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Chapter 16. Stars on the Dome

We crossed the courtyard to where the new building for the Center was being erected on the open construction site. The second floor was already being built. And though the construction looked quite large, I could see neither cranes nor bulldozers, nor any other construction machinery. Everything was being done by hand. That I could see right away. People were working on every wall of the building. They were laying bricks, assembling steel reinforcing bars, welding things. A blinding white flame was spewing sparks in all directions from one of the window openings. People were constantly walking up the ramp carrying bricks on litters. The ramp would sway like a springboard – up and down, up and down, and it was scary to watch the people carrying those heavy loads. It seemed they would be thrown off the ramp, but no, everything was well calculated, and they passed unharmed. I breathed a sigh of relief. They had passed, and someone on the wall was already laying those bricks.

By the way, I was quite surprised to learn that they were using the bricks from the old building for the construction.

"Why was so much time spent taking the old building apart?" I asked. It seemed that the American time-is-money mentality had taken root in my mind.

"What do you mean, why?" Mukhitdin asked, perplexed, as he picked up a brick. "This one is pre-revolutionary, its durability rating is 130. And a new one’s is only 60. Watch!" The doctor picked up a hammer and hit the center of the brick. The hammer bounced back, the brick remained undamaged. "This is the old one. Now let’s take a new one. Here we go… " One blow with the hammer and the brick fell apart. "That’s how it works," the tabib summed up the experiment. "It’s been 80 years, and they still can't figure out the secret for baking them."

We approached the ramp and were about to walk up, but the tabib halted. A worker had just finished mixing a mortar, and Mukhitdin bent over to examine it closely, as if it were not a cement mortar but rather a medication prepared for a patient.

"Wait, wait, my dear man," he said. He picked up a shovel and added some more cement to the mortar with a dexterous and familiar gesture. "Otherwise it will be too watery," he explained to the worker, and to me at the same time.

We walked up the ramp and found ourselves near those “knights of fire,” whom we had seen from the ground. They removed their helmets to say hello… Oh my, they turned out to be Abduraim and Makhmoudjon. I had just seen them in class. And the tabib was already ushering me farther inside. No matter where we stopped, he found something to do. Now, as he took a writing pad from his pocket, he discussed the details of the work being done there that I didn’t understand anything about. Then he would climb to the top of a wall and, lying flat on it, would examine the brick masonry. Then he would show a welder where exactly a bend should be.

I was amazed. When had this healer and herbalist, this expert in Eastern medicine, had time to learn all about construction? It was true that he had a degree in hydro-technical engineering. But a construction engineer was something quite different, a profession that required quite specific and very thorough training. I didn’t dare judge professionally, but the way Mukhitdin behaved on the construction site spoke for itself. He was the same as he was at his doctor’s office.

Now and then, Mukhitdin talked to people I didn’t know. It turned out that, apart from hired workers and his students, the doctor’s friends worked on the construction. Besides, there was a wide circle of participants in the construction, a very wide circle, I would say, and some of them were from far beyond the limits of Namangan. I was interested in learning how they managed to get construction materials, which I knew were hard to obtain.

"We find a way," the tabib answered. "For instance, marble for the façade was sent from Germany, and from Saudi Arabia…"

"How is that possible?" I gasped.

"It’s very simple," the tabib said unflappably. "There are many patients in different places, so they help… without compensation, straight from the heart."

At that moment we were standing on the second floor near the main staircase, above which there were plans to build a large hall with a dome over it. As soon as we began to talk about the dome, I saw yet another Mukhitdin – an artist, a dreamer, a poet.

"Imagine a firmament above us," he said. "And the Universe… stars, planets on it… and over there the Milky Way like a wide ribbon… and there comets streaking…"

The tabib's eyes sparkled, his hand with its lit cigarette moved along the imaginary trajectory of a comet traveling from star to star. And perhaps he already visualized patients sitting in the hall to whom the night sky above them, the twinkling stars, the feeling of eternity would whisper something soothing and wise, would help rid them of fear, would help them believe that a cure would reach them.

I don’t know what else he saw there, but I admired him and was proud of him.

"Well, it’s time for me to go," the tabib suddenly remembered. "My patients await me."

No matter how interesting it was on the construction site, I had long wanted to attend his consultation

with student participation. He gave me permission and soon I went to his office.

Chapter 17. The Scent of Herbs

When I entered the office, the doctor was already seated at his desk. One of the students was with him, that same Makhmoudjon who had traded a prestigious profession as a surgeon for a difficult apprenticeship, and whom I saw that day for the third time. All the students at the Center practiced pulse diagnostics under the guidance of the tabib three or four times a week. Today was Mukhmoudjon’s turn.

This is how it went. The doctor felt a patient’s pulse, asked questions that would help to make a diagnosis and establish the primary causes of a disease.

