What Abai calls constancy of purpose, Mukhtar calls simply “doing things properly.” He believes that if knowledge is rooted in an honorable vessel, its fruit will sustain a family, and even a country, through unimaginable transformations. Abai instructs us not to abandon a truth we have fought for, “even on pain of death.” Mukhtar lived that creed through storms of economic collapse and even after his heart failed him. Disability forced him to move slower, but not to abandon the knowledge and dignity that had shaped him. He continued to trade after surgery, refusing to see limitations as defeat. Word Thirty-Two speaks of firmness in defense of one’s views, to preserve reason and honor. Mukhtar defended trust, honesty, and responsibility not through argument or rhetoric, but through example. He valued knowledge that served people, not knowledge that “simply confuses people,” as Abai warns against. He never pursued wealth to show he was superior; he worked so his children would never feel the hunger he once feared
Mukhtar’s story is not simply survival. It is a profound example of what Abai saw as the highest form of learning: knowledge rooted in conscience, applied with courage, and carried with unwavering will. Through his disability, his resilience, and his steadfast integrity, he shows what it means to be a man whose learning serves not only himself, but his family, his community, and the dignity of his nation.
Mukhtar Tarbagatayev grew up believing that life was supposed to be simple. In 1960s Soviet Qazaqstan, a man’s path was laid out before him long before he took his first step: go to school, work in a warm factory or office, receive your wages on time, retire with dignity, and watch your children repeat the same pattern. That was the promise, stability in exchange for loyalty. He remembers that period like a distant dream now. “Under the Soviet Union we worked indoors, in warmth, with good conditions,” he says. The future felt solid. His world had walls and rules, and none of them hinted that one day he would be hauling sacks of potatoes across a border just to keep his family fed.
Then history struck, sudden, cold, merciless. In 1990, everything collapsed at once. Factories shut overnight. Wages stopped. People were sent home with nothing except the words: unpaid leave. “Since we had to make a living somehow,” Mukhtar recalls, “we all went to the market.” There was no time for pride; hunger makes decisions for you. If you wanted to eat, you body froze in the cold, but his purpose stayed burning. “We planned carefully,” he says. “We never chased every last coin.” While some traders spent profits on showy celebrations or cars to mask the insecurity inside, Mukhtar and his friends spent nights calculating, saving every extra tenge, investing in the next shipment of goods
They had no phones, no guidance, no safety net. But they built trust, and that became the real capital of the 90s. “The first and most important thing was mutual trust,” he says. They gave goods on consignment, often without even IOUs. If someone made a promise, that was enough. In those years, a handshake was worth more than a contract stamped by a broken state. Of course, betrayal exists everywhere. “There were many who took goods and couldn’t pay.” When that happened, they did not fight, did not chase, did not threaten. “We entrusted such people to God,” he says quietly. Stress already weighed heavily; they could not afford hatred on top of exhaustion.
Day after day, Mukhtar stood in the open cold, “from morning till evening”, writing every transaction carefully in a big ledger. After hours at the stall, they loaded goods into a car and distributed them across towns before night fell. Competition was fierce, margins tiny, two or three tenge on a sack of flour. But they treated every customer as if their dignity depended on it. “We didn’t squeeze people,” he says. “We sold with the mindset of: what is allotted will sell.
With every frozen morning and every long drive, Mukhtar’s character sharpened. Entrepreneurship taught him the truth had to trade. If you wanted to survive, you had to become something entirely new, an entrepreneur. Qazaqstan in the 1990s was chaos wrapped in winter. Inflation devoured money faster than hands could earn it. The currency changed again and again, tenge replacing rubles, then tenge collapsing in value. “No matter how much you worked,” he says, “inflation burned it up.” He and others hauled food from Russia, potatoes, sugar, flour, carrying it by the bag, one aching trip at a time. “Production in Qazaqstan had stopped. We hauled in everything from Russia.”
This wasn’t entrepreneurship as textbooks describe it. It was survival in a collapsing country, where the rules changed daily, and the ground shifted underfoot like melting ice. But even in this instability, Mukhtar discovered something steady within himself: qairat (will). His about money, how hard it is to earn cleanly, how easy it is to lose foolishly. It taught him to read people, to stay vigilant, to adapt faster than fear. It strengthened his reasoning, and his compassion. It taught him that success without integrity is not success at all. But the body, unlike the heart, has limits. Cold seeped into his bones year after year, the roads aged his spine, stress gnawed at his heart. “Because I was constantly on the road, my heart was damaged,” he says. He knew something was wrong, but the stalls didn’t allow sick days, and bills didn’t wait for surgeries. Still he pushed his body to obey a will that refused surrender. Then one day, the body pushed back and from 2001 he was officially granted disability status. Life forced him to pause, but only for a moment. “I carried on in trade,” he says. He still needed to be the man his family relied on. Disability was not a sentence, it was a test. It asked: What does strength mean to you now? Mukhtar answered not with speeches, but with continued action. In 2014, he had a heart surgery and then he need to stop working and business was sold.
