https://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/slow stories from Irad, written to be read to the end Kündölük 3.4.2enhttps://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2018/03/a-note-before-leaving.html Sun, 11 Mar 2018 19:00:00 +0600Noteshttps://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2018/03/a-note-before-leaving.html I am starting at a newspaper in Talas. A few lines about what these long pages were for. Three years, six long stories, about 4,000 readers. Two of the stories were reprinted in the Talas Herald, one was read on the radio. The projectionist's son came back from Almaty for a week after he read…https://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2018/02/the-man-at-the-door-of-the-old-bathhouse.html Sun, 18 Feb 2018 19:20:00 +0600Peoplehttps://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2018/02/the-man-at-the-door-of-the-old-bathhouse.html In the Old City of Talas the moncho has stood for two centuries. Its attendant has never taken a bath there. The old bathhouse stands near the Sarchashma Springs, behind a door that is lower than a man. You bow to come in, and Kadyr, the attendant, 64, bows too. He has done it eleven thousand…https://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2018/01/coal-weather.html Sun, 14 Jan 2018 20:15:00 +0600Peoplehttps://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2018/01/coal-weather.html In Tash-Kömür, the coal town below Iyık Janyl, the first frost is announced by a smell. The men who deliver it say they never have a day off in winter. At six in the morning the town smells of cold iron and smoke, the same smell as a stove that has been lit for the first time in autumn. From the…https://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2017/11/the-keeper-of-aulie-ata.html Sun, 12 Nov 2017 17:50:00 +0600Peoplehttps://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2017/11/the-keeper-of-aulie-ata.html A small town where the Talas leaves its valley, a mausoleum with a green dome, and an old man who has locked and unlocked its door every morning since 1971. Aulie-Ata means holy father. The town is named after the tomb of a ruler of the Kara-Khanids, ten centuries dead, and the tomb is a brick…https://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2017/09/under-the-red-cliff.html Sun, 24 Sep 2017 18:40:00 +0600Placeshttps://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2017/09/under-the-red-cliff.html At Kyzyl-Senir, the church's wine ripens in clay jars buried in caves. The brothers who tend it say it is not a winery. It is a patience. The cliff is red sandstone, cut by the river into the shape of a rooster's comb, and all along its foot are black holes: caves, big and small, which people dug…https://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2017/07/sunday-at-the-sheep-market-in-bazar-korgon.html Sun, 16 Jul 2017 19:45:00 +0600Placeshttps://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2017/07/sunday-at-the-sheep-market-in-bazar-korgon.html Every Sunday, before sunrise, six thousand animals and a few thousand men arrive in a town at the edge of the Fergana rim. By ten, it is over. The market is a field at the edge of town, behind a wall that nobody has repaired, and it smells like every field in the world on which animals have been…https://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2017/06/the-bus-to-the-end-of-the-line.html Sun, 04 Jun 2017 20:30:00 +0600Roadshttps://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2017/06/the-bus-to-the-end-of-the-line.html The village bus runs from the Talas bazaar to the last village before the hills. Two hours, forty stops, and a driver who knows every passenger's mother. The driver, Asylbek, has driven this route for fourteen years. He does not need to look at the passengers; he knows them by their cough. The…https://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2017/04/forty-years-of-weddings-in-one-lens.html Sun, 30 Apr 2017 19:00:00 +0600Peoplehttps://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2017/04/forty-years-of-weddings-in-one-lens.html Murat Alibekov photographed the weddings of two generations of Talas. He will tell you which family is still angry about which photo. His studio is a room above a pharmacy, up a staircase with a handrail that wobbles. In the window is a gallery of couples: some in black and white, with the bride…https://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2017/02/train-no-1.html Sun, 19 Feb 2017 20:30:00 +0600Roadshttps://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2017/02/train-no-1.html Seven hours and a quarter from Talas to Nurzhan, in a carriage the age of its conductor, with a samovar that the whole carriage guards. The train leaves at 07:40. At 07:30 the platform fills: women with bags tied in sheets, men with their lunch in a tin, a student with a guitar in a bag, two…https://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2016/12/the-museum-of-the-labour-collective.html Sun, 04 Dec 2016 18:00:00 +0600Placeshttps://blog.attelkom.net/daniyar/2016/12/the-museum-of-the-labour-collective.html In the antimony-works settlement of Sary-Bulak, the house of culture keeps a museum of the people who built it. Its curator is eighty-one and she knows every face. The works at Sary-Bulak was opened in 1961 and for sixty years the settlement of Rudnik has lived by it. The house of culture is a…