The Pain You Must Live Through

There is pain that must be lived through,

carried quickly and completely

so, it doesn’t poison the life you’re still meant to live.

If you let it linger, it grows stronger,

feeding off fear, off disappointment,

until it becomes heavier than you can bear.

It could have happened to me.

It should have.

But it didn’t thanks to the prayers.

They became my soul’s compass,

a guiding star when everything inside me was broken, bleeding.

My soul felt torn apart

like the intricate patterns I’d seen all my life.

From the earliest moments I can remember,

I saw those patterns the shyrdaks (felt rug with ornament), the kiyiz (handmade felt rug)

in my grandmother’s living room,

in my mother’s home,

in the homes of neighbors.

It was an entire world of work,

created by the hands of Kyrgyz women.

A tradition, a season, a rhythm.

They embroidered them in winter,

sitting near a warm stove,

the sunlight coming through wooden-framed windows,

its golden rays touching my face and the face of my little brother.

We played beside our mother,

tossing knucklebones, playing chess, laughing.

And she my beloved mother

was bent over the felt,

her hands breathing life into it,

thread after thread.

She drew bright, living patterns,

where summer meadows bloomed,

birds sang of spring,

and silent hopes stirred that winter would pass

and with it would come warmth, sun,

a fragrant spring full of light and life.

The cries of cats, the parades of ants,

the soft rain falling in sunlight.

We, the children, ran barefoot into the grass,

laughing, soaked,

celebrating this ordinary miracle.

And after the rain came the rainbow

we’d count the colors, every time different.

The numbers changed, the colors disappeared,

and then silence.

That peaceful, sacred silence after rain.

Later, when I recall my village childhood,

a wave of sadness washes over me.

Now I live in France.

My loved ones are still in Kyrgyzstan.

The house we grew up in no longer belongs to us.

New people live there.

New children grow up in rooms that once echoed with our voices.

We were eight

I was the seventh child of my father.

I remember those cold winter days,

when our shyrdaks were created.

It felt as though the entire Universe took part

through the colors, the patterns, the sacred patience.

My mother would slip into a meditative state,

her spirit aligned with the world around her.

And then she would pause,

turning toward us,

sharing stories from her own life.

We would fall silent.

She told us of hunger.

Of war.

Of being orphaned.

Of sickness.

Of surviving.

She told us of her father

my grandfather

who saved them.

He brought food, hope, healing.

He made decisions that changed lives.

He chose well.

He knew how to make life livable.

He was the healer of our village a shaman.

He helped his family, his neighbors.

He removed sorrow from homes,

fought off misfortune.

He went into the mountains to bring back food.

He became a hunter

not just to survive,

but to own his fate,

to look others in the eye without shame,

to greet life with dignity,

to serve his children, his family, his people.

And then my mother.

An ordinary woman, from an ordinary family,

but her soul held an extraordinary strength.

She raised beautiful children,

withstood all hardships

the ones not created by her,

but placed upon her shoulders by others.

She faced betrayal.

She felt fear.

She saw illness, death, and birth.

She carried it all

and through it all, she carried love.

A love that never left her.

It lived inside her

in her dreams, in her prayers,

in every thread she wove.

Evil could not touch her.

It could not enter a home where such a woman lived.

She lived with hope.

She lived with love.

She honored life itself.

In her, I saw what it meant

to take responsibility for one’s destiny.

To have faith in one’s own strength.

To be honest

always.

Truth was her banner.

It flowed through her,

and through us her children.

It was in our blood.

It could be no other way.

Now I understand where I came from.

Where I got these values.

These qualities of a human being.

I inherited them from my roots

just like the patterns in the felt rugs of our sitting room.

We children were woven from the same knot,

from the same design,

from the same thread

shaped by a woman’s hands.

Nothing was created in vain.