When I returned with my flock to the hürde and the yurt in the evening, I learned who had taken care of the large flock: Galdarak, Dügürshep’s younger brother. He was drinking tea and eating meat, and telling what he had seen in the course of the day, where the wind had blown from, and how the flock had behaved. Then he rode off.

I was left alone with Father and Mother. For the first time ever our family was that small. I pretended to be busy, crushing a lot of ticks, and spent the evening with all my senses alert. But not a word was said about Grandma, who had lain on her bed and worked on the continuation of her stories just the evening before. Now we lived as if we had never had her, never known her.

While I bent over the lambs, combing their necks with my fingers for ticks and crushing a few more, I could still hear her soft, sonorous voice, and I could see the kindly, spider-web smile in her wrinkled face.

As time passed, the secret got more and more hazy. An occasional visitor would ask me teasingly where my grandma with the shaved head had gone. Or sometimes they would be even more direct and ask if I longed for my grandma, who had gone into the salt.

Oh yes, going into the salt! I already knew about that. Once we expected a baby to come to us. We had longed for it so badly but never got to see it. People eventually said that it had lost its way and gone into the salt instead of to us.

Salt was a rarity in those days. People went into the salt with their camels. It took them a long time to return, and when they finally did, they brought back a lot of salt. People also shared whatever salt they had. I often had to run to the neighbors to ask for a bowl of salt, and sometimes I came back with only half a bowl.

I never replied to questions about Grandma. Mother did it for me, or Father. They said that Grandma would return once I was a grown-up. Everybody agreed, even people who had teased me at first. It was strange, but the doubt that had reared up inside me and torn at their words would then die down, and I would be calmed again for the time being.