At three o'clock in the morning the village school was quiet. Twenty pupils were sleeping on the floor of the big room, in coats and socks.
Bekzod wasn't sleeping. He was listening to the rain on the roof.
He walked to the window. Outside, a light was burning in a small house. A woman was making bread at a table, and two children were carrying water from the yard.
In the corridor the teacher was sitting on a low chair with thirty exercise books on her knees. She was writing in red ink.
"Why aren't you sleeping?" she asked.
"The rain was making a noise," Bekzod said.
"Was it raining in your dream too?"
She poured tea from a kettle on the floor. At half past three Bekzod was drinking tea in a cold corridor and reading his classmates' names in red ink.
The light in the small house was still burning when he went back to his coat on the floor.
He understood something that night. While twenty people were sleeping, three people were working.