Father had no time for such talk. If he happened to catch the tail end of one of these conversations, he had nothing but disdain to spare: “Without livestock, without meat or milk—what are these purultarens going to live on? Their jabber perhaps?”

Purultarens—this was one of the fashionable words Uncle Sargaj and Uncle Sama had recently taken to. They called themselves purultarens, by which they meant proletarians. Then we heard that Uncle Sargaj was going to move and settle in the sum center because his children would be attending school. Reputedly Sambyy, who had spent his first year in boarding school, had become homesick and now said that he would only return if his parents moved to the center with him. And maybe Gökbasch could still be talked into going to school if her parents’ yurt were next door and she knew she could go home whenever she felt like it.

So one morning Uncle Sargaj showed up with four camels he had borrowed from the Kazakhs in exchange for a ewe lamb, and the yurt was loaded up. Aunt Buja and Munsuk, the youngest of the children, sat on the white horse that always stood saddled from morning to night. Everybody else followed the packed camels on foot.

The family left their livestock to Uncle Sama. “That’s madness. They will drink milkless tea as early as the hot autumn. Ask them if they don’t want to take the black horse so at least they can ride?” Mother asked Father.

But Father laughed scornfully: “He who thirsts for poverty shall enjoy it to the fullest.”

Until this episode, it had been customary for families who were about to move, to invite everybody who would stay behind for tea on the day before their move. And then they in turn would be invited back for early tea on the day of their departure.

But now none of this happened with Uncle Sargaj. “What strange times these are,” Grandma commented.

A little later, we heard that Uncle Sama and Aunt Galdarak, too, would move to the sum and settle down. But they would not move until the onset of winter, and so their yurts still stood where they used to be. Having heard of the plan, Father called over to Uncle Sama, who was lying in front of his yurt tanning himself: “And what will come of your animals?”