Three Kids and a Kettle

The kitchen is in boxes. The kettle is on top of the last one, with the cups inside it, wrapped in Dastan's shirts.…

We decided. After the school year, in August, we go to Almaty. Dastan goes first in June to prepare the flat, then I…

Dastan's cousin in Almaty found a place for him in a building company, as a boiler engineer, the work he knows, with a…

Fourth month in a row of the coal bill. The price is up by a third compared to the year before. Dastan got an extra…

My mother-in-law lives in the village and does not have the internet, so we call her on the phone twice a week and put…

The sewing machine and the first pile of masks. Orders for school uniforms stopped, but I started to sew masks, two…

Salima was born on 19 January, 3.4 kilos, at the maternity house in Iyık Janyl, in the middle of a snow day. Dastan…

All the mothers' group has moved to Tulpar. The new app. The group chat of the school class is there, the kindergarten…

For people who ask what "shifts" means: it means that for two weeks I see my husband at breakfast, for two weeks at…

The Old New Year, 13 January, the one nobody can explain. In the village they still celebrate it, with a table and a…

The winter list on the fridge door, in my handwriting. Every November I write a list on a piece of paper and hang it…

The kettle that started this. Dastan brought it from the bazaar in Talas. My sister Gulnara in Talas says everybody…