science. He was a healer… And this person who had prolonged the lives of thousands of people had to die at the age of 64. How could it happen? Why couldn’t he identify his disease and help himself?
I remember how, when we saw each other in Tashkent last May, he repeated merrily, “Even 20 years from now we’ll continue to see each other.” I remember how I congratulated him on his birthday only a week ago… “Tabib, how could it happen?” I whispered looking at the candle.
Yes, it seemed that he was healthy and strong, though Yura and I had been noticing changes in his appearance and state of health over the last five years. We knew – he had told us himself – that he had high blood pressure and was treating himself with herbs and even took pills. “I get tired,” that’s how he explained his indisposition. “I have 100 patients a day, after all.”
“That’s wrong!” Yura and I expressed our indignation. “You should ask your receptionist to make appointments for no more than 50.”
The doctor grinned. “They will come without an appointment. And if they come, I won’t be able to send them home. I have to help people. I have to help sick people.”
I am convinced that these words should be considered Mukhitdin Umarov’s motto, which defined the qualities of his soul and the purpose of his life. His appearance was proof of that. His dark-complexioned face, open and friendly, was always amazingly calm. It seemed he couldn’t get angry. And the gaze of his hazel eyes (evidence of the saying that the eyes are the mirror of the soul) was always kind and radiant.
“I have to help sick people.” Yes, I am sure that only that could explain the doctor’s enormous workload. He, with his fame, had more than enough money. He could have seen four times fewer patients. He taught and treated his students free of charge; he even supported some of them. No, Doctor Umarov didn’t forget his Hippocratic oath, which required “Art, if they want to study it, should be taught free of charge.” Well known was the case where Mukhitdin didn’t demand the money an airline owed him, big money. In a word, he wasn’t a businessman. He was a physician, through and through, a wonderful physician who had profoundly mastered the ancient science of healing.
“I have to help sick people”… As he was saying it while helping people, he ignored his own ailments. He didn’t want and didn’t know how to spare himself. Moreover, I was struck many times by his other feature. He tried hard to protect people from worrying on his account. I remember how once when he was in New York we were riding bumper cars in Luna Park. I was in a car behind him. I miscalculated the distance between our cars and bumped into Mukhitdin’s car. He hit his back against the partition of the seat. After that we walked in the park for a long time. When we returned home, the tabib sat down on the bed and asked me to help him with an exercise. I was holding his legs and he was bending the upper part of his body to the floor and bringing it back up. Only then did he remind me about his old spinal injury, which the impact in the car aggravated. A bump appeared on the spot of the impact. I was terribly upset. Why hadn't he asked me to take him home right away? In response, he only chuckled, “It’s a trifle.” But I understood that he didn’t want me to worry about him, to be upset.
‘Tabib, Tabib,” I whispered, looking at the candle. How much this man had given me, how much good he had put into my soul.
I remember a morning in South Carolina, which we visited together. It was before dawn when we set off for a walk on the beach. We sat down on the sand and watched the intense blue of the sky grow lighter, dark-gray clouds like a mountain range appearing on the horizon, getting lighter and losing their ominous appearance. A sparkle could be seen in their “belly.” It was growing and growing and turned into a fiery arc, and following that, the sun rose from beneath the ocean. It was an unforgettable moment.
Everything came to life as the sun rose. A flock of pelicans was flying over the water, seagulls were dashing about above the ocean’s smooth surface, the fin of a dolphin was cutting the water not far from us. No people were to be seen except the two of us.
And then the doctor (he was sitting next to me, pouring sand from hand to hand) said, as if he had read my thoughts, “Every living thing in nature welcomes the sun, everything but a human being.”
Yes, it was that pure gift in his soul, a harmonious perception of nature, a need for its beauty. It seemed to me that I learned to feel that incomparable beauty on that day, thanks to the tabib.
After we had become friends, we saw each other quite often. Mukhitdin visited New York twice a year for 13 years. Many patients awaited him here, old ones as well as new ones, whom Yura and I would find, and we would make appointments. As I already mentioned, it had been five years, starting in the fall of 2006, since we had noticed that the tabib wasn’t well. That fall, as usual, we met him at the airport. He looked tired, which was understandable – the 15-hour flight, with a connection and jetlag. Anyone would be tired. We put him to bed, but neither rest nor herbs helped. Fatigue and headaches continued day in and day out. Our old friend talked with difficulty and reluctantly, his radiant gaze through his narrowed eyelids grew dim. We only learned much later that his blood pressure had been over 200 after the flight.
Mukhitdin and I had our last heartfelt conversation in New York during that visit. And I am glad that my ability to retain “memory pictures” allows me not only to hear but also to visualize how that friendly conversation, filled with memories, went.
