Aizhan Abