Sergeyich tries to testify for Bekir and secure his release

Sergeyich tries to testify for Bekir and secure his release by going to the police in Bakhchysarai and stating that he had given Bekir the candles, so Bekir had not robbed a church. The visit becomes a collision between a simple act of witness and a legal authority determined to treat Bekir’s case as more than a misunderstanding about church property. Sergeyich leaves without Bekir, and with an eleven-day deadline to leave Russia himself.

The journey and the reason for intervening

After being told that Bekir had been taken to the police station in Bakhchysarai, Sergeyich drives there with Aisha beside him in the passenger seat, guiding him. At the desk, he asks to speak to the chief about a young man from Albat named Bekir. The policeman corrects the village name, calling it Kuybyshevo, and identifies Bekir by his surname, Mustafayev. When asked what Bekir is to him, Sergeyich answers that he is no one to him; he has come because the candles were his and Bekir did not rob a church.

That answer defines both the modesty and the limit of Sergeyich’s intervention. He does not claim a family tie or a special standing. He offers what he can establish from his own actions: he gave Bekir the candles. The policeman directs him to the lead detective and asks for his papers, so Sergeyich hands over his battered Ukrainian passport. His effort to help therefore begins as a straightforward attempt to correct one accusation, but it takes place in a station where his identity and permission to remain are already visible.

Making a statement

The detective introduces himself indistinctly, and Sergeyich cannot make out the name; he hears only the word detective clearly. Told to explain himself, he recounts the candles, his village, its bombed-out church, and his bees. The detective listens and nods, but his stony, indifferent expression makes Sergeyich increasingly nervous. When the story reaches what seems a natural stopping point, Sergeyich insists that it is the truth.

The detective then makes the oral account into a written statement: Sergeyich must put everything he has said down in detail. Sergeyich worries that he may make mistakes, and it takes him about twenty minutes to cover three sheets in uneven handwriting. The detail matters to the shape of his testimony. He is not merely asking the police to take his word for the candles; he accepts the effort of recording his whole account, despite his anxiety about writing it correctly.

A release expected, then denied

After reading the three pages, the detective leaves the office without explanation. Sergeyich assumes he has gone to fetch Bekir and that the young man will be released so the two can leave together. About five minutes later, however, the detective returns alone, with neither Bekir nor the papers. He tells Sergeyich that he can go. The missing statement and the absence of Bekir make the outcome plain before any explanation is offered: the account has not secured the release Sergeyich expected.

Sergeyich asks whether he should wait outside for Bekir, explaining that he came by car and could drive him home. The detective is baffled by this expectation and calls Sergeyich odd for getting involved in other people’s affairs. He also makes clear that the candles are not, in his view, the only reason Bekir is being held. The detective describes Bekir as brazen, saying that he had driven someone else’s car for two years without official permission and had mouthed off to the authorities.

Sergeyich objects that the car belonged to Bekir’s father and that the father had been killed. The detective responds that the car was registered to the father, but that the father had never given his son official permission to drive it; by that reasoning, Bekir had been violating Russian law for two years. The exchange recasts the dispute: Sergeyich’s testimony addresses the candles, while the detective invokes a separate allegation to explain why that testimony will not bring Bekir out of custody.

The warning and the return

When Sergeyich asks what he should tell Bekir’s mother, the detective snaps that he can tell her whatever he wants. He returns Sergeyich’s blue Ukrainian passport and its insert, then warns him that he is a foreigner and must leave the territory of Russia within eleven days or be brought back to the station and put in a cell. The visit that began as an attempt to stand witness for Bekir thus ends with a threat directed at Sergeyich himself. His Ukrainian papers, handed over at the start of the encounter, are returned as the condition attached to his continued presence.

On the drive back to Albat, Sergeyich keeps glancing at Aisha, wondering whether to tell her what he learned. Neither speaks: he says nothing, and she does not ask, sitting quietly and tensely all the way to the village. When Sergeyich later tells Aisylu about his conversation with the detective, she can barely hold back her tears. His testimony does not free Bekir; instead, the station’s response carries the consequences outward, into the anxious silence of the journey and the distress of Bekir’s mother.