I opened the dresser – costume jewellery, bills going back years. Beneath them was a display box with a clasp. I opened it. On one side was a black and white photograph of an unsmiling man in the fatigues of a Soviet Tank Division commander. Her father. I recognised the Darul Aman Palace behind him, still intact, and felt a momentary shiver, as if overhearing a stranger discussing your own dream. Kabul, maybe 1979 or 1980. He could have been no more than twenty-one years old. Pinned opposite it was a Soviet Valour Medal with a red, white and blue ribbon.

Sent to farm, sent to fight. Lives picked up and dropped down. I put the box back, returned to the hallway. The plasterwork here was peeling. All the furniture was old. Military pensions never stretched far. I thought about the medical treatment for her grandmother, and imagined the life of a bright daughter, a lucrative daughter. Responsibility like that could corrupt more effectively than anything else.

Her room was at the end of the corridor. Single bed, clothes draped over a single chair. No PC, but a laptop on the desk. On her shelves: old Russian translations of the English and American writers considered revolutionary enough to be published under the Soviet Union, a canon about which I’d always been curious – Shaw, Hemingway, Shakespeare, Ford Madox Ford. Then newer editions: Orwell, Fielding, Proust. A collection of Shevchenko’s poems, the revolutionary currently sprayed across Astana’s walls. I took that down, leafed through to ‘My Testament’, the poem in question, in case it was marked in any way. It wasn’t. I put it back, read the other spines: Rewriting the Nation: Elites and Narratives, Modernising the Kazakh Alphabet. On the desk were more current affairs: The New Imperialism, The Globalisation of NATO. On the wall above the desk was a list of time zones and public holidays in different countries. A key had been left in the top desk drawer. I was approaching when I heard her steps on the stairs. I took a book from the shelf.

‘Auezov,’ Aliya said, when she arrived beside me. She was smiling. ‘He is a good playwright.’

‘When I was in Almaty I saw a procession of men and women all dressed in white,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t imagine what was going on. They didn’t look like any particular religion. So I followed them all the way to the central cemetery. Do you know it?’

‘Yes.’

‘They went to Auezov’s monument and took turns kissing the statue. Then they sat down nearby and read from his works.’

‘It is a tradition, on the anniversary of his death.’

‘I thought it was beautiful. And the cemetery itself was so overgrown. I loved all the headstones together: crescents, orthodox crosses, Stars of David, Red Stars. They all seemed very equal and comfortable together. But only one had worshippers that day.’ I put the book back. ‘I should go.’