Читать книгу: «Allamjonov's fault», страница 2

I learnt to write my pieces out of sight of prying eyes, particularly those of the director. I’d beg for permission to use the camera, then edit everything under cover of night… But I ended up producing some good stuff that was deemed fit to be shown on television. For example, I did one short piece about the «Qutqaruv-050» rescue team that even Furkat Zakirov couldn't find it in his heart to criticise. He even ended up putting it in the show's lineup.

I then did a piece on Uzbekistan's Emergencies Ministry4. It went down well enough that I decided to go to the ministry's office and show them the clip in person.

You might call it being in the right place at the right time. I was walking along the street towards the Emergencies Ministry building when, at that very moment, the head of the press service, Capt. Begmatov, just so happened to be sitting in the office of the newly-appointed minister, Botir Parpiyev, getting an earful from the general about how the information service wasn't working. It wasn’t attracting people, wasn’t creating news, wasn’t getting any TV airtime. Capt. Begmatov cut a forlorn figure as he sat there wiping his neck with a tissue, at a loss as to what to do next. The minister was right.

Just as he was leaving the office, I popped into the Emergencies Ministry building and asked if I could visit the information service. Well, you wouldn't believe how pleased the captain was to see me!

«You know what, that's exactly the sort of thing we need!» he lauded after watching the piece. Then he looked me critically up and down and said: «Tomorrow dress yourself properly, in a shirt and trousers (I was wearing shorts at the time), and come back to see the minister».

The following day, I was already standing in front of the Emergencies Ministry's doors fifteen minutes before the official start of the working day. I entered the minister's office. A uniformed Botir Rahmatovich was sitting at his desk reading something. He was a huge, veritable mountain of a man. He looked up at me.

«As-Salaam-Alaikum» – I said faintly, stepping hesitantly towards his desk. Furkat Zakirov had taught me that people weren't obliged to respond when I greeted them. But something incredible happened. The minister got up from his desk and stepped to one side, offering me his hand.

«Wa-Alaikum-Salaam. How are you?» he said, pointing to a chair as if inviting me to take a seat.

I'd forgotten why I was even there. In that moment, I was in complete shock. A fully-fledged minister had stood to greet me, a nameless student. It was probably then and there that I developed my soft spot for that man, one that endures to this very day, along with an immense sense of gratitude.

Botir Rahmatovich watched my material and really liked it.

«Well done. Now grab a pen and paper and start taking notes». This man's tie is crooked, this one's uniform cap needs straightening…and here, you shouldn't be coming in from this side, but from over here…»

I was sitting there, writing, becoming more and more depressed as he went on. A video report isn't like a newspaper article, you can't edit it in five minutes. If I want to straighten someone's crooked tie, I have to shoot the entire thing again. And back then they weren't just handing out cameras to anyone down at NTRK. There was a schedule, and journalists had to wait their turn for whatever equipment. You would take what you needed, sign it out, and only then could you go and shoot: there were strict procedures. After all that, you would then have to edit and render it.

«Did you write all that down? Have it done by tomorrow».

I don't know how I managed it, but I did. I stayed up all night and then took it to him the following morning.

«Well done. There's just this little bit here we forgot to fix yesterday, just add this there. You'll show it tonight».

The deadline was even shorter. That was the first time I had ever gone the extra mile, and it certainly paid dividends. I did everything Parpiyev asked and showed it that very evening.

«Perfect» – said the minister. «You can air it».

«Botir Rahmatovich, sir» – I almost burst out laughing. «I'm a total nobody down at the TV station, even the director doesn't deign to speak to me, much less the NTRK president. In fact, I never even see him. And only he can sign off on a story for broadcast».

«You what?» exclaimed the minister with genuine surprise. «Well, that's no problem…» He picked up the telephone and called Kuchimov5. «My dear Abusaid, thank you for your valuable help. You've got such talented guys working for you, they've made a wonderful programme».

