"That's right, Mr. Prosecutor."
Thank your father and serve your mother for the one who said, "Don't take your own yard, take your own neighbor." Why do you say that?
“That’s right, Mr. Prosecutor”
A thousand thanks to the author of the proverb “If you don’t have a yard, take a neighbor.” Why do you say that?
In the early nineties, we lived in six-story “Moscow-style” houses in the Darkhan district of the center of Tashkent. Our neighbors were ministers, deputy ministers, prosecutors, judges, high-ranking military officers, and the newly rich who were just getting on their feet. Neighborly relations were almost imperceptible. Most people were busy with their own affairs and did not come in or out of each other.
When we called a hashar to clean the yard in the spring, only three or four people from more than fifty households came down. Some of the owners of the households had hired laborers because they did not have time.
Okay, thanks for that too, we cleaned the yard, opened the waterways, smoothed the bases of the trees, and gave them shape. The result was a beautiful courtyard that would delight anyone who saw it. But...
Within three or four days, the areas we had cleaned began to get dirty again. Someone had thrown a bag full of garbage from the balcony, and it was scattered all over the courtyard. Inside the bag were empty cans, candy, cigarettes, sausages, fish sauce, black and red pickles, and other expensive food and drink remnants that ordinary people would never see. Even pieces of bread were scattered.
Who could do such a thing? I conducted a journalistic investigation myself. There were two apartments on each floor of a six-story building. The first floor - no, these neighbors don't do that. We live on the second floor, and our neighbor hasn't been home for a month or two. There is no doubt about the people on the third floor...
I gradually began to climb up. I stopped at the apartment of a paratrooper prosecutor who had come to Uzbekistan to restore order. “Yes, this is the work of this family. No one smokes Marlboro cigarettes in this house except this “orderly”. Expensive candies and sausages are on their table.”
Having made sure that my conclusion was correct, I put the scattered garbage in a bag, went upstairs and rang the doorbell. I handed the bag to the maid who was looking at me with an evil look and turned around...
The next morning, we met Prosecutor Gaydanov in the yard, sitting in our service cars. He glared at me, hissed in a prosecutorial tone, and said, “Is my house a cesspool for you?”
I provoked his soldier into a greater frenzy by saying, “That’s right, Mr. Prosecutor.” After another sentence or two, his boot fell off by itself. Because... the cigarette in his hand had already exposed him.
Ahmadjon Meliboyev