My father was called Schynykbaj, his father Khylbangbaj, and my grandfather’s father, Tümenbaj. And if the flow of history in my homeland had not been disrupted but had continued in its familiar bed, my name would have likely been Dshurukbaj. Baj denotes in all Turkic languages ‘rich,’ or ‘somebody rich, noble, or powerful.’ ‘Tümen’ in my great-grandfather’s name means ten thousand. It was not his original name but an honorific he was given when his herds numbered ten thousand animals. Khylbangbaj, my grandfather, was not quite as rich, but rich enough—he was still the richest man in the country. His many sheep, goats, horses, and yaks had to be divided by twenty-five because, in addition to the two sons and three daughters in his own yurt, he had twenty foster children, most of whom had found their way to him as adolescents, and some as adults. (He had only four camels, each a gelding that he got when he was an old man, each in exchange for twenty-five fully-grown sheep rams. Th se four, he used to say, belonged to nobody but him and his aged wife and were for carrying his equally aged yurt.)

Khylbangbaj was proverbially kind and above all, open-handed and generous. Anybody who no longer knew how to carry on in life struggled to reach his ail, threw himself at his feet, and asked for permission to call him Father. Khylbangbaj would immediately have the prostrate person stand, would have him fed, and would ask the members of his tribe who happened to be around to come and give witness about the person: Did he steal? Lie? Smoke? Drink? Was he violent? Was he known for any other vice? If all questions were answered in the supplicant’s favour, my grandfather would say: Take him or her into your midst; let him be a brother or a sister to you; and treat him or her well. Only once or twice is he known to have rejected a supplicant. Everybody else was taken in and treated by him and the whole community like a child of the daamal. They would share shelter, kettle, and, of course, duties with the rest of the family, and receive their inheritance when they got married. Yes, daamal—that was his title, which eventually replaced his name among the Tuvans altogether. But by then the Kazakhs had arrived, and they kept calling him Khylbangbaj. Daamal probably meant chieftain in another, fancier language. It might have been Chinese because I have heard that da means ‘grand’ in Chinese, as in Grand Chief.