About ten years ago I had a rest in Saki and there was, at first sight, insignificant, but a remembered case. Went from sanatorium on the market, nearby at a window the fragile pretty woman of years of thirty five sat, graceful features gave out in it the Tatar.

The minibus has made abrupt turn, in windows the panorama of the sea with clouds hanging over it has opened. «As I love our Crimean clouds!» — suddenly, looking in a window, the neigbour has quietly said. Words intended obviously to me, therefore I responded: «And what is special in them?» She has quickened and has turned to me: «Such clouds are not present anywhere, such beautiful, the most important thing — look how low they are, from it the sky seems much more close! I lived in Samarkand, was in Moscow and St.-Petersburg — such clouds are not present anywhere, only in Crimea!»

The woman was going to an exit also left on an entrance to Saki at a housing estate where as I already heard, not only in the summer, and and in the winter, there lived the Tatars who have arrived from Central Asia, those to whom «has not had the luck» to receive the earth for house construction.

The good mood and the smile called by a meeting, did not leave me and some more days were recollected. It was thought: the woman — can be the doctor, high quality sister (she sat down too at sanatorium), in any case — the developed person with a rich inner world — has returned on the earth of the fathers and the grandfathers, the favourite trade, is well off and she is happy from it.

And then I have seen her in sanatorium — on avenue where strolled at the evening sea having a rest, it… Sold sunflower seeds, next day in the market in the afternoon — the same…

She did not work as the doctor or the nurse; obviously highly educated person, she traded in sunflower seeds because could not find other work in reviving only in the summer of Saki, but — rejoiced to that lives on the Native land, and admired it.

… Then I repeatedly happened in Crimea and each time saw Crimean Tatars living there — sellers in shops and in the markets, the owners giving a shelter having a rest, etc. And always marked affability of these people, diligence and purposefulness (it seemed, they are ready to gnaw teeth stones to construct the house for the family, to grow up and learn children), absence of aspirations to ostentatious luxury (the owner at whom we lived in Sudak in the house in cost at least in one million dollars, went in such grated trousers and went on such old car that if who same begged in Kiev — would throw), but the main thing — always amazed their love to the earth, amazed how they take care of each scrap which has got to them. And as it differs from behaviour of many Ukrainians-peasants selling, got them at collective farms, the earth for apartments, and is even worse — for foreign cars.

… These May days when the Crimean Tatars marked 66th anniversary of Stalin deportation, I have again recollected the small woman from Saki minibuses who has told to me about the love to the Crimean clouds, what is it gave and allows to me forces to overcome the problems, and have thought: can to the people of Ukraine the Crimean Tatars are God-given to remind of true values, to remind of how it is necessary to love the earth, the country not to hand over it for import pieces of iron, even for gas?

Olga Miljyhina