When I arrived back at work, my second railing from Furkat Zakirov was waiting for me. As I approached him, I could see he was incensed. This time he screamed so loud that all of Tashkent could hear him. About how I'd gone over his head, hadn't asked for permission, had taken a camera out of turn. How I was a jumped-up nobody, a clueless amateur, an idiot, a fool. How I'd better not dare «put pressure on him from above» again.

From that moment on, I was between the devil and the deep blue sea. On the one hand, I needed to make the pieces that the Emergencies Ministry was requesting, but then every time I did, I had to listen to the director's hysterics about them having to rearrange the camera schedule around me all because of a call from the ministry.

I was always back late from NTRK as there was always so much to do. The last train from Navoi station left at 00:03; it was my only ride home and it was absolutely crucial that I didn't miss it. At that time, the metro was completely dead: one solitary cleaner slowly sliding her mop from one end to the other and two half-asleep policemen. Empty, echoing, dimly lit, and that smell… How I loved the smell of the metro! It was the scent of my journey home. That breeze from the tunnel and the glimmer of the approaching train… I loved that moment more than anything, it felt like a wind of freedom, liberating me from another hard day's work.

My station was the last. I would occasionally fall asleep on the way, but it didn't matter, it's not like I could miss my stop. «We are now arriving at Beruni6 station, end of the line. Be sure not to leave any personal belongings in the train». These words were my wake-up call.

There was no public transport to Beruni after midnight. I would then have to make a beeline to the taxi rank to get to the Karakamish7. To make it to my final destination, Tansikbaeva street, I had to wait for three fellow travellers to appear. We all chipped in two hundred soms, and off we went as if it was a minibus. I would then sit down in the front seat and wait for others to turn up. When it was cold, I'd ask the driver to turn on the heating and then fall asleep hugging my backpack as a pillow. Sure enough, we would get to the required number of passengers reasonably quickly.

I was almost always the last to get out, and the taxi drivers would invariably end up arguing with me: «You said you were only going to Tansikbaeva, go on, get out!» This meant having to walk the last two hundred metres. But every time I'd convince them to take me just that little bit further as I sometimes simply hadn't the energy to make it on foot.

I typically wanted to eat more than sleep at this point. My twelve-entrance apartment block home always seemed as a loaf of bread while I ran towards it. I would imagine placing two slices of Caspian pink tomato on top of it carefully, along with a sprinkle of salt.

If I left work earlier, I could go by trolleybus and then walk two stops. There was a school on the way, and I would walk past that at a perfectly normal pace, but as soon as the school railings ended and the cemetery began, I'd start running and wouldn't stop until I'd passed it completely. It was scary and dark, and every rustle of leaves from the other side of the fence would make me jump with fear. It was best just to run.

Of course, mum was always waiting for me to get home, so she could feed me. Back then, we were living in a two-room apartment, all six of us: my dad, mum, grandma, two sisters and myself.

Us, the children slept in one room with granny, on kurpachas8. She taught me how to pray. The words of the prayer grandma used to say every night before bed are forever imprinted in my mind. Though I might not have had a clue what they meant, they were soothing words on which to end the day. Later, I started to pray myself, in my own words. As I was doing so, I would stare out of the window at the stars. That's because I was convinced that God was there somewhere watching me, perched on the brightest of them all, the one I had picked for Him. Helping me even. And that any day now I was bound to become successful, rich, famous and happy.

For the time being, though, I would have to sit and wait at the NTRK security desk for someone to take me to the studio. They didn't even give me a pass, so I could only go in clinging to somebody else's coattails. If I couldn't endure any more and called, Davr's coordinator, Dilshod, would bark at me like a dog: «Don't call, everyone's already had quite enough of you. Sit and wait!» I really hope he gets to read this chapter, may God grant him many more years to come. According to him, I wasn't even worthy of a pass. It still offends me today. And it was also pretty damn offensive that, come payday, all Davr's employees used to go home with huge wads of cash, between seventy and one hundred thousand soms, while I was only worth one-and-a-half to two thousand. No doubt if it had been up to the director, he would have had me pay for dirtying his precious studio floor with my shoes.

