He Stopped to Help

Highlighted words are key vocabulary — tap one to see its translation. Colors show the part of speech:

My grandfather stopped helping strangers on the road in the autumn of 1998, and he had a reason.

He drove a lorry between Tashkent and Termez for twenty-six years. In September that year he stopped to help two men with a flat tyre south of Guliston, at night, and while he was under their car with their jack, one of them took his bag, his documents and eleven months of saved money out of his cab.

He walked into the police station in Guliston at four in the morning and he never got any of it back.

After that he drove past everybody. My grandmother says he would go quiet for about a kilometre afterwards, every time, and then talk about something else. He went on driving that road for another eleven years like that.

My father took over the lorry in 2011, and he has a different rule, and it is written on a piece of card above the windscreen in handwriting I know: Always stop. Lock the cab. My grandfather wrote that card himself, which took me years to understand.

In February 2016 my father stopped to help a woman with two children and a dead battery on the Guliston road, at eleven at night, in the rain, at almost exactly the same place.

He tried to start her car from his own battery and it did not work. Then he tried putting the children in his cab with the heater on while he waited with her, because a woman does not get into a lorry with a stranger at eleven at night and he understood that immediately.

They waited four hours for her brother to come from Sirdaryo. My father lost half a night and, somewhere in those four hours, a phone that he had left on the seat with the door open.

He remembers standing in that rain and thinking about his father under the other car in 1998, eighteen years and about two hundred metres away.

He did not stop helping people. That is the whole story, and my grandfather knew it would go that way, which is why he wrote the card instead of the rule he actually lived by.

My father is fifty-one. He tells me two things every time I take a car anywhere: remember to lock it, and do not stop being the kind of person who stops.

Vocabulary from this story

Tap a card to flip it.

strangers

notanish odamlar

lorry

yuk mashinasi

flat tyre

ochilgan gʻildirak

jack

domkrat

documents

hujjatlar

cab

kabina

police station

militsiya boʻlimi

windscreen

old oyna

handwriting

qoʻl yozuvi

battery

akkumulyator

heater

pech

immediately

darhol

seat

oʻrindiq

Grammar from this story

Key patterns that appeared in the text.

stop doing vs stop to do

stop + V-ing — ishning oʻzini tugatish: He stopped helping people (endi yordam bermaydi). stop + to + V1 — boshqa ish uchun toʻxtash: He stopped to help somebody (mashinani toʻxtatdi, yordam berdi). Bir soʻz farqi — teskari maʼno.

My grandfather stopped helping strangers in 1998.
My father stopped to help a woman on the Guliston road.

remember / forget: which order?

remember to do — kerakli ishni yodda tutib qilish (Remember to lock the cab). remember doing — oʻtgan voqeani eslash (I remember standing on that road). forget ham xuddi shunday ishlaydi.

Remember to take water in July.
I remember sitting in that cab at midnight.

try, go on, and need + -ing

try to do — urinib koʻrish (qiyin ish), try doing — tajriba qilib koʻrish (boshqa yoʻl). go on doing — davom etish, go on to do — keyin boshqa ishga oʻtish. need + -ing esa passiv maʼno beradi: The tyre needs changing = needs to be changed.

He tried to push the car and then tried putting stones under the wheel.
The spare tyre needs changing.

Check your understanding

Read the story, then choose the best answer. Tap a choice to check it.

1. What is the difference between the grandfather and the father?

2. "He stopped to help a woman" means:

3. Which sentence is about a memory of the past?