Bride kidnapping revisited
Three years ago my roommate was bride kidnapped. Now it’s my youngest sister-in-law. E turned 18 a few weeks ago, right before her high school graduation party. She’s now in the […]
4 a.m.
In the black, frozen pre-dawn of 4 in the morning all Semetei wants to do is stare out the window and suck his hand. This is baby logic. So I’ve been […]
Crabs in a bucket
G was born in 1967. At 19, she married. Bride-kidnapped by a man she’d grown up with. Not an actual brother, but a boy-man who had had the same babysitter as […]
Folk medicine, sex ed. and lies
A desperately needed to see a doctor because of pain in her “woman’s area.” 18 years old, she didn’t know where to go. So her older sister, older brother and male cousin […]
ISIL in Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyz in ISIL: Is the threat real?
So far, more than 200 Kyrgyzstani citizens have joined the fight in Syria and Iraq, including some 30 women. Roughly 150 of these fighters are ethnic Uzbeks, according to the Kyrgyz government. To […]
Stakes in the ground
My main reason for being in Kyrgyzstan is to research conflict along the un-delimited Kyrgyz-Tajik frontier. The area has never had a fully agreed-upon international border and it saw increasing tension over 2014, […]
Highway robbery
The Ak Keme Hotel, nestled in Bishkek’s mountainous outskirts, is an inoffensive, boilerplate, beige kind of a place. It’s the kind of place where middle managers confer over their ‘success […]
When you imagine your wedding day…
This is about weddings. I’m not talking about weddings as they once were or as Kyrgyz custom dictates. I’m talking about weddings as practiced here and now by the Kyrgyz middle […]
When you believe in things you don’t understand
I’ve been running into a lot of superstitions lately, as in people keep telling me: “Don’t do that! It’s bad luck.” So I’m keeping track of the superstitions here, if only […]
Kyrgyz schools take $46 million in bribes annually
On a cold Monday in December, my sister-in-law came home three hours early from school. “They stopped classes because we have no heat,” she explained. She and her parents were not happy. The […]