Then came the offer for me to go and work in the Emergencies Ministry. It was the first incredible stroke of luck I had. The Emergencies Ministry building was right in the city centre, on the very spot that the Senate stands today. It was a top-level ministry and was just as hard to get into as NTRK. Truth be told, I was delighted to be able to quit Davr. At the Emergencies Ministry, my job title was Senior Specialist. They gave me a uniform and even my own ID badge. To give you an idea of the extent of my good luck, I should let it be known that, by that time, I had been kicked out of the Institute for writing my own grade in the student record book.

Recording of the programme Tax Service in the NTRK equipment room.

In the journalism faculty of Tashkent State University9, where I wanted to go to study, there was huge competition for places. Following a rational assessment of my chances of getting in, I decided to apply to the directing faculty of the Arts Institute. The plan was simple: study there one year, then transfer to the journalism faculty. Transferring was always easier. The university's Chancellor had always been very nice to me, but I was missing grades for two courses from the autumn term. For one of the courses, my classmate Dilmurad and I just about managed to convince the lecturer to give us a grade. It was no easy task given that this particular lecturer had been demoted from Vice-Chancellor to ordinary teacher because of me. I had told the Chancellor that he was a drinker. But despite that, he was still willing to help us out. My other incomplete course was «Stage Speech». The lecturer had gone away on holiday and, without that grade, there was no way I could transfer.

I was stood at the campus snack bar with a friend looking at the marks in my student record book. I took a bite out of my somsa… and gave myself a «C». Not an «A», that would have been taking the mick, so a «C» it was. I wrote the same for my friend, too. We thought that the lecturer was bound to take pity on us. She had children of her own, and our fate was in her hands. The plan was to go to her later and explain everything; she would surely understand and forgive us. We submitted the transfer documentation and waited for the approval to come.

On 2 September, we went to see the lecturer. I started in a roundabout fashion, about how I was my parents' only son, and how it had been their life's dream for me to go to Tashkent State University…

«What do you want?» – asked Hatira-opa.

«We needed transfers, so we wrote our own grades in our record books, we only gave ourselves a «C», we truly are sorry, it's just you had gone away on holiday».

I really did not expect what happened next, if I'm honest. She pounced on me as if it wasn't a grade I had forged, but the signature on her will.

«How could you, Komiljon?» That's a criminal offence! It's against the law!

And the more she rebuked me, the more I understood the severity of what I had done. Then, forging a «C» didn't seem quite as trivial as it initially had. She dragged us in front of the Chancellor and set an ultimatum: if we were not immediately excluded from the Institute, she would walk. I couldn't fault her on principle. That's how it had to be. You simply cannot afford to forgive students for deception if those students will one day be responsible for ideology. No matter how much we begged her, she would not change her mind. It was an unwavering «no»! Money, connections, nothing helped.

They called my mum and told her that her son had been kicked out of the Institute. I thought she was going to faint on the spot.

We were walking together along Kosmonavtov’s Avenue in as low spirits as I ever remember us being:

«Don't worry about it, Komiljon. I knew all along you'd never be someone important. A working man's son is destined to be a working man himself. But it's not the end of the world. Now, let's go and see your dad at work and hope he'll take you on as an apprentice. Having a trade is a good thing, too. You'll be a car mechanic».

Compared to that, I would have much preferred a beating. I knew what hopes she had invested in me, how much she believed in me. And I had made her look a fool.

2002 y.

But now they were hiring this university dropout to work in a ministry. I didn't feel resentment towards my teacher for long; it was a harsh but valuable lesson and a strong push in the right direction career-wise. But most important of all, it made me understand that, sooner or later, dishonesty will always be discovered, and it is better to get your just desserts straight away than to live with that dishonesty eating away at you, in constant fear of exposure. And even if, initially, I really wanted to go to her in my uniform, with my Emergencies Ministry badge and say something like: «See, look at me, look what I managed to make of myself…», I later realised that she actually played a big part in how my life developed. I did go to see her many years later to tell her about my success, but the tone was completely different.

Inside the Emergencies Ministry press office. We are filming a report on the activities of the Kamchik specialist search and rescue unit.

As things were, I was happy. It felt as though all my dreams were starting to come true, and I was headed for a meteoric rise.

