Silent Girl (6 page)

Tradition says if the boy can catch and kiss the girl, she is bound to fall in love with him. If he loses, she can whip him. Kyal was born to the saddle and has trained Aisulu to cover ground quickly. That her cousin might steal a kiss is revolting. She wins, as always, and declines to whip him. The tourists applaud her magnanimity. It's just a game but a deeply satisfying one.

After the race, the American woman says she heard most Kyrgyz brides are kidnapped. Kyal laughs. “No, no, no.
Ala kachuu
has been illegal since the Soviets took over. We're independent now, but it's still against the law.” She doesn't mention that everyone whispers of someone who was taken against her will and that the police are too corrupt to enforce the law. Ambassadors aren't expected to reveal everything they know.

Later, as she helps with dinner, Kyal relates what the woman said. “Tell her to come to campfire tonight,” Dimira says. “I will speak of
ala kachuu.
”

Kyal can't remember a time Dimira didn't tell of the days when emirs and khans prevailed and people believed in flying camels. The stories are windows to Dimira's heart, the way she warns and protects and reveals what she sees inside others, the way she passes along lessons she fears have been lost. When Aigul and Kyal were little, Dimira fed Aigul tales of poor peasants submissive to Fate. Kyal preferred the ones about brave young women even though they rarely had happy endings.

This night, Dimira starts with a tale about a fox that learns there is no gratitude in the world. Then, fixing her eyes on the American woman, she tells of an old khan so cruel he killed one peasant each day. So lecherous he sent a gang to kidnap a poor peasant girl who lived with her father in a small village in a valley in the mountains. The girl was of indescribable beauty as all girls in Dimira's stories are. In a clear voice younger than her years, Dimira recites: “‘I love another,' the girl cried. ‘I shall not be yours.' She threw herself from a window in the Khan's towering fortress. From where she fell, caves opened up and pure, clean, crystal clear water flowed from them, forming the mountain lake the people call Issyk Kul. Only there do jagged peaks rise sheer from the water on all sides. Only there do hawks ride the wind and chase the clouds away.”

Since Independence, Dimira has spoken only Kyrgyz. Kyal translates Dimira's words into English, trying to match her grandmother's facial expressions and gestures. English is better for getting to the point than for telling tales. Kyal has to be careful not to be done too soon or the tourists will think she's holding something back.

Two days pass before Usen speaks to Kyal as Aigul said he would. The family sits cross-legged on cushions, a kerosene lamp casting light on the meal before them. Kyal is blowing on her noodle soup when Usen clears his throat and speaks her name.

“Emil has asked permission to marry Aigul and I have said yes.”

“What happy news,” Kyal says. “Who would have guessed?”

Usen folds his arms across his chest. A nerve in his left eyelid twitches. “I told him my approval is conditional on you. As the oldest, you must marry first.”

“
Erf!
” Kyal shoots back. “That's the old way, unnecessary.”

“Don't scorn the old ways,” Usen says. “We owe them our living.”

“Some things aren't worth keeping.” It astounds her that so many people believe Kyrgyz independence means bringing back the past.

“The Soviets mocked our ways,” Dimira says. “They claimed we were backward. My mother was the last in her village to have a traditional wedding. It was beautiful, she said, everyone weeping rivers of tears. She drank from that memory as she dug irrigation ditches and waited for my father. He never returned from the war. I was five.” Dimira wipes her eyes. She relates this story often and it never fails to move her.

“Who can afford such a wedding anymore?” Usen says.

“Emil's family,” Aigul says. “They have many more horses than we do.”

“Aigul will have to wait 'til I finish university,” Kyal says, returning to her soup.

“You've had two years already,” Usen says. “More than anyone in the village. We could better use the money on showers for the tourists and generators to power them.”

Kyal's cheeks burn as if they've been slapped. She swallows hard and meets his impassive gaze. “I need a degree to get a good job.”

“I sent you to find a husband. It's taking too long. Best you marry now and learn how to be a woman.”

“I don't need to be a wife to be a woman.”

“Bite your tongue!” Dimira says.

“Emil can't marry, either,” Aigul says, “until his older brother does, and he isn't dating anyone.” Her voice comes out in whining notes. She pushes her dish away, delicately, with the tips of her fingers.

“Perhaps the brother would be interested in a match with Kyal,” Usen says.

“
Ahyee,
Ata, that's brilliant. The bride price you'll get for us! I am sure to fetch five horses. Kyal much less, because she's so bossy.”

In classes, Kyal sits shoulder to shoulder with young men from other lands who don't expect her to lower her eyes when she speaks with them. Men taller than her father. Future lawyers and software designers who will live in houses with electricity, running water, and flush toilets. If she has to have a husband, she wants one like that. “One day I will go to America and come back with a groom,” she says. “He will not own me for as little as five horses. He will not own me at all.”

“He will be rich and carry a gun, I suppose,” Dimira says. She saw a Hollywood movie once in Bishkek.

“I'll speak to Emil's family,” Usen says, his voice unyielding. “I'll not be left with you on my hands.”

Kyal gnaws her lower lip to stop her eyes from filling.

“Nobody gets to keep a daughter,” Dimira says softly, squeezing Kyal's hand. “That's our way.”

Usen strokes his face with both hands. “
Oomiyin,
” he says, ending the meal.

“
Oomiyin,
” Aigul and Dimira say.

Kyal cannot summon the word.

“He's afraid for you,” Dimira says later as Kyal helps her wash the dishes. “Afraid you'll be like a river that wanders off and gets swallowed up by the desert. He hated giving all his hard work to the collective. Don't you remember? Our herds fed the entire Soviet Union and still they didn't respect us. There was a great forgetting those years when factories sprung up like grass. Some of our young people never learned their own language, their mouths full of the crude sound of Russian. Your father wants you to have the life he waited for, a life you reject.”