He would give all his conclusions, everything he had traced while feeling the pulse and learned during a conversation with the patient, to the student. For example, “The interconnection of liver-colon-stomach has been corrupted. Frequent constipation.”

Then a student would take over the consultation, feel the patient’s pulse, and compare it with what he had overheard of the diagnosis determined by the tabib. In other words, he would try to draw a picture of the disease for himself. And after that, while the tabib was putting together a list of herbs necessary for the patient’s remedy, the student would take notes and make some sort of outline, as detailed as possible so that when he went over the material at home, he would be able to recreate the case history as precisely as he could. I noticed that Mukhitdin worked calmly and thoughtfully. He even managed to take notes as he was feeling a patient’s pulse. His experience as a physician was evident, along with the concentration and composure typical of a surgeon.

As the teacher and his students were working, I watched them from my seat by the window. There was something unusual about the atmosphere of this office, beyond the absence of any diagnostic apparatuses. I couldn’t figure out precisely what it was right away. But suddenly it dawned on me: there was none of the habitual irritating fuss that occurred in American hospitals and doctors’ offices. Mukhitdin didn’t run between his office and examination rooms. No one brought him results of recently completed tests. Telephone conversations couldn’t be heard; there was no telephone in his office. Life bubbled outside his office, in the reception area, in the hallway, but here it was quiet. Here the atmosphere was utterly calm so that the examination would yield the most precise results.

And then I thought that the office rather reminded me of an artist’s atelier. An artist paints on canvas with paints, while Mukhitdin drew a picture in his imagination, and his fingers also created a picture, a colorful three-dimensional, detailed image of both a pulsating artery and the whole organism of a patient, an organism that was functioning, alive and changing.

That was when I remembered the amazingly bright images created by Ibn Sina to explain each cycle of the vibrations of an artery. Here was a slender, graceful gazelle at the top of a rocky cliff. It was somewhat nervous, hopping and beating its hoof against the cliff. Maybe, the road down from the cliff was blocked by a dangerous foe – a gray python? Oh, how alarmed the gazelle was. First, it stood still, but suddenly, it couldn’t stand it any longer and decided to take a risk – to jump over the snake who watched it in one high leap. The pulse of a gazelle. Isn’t it a vivid and at the same time very precise description of an irregular pulse? Ibn Sina explained, “The beats are irregular in one part of a vibration when it is slow, but then it is interrupted and then it beats again.” Contemporary physicians have found a different definition for that, “atrial flutter,” but the essence is the same.

Meanwhile, patients continued to arrive at the office. The conversations were predominantly in Uzbek, which, to my embarrassment, I didn’t understand well enough. That was why the doctor gave me brief explanations now and then.

"He’s a shepherd. He fell off his horse and the horse landed on top of him. He was paralyzed from the waist down. They brought him here for the first time on a stretcher.

The old man in worn boots and a chapan (traditional Uzbek robe), about whom I had just heard, hobbled to the door leaning on a cane. His thinning half-gray beard swayed in time to his steps. Even though his gait couldn’t be called steady, Mukhitdin, who followed him with his eyes, wore a satisfied expression on his face. He was as happy as any physician who had achieved success in a difficult situation.

It happened often during his consultations. Sometimes I saw a broad smile on his face. Sometimes I could hear his joyful chuckling. He would also light his cigarette –an additional pleasure for him.

"Thank you, Tabib. Thank you so much," a moved patient, satisfied with his treatment, could be heard saying.

"How can you say that? I had little to do with it," Mukhitdin would say slowly, even somewhat surprised. "I just gave you the right herbs." And he would raise his thick eyebrows and throw his hands toward the heavens. "Thank God. It’s His doing. Besides, it was your zest for life and your determination to fight the disease that helped you."

At that, I felt like adding, “And it also helped that you believed in your doctor.”

I was absolutely sure that the tabib was a wonderful, skillful psychologist, in addition to being an accomplished physician. He astonished his patients with his ability to make a diagnosis, to discover the most important things during the first visit.

I remember how my American acquaintance, Neil Mazela, a robust 40-year-old man, once visited Mukhitdin when he was consulting patients in New York. Like all Americans he was very skeptical of any attempts to deviate from accepted medical practice. What is a physician expected to do in America? Tests, injections, operations. No pulse feeling, of course. So, Neil decided to consult with Mukhitdin, out of curiosity, after hearing from me that Mukhitdin was an extraordinary physician.

"You have strong headaches at the top of your head," the tabib said after feeling his pulse.

"I don’t remember having any," Neil answered.

"You sometimes have pain in your lower back… here… You must have lifted something very heavy years ago, hurting yourself badly."

"Maybe. I hadn’t noticed," Neil answered with a chuckle.

"There was a time when you fell, hurting yourself badly, as well. And you still have pain here." Mukhitdin touched his right hip.

