p Last autumn we were digging with our bare hands in the early snow on the fields of Dilaram Rafikova, looking for the fragile stalks of the raikhan. We wanted to take some 134 back with us. Raikhan is a plant not much to look at, but in the evening it fills the air with a mysterious and fairy fragrance.

p While we looked for the raikhan, Dilaram was pacing up and down the field with a triumphant look in her eyes. She did not even try to conceal the pleasure she felt at the fact that the bumper harvest had been collected before the foul weather set in.

p The next time I saw her was on a grand occasion. In her national-style shawl over a light-grey suit, which she had specially ordered at the best tailor’s, Dilaram went up a red carpet to accept the Gold Star of the Hero of Labour. Her eyes were cast downward, and she pressed the tips of the shawl to her lips.

p I heard somebody whisper, "What luck! Do you think she really accomplished something?”

p The man, of course, had no way of knowing what had preceded this grand occasion.

p Ten years ago Dilya graduated from the Dzhalal-Abad mechanical school and got her diploma as a harvester-driver. That was a special occasion because it was the first group of students to be graduated from the school.

p Though only ten years have passed since then, many changes have taken place. New problems have cropped up, obsolete views that women should not do men’s work are losing ground, the times have gone when girl-drivers were pulled down from the harvesters and ordered to put on skirts over their overalls.

p The practical cotton-growers came to a simple conclusion that if their daughters worked as harvester-drivers, they would earn much more than they would with the outdated hoe. They even encourage their daughters to join the Dzhalal-Abad mechanical school which has become a special school for women and trains drivers of farm machines.

p Now it no longer surprises anybody to see a woman driver. Many of the graduates from the Dzhalal-Abad school have become team leaders, like Dilaram Rafikova, or secretaries of Party committees, like Ibakhan Saidova, or chairmen of village Soviets.

p In the village where Rafikova lived people were assessed according to their work. Rafikova proved that she was very 135 industrious, and so nobody was surprised when she was made a team leader.

p Then someone made a telephone call from the regional Komsomol committee and offered her a trip to Egypt. Winter is the off-season for cotton-growers, and so Rafikova took advantage of the offer. When she returned, many venerable farmers came to see her and respectfully congratulated her on the return. Dilya was puzzled at this show of respect, and then she understood everything. It was because during her trip she had been quite close to Mecca and Medina, the sacred cities of the Moslems. The old men of the village decided that since she had returned safely from the trip, she must be a good person. Allah would not receive bad people. ...

p The trip to Egypt and the respect from the grey-beards were, of course, a coincidence, because long before that she proved that she could grow higher harvests of cotton than anybody else on the collective farm or indeed in the whole of the Osh Region.

p Today Dilaram Rafikova is prominent in the republic, many people know her better than they know popular film stars, and that is not surprising, because the local newspapers are constantly printing photographs of her taken during the harvest.

p The first word which Dilya heard in her childhood was cotton, and then came the word bread.

p Last spring Hero of Socialist Labour Dilaram Rafikova was elected deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Kirghiz SSR.

p That was an acknowledgement of her fine work and great courage.

I keep in my reporter’s office a small bouquet of raikhan which we collected in the snow on Rafikova’s field. Autumn is drawing near and more snow will come, but the raikhan is as fresh and green as ever.