A Sunday Afternoon In Kyrgyzstan
A Sunday Afternoon in Kyrgyzstan
It's Sunday afternoon and I need bread. I ate the last piece at lunch and a scattered mess of crumbs atop my lopsided kitchen table is the only bread in the house. I need bread for breakfast before I teach tomorrow morning.
I brush the crumbs into a bucket that holds all my food scraps--apple rinds, egg shells, moldy pastries and sour milk-which I will feed to the hogs later, along with whatever else I have accumulated.
Not that I own any hogs. I live in a house in a family's compound. The family lives 100 meters from me. A large garden, a small apple and pear tree grove and some livestock pens and stables separate our homes. In the orchard is a grassy half acre of land where the family's two cows graze and a muscular horse stomps in the background.
The father of the family sometimes sits and smokes and carves wood in the shade of the grove. He runs around the trees, hiding behind the abandoned chicken coop or the rickety firewood shed. Sometimes I see him leap out of hiding and open fire on his enemies, using a broken broom handle for a gun. His voice and breath and tongue work together to simulate rapid machine gun fire-the same way I used to play as a boy. His main enemies seem to be the pigs and the calves. yet a few times I have caught him peering through my windows. I suspect I have only narrowly survived numerous assassination attempts.
Thus far, however, I have escaped and so I'll be needing bread. I quickly set about tidying before I leave. This doesn't take long as the house contains relatively little: a lumpy bed, a free-standing closet, a refrigerator, a kitchen cabinet, a gas stove, a sink that sometimes yields cold running water, an assortment of chairs and stools and two tables-one for each of my two rooms. I have everything I need, but not much else. I straighten some papers and close the closet doors. I don't need to turn off the lights...
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