Taras Urazbayev ☼ When he returned from the war

He returned a year after the war ended.

A whole year was spent trying to figure out whether he was a prisoner of war or a deserter. His name was dragged through offices, dusty papers, and strangers' mouths until they finally gave up and said, “Go. You're free.”

He vaguely remembered the road home. The stuffy back of an army truck carried him to the city — it rattled with iron and smelled of sweat and gasoline. He walked the rest of the way. Step by step, on the ground that once knew him as a barefoot boy.

The forest was the same as before: dark, damp from recent rains, with soft, springy soil underfoot. It seemed to him that the trees were bowing a little lower, welcoming him, as if they remembered and recognized him. The sun broke through the foliage, casting golden spots on his shoulders. The air smelled of moss, damp wood, and smoke from a distant fire—someone was burning leaves by the roadside, and there was something homely about the smell.

He knew the trails by heart. Every fork, every snag — like wrinkles on the face of an old friend. Even now, he could walk with his eyes closed, feeling the direction by the curve of the ground beneath his feet. That was why he didn't take a horse or a car; he wanted to walk himself, to walk the same paths where, many years ago, he and his friends played tag, stumbling over stones and scraping their knees, where his mother led him by the hand to town on errands, and where his father drove him in an old, puffing car, and he, leaning out the window, counted the trees.

And where he walked with her hand in hand on warm evenings.

The forest bells were blooming now, swaying quietly in the wind. Daisies on the roadside. The birches stretched upward, as they had then — white and slender. Only there were fewer birds. Or maybe they had just become quieter.

Too many things had become quieter.

Maybe it was for the best. He was tired of the noise, the sound of tires, the gunshots, the conversations. It felt like the war had taken not just his love for life and his youth, but his entire soul — though he could still feel it somewhere deep inside, especially now, here, in the woods where he grew up, on the road back to the village.

His parents were already gone. His mother had died when he was only fifteen, and his father hadn’t survived the war. He had no brothers or sisters, and it seemed like he had no real reason to return. But there was still one thing left — the only thing that might still belong to him.

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He remembered her often. Especially in captivity — when all around him was dampness, rust and the hum of foreign speech. All he had left were his thoughts of her.

About her smile, so bright, as if the sun were breaking through the December clouds. About her delicate hands that smelled of soap and bread. About how ridiculous and cute she looked in his huge, worn-out boots — the very ones, work boots covered with dust, dried clay and fuel oil.

Back then, at the station, she had put them on in a hurry — barefoot, in wool socks — just to run out after him onto the platform. Her coat was unbuttoned and her hair was blowing in the wind, but she just laughed and hobbled after him, holding the hem of her coat like a little girl.

His father then bought him new boots, "so your feet wouldn't get cold." And he, standing on the step of the carriage, leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.

Then there were letters. He wrote in uneven handwriting, clutching the pencil in his numb fingers. And she replied: neatly, with a fold, with the smell of her home, with news and gossip to cheer him up and make him happy. He folded each letter and hid it under his shirt, close to his heart — like a talisman, like proof that outside, beyond the barbed wire and the noise, she was still there.

And she was.

More precisely, her house, standing a little way off, closer to the forest, with a slightly crooked roof, stood alone above the sagging fence. At this sight, his heart skipped a beat for a second.

The early morning made the village especially silent — not a soul on the paths, only the distant mooing of cows and the sleepy clucking of chickens.

It was scary. Painful — not even from the thought that she wasn't waiting... But from the fear that she was already gone.

But he forced himself to go. Past places that were painfully familiar, each of which echoed in his chest with heavy memories — of childhood, of laughter, of what could never be returned.

And suddenly — a creak.

The door opened softly, like it had known he was near.

She came out onto the porch, wrapped in an old shawl, and he froze, not daring to step closer. He just stared. As if any movement could destroy this moment, like a dream.

She was still the same. Tired, grown up. But as beautiful as he remembered her.

And then he noticed them.

Boots. His boots.

Cleaned up, a little neater... but still clumsy and too big on her feet.

He exhaled and, without noticing, smiled.

“Should’ve thrown them out ages ago, silly girl.”