Early in the morning before sunrise I came to the kitchen to brew tea. When the stairs creaked, that was the doctor walking down. Everything had been set up for breakfast in the living room. We didn’t sit down at the dinner table. We sat on the rug at the chess table. The tabib, when he felt at home, preferred that ethnic pose – on the floor with crossed legs and hands on his calves, palms up. I was glad that the doctor had taken on a healthier color and was looking better. As I was pouring tea into tea bowls, he was peeling a pomegranate, and, as with everything he did, he was doing it beautifully. First, he made a round cut in the hard rind of the fruit, then a second one perpendicular to the first. Oval segments of the rind became separated from the fruit one after another. Then the naked pomegranate was divided into four parts without losing a single glowing aril. When finished with the pomegranate he switched to tea and drank it with pleasure, one tea bowl after another. At the same time he was looking at the chess table covered in granite mosaic. He liked the table (Daniel’s recent work).
"It’s beautiful except the corners are too sharp. Someone could get scratched. Here, give me a handsaw and a file." (Mukhitdin meant an injury not just a scratch. He told us about injuries he had witnessed).
He put a newspaper on the rug and began to adjust the corners. I was alarmed for the doctor wasn’t well, but it was useless to argue with him. No matter how hard I tried to convince him that I could do it myself, he only grinned.
We began to talk about my son’s future profession. Svetlana and I dreamed that he would become a physician specializing in pulse diagnostics like Mukhitdin. But Daniel, though he took lessons with doctor Maria Yakobova, was attracted to mathematics and physics. However, none of Mukhitdin’s five daughters followed in their father’s footsteps. When I asked him why, he shrugged his shoulders.
"Don’t forget that I studied for 15 years. What young woman would endure that? The main thing for them is a family, not a profession." He sighed and lifted his empty tea bowl, signaling for more tea.
The conversation about our families brought back memories. I must admit that I always wanted to know how his friendly feelings toward our family, toward Mama and me, had arisen. We could have remained just a couple of his numerous patients. And I asked him whether he remembered how we had met. It turned out that he remembered, and in great detail.
"One glance was enough for me to feel respect and sympathy for your mother. She was so reserved and quiet, so dignified and patient. I wrote in my diary, 'This woman has suffered a lot.'”
“I wrote in my diary”… We had been friends for many years. Every time we got together, I learned something new about him… like now about his diary.
"Tabib, I was astonished how Mama had a deep feeling of trust in you… right away. She… we were both so desperate. The doctors insisted on chemo and radiation. They predicted her rapid demise…" I remembered those horrible days and my voice trembled.
"Do you think I wasn’t afraid after I felt your mama’s pulse?" The doctor nodded. "But I couldn’t let her see it."
I was well acquainted with the tabib’s principle. I knew that he considered the custom adopted by contemporary physicians of informing patients about their diagnosis and prognosis to be stupid and dangerous. He didn’t use too many words with patients. He didn’t use such words as cancer, tumor, or cirrhosis. He simply explained that one’s stomach should be treated or that the rear wall of the heart should be strengthened. I remember once when Mama asked him, “How is my oncology?” “Oncology? What is that?” The doctor was surprised. “I only know that I am going to treat your liver.”
A good physician has to be a good psychologist. I understood it when Mama and I visited Namangan the second time. He was holding Mama’s hand by the wrist, yet I also felt the warm touch of his fingers. Then his long fingers began to move slowly and smoothly, now pressing on an artery, now letting it go. Mukhitdin smiled, nodding slightly. Then he tapped the table with his fingers and said, "Ptui, ptui."
Both Mama and I felt relieved. It had been three months since she had begun drinking herbal brews prescribed by the doctor. She felt somewhat better. Did it mean she was on the path to recovery?
The doctor’s face, his smile confirmed our hope. And she needed that hope, for without it she wouldn’t be able to cope with the disease. Hope brought to life the forces of her organism that couldn’t be awakened even by the strongest drugs.
The doctor didn’t conceal the state of Mama’s health from me. Just as it would be impossible to stop a heavily loaded dump truck with no brakes rushing downhill, it was impossible to stop the destructive force of a difficult disease of many years in a woman who was no longer young. To slow down its effect, to make her feel better was what Mukhitdin tried to achieve. The herbs helped, along with Mama’s confidence in Mukhitdin’s power. I will never forget the expression on her face when Mukhitdin said “ptui-ptui,” his smile, his sparkling eyes. Mama’s shoulders straightened up as if a load had been taken off them.
Our friendship with the tabib sprang from that belief and admiration for him. Our attitude, which obviously went beyond the limits of the usual gratitude, didn’t leave him indifferent either.
That conversation at the chess table turned out to be our last one in New York. Mukhitdin didn't feel up to trans-Atlantic travel anymore, but he did travel to Moscow twice a year, in the fall and spring. Svetlana and I naturally went there a few times to see our friends and also to seek his medical advice. I remember how glad we were during our first reunion there after we saw that the tabib had regained a healthy color and was even cheerful. We got together at Galina Feodorovna Solilova’s house. The doctor had cured her daughter Olga of leukemia many years before. That disease was so dangerous that doctors had feared for Olga’s life and forbade her to have a baby. But after the tabib cured her, Olga gave birth to a healthy baby girl. There is no need to explain what Galina Feodorovna’s family’s attitude toward Mukhitdin was.