What happened next is hard to describe. The smile left Neil’s face. He jumped out of the chair, moved closer to the doctor and… pulled down his jeans.

"Look here… But how did you know? How? Look!"

Neil’s right hip was a bit deformed, and it looked different from his left one.

"I used to go in for sports… and once…”

I had barely managed to translate his words when the tabib nodded and raised his hand.

"I know," he said calmly. "Sit down. I haven’t finished yet."

Neil was completely won over. He now believed the tabib unconditionally, which meant that he also believed in the effectiveness of his treatment. He was obsessed with the doctor. Belief stimulates brain receptors, and they, in turn, stimulate an organism and its immune system.

I observed something similar now in his office in Namangan. No matter which of his patients the doctor talked to, I could read in his glance, “I know what’s happened to you. And if you don’t remember it, I’ll remind you about it and explain everything.”

The pharmacist Abdulla entered the office to pick up a prescription for another combination of herbs. I had long dreamed about visiting the pharmacy and wanted to take this opportunity, but Mukhitdin said, "Wait… Sit down," and pointed to the chair for patients. "Let’s treat you a little. All right?"

I had caught a cold during the first days after our arrival. My nose was running. I had chills. Mama had been saying over and over, ”Treat him, Mukhitdin-aka, treat him, please.”

This time the tabib didn’t need my pulse. He took a small white packet out of his desk and commanded, "All right, comrade general… Throw your head back and show me your tongue… Now I’ll give you something tasty."

I opened my mouth, not expecting anything bad, but the doctor, the prankster, tricked me and poured something very bitter onto my tongue. I had no time to recover from that first blow before he grabbed me by the nose, and the rest of the powder ended up in my nose. My body shook as if from an electric current. The powder penetrated my throat, burning like fire. It even seemed to me that it came out of my eyes as smoke, for my eyelids burned and tears poured out of my eyes.

I jerked and tried to jump up, but the doctor’s strong hands pinned me to the chair.

"What’s wrong?" he laughed. "Be patient. You’ll feel better."

And I did feel better. The burning decreased and my nose dried out.

"Do you also use it for yourself?" I mumbled in a squeaky voice, for my mouth and throat felt as if they were stuffed with sand.

"Precisely. That’s how we treat a cold here. Now, let’s go to the pharmacy. I’ll show you everything there," the tabib suggested.

The pharmacy was next door. As soon as we entered it, I felt as if I had been transported from one “element” to another. The air was filled with the strong, spicy, exquisite aroma of herbs. Some of the scents were familiar. I felt as if I were in a garden with many different flowers where you could smell roses, the aroma of jasmine, and something wonderful though not familiar. By the way, I later recalled the pharmacy as not only pleasant but also soothing.

The pharmacy was a large room with many shelves, cabinets and racks filled with various zinc cans, hundreds of labeled cans. Accompanied by Abduraim, the head of the pharmacy, we set off on a tour.

It began with what Mukhitdin had promised.

"Try this," he said after taking pieces of some fruit from a can.

I chewed cautiously and said with relief, “It’s tasteless."

"All right. That was moza (oak’s nutgall, as I learned later on). It has antiseptic qualities. Now try this," and the doctor gave me something that looked like a smooth white root.

I bit a piece of it off cautiously. The mysterious fruit was sweet.

"It’s hirsigyo. It restores the connection between the lungs and the bronchi. Now wait a bit."

The tabib went to a table, on which there were different vessels and a grinder for herb preparation. He ground the two plants he had given me and asked me to try it. I opened my mouth and almost choked – it was the same spicy bitter powder he had treated me to in his office that morning.

While I was laughing and coughing it off, Mukhitdin took a small can from a shelf and shook a few small round fruits out of it onto his palm.

"This is vildon. It grows on bushes in valleys in China. It’s a very valuable plant; we pay hard currency for it. It’s the basic remedy for cancer patients. As soon as the bushes bloom, they cover them with fabric. They build tents made of gauze to protect them from birds. If they were not guarded as well, birds would peck on the fruit through the gauze. Birds, you see, like them very much. They also use them for treatment."

"Is this what you treat Mama with?" I was looking at the black peas as if at some sort of miracle.

"Well, not just these, but we don’t know of any other plant which, in combination with others, can slow cancer development."

Meanwhile, Abduraim, who had left us, was already working with his assistant to prepare the combinations of herbs required for the day's prescriptions. I heard him constantly mumbling as he stood at the table. As I got closer, I admired his fast-moving hands. His assistant was taking the needed cans off the shelves and measuring herbs. It turned out that Abduraim was calling out their names. There was a green heap of herbs in a bowl sitting in front of the pharmacist, but they continued to add more.

"I’ve prescribed over 40 herbs for this oncological patient," Mukhitdin explained. "Don’t be surprised. There are combinations that are even more complex. There can be fifty or more herbs in a remedy."

