Camel from Kyzylkum

After my first year in college, I went to my summer internship in the mountains of Tajikistan. There I met Nikolai Gelya; he had just graduated from the same college as I was attending, and he got his first job in the geological expedition in Tajikistan. We fell in love. I was eighteen and Nikolai was twenty-two when we got married and went to work in the geological expedition in the Kyzylkum Desert.

Nikolai was born on December 8, 1946, in a small village, Grigorovka, in Ukraine. We never knew Nikolai’s biological father. Valentin Gelya adopted him when he married Nina, Nikolai’s mother. Nikolai resembled his mother, especially with his big, green-gray eyes, which he passed on to our daughter. Valentin and Nina had a daughter of their own, Lilya, who was around six or seven when Nikolai was about twenty-three.

Valentin Gelya lost both legs during a fire in the school where he taught. His recovery and fight for his life took more than a year. But he survived. Both of his legs were amputated just above the knee. Although severely handicapped, he kept a strong spirit and supported his family by fixing electronic appliances for his neighbors. He moved on a wooden platform with wheels, pushing himself off of the floor with custom-made, flat, wooden devices for his hands. He drove a specially-made for handicapped people compact car and was a good husband and father. I had a lot of respect for him, for his strong and kind character, and for how he was able to deal with his limitations with great dignity.

From corresponding with people in Ukraine, I know that in the late 1980s, first Nina, and then Valentin, passed away. Lilya was married twice and had children with both husbands: a daughter and then a son. She divorced both men and lived in Grigorovka, Ukraine. In the harsh years of the 1990s, I even sent money to her and her children, but then communication was lost, and I do not know anything about them at present.