Baldar: honey from the Kara-Buura hills

Today is 23 July. This year I went up with Papa, with the other families from the old Sary-Say. Papa was twenty-one in 1973. He had come down to Kara-Buura for the dipping of the sheep and he stayed two nights. When he went back the village was not there.

I did not know all this. He never told me in all my life, and I did not ask. Today, at the debris fan, a priest said the Qurbana and an old woman read the names, a very long list, in a thin voice. Papa read one name aloud, his cousin Aigul's, and put a small jar of honey on the stones. Then we went down. In the bus he said: "Now you know what is under there."

I won't write more. This is only to say that on this day every year there is someone from our family at that place.