When he visited Moscow, he always stayed with his friends. We were usually invited for dinner. There were other guests too. I remember meeting Mukhitdin’s friend and colleague Pyotr, with whom he had worked at the Institute of Physics and Geochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He was the only person I knew who addressed the doctor by his first name. He exclaimed now and then, “Do you remember, Mukhitdin?” And the doctor, usually a man of few words, would join in the conversation.
“Do you remember the man whose life you saved who filed a complaint against you?”
“Yes, I do… I saw a man lying on the platform, people crowded around him… I naturally approached him and felt his pulse. It was clear that he was close to a heart attack. I began to massage his heart… At that moment, an ambulance arrived. I gave my business card to the medics and left. That man called three days later and said that I had injured two of his ribs…” “But he forgot to say thank you for saving his life. What a strange man!”
We laughed. Then they remembered another case, a sad one. A colleague of Pyotr and Mukhitdin decided to have a mole that was irritating him removed from his arm. Mukhitdin tried to talk him out of it, explaining that it was dangerous. The poor man resisted. He died during the surgery – they failed to stop internal bleeding.
Doctor Umarov saw patients in Galina Feodorovna’s small bedroom. I was there as a patient. I saw a list of patients and found my name under number 257.
It seemed to me that he treated us like relatives, always asking about our kids. He even remembered their nicknames – Polvan and Chimchukcha. He was glad to tell us about his grandchildren whom he was proud of. “My grandson, the son of my eldest daughter, won the German language competition so I gave him a present, as I had promised.” The tabib considered the knowledge of foreign languages very important for both cultural and business purposes. He had promised to give a car to whichever of his grandsons could master 3,000 foreign words. And he did… not bad to have a grandfather like him.
We met Mukhitdin Inamovich in Moscow for four years. When everything is all right in one’s life, it seems that it will be that way forever. Troubles arrive unexpectedly. Once, in the winter of 2010, we learned the terrible news from Galina Feodorovna that the tabib’s daughter Dilfusa had been killed in a car accident on Christmas night. She was the eldest of his five daughters, the most beloved, a talented, brilliant person.
Is there anything worse than the grief of losing a child? We suffered, imagining how devastated this person who so close and dear to us was. We were so used to his constant help. And now he needed it himself.
So, after a seven-year break we went back to Uzbekistan. A long line of patients, about 30 people, could be seen at the door of the one-story building of the Railroad Workers Hospital where Mukhitdin’s Tashkent Center was located. There were many women in ethnic silk dresses with long jet-black hair.
On entering the reception area, I saw Mukhitdin at his desk at the back of the office behind a loosely closed curtain, and my heart skipped a beat. The doctor, as always, wore a starched snow-white shirt, his face thoroughly shaven, but what a thin exhausted face it was, and how much gray hair he had.
A woman’s sniffling could be heard from his office. The doctor calmed her down, “Your disease is at the very beginning. We’ll overcome it.” He was calming her down, but how unusually weak his voice was.
That was out last encounter. I will never forget it. I won’t forget our last parting. I hugged the doctor, feeling the warmth of his body. Clinging to him with particular tenderness, I whispered, ”Take good care of yourself.” He patted me on the back…
Yes, our last encounter was sad, as was our visit to Uzbekistan. But during that visit, as in the ones before, there were moments when I rejoiced with all my heart at my encounter with my homeland. It was May, the most beautiful time in Uzbekistan. The greenery of the city, the blossoms and fragrance of its orchards, the outdoor markets piled with vegetables and first fruits. As I went out onto the balcony, I watched the sun rise from behind the peaks of the Tian Shan, covered in snow. What a sight! And again, I remembered Mukhitdin’s words: “Every living thing in nature welcomes the sunrise.” There were swallows and swifts flitting around, crisscrossing the sky. The voices of children could be heard from the yard. Birds were catching insects, children frolicking together at the gate of the kindergarten, and they all seemed to welcome the sunrise…
The sunrise, the birds and the children were forming a beautiful picture of being. This state of bliss gripped me for a few moments, but then my heart sank from the pain again – Mukhitdin… Would he be able to bear that enormous spiritual and physical strain after such a blow? His pupils, hundreds of patients, his enormous work as an herbalist, a researcher, regular trips (once every two weeks) from the Tashkent Center to Namangan…
And then I remembered Mikhail Blay, my mama’s old doctor. Once I found him very ill at his office – he had a weak heart. I asked him why he wasn’t at home. “And who will take care of my patients?” The doctor answered in surprise.
Yes, there is a noble breed of people with special souls, not many of them. They are the best of what mankind has created. They need “to cool one pain" from someone’s life. Otherwise they cannot live.
That’s how the tabib lived, until his heart stopped beating.
In the book about Eastern Medicine and about Mukhitdin Umarov’s place in it, his pupils ranked him on a par with Hippocrates, Galen, and other great physicians. I often remember that when I light a Sabbath candle dedicated to Tabib Mukhitdin Inamovich Umarov. I am proud that this wonderful man was my friend.
The End.
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