On windless Sundays we hiked up to the top of Doora Hara. From there everything was visible as if in the palm of my hand: The big rivers that were now covered with ice and snow and were glinting in places; the ails along the bank on this side of the Ak-Hem; Tewe-Mojun, the Camel’s Neck, and Saryg-Höl, the Yellow Lake, both brought into being by Sardakpan, the giant hero and creator of the Altai Mountains; the six Kazakh yurts that lay in regular intervals along the Homdu’s left bank and almost always gave off clouds of thick smoke; beyond Ak-Hem and on the Homdu’s right bank the center of the Ak-Hem sum, which was Kazakh; the bushes starting at Dshedi-Geshig and stretching along the Homdu until they disappeared in the ravine between the mountain ridges of Ortaa-Syn and Borgasun; the center of Tsengel sum, which was Tuvan; and finally the mountains in the distance, above all Harlyg Haarakan, the vast blue-white, snow-covered peak.

I had been to fewer than half of these places, but I knew all of them by name, and I knew pretty much where things were and who lived where. I knew because Grandma had a good memory and, unlike Mother, the patience to answer all my questions.

The sum, which always meant the center of the Tuvan sum, was closest to my heart. I stared at it more often and longer than at anything else, until I was able to distinguish one house from the next and thought I could even count the yurts scattered around the houses like a shooed herd. They stood out against the brown steppe, shimmering from afar. Sometimes I saw a car drive past. It dragged along a white thread of dust, which would often grow into a cloud. At other times the thread would break off and balloon into a veil of fog that grew bigger and paler until I could no longer see it.