My meteoric rise continued for nine years. Nine years of working myself to exhaustion, with no weekends or holidays, under the guidance of an unforgiving perfectionist for whom every tiny detail mattered. Either you do it flawlessly or you're worthless. During this time, I also recognised another trait I had possessed throughout my life: the ability to quickly and irreversibly make enemies.

After a year, I was completely at ease in the Emergencies Ministry information service. I was constantly coming up new ideas that Parpiyev liked, but, most importantly, I knew how to implement them. I couldn't stand it when people would interfere with my work, and I was speaking with deputy ministers like equals. Within the space of a year, I was already thinking of myself as a real specialist hired to do something at which he was properly competent. But for some reason, the management's entourage always wanted to interfere in my business specifically, despite my never interfering in anyone else's. That really got on my nerves. It's like asking the cook to make you pilaf and then distracting him with comments about how he hasn't put enough rice in the pan, or too much oil; interfering in the process, basically. Wait until the dish is ready and then criticise it if you don't like it. But everybody wanted to stick their oar in my process. That was something I had no patience for, which is why everyone said Komil Allamjonov is too petulant and impossible to manage. I could understand if I was stupid and unreliable, but I did my job and a damn good one at that! Still, everybody wanted to know the reason for the excessively «arrogant» way in which I comported myself.

Nobody could understand why Parpiyev, a man who even government officials were wary around, who never let anyone into his circle of friends, and who was extremely insular and not particularly amiable, used to treat me almost like a son. He brought me into the Emergencies Ministry, then the Customs Committee, then the Tax Service. Why did he trust me so much? We were clearly related. That's how the rumour came about that I was the general's nephew, which explained why he was helping me climb the career ladder. The evidence was «ironclad»: Parpiyev was from Andijan, his father from Margilan and my grandfather from Fergana, so it was as clear as day that he must be my uncle. In the Fergana Valley, everybody is related to one another. Case closed.

The general truly was a hard-faced man, no fan of lies or trickery, and quite unforgiving of mistakes. I wasn't permitted to make even the smallest error. He never talked to me about his personal life or free time. With him, it was all work, all the time, and he expected the same of everyone else. I was a worker. I could never let him down. I couldn't say «I can't, I won't be able to, it won't be feasible» or that I'm tired and want to go home to mummy. I listened to his instructions and carried them out. I never dragged my feet or procrastinated. It was my job performance, my perfect track record of delivering results that he liked, and that's why he took me with him from one government department to the next. Botir Rahmatovich knows the value of true professionals. He only learned about my being his «nephew» many years later, from an article in Uzmetronom10.

Many people simply cannot understand that trust is earned with hard work and loyalty – by being fair and honest with people. They can't even get their head around it as a concept. For them, the only justification for someone trusting somebody else is that blood is thicker than water.

I didn't stay much longer at the Emergencies Ministry after Parpiyev left. But I do believe that the qualitative improvement in that department's information service was down to me personally.

Back then, nobody knew anything about the Emergencies Ministry; people had no idea that rescue personnel even existed because they were never shown in the media.

Meanwhile, the head of the department, Colonel Irgash Ikramov, was a stickler for cleanliness. Whenever he came to the building, the yard had to have been watered and his office had to smell like rue. For that reason, every single day, the yard would be scrubbed clean, and the rescue equipment polished until it sparkled, despite the fact that it was new and completely unused.

Initially, in a bid to drum up interest, we did some staged shoots inspired by past events, as-it-happened reconstructions. In actuality, we splotched ketchup on drivers to look like blood, like in films, and recreated floods and fires as they do for training exercises. We broadcast heroic content to show people how the Emergencies Ministry operates. Later, we started going to incidents with our camera and putting together pieces from live footage.

When the programme started to gain serious traction and real calls to the Rescue Service started to come in on the emergency number 050, the rescuers couldn't keep up. They made all sorts of rescues, from cats stuck down wells, to people trapped in lifts.

