A Village Sensation When your humble servant returned from Russia and arrived in the village by taxi, I was greeted by some extraordinary news. Our eighty-year-old neighbor, after being a widower for a year, had married a seventy-year-old woman. “Is that really a sensation?” You may criticize me. I will answer: “You are one hundred percent right. That is not a sensation.” But when a seventy-year-old woman becomes pregnant by an eighty-year-old man with a walking stick and false teeth—that is a sensation! Science tells us that most women give birth before the age of thirty. And here was a seventy-year-old woman who, against all expectations, was about to become a mother. Nobody could digest the news. The old man’s grown-up children thought that their father and his elderly wife would soon leave this world one after the other. But then something drove them crazy. A new heir had appeared on the horizon. The matter concerned a property consisting of sixteen sotkas of land, seven houses, thirty fruit-bearing trees, a vegetable garden, and a barn where they kept a dairy cow and seven sheep. Saodat, the wife, was so delighted by her sudden pregnancy that old Mamed himself, bursting with pride, threw away his walking stick, twirled his Budyonny-style mustache, and began boasting among the old men: “Look at me! Look what a man I am! I have accomplished a feat! One nighttime raid by me, and a woman who had not given birth for many years with her first husband is now going to become a mother!” He even declared: “My name should be entered in the Guinness Book of World Records as ‘Father of the Year’!” Then he added: “Let the whole world know that there is such a nighttime bandit—not Schiller, but Mirovsky!” His father’s name had been Mir. Mamed gathered his sons and solemnly announced: “According to my observations, your mother is going to give birth to a boy.” “Did the ultrasound show that?” his sons asked angrily. “I figured it out myself.” “How?” “She eats nothing but shashlik.” He said confidently: “So it will be a boy.” The sons were almost in tears. “I called you together so that you can start looking for separate apartments,” their father continued. “Your mother keeps hinting that I should officially register her as my wife. We need documents from the civil registry, and she also has to be registered at the village council.” He paused and continued: “And this house will belong to your younger brother. I will name him Pakhtaboy.” “Why Pakhtaboy?” “Because one day I embraced your mother in a cotton field. Perhaps, by the will of God, that was where our Pakhtaboy began to grow.” The sons looked at one another. “Your mother…” “She is not our mother,” one of the sons interrupted. “Your second mother,” the old man corrected him. Then the father warned them: “Pakhtaboy will be born soon. I will slaughter a sheep. We will feed him milk from our dairy cow.” Despite all their father’s confident conclusions, the sons still had their doubts. Although Saodat’s belly was getting bigger day by day. And Saodat herself happily ate shashlik, stopped picking up the broom, rested, and watched advice for young mothers from gynecologists on her phone. Meanwhile, my trip was coming to an end. My boss called me from Russia and asked me to return as soon as possible. Work was waiting for me. But before my flight back to Russia, I was accompanied by one more sensation. Our neighbor’s wife was taken to the clinic for an examination. The doctor performed an ultrasound and delivered some unpleasant news. Mamed’s chance of entering the Guinness Book of World Records had disappeared. According to the doctor’s conclusion, Saodat was not pregnant at all. “Then why is my belly so huge?!” she shouted. “It’s air,” the doctor calmly replied. “What air?!” “During the bad weather, you caught a cold, developed a runny nose, and didn’t treat it.” The doctor prescribed her some medicine. Before long, Saodat’s belly returned to its previous size. That’s the story, friends. And our airplane was already rising into the sky, pulling its wheels up under its belly. submitted by /u/YusufNasrullo [link] [comments]
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