Story

There was still time to get home. We had just taken a week’s vacation from school and were setting off with heavy bags. We sat down in a huddle, waiting for the bus. The bus was silent, except for the sound of car horns on the street. Everyone was busy with their own business, some playing on their phones, others leafing through newspapers.

At one point, two men in their fifties sat down on the benches, talking. Everyone seemed distracted since they got off. I quietly glanced in the direction where the voice was coming from. A woman in the front seat was looking around through the window, thinking, while the man behind her had been talking about something since he got off. She was wearing old, shabby, but apparently well-maintained clothes from the Soviet era. While the sun was shining brightly, this man seemed to never want to take off his warm clothes.

Even though two people got off at each stop, the passengers never seemed to end. The old man in front of me was still talking, laughing and sighing. It seemed that the woman had arrived at her stop, and she began to pack her things carefully. It seemed that all the passengers, who thought that Babajon was talking on the phone, also had the same thought in their minds, and they slowly looked at each other. I didn’t know why, but suddenly I felt like he was talking to himself.

Just like the end of everything, our final destination was approaching. I had asked him himself that the old man didn’t even have any relatives, but I couldn’t even tell my friends about it. As people get older, they become more and more lonely. It was the first time I had met a person who had been ignored, and every time I think about it, my insides go cold.

Erkinjonova Bibisora ​​Elyorbek qizi. Born on January 18, 2012 in Uchkurgan district, Namangan region. Currently, she is an 8th grade student at the Ishoqkhon Ibrat creative school. She can communicate in English, Russian and French. In 2025, she traveled to Dubai.