"What is the average price of a combination for a cancer patient?" I asked.

"It’s expensive," the tabib nodded. "Some of the herbs must be paid for in hard currency – vildon, for example."

"What if a patient is poor? How do they pay?"

"They don’t," the doctor answered. "We give them the medication free of charge."

The grinder on the table began to hum. The scent of herbs was sharp, and I inhaled their aroma with pleasure.

"Stay here if you like," the doctor said. "It’s time for me to go." And he went back to continue his consultations.

I approached the shelves. I could see leaves with bulging veins in some of them, pieces of bark that looked like long entwined nails, roots in intricate shapes, long thorns, shrunken fruits, and even rocks that sparkled like pieces of ice.

“Oh yes, I wouldn’t call the work of the pharmacist monotonous,” I thought. Besides, everything was so beautiful, so many shades of colors and rich textures. There was something bright yellow, bright as the sun, and something crimson, like blood, on the table. Even the black color was attractive. It was not a boring black but rather had a deep undertone like a warm summer night.

"Why don’t you grind everything right away, so you have a reserve? It would take less time to put the different combinations together," I asked out of ignorance. It turned out that ground herbs oxidize faster and lose their potency and curative qualities. That was how the conversation about herbs and plants began. I learned so many interesting things that day that I felt like staying there for good and becoming the pharmacist’s apprentice. I would be lucky if I remembered everything they and Mukhitdin had told me.

No remedy on this planet is as ancient as herbs. It was not people but animals that began to treat themselves with herbs. It's possible that prehistoric people got the idea of using them from observing animals. However, there were also independent discoveries. Women, who were the support of their tribes, picked berries, herbs and roots. They learned about their qualities haphazardly, through personal experience. Ancient people lived surrounded by nature, in permanent contact with it. It’s difficult even to imagine how acute their powers of observation were. They knew more about plants and animals than contemporary botanists and zoologists, excluding the purely scholarly information, of course.

Hunters hiding in ambush saw a deer and different kinds of goats looking for and eating herbs and roots, sometimes digging them out of the ground with their hooves. As a rule, those were either sick or wounded animals. Or, for example, if they saw a deer with a bleeding wound on its leg eating red carnations, they would naturally ponder this and test its astringent quality on themselves later.

A wounded deer with arrows in its back disappeared into a cave. Hunters ignored it while they were pursuing other animals, assuming that the goat would die in the cave. But a week later, while chasing a deer, they noticed that it was the same one, the one with the arrow in its back. It was agile, healthy, not at all exhausted, the skin around the healed-over wounds covered with traces of dark resin. The curious hunters entered the cave, where they saw a dark, wax-like substance oozing from the cracks in the rocks, the same as on the deer’s skin. Those hunters, who were commanders in the army of the Persian king Fereydun, collected the substance and took it to the King. That was how the story was recounted in one of the ancient Eastern papers about how mumiyo (shilajit resin), the universal remedy that helps cure many ailments and is a powerful antiseptic, was discovered.

Information was collected, accumulated, and handed down by word of mouth. After these discoveries, collection of information and preservation of experience fell to many of most talented and clever people, and quackery began to crop up. The knowledge was handed down from teacher to pupil. It gradually became shrouded in mystery, evoked mystic fear, and was linked to sorcery. Over the millenniums of historic times, as that ancient knowledge passed into the hands of scholars, it was recorded and published in many languages, spreading from country to country. And, of course, scholars from different countries made their own contributions to the science of herbal healing. The characteristics and methods for the use of about 900 types of remedies and plants were recorded in “The Canon of Medical Science” by Ibn Sina. Some of the most complicated remedies were made with dozens of herbs.

Certainly, our ancestors could have only guessed, often quite sagaciously, about what has become common knowledge today – plants, over their lifetime, like all living organisms, produce between dozens and hundreds of biologically active substances containing various classes of chemical compounds. Yes, although the ancients didn't know about chemistry and microbiology, they brilliantly mastered the practical application of herbs, by observing the effects of the use of numerous individual plants and combinations. Methods of gathering and storing herbs, their drying, mincing and boiling, were developed down to the last detail. The methods for preserving the different qualities of plants were well established. The mixing of herbs so that some qualities could be increased, others decreased, and still others created, was fine-tuned with the greatest skill.

I had an opportunity to see for myself after trying the herbs that the tabib had used to make the fiery powder to cure my cold.

I didn't understand and most likely will never understand one thing – how could it be that herbal healing, in other words, using pure plants has been forced aside by treatment with toxic chemical drugs in almost every country in the world? Why has mankind turned away from mastering and improving the chemistry of nature and its powerful resources?

But then again, hasn’t mankind made enough monstrous mistakes and had misconceptions, strange as it may seem, related to the development of science and technology?