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permission to marry Aigul and I have said yes.”
    â€œWhat happy news,” Kyal says. “Who would have guessed?”
    Usen folds his arms across his chest. A nerve in his left eyelid twitches. “I told him my approval is conditional on you. As the oldest, you must marry first.”
    â€œ Erf! ” Kyal shoots back. “That’s the old way, unnecessary.”
    â€œDon’t scorn the old ways,” Usen says. “We owe them our living.”
    â€œSome things aren’t worth keeping.” It astounds her that so many people believe Kyrgyz independence means bringing back the past.
    â€œThe Soviets mocked our ways,” Dimira says. “They claimed we were backward. My mother was the last in her village to have a traditional wedding. It was beautiful, she said, everyone weeping rivers of tears. She drank from that memory as she dug irrigation ditches and waited for my father. He never returned from the war. I was five.” Dimira wipes her eyes. She relates this story often and it never fails to move her.
    â€œWho can afford such a wedding anymore?” Usen says.
    â€œEmil’s family,” Aigul says. “They have many more horses than we do.”
    â€œAigul will have to wait ’til I finish university,” Kyal says, returning to her soup.
    â€œYou’ve had two years already,” Usen says. “More than anyone in the village. We could better use the money on showers for the tourists and generators to power them.”
    Kyal’s cheeks burn as if they’ve been slapped. She swallows hard and meets his impassive gaze. “I need a degree to get a good job.”
    â€œI sent you to find a husband. It’s taking too long. Best you marry now and learn how to be a woman.”
    â€œI don’t need to be a wife to be a woman.”
    â€œBite your tongue!” Dimira says.
    â€œEmil can’t marry, either,” Aigul says, “until his older brother does, and he isn’t dating anyone.” Her voice comes out in whining notes. She pushes her dish away, delicately, with the tips of her fingers.
    â€œPerhaps the brother would be interested in a match with Kyal,” Usen says.
    â€œ Ahyee, Ata, that’s brilliant. The bride price you’ll get for us! I am sure to fetch five horses. Kyal much less, because she’s so bossy.”
    In classes, Kyal sits shoulder to shoulder with young men from other lands who don’t expect her to lower her eyes when she speaks with them. Men taller than her father. Future lawyers and software designers who will live in houses with electricity, running water, and flush toilets. If she has to have a husband, she wants one like that. “One day I will go to America and come back with a groom,” she says. “He will not own me for as little as five horses. He will not own me at all.”
    â€œHe will be rich and carry a gun, I suppose,” Dimira says. She saw a Hollywood movie once in Bishkek.
    â€œI’ll speak to Emil’s family,” Usen says, his voice unyielding. “I’ll not be left with you on my hands.”
    Kyal gnaws her lower lip to stop her eyes from filling.
    â€œNobody gets to keep a daughter,” Dimira says softly, squeezing Kyal’s hand. “That’s our way.”
    Usen strokes his face with both hands. “ Oomiyin, ” he says, ending the meal.
    â€œ Oomiyin, ” Aigul and Dimira say.
    Kyal cannot summon the word.
    â€œHe’s afraid for you,” Dimira says later as Kyal helps her wash the dishes. “Afraid you’ll be like a river that wanders off and gets swallowed up by the desert. He hated giving all his hard work to the collective. Don’t you remember? Our herds fed the entire Soviet Union and still they didn’t respect us. There was a great forgetting those years when factories sprung up like grass. Some of our young people never learned their own language, their mouths full of the