Bitter Tears of the Mountains

The day after tomorrow, I will be in Tashkent, a city I left almost thirty years ago. It is the place where I developed as a writer, living on the edge between reality and mysticism. Before leaving, I want to share with you a memory that has never abandoned me. It is something that cannot be revisited, but that does not mean it has simply vanished.

Childhood memories never fade. Early impressions shape our personality and stay with us for a lifetime. Sounds, images, and finally smells—just imagining them instantly transports us to our most cherished memories. The memory of smells is particularly powerful because it stands apart from other "anchors," being essentially physiological and primal. Memories of home—perhaps the smell of cabbage pies? Your mother's "Red Moscow" perfume? The faint, mysterious aroma emanating from the keys of an antique piano? Or maybe all of them at once?

My home smelled of photo chemicals, hot prints fresh from the glossing machine, and mumiyo (a natural resin). When my father left for business trips, the chemical smells faded, but the mumiyo continued to permeate every corner of the apartment. Everywhere—on bookshelves, on the coffee table, on my desk in my room—lay pieces of mountain rock with black streaks. This thin black film emitted a bitter "oily" scent reminiscent of the smoke from burning autumn leaves. I love autumn and I love that smell.

Mumiyo is called the "tears of the mountains" because it seeps out from narrow crevices, drips from cave ceilings, and flows along mountain riverbeds. Don’t believe anyone who claims it’s the decayed remnants of animal droppings. Or show me an animal that could crawl into a narrow crack in the rock or leave droppings on a ceiling. No, this substance is born inside the rock and is pushed out by pressure or temperature fluctuations. All the stones that found their place in our apartment were brought from the western Tien Shan, specifically from the Chatkal Range. That’s where my father went to "hunt" for mumiyo. He was a journalist and never practiced mountaineering. His companions weren’t climbers either; their entire gear consisted of a rope and an ice axe. Back then, in the early seventies, there were plenty of such hunters. I think their emergence was tied to the rediscovery of this miraculous balm, known since ancient times but somehow forgotten.

There’s a legend about the Iranian king Faridun, who wounded a gazelle with an arrow. The animal fled with the arrow lodged in its back. Some time later, it was found with a healed wound, the arrow still protruding from it, and the injury smeared with some black substance. The gazelle was grazing near a cave. People entered the cave and discovered this very substance. According to legend, animals ate it to heal wounds, fractures, and illnesses. Since then, humans began using mumiyo for treatment as well and wrote countless treatises detailing how and for which ailments to use it, how to prepare potions or ointments. In short, they described all its properties and treated themselves with it for many centuries—until pharmacology advanced and mumiyo was forgotten.

Traditional medicine in Tibet, India, Central Asia, Iran, and Afghanistan always relied on mountain tears. But once-enchanted Europe turned out to be fickle and forgot about its existence for nearly 150 years, even erasing it from all pharmacopoeias. I think that if not for the hippie movement and their calls to return to nature, no one would have remembered it at all.

There are many types of mumiyo. It can be solid or liquid, green, brown, or black. Its characteristics depend on the region where it is harvested. I, however, am speaking only about the black variety, which Uzbeks call mumiyo-asil—the best and most authentic form.

Mumiyo was purified, and the dirty streaks mixed with dust, animal hair, and other debris were turned into thin black plates that were packaged in plastic bags. Pieces the size of a match head could be ingested to heal ulcers or any wounds in the stomach and intestines, or to aid in bone healing after fractures. For external or deep cavity wounds, mumiyo was diluted in water to create a strong solution resembling iodine. I wasn’t sick with anything, but I loved nibbling on the edges of those sticky black plates despite their sharp smell and intense bitterness. My father used to say that small children have instincts similar to animals—if there’s a need for something, it shouldn’t be forbidden. Since then, more than forty years have passed, and I’ve never had a single fracture. Of course, this could simply be a coincidence or the result of my own caution.

I grew up in a concrete jungle surrounded by tall buildings, walking along asphalt paths and hearing the clatter of trams that drowned out birdsong and other sounds typical of a big city. But on clear days, I could see mountains far beyond the buildings—the bluish silhouettes of snow-covered peaks almost blending into the sky. The Tien Shan mountains are multi-tiered. Yet I never had the chance to visit that highest tier visible from the city. We traveled to the foothills for tulips; we climbed higher to places abundant with sea buckthorn and wild apple trees—where roads still reached, and sheep grazed on the slopes. One spring, I even visited a glacier from which a rushing stream—called a sai—flowed, fed by melted snow. But I never ventured to those cliffs where mumiyo was harvested, where trees are sparse and grow out of crevices, often not upward but sideways.

They said that yetis—or, as we call them here, kaptar—live in those mountains. In Uzbek, kaptar means "pigeon." I don’t know if these two words are connected in meaning, but they sound identical. Even if they are unrelated, in my mind they are forever linked. Just like, in a strange way, kaptar and mumiyo became intertwined. After a successful hunt, my father loved to share stories about everything he saw, and he often mentioned the snowman. Many of his tales were humorous—like the time one of the hunters decided to "melt" giant footprints in the snow and spent half the night walking barefoot around the tent. Another time, during summer, someone tied pieces of artificial orange fur to sharp rocks because legend had it that many kaptars were red-haired. But my father never claimed to have seen a snowman—neither up close nor from afar.