I remember one time, at the Zhemchug11, a man had decided to end it all by jumping from his ninth-floor apartment balcony. All the different services arrived together, and the rescuers were barely able to talk him out of jumping. They talked with him for four hours in affectionate, soothing tones. They persuaded him that we are only given one life, that everything was going to be okay. It was just like in a Hollywood movie. But when the man finally came down, they gave him a boot up the backside, swore at him and packed him off to a mental hospital as a suicide risk. To be fair, he'd just stolen four hours of their lives!

The rescue teams were often called out to accidents, where they would have to pull out people trapped in their cars. We started to show such incidents, making sure to highlight any incompetence by employees of the State Road Traffic Safety Department. Announced as the new Emergencies Minister was Bahtier Subanov, who up until then had been the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs and who, in addition to the Emergencies Ministry, was also in charge of the State Motor Vehicle Inspectorate. It all looked like an act of revenge between former colleagues.

Subanov handed control of the press service to his own man, who then banned us from showing deaths or criticising the Ministry of Internal Affairs in our programme.

I fell in line and continued airing the kind of material I felt was needed. Oh, how it used to get on the nerves of Minister of Internal Affairs Zakir Almatov! You should have seen how they used to talk to me. The Ministry of Internal Affairs even got an addressing down from the Presidential Administration because of my stories. The Tashkent Internal Affairs Directorate went as far as to set up an «Allamjonov gagging unit». I was told that the Tashkent IAD was planning to plant cannabis on me and lock me up. That was a typical tactic they used on uncooperative individuals.

I arrived one morning at work to find police everywhere; they were looking for Allamjonov. Once again, I found myself at the centre of a scandal. It was Colonel Ikramov who saved me that time, interceding for me, saying that it wasn't right to destroy my life. For a month after that, I lived in fear. I wouldn't leave the house. Every day the traffic police would stop my driver on the street and give him grief for some nonexistent reason.

My entire first salary at the Emergencies Ministry went on drinks with my old colleagues. They referred to it as «popping the cork». So, after waiting all that time to be able to take it home to show my mum, I went and poured it down my drinking companions' necks instead. They reserved a table at a cafe just beside Shark12. Nothing of my first salary left that table with me. Only a few kopeks, which I took home.

My second salary, too, went the way of the first. But what could I say to those two dashing soldiers? Nothing.

The third time I had to use all my cunning and ask the cashier to give me my wages after everyone else. I took them and quickly ran home, so that my enthusiastic bosses and friends couldn't find me this time.

2005-2006 yy.

When he was President of the State Tax Committee, Parpiyev's first deputy was a man named Erkin Fayzievich Gadoev. Now, at the time, Islam Abduganievich Karimov pursued a divide-and-conquer policy. Ministers' deputies were always secretly opposed to them. It's possible that this gave Karimov more information about what was really going on, but it killed teamwork dead and only encouraged back-room dealings and intrigue. In the hierarchical structure, everyone was loyal to somebody: there were Parpiyev's people, Gadoev's people, Azimov's people. If you wanted to govern effectively in such conditions, you had to develop your own unique tactics. When Parpiyev came to the Tax Committee, he asked everyone to submit letters of resignation. He said he was going to put a new team together. They all handed in their resignations. Then Botir Rahmatovich sat down, set up calls to everyone he wanted for each position and put together an entire recruitment map for the Committee. Incredible!

It always amazed me how Parpiyev's deputy would kill all of his directives right off the bat. I was «Parpiyev's man». At that time, I was already working for the State Tax Committee press service.

«What are you here for?», «Why do we need that?» were the rhetorical questions Gadoev would ask every time I came in to see him, even if it was about something urgent. He wouldn't offer any help either, of course.

We planned to release a photo album book celebrating the sixteenth anniversary of Uzbek independence. It was to include all the changes and achievements that had been made both in the department and in taxation at large. A working group was set up, with me at the helm; the only snag was that I had no official authority. So, there I am running around, collecting information, trying to get people to bring me statistics, and everyone is just fobbing me off, ignoring me or, if they did give me something, it invariably turned out to be completely useless.

I decided to go and see Parpiyev. The album was all but finished, there were just a few bits and pieces we needed to add.

