(through and above the heartland of the country)
The story is taken from the book "Tenderness has saved the world" by the philosopher Begaly Tagayev and writer Zamir Osorov (Aesaerov), which was published in Singapore and went on to its world tour of love.
This astonishing story happened in our family long years ago when I was young man and lived with father and mother in Naryn, the town deployed on northern–eastern part of Kyrgyzstan. During our visit to our relatives from south of country my cousin from Birke village of Nooken district on the south of Kyrgyzstan presented me a white pigeon, called Nazik.
I placed Nazik into large hard paper box, which put into the lockable luggage compartment of our “Volga”, located at the rear of the car. After 15 hours of driving along the magisterial road, linked two region of country, moving through Kochkor-Ata, Tash-Komur, Karakul, Toktogul, Chichkan, climbing up to Ala-Bel pass and descending from it and then move up to Too-Ashuu pass and after crossing tunnel descending gradually by sneaking steep road toward Sosnovka, then going right to Kara-Balta and from where road turning right to Bishkek - we move and move on across the whole country, stopping just for refueling our car on oil stations and for having dinner in roads caf; of Chichkan canyon and again after 5 hours - in Boom canyon. Eventually crossing Kochkor valley we reached up to Dolon pass, leaving behind 800 kilometers and need else drive nearly 150 kilometer until we reaching our home on the edge of boiling Naryn river.
During this long trip when our car did a short stops along the road I was getting up from car quickly and opening luggage giving to bird some water and seeds.
I did the same during our short stop on the top of Dolon mountain pass, but to my great regret, when I opened luggage compartment - Nazik escaped quickly from paper box and flying out from prison of our car. That was a shock! The bird soars away without any intention return to car, moving farer and rising upper and upper over the Dolon until vanishing at all behind surrounding slopes and hills from our observing.
Nothing to do with such heavy lost, we proceeded our move toward Naryn and reached at home two hours later.
A week late since that day, my cousin from Birke village, called and informed that the pigeon returned at home.
It was a wonderful news!
We are all thought that our unhappy bird, which escaped from our love and hospitability in windy and cold Dolon, very soon killed and eaten by falcon, during daytime – or this amateurish traveler had torn by talons of soundless flying owl, at midnight – or, maybe, ripped by fiercely decisive and impish wild cat, when slept on tree - or being captured by tireless patrolled jakal, fox or other predators, when pigeon landed down to earth to pick up some seeds and insects.
But it was a great riddle - how our pigeon charted and calculated the way back to home? From the top of Dolon pass (more than 3000 meters above sea level) where she escaped to freedom from our car’s luggage compartment when we made stop for 5 minutes as have usually did all travelers for short rest and breathing fresh air when they moving along this route?
But even if we excluding these all great dangers and risks for young and unskilled pigeon as a happy coincidence, how this avian creature returned back, wading succesfully so many obstacles and unknown entities, which waited up ahead and calculated and traced the way leading at home? When you surrounded from any side by hundreds of miles of great and wild, odd, cold and hostile Kyrgyz mountains?
The Quantum Computer of Bird in Action
What a wonderful navigational art! Even the direct distance between the Dolon in the Naryn region in the north of Kyrgyzstan and the village of Birka in the Nooken district in the south of Kyrgyzstan is almost 600 kilometers! And it stretches along a completely unknown and unbridled territory, among the great mountains and the harsh and dangerous desert of the heart of our country! If you go with Birke to Dolon by car, like us, you have to pass along the main road almost twice as far as the distance.
Much later, I was able to realize and imagine all the amazing and incredible things that happened to our pigeon during this week amidst completely unknown mountain landscapes.
I read many books of ornithologists and scientists who gradually opened my eyes and helped me understand the art of navigation and the behavior of pigeons, as well as look at many other hidden sides of this epic and made me a dedicated and enlightened person.
I came to the conclusion that Nazik was an extraordinary dove, in terms of his great love for a small and forgotten village called Birke, one of thousands among such small villages in our country.
Why did this wonderful bird so passionately love this village? Of course, it was natural for pigeons and many other creatures to love their native land and the house where they were born. However, such an answer did not satisfy me, until I learned a more accurate answer to this riddle. After talking with my nephew, I suddenly discovered that Nazik had a strong and incomprehensible attachment to a young girl, Innaet, one of Uncle Begmat's daughters, whose son Akyl was a pigeon and had a small flock of birds numbering a dozen birds. They rested at night in a small wooden box, mounted on top of a massive log length of 1.5 meters, erected vertically upward. The base of the column was dug in the ground.
The box on one side is covered with an iron mesh and had a door opening on the roof, straight up. Inside were strengthened two perches. In the morning Akyl opened a box, and the doves one by one flew out of it and quickly ascended to the sky, where they made circular flights over Birka. Two hours later the birds returned back to their home, waiting for them to be fed with seeds or crumbs of bread.
How could such a poor dwelling and living conditions cause such a strong pull of the pigeon that after leaving the car luggage compartment on the Dolon, he made a real feat, finding the way back and after a week, having overcome a huge distance again to sit in this wooden box? It was just incredible!
