On a fine autumn day, a writer goes out to prune his vines. In his mind, an anxious chatter of thought: “These were vicious, unpredictable times… his friends were being snatched away: it was like a field being weeded.” Stooping to tend his vineyard, he finds a bunch of grapes hidden beneath a leaf: “bright-red berries, as tiny as dewdrops, so that they looked more like a pretty toy than fruit”. For some time he has been “nurturing the idea for a book: the story of a beautiful slave-girl who became the wife of three khans”. Now, with the discovery of the hidden grapes comes a sudden clarity: “He knew how to begin his book.” It will be his best yet, he promises himself. A task for the cold months of winter.
But there would be no book – or not in the form that its original author envisaged. On 31 December 1937, as the Uzbek writer Abdulla Qodiriy was preparing to celebrate the New Year with his family, the NKVD (Communist secret police) broke into his home, ransacked his possessions and took him to prison, where he was repeatedly interrogated and beaten.
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