«Get this book finished sharpish, I want to show it to the President in a few days» he said. He then called Gadoev and told him to help me; «I'm on it» came the reply.

I went up to Gadoev.

At one of many State Tax Committee staff meetings.

«What on Earth are you thinking? How can we have a book ready in four days? Who writes a book in four days?»

«Erkin Fayzievich» I said, «It's almost ready, I just need…»

Gadoev wouldn't listen to what I needed. Instead, he started to grumble and talk down to me in his usual manner. He didn't give me any information either.

That's what it means to be between the devil and the deep blue sea. Later, the bigwigs would work things out between themselves, and I'd be left out in the cold. I'd be the one to blame, naturally, of that I had no doubt. Anyone can be destroyed and replaced in this world. What does that mean for a nobody like me? It truly was scary, I felt like a little fish caught between two huge whales that can't even sense my presence. One thing that made Parpiyev unique was that he never forgot anything and was able to monitor every hour of every day whether things were getting done or not. I told him I was on the case, but nothing was actually getting done.

There was no other option. I had to go and see him.

«Botir Rahmatovich, I won't be able to get the book finished on time. Erkin Fayzievich shouted at me and kicked me out of his office. He says it's a waste of time. What should I do?»

It was clear that the general was extremely annoyed. But he kept silent before issuing a curt: «Go…»

There was a meeting on Monday. I hated all those Monday morning meetings with a passion, and this one even more than usual. I almost overslept because I hadn't got to bed until the early hours. I legged it to work and put on my uniform. The meetings always started on the dot, being late simply wasn't an option.

I sat down, sluggish, blue in the face, with puffy eyes, only half-listening to what the committee president was saying. But I noticed that every time he said something, he would turn to his deputy. He would float an idea and then ask Gadoev's opinion, whereupon Gadoev would delicately and eloquently tear it to pieces.

Then, all of a sudden, Parpiyev banged his fist on the table so hard all the tea pots went flying, jolting us all awake in an instant.

«Erkin Fayzievich, do you think I'm an idiot? You say 'no' to all my directives. You take issue with all my ideas and frustrate all my efforts at reform!»

He stood up, sending his chair flying off to one side. He snapped the pencil he was holding and threw the pieces onto the floor. A deadly hush fell over the room, everybody was on edge.

«Take Allamjonov here!» He scanned the attendees with his eyes until he located me. I gripped my chair tightly and felt a sudden strong urge to visit the toilet. «I told him to make me a book, but you sent him away. Why did you tell him it was a waste of time?»

«I didn't say that, I mean…» – said Gadoev attempting to defend himself. It was obvious that he was terrified.

Parpiyev took off his glasses, threw them onto the table and left the room, slamming the door so hard that the walls shook.

Meanwhile, I stayed where I was, hoping my chair would swallow me up. Gadoev gave everyone a look as if to intimate that the meeting was over. Everybody went their separate ways in silence.

Then he approached me.

«May I talk to you for a second? Where's your office?»

We stepped into my office, and he immediately started backing me into a corner with question after question.

«What did I ever do to you? Why did you set me up like that?»

In an effort to save my skin, I had to think on my feet:

«Erkin Fayzievich, Botir Rahmatovich asked me a question, and I answered it… I said you were concerned that the book wouldn't be good enough if it's written in four days. He asked and I answered, that's all there is to it. He just didn't understand me correctly».

Naturally, he didn't believe me.

The truth – that I had indeed set him up big time – became apparent a few minutes later. Everyone received a message telling them to go to their offices and that nobody was to leave. We stayed in the building well into the evening, in our offices. The president, on the other hand, did not. As I later realised, that was to prevent any information from leaking out. To make sure Gadoev couldn't muster his men, tanks and heavy artillery.

The very next day Prime Minister Shavkat Miromonovich Mirziyoev13 came for a meeting and Gadoev was relieved of his position. However, he had been first deputy for many years and had still managed to rouse his tanks into action. They kept him on as Deputy President of the Committee and Chancellor of the The Academy14; he just left the State Tax Committee and stopped interfering in our internal business.