He is part of a generation he describes with pride: “We people born in 1960–61 have lived through two centuries and many phases.” Soviet order. Post-Soviet chaos. Rebuilding. They were not trained for entrepreneurship, but they did it anyway. They were not taught resilience, but lived it daily. They were not told their efforts would build an independent Qazaqstan, but they did. Mukhtar’s wife was his anchor in every storm. “My steadfast helper was my spouse,” he says with gratitude that softens his voice. She managed the household, protected his health when he did not, and raised the children while he chased income for the family’s survival. Together, they were an unbreakable partnership, a union of sacrifices and shared victories. “The children studied well and took care of the home themselves,” he adds proudly. His heart never stopped being a father’s heart, worrying constantly whether his children would have enough, whether they would grow up educated, upright, not needing to fight the same battles he did
Disability brought new humility. The man who once traveled tirelessly now had to listen to his doctor, rest, avoid cold, slow down. But instead of letting stillness turn into bitterness, he chose growth. After retiring, he attended courses. “For anyone who wants to work,” he says, “there’s plenty to do.” He still dreams, still learns, still keeps himself useful. He follows medical instructions carefully: medicine on time, fresh air, tests, supervision. He does not take life for granted, he guards it. Mukhtar speaks with deep respect for the state support he now receives. “They paid a disability pension and sent us to sanatoriums. When traveling, I pay only half the ticket price.” He is grateful, but he does not see support as something to depend on blindly. “Don’t just sit and wait for assistance,” he advises others with disabilities. “Do what you can do. Keep earning.” He believes agency is a form of dignity, and dignity is a form of strength.
He sees with pride how Qazaqstan has evolved, how markets that once operated like battlefields are now stable, how young people build businesses online, open cafés, and create technology. “Nowadays most work is done via the internet. Young people today have tremendous opportunities.” He helped lay the foundation they stand on. Their freedom rests on the sacrifices his generation made, a truth he states without needing credit. When asked about success, he doesn’t talk about money or power. His voice becomes softer, deeper: “To engage in business, you first need knowledge. If you learn planning, profit management, and financial literacy, you can achieve great success. A person must work from the heart, honestly. Don’t deceive anyone; treat everyone as your equal.” These are not business tips, they are philosophy earned through bruised hands and sleepless nights.
His disability, the scar left by years of unrelenting labor, is not a mark of tragedy, it is a mark of honor. It is a reminder of a life spent giving more than taking. It represents the weight he carried so his children could walk lighter. When he speaks, you hear no regret. When he looks back, he says only: “I feel I did everything properly.” This is success, a heart at peace with its own story. Mukhtar embodies Abai’s Tolyq Adam: aqyl (mind) in the choices he made, zhurek (heart) in the care he gave his family and customers, and qairat (will) in the way he refused to surrender his purpose even when his body faltered. He lived not for praise, but for responsibility. Not for selfglory, but for service.
He says he and his friends, now retirees, still check in on each other. They survived the same battlefield. They built trust that no inflation could erase. They are a generation that saw a world collapse and then helped build a new one, brick by brick, truckload by truckload. Qazaqstan’s independence was not only declared in politics, it was earned in markets, in cold mornings, in the determination of men who refused to let their families go hungry. Mukhtar’s story is not loud. It doesn’t shout in headlines. But it carries the quiet heroism of someone who lived through historical earthquakes and stayed standing. The disability that slowed his steps could not slow his purpose. The challenges that came from beyond his control did not break his faith in himself or others.
He is living proof that strength is not measured by how much a man can lift, but how much he can endure. That success is not measured by wealth, but by whether one can look at their life and say: “I stood for honesty. I cared for my family. I remained someone people could trust.” That is a real achievement. Sitting now with his grandchild, he witnesses a Qazaqstan he helped shape, a country more stable, more hopeful, where entrepreneurs no longer trade survival for dignity. He sees young people dreaming of opportunities he never had, and he smiles, because this is what he worked for. Mukhtar Tarbagatayev lived through instability and chose integrity. He lived through disability and chose dignity. He lived through uncertainty and chose perseverance. His story teaches that the true measure of a person is not the obstacles they face, but the will with which they continue to rise. In every phase of his life, Mukhtar chose to move forward. And in doing so, he carried his family, his community, and a piece of Qazaqstan forward with him.