In the high-altitude villages where hunters sometimes stayed overnight, legends abounded. Elders would tell stories about how snowmen were once common and that several even lived among humans. They said people and kaptars intermarried, and their descendants live on to this day—towering giants with extraordinary strength. But to my childhood imagination, the most fascinating tale was about telepathy and radiation. Capturing a kaptar on film was deemed impossible. Don’t even try—even if you meet one face-to-face, the film will inevitably be overexposed, as if it emits X-rays. Nowadays, in the age of digital photography, you’d think it might be worth a shot since there’s no film to ruin. But for some reason, kaptars have stopped appearing altogether. And that’s truly sad.

The most remarkable ability of the snowman is, of course, its skill in communicating without words. Everyone knows that if you encounter a snowman on your path, you won’t even be able to form a single thought. You’ll just stand there, paralyzed, hearing nothing but "white noise» and nothing else.

In 1973, my father ended his expeditions once and for all, and there was a reason for it. One evening at dusk, he slipped off a cliff and would have fallen to his death. But something happened that I call luck or fortune. He managed to grab hold of the trunk of a gnarled tree growing horizontally on an almost vertical wall. Just as the tree clung to life against all odds, he clung to its rough trunk. Of course, he was secured by a safety rope, but his friends were too afraid to pull him up in complete darkness—and night falls quickly in the mountains. According to him, even the moon didn’t shine that night—it was the days of Hecate. The sky was scattered with stars that seemed enormous and close in the clear mountain air but gave no light; they were too distant and cold.

My father had exceptionally strong hands—a trait he passed down to me. But how long can a person hang in such a position? He struggled to pull himself up and lay across the trunk, clutching it with both arms and legs. The tree wasn’t a baobab; it might have been a archa, growing by chance in such an inhospitable spot. I won’t lie—perhaps my father didn’t even know what kind of tree had saved his life. He only knew one thing for certain: below him was an abyss, and dawn was still hours away. During those hours, he had two enemies—cold and sleep.

At first, he exchanged words with his friends, but talking in such a position—with his cheek pressed against the bark, trying to merge with the life-saving trunk—was difficult. The echo made things worse; the abyss swallowed his voice and returned it distorted and grotesque. In the mountains, shouting is dangerous—any sound can be fatal. So, he fell silent, deciding to conserve his strength and wait for morning.

At some point, he felt as though someone was walking heavily right above him. Then he heard "white noise," the sound that appears on a television screen when broadcasting stops. His head suddenly throbbed with pain, and instinctively he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he saw daylight—as though the night had already passed. And indeed, it had passed. He felt rested and strong; even his arms and legs didn’t feel numb, and it seemed as though the cold had never existed. Half an hour later, his friends pulled him back up to safety.

As a result of the stress, my father developed facial paresis, but there were no other lasting effects. He rarely spoke about that incident, always using the same words: “Once in the mountains, I spent an entire night hanging over an abyss.” Only once did I hear him say something different: “I was saved by the kaptar.”

I know what you might say—that it’s all just imagination, stress, maybe even a dream. Who knows? Whether he saw someone that night, we’ll never find out—my father is dead. The mountains didn’t take him; he died from diabetes in his own bed. But I feel that he knew the truth and, for some reason, chose not to share it. Perhaps the snowman has the ability to hypnotize? After all, he is the one who cannot be found, the one who doesn’t wish to be discovered. And if he does choose to appear, he will vanish again without leaving any evidence of his existence.

Thus, in my mind, the tangible mumiyo and the elusive kaptar became intertwined. Of course, I understand that there is no connection between these two things and there cannot be—but all my life I’ve been searching for one. Someday I’ll write a story or a novel about telepathy and cryptozoology, about mumiyo and Abu Ali ibn Sina. Someday. But right now, I don’t feel I have enough strength or skill for such a narrative.

Here, in my new country, mumiyo isn’t used and is impossible to obtain. But I remember—and will always remember—the bitter scent of my childhood and yearn for it as one would for a beloved person.


1. Kaptar
Kaptar is an Uzbek word meaning "pigeon." However, in the context of local legends and myths, it is also used to refer to the snowman, known as the yeti.

2. Mumiyo
Mumiyo is a natural organo-mineral substance extracted from mountain rocks and caves at altitudes of 2,000–3,000 meters above sea level. It is renowned for its healing properties and has been used in traditional medicine for over three thousand years.

3. Abu Ali ibn Sina
Abu Ali ibn Sina (Latinized as Avicenna) was a prominent scholar of the Islamic East, born around 980 in Afshana (near Bukhara) and passing away in 1037. He was a philosopher, physician, astronomer, and mathematician.