“I don't! I'm studying it. But there's more in the world than this sliver of land.”

“All your studies can do is to prove what we already know is true.” Dimira retrieves a faded and cracked photograph from a chest behind the
kolomto
and holds it out. Kyal has seen this photo before: Dimira, her two sisters and their mother, standing in long dresses and coats, great gnarled mountains rising behind them.

“We lived on the roof of the world,” Dimira says. “So high all we could raise were yaks. The sky and all that's in it came to us. Why go anywhere else?”

“That was a long time ago, Ama. Life can't be as it was then.”

“It can. If there's only one road, no one gets lost.”

Dimira hauls out tradition when it suits her. If she wanted to be rude, Kyal could point out that, in the past, selling things at market was considered a disgrace. Yet Ata sells horses and the women sell
shirdaks.
She studies her great-grandmother's face in the photograph. Gentle but unafraid. Loneliness settles over her like mountain mist. “What was my mother like?” she asks.

Dimira puts the photo away and takes Kyal's cheeks in her calloused hands. “Restless like you. Harder to hold than a green horse. It wore me out to watch her.”

“Father never speaks of her. Why is that?”

“Because she was cursed. That's all you need to know.” Dimira flicks her hands in dismissal and walks away.

Superstitious nonsense. A fantastic tale contrived to frighten.

The first batch of tourists leave and the second turns up, along with a young man on a high-stepping grey horse he has to rein in sharply. Kyal is outside grooming Aisulu. The man's horse is a natural racer, its body pulsing with energy. And oh, the soulful eyes – almond-shaped and hooded. Who chooses a horse so hard to control?

Aigul hurries up to her and whispers, “That's Jyrgal, Emil's brother.”

He looks neither like Emil, whose features are too perfect to trust, nor like the American whose wide shoulders and straight teeth made Kyal weak in the knees. This man is skinny as a
bishkek
with a head so long and narrow, one might think his mother pressed it between two boards the moment he left the womb. The alpine sun has deeply scorched his once fair skin. A herder, Kyal thinks, disappointed.

Usen emerges from the yurt and holds the horse while Jyrgal – in jeans, long-sleeved black shirt, running shoes, and
kalpak
– dismounts. Usen calls out, “Kyal, I need you here now.” He waits until she stands beside him before spitting on the ground, taking Jyrgal's two hands in his and asking, “How are your father's horses, Son?”

Jyrgal leans over to spit. “Strong and swift, praise Allah.” His full voice is startling. Such a head should hold only thin, reedy sounds.

“Are you enjoying a peaceful life with your family?” Usen continues.

“More than I deserve, praise Allah,” Jyrgal replies.

Kyal doubts religion rests any heavier on Jyrgal's shoulders than it does on Usen's and hers. “Praise Allah” is the polite thing to say, a ritual display she does not respect. She clears her throat in impatience.

Usen throws a frown her way. “My daughter, Kyal. The one we spoke of when your family welcomed me recently.”

So he's done it. Sold her like a broodmare to this peasant. Tradition calls for her to bow slightly and cast a meek, virginal look at her suitor's feet. Instead, she thrusts out a hand to Jyrgal and stares boldly into his face. He's clean-shaven and smells like witch hazel. His eyes are as blue as a desert sky.

“My daughter likes to pretend she hasn't been brought up well,” Usen says, pinching his cheek to show his disapproval.

His face solemn, Jyrgal grips Kyal's hand and pumps it, seemingly unfazed by her immodesty. Pretending. Or spineless. She pulls away from the hot pressure of his rough hands.

Usen leads them into the yurt where Dimira boils water on the
kolomto
. “My mother and daughter will serve us chai. Be seated. Please.” He indicates the place of honour, the one he usually takes.

While they wait for their tea, the men agree that horses, not sheep, rule the landscape. Their voices recede into a crevice of Kyal's mind as she sets out cups, spoons jam into a bowl and slices bread Dimira baked that morning. She has signed up for field work the next semester. Travelling to burial grounds in search of ancient Turkic inscriptions. Unlocking secrets about the past. The yurt feels like her burial site as a pall of despair falls over her. Married women don't go to university. At least not women married to herdsmen. She looks at the straight-backed young man with reddish-brown hair as curly as a sheep's. Her back twitches in revulsion.

She sits beside Dimira and pours tea as Usen probes Jyrgal. He is twenty-five.

“Four years older than you, Kyal,” her father says as if she can't subtract.

Dimira says, “Mmm.”

Jyrgal's family breeds racers. “When I'm not tending the herd,” Jyrgal says, “I train horses for the leaguers who play
ulak tartysh
in the hippodrome.”

Dimira says, “Aah.”

Usen says, “We play, too! My brothers, nephews, and I. You must join us.”

“I will do that.”

“Do you play an instrument?” Usen says. “The
komuz,
perhaps? Everyone plays the
komuz,
no?” He points to the three-stringed fretless lute leaning against a wall.

“No.”

“Do you sing?”

“Like a mountain goose.”

Usen forces a laugh. “That's a good one!”

Kyal steps in to save her father from further disgrace. “What, then?” she says. “You don't play. You don't sing. Have you no tricks?”

“I can recite verse,” he says as if announcing he'd discovered a new planet.

“Un hun,” Dimira says.

Usen says, “We would enjoy that.”

Jyrgal stands and closes his eyes as though seeking inspiration. What a bore. Kyal would laugh if she weren't angry to the bottom of her heart at this charade engineered for her benefit. Ata knows all he wants to about Jyrgal. He has fallen in love with the idea of him. She is expected to do the same.