Oh yes, Nazik was strongly attached not only to Birka and to this wooden box, but to Innaet. As Akyl said, the pigeon did not avoid this girl under any circumstances, as did other pigeons, when Innataet fed birds with seeds or bread crumbs, Nazik approached her hand and wanted to be grasped by this girl. While other pigeons always shied aside, differing little from their wild counterparts, and if Akyl and Innaeth did not feed them twice a day, perhaps these pigeons never returned to the box after the morning flight.
But Nazik was a completely different dove.
And this great journey from Dolon to Birk witnessed this bird's great love for Birka, the home's nest and Innaet.
But the dove, even if we are dealing with a love pigeon, in sharp contrast to a man mad with love, never lose heart and mind, always focusing and concentrating on what needs to be done now - in every case and every moment. At the same time, he never loses the sharpness of his amazing panoramic vision (ten times wider and better than that of the human eye), working in sync with the precise mechanism of instantaneous focusing on specific goals, things and objects that suddenly appear around from all sides, because without such a survey the bird cannot detect either a small insect or seeds scattered somewhere on the ground or to detect in time by the lateral vision of an attacking hawk at a high speed or other air predator who knows how to hide the rapid jumps and steep peak to the victim, if it on a matter of seconds or two forgets about panoramic attention.
What is happened with the pigeon after its escape on Dolon?
There has been only one choice and correct strategy, which can bring bird at home - to make day by day the circling investigative flights above the totally unknown landscapes, threading one circle to another. At first flying around and above the Dolon pass (first circling) and then select another one into chosen direction, next to the first circle. With the radius of every circle, nearly 100 kilometers our pigeon possible flied out 350 kilometers daily.
The bird did free circling flights - two of them with the spherical orbits and one between them with the long stretched elliptical orbit with major axis extended to 200 kilometers.
III quantum jumps of the pigeon’s intellect
Undoubtedly, our pigeon was an extremely smart creature, she very well compartmentalized her everyday obligations and duties for being in good health and shape with the series of circling investigative flights and panoramic fixing on the vast mountain area into heartland of Kyrgyzstan - all these must to help him to bring succes in searching that tinnie dot on the map of Kyrgyzstan where pigeon had kept a non-chalance days of his childhood.
The very first day our pigeon charted a large aerial circumference around Dolon eminence on great height, starting from south direction, flaying far from Dolon on 100 kilometers toward Naryn, she did remarkable thing there - seeing from great distance the riverbed of Naryn and fixed the course of water and maybe recognized it similarity with “the same riverbed in down part of Naryn” which crossed the north part of Nooken district where she born. Bird has keeping in memory all these details and carefully mapping environment in south extension, proceeding its exploratory flight up along the east part of the great circle, after several hours of journey reaching the sky above Kochkor town. There she did another remarkable discovery. She saw from distance the Yssyk-Kul valley, which very reminds by shape, size and mountain surrounding her native Fergana valley, although the existence of great marvelous lake was completely odd and unknown geographic mark for the bird perception. She continued flying along northern hemisphere of circling flight and there in far northern point she could observed from great height the Chui valley on far horizon behind the massive Boom passage. It was also very remarkable discovery for bird navigation, because this valley was quite different from Fergana valley, bordered by mountains only from nearest side and other side stretched to the vast steppes going far.
Eventually, the pigeon closed the western segment of a circular flight, reaching the edge of the high-mountain Sonêul Lake in the evening, where it landed for the night rest, very tired, to the top of the warm yurt of a solitary shepherd. But before falling asleep Nazik managed to fix in his photographic memory a map of the magical starry sky over Sonkul and the slightly changed nature of parallel geomagnetic lines, stretched across the sky from north to south high above the Earth.
On the next day, she started her epic journey into unknowns before early cockcrow. Something tell her a new route, when she flying up above the Son–Kul, selecting the west direction - have tipped her into making her next circling flight with much more elliptical orbit, stretching twice a longer - for 200 kilometers toward west direction down the flow of Naryn.
So in the evening of second day she reached the Kazarman town where rested on the roof of big farmhouse on the edge of Naryn. Climate is going to be warmer and more known for her as the riverbed of Naryn. The smart creature now no doubt that she selected right direction on early stage of her expedition, which makes her trip little easier, less troublesome and more sufficient and economy this long way at home.
On the third day she decide to do the first circle toward west direction and soon get that it was a right choice. Raising up high above Kazarman valley, from the great height the bird observed the west side of Kyrgyz mountain chain, the dense and prodigious walnut forest behind the mountain ridges and stretching far on horizon the great Fergana valley, unknown for her from such point of view and angle but bordered by mountains with such unique way, which is belong only to that great and majestic valley.
Even more when the bird was nearing close to the mountain pass which divided north region of Kyrgyzstan from south, she not only felt the warm gust of wind blowing from Fergana valley but she also observed on far distance the Sulaiman-Too, the mountain which placed right in the center of Osh big town and on the right side the chain of other similar mountain relatives called Kerme-Too.
Sulaiman-Too magnetized and shortcut on itself all navigational skills of pigeon, she flied right into this distant point all day and in the evening landed on top of ancient holy mountain - on small garden near the mosque where she found out plenty of various food - crust of bread, left from people, seeds, insects and water accumulated on stone bowls after watering the trees and grass growing there.
On the forth day pigeon takes course to north direction, she know now perfectly well where she find out the native village and home where she born, the last doubts dissipated when she saw the far blue silhouettes of majestic Tiger Shrine, Ak-Tash and Babash-Ata - on the distance of nearly 200 kilometers! More nearer the bird was flying up to these mountains, more clearer and familiar unfolded the environment, more similar the nature, which surrounded his native village - one among the great number of others villages. When she crossed the pass Kur-Baka between Jalal-Abad and Bazar-Korgon, he entered to completely known surrounding.
The position of Sun, the picturesque peak of Tiger Shrine and features of roads, fields and pastures below - all these things clearly informed to the bird that his home, where he born, very close.
But there is another navigational problem emerged for domesticated bird. He was young pigeon and never flied far away from home and nest, circling usually around native village on very small distance, only sometime extending on 10, maybe 20 kilometers far away.
That’s why even if all visual environment have been very familiar for our air traveler, it was not simple to him to find out exact route leading to her village among such abundance of very similar hills, small villages, roads outstretched everywhere on the lower part of Bazar-Korgon and Nooken districts.
But the quantum computer of the pigeon again came to the rescue. Nazik decided to make the next semicircular flight at an altitude of 500 meters, capturing along the arc of the village and places known to the local inhabitants by the names of the Aral, Bazar-Korgon, Shaidan, Toskol, Dobo-Mazar, Kara-Bulak, Uch-Emchek, carefully examining and studying earthly landmarks and comparing them with the position of the sun in the sky, silhouettes of blue mountains in the far background to the north, and the changing pattern of geomagnetic lines in the sky, during such complex computations and unnumerous comparisons in 3D scale pigeon gradually moving towards increasing the gradient of visual coincidences and identifications with panoramic memory maps, - and eventually with the trembling of the pigeon's heart, Nazik recognized from the great height the unique outlines of the hills of Besh-Moynok and the environs of Nooken-Aryk, the village of Nooken and its central part called Birke, a green garden and home of Begmat, where was a small wooden box with the door, opened right into the sky.
Epilogue
Action takes an effect, especially the demonstration of such amazing skill into the searching own home nest.
After two month when we again went to the south of Kyrgyzstan and visited to Birke, I am of course, at first wanted to see my Nazik. But I was shocked again when knew that the pigeon was killed and from its meat prepared some supper for the one sick old lady.
-Why did you do so?- I asked in despair from Akyl.
He told me that old lady heavily sick from stomach and one local tabib recommended to her a supper from pigeon. Because Nazik never afraid Innaet in sharp contrast with the other, she caught this bird and we decided sacrificed her for the health of our relative.
-But I killed the bird very quickly,- Akyl said as if calming me, - beheaded her in one movement, I think that Nazik did not even understand what happened when Innaeth gave it to me.
Hey, Innaet unexpectedly getting tough and even shocked when she saw the headless, trembled body of the unfortunate bird on a plate, which was so strangely tied to it...
Well, do not worry, you too! I will give you another pigeon, choose which one you like, that will be yours?"
- No, we can not find such a pigeon any more,- I told him.
- Come on, brother, - rejoined Akyl. - You, too, have started talking, like Innaet. Among the sheep and goats, chickens and turkeys too, sometimes not quite ordinary individuals come across, they become very attached to us. Well, what do we need to do after? Stop killing them and eating their meat? Pigeons are much luckier, by the way, nobody eats their meat generally. And what happened to Nazik is an exception.
- That's it, Akyl, all your other sheep, chicken, turkeys, dogs, cats, pigeons are just pets and birds, much like to their wild counterparts like rats, mice, sparrows, jackdaws, crows, cockroaches, which will always be a lot around. But it was necessary to take life from the one who is much more dear than all - who flew across the whole country to find this damn hole, your Birka. Who else will able to love you like this creature?!
Even Akyl was embarrassed for a moment from this tirade, and then, with a wave of his hand, retired to the backyard, to the cowshed, where he had to clean fresh manure.
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The story of the pigeon who returned home, having overcome the whole country as an epic of love for his homeland, village and home nest where a noble bird was treated so cruelly, touched and wounded deeply my heart and all the people dedicated to this story. Even if we all look incredibly thick-skinned when it comes to humane treatment of animals and birds, because we are so adore their meat.
Life often looks extremely harsh and merciless towards love and feelings, even if mathematicians say that it is not so. They assure that this is simply the result of quantum statistics when superimposed on each other are different versions of being born in the mind and consciousness of different beings. And yet it is terrible and unfair, when even in one world there is such a cruel tragedy happened.
That's why I decided to tell this story about the dove called Tenderness with the hope that his name will not be forgotten, because the love of such a level - to the village, Innaet, to this wonderful valley and the mountains framing it should not be forgotten and, perhaps, it will help at least slightly change our attitude to the pigeons and other birds and animals that surround us in our daily lives.
After all, they are all much older than us and know much more about life, navigation, cosmic geomagnetic lines and the inscrutable origins, paths and purposes of love