the sergeant was yelling at him to fire his pistol
from a position in front of an immobilized T-34,
– not his barn, not his schoolhouse –
the same never-ending pastures in his eyes,
in the hesitation of his fingers the same chalk dust.
Now, so many years later, every afternoon
sitting in this nameless café all alone,
an arm missing, an eye almost blind,
I browse through our favorite poems:
“Of what does the homeland smell?
Of a dry blade of grass,
Caught in a child’s hair…”
O Stalin, fearless leader of the International Proletariat!
Where have you taken him, I wonder?
To a nameless grave next to the battlefield?
To an Özbek metal factory, near Taşkent?
To a diamond mine, in Yakutland, in east Siberia?
Whenever I close my book,
a green meadow covers Gorky Square;
the honor guards drop their rifles,
the school children run joyfully after a class,
– Cengiz’ smile on everybody’s face.
Lilia Budzhorova, “Kak pakhnet
rodina?” cited by Edward A. Allworth in The Tatars of Crimea,
Return to Homeland, Durham University Press, 1998 – ISBN
0-8223-1994-2, Page 3.