Archive · 2012 · From the print edition of Wednesday 31 October 2012, Vol. 20, No. 6,147
FeaturesFive things that go bump in the Irad night
For Halloween, a Herald guide to the stories Iradis tell after dark: a bride in the kariz, a minibus to nowhere and a bell that rings in July.
TALAS — Halloween came to Irad with the Americans, and the parties at the bars on Liberty Boulevard tonight will be full of plastic pumpkins. But Iradis have never needed imported ghosts. Here are five of the stories told in student dormitories, on the night shift and in the back of minibuses.
*The Kariz bride. A woman in white walks the underground galleries of the Kok-Tash Kariz and leads smugglers astray. Those who follow her come out at the wrong shaft, without their cargo. The sanatorium lights.* On the ridge above Iyık Janyl stands an empty Soviet sanatorium. During the Feast of St. Janyl, its windows light up, one floor at a time.
*The last marshrutka. After midnight on the road to Aulie-Ata, emptied by the war of 2007, a minibus stops for anyone standing by the road. The driver does not take money, and nobody remembers getting off. The humming tower.* The Kobozev radio mast, built in 1934, is said to hum the anthem before an earthquake. Nurzhan residents swear it hummed in August 1992.
*The Sary-Say bell.* On hot July nights above Kara-Buura, where a mudflow buried a village in 1973, herders hear a church bell ringing below the ground. "My grandfather heard it," said a student from Kara-Buura. "My grandfather also heard the Americans were leaving in 1995. Both times he was wrong, and both times he was sure."