Grandma sighed, but immediately cheered up again. She pointed at her legs: “I told the two of them, Don’t be so lazy or I’ll take you to herd the sheep!”

I didn’t want to reply because I thought her joke was inappropriate. Instead, I wanted to get to the bottom of something else: “Grandma, why did you have to go behind the hill? The others squat right here in the steppe.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that, dear. I’m not used to squatting while people look—I could never do that!”

Suddenly a fie ce feeling for her overcame me. It was part compassion and part awe. Then it changed into love. It felt like pain, it really hurt. The rims of my eyes turned hot. “Grandma!” I said and took her hand. She looked at me so kindly and with such understanding that I could barely speak: “Let’s go, Grandma. Let’s go home.”

Grandma

GRANDMA

Grandma was human silk. That’s what Father said, and what he said was always right. Always. And she had been sent to me by the sky. That’s what Mother had revealed to me. Some of the things she said weren’t true of course, but when the sky was involved, we were not allowed to lie. Mother had said so herself and even Grandma had listened.

At first she was a stranger among us, people said. She used to have a husband, a son, a yurt, and a sizeable flock. Later her husband was shot dead by fleeing Russians, and her son struck dead by pillaging Kazakhs. The two events happened one right after the other.

Left all alone, she sought the company of her younger sister, Hööshek. The sister was widowed as well, and for all I know, she was the only woman in our corner of the world who had managed to acquire the title baj. She had a son who, though long grown up, had remained weak and shy; and probably as a result of this worry Hööshek felt both more important as head of her family and more determined to assert herself in life.

Grandma did not talk much about her sister, and what little she said was good. She never said anything bad about anybody, not even about strangers. That’s the way she was.

In spite of that, people talked a great deal about Hööshek and about what she had done with Grandmother’s yurt and flock. The stories added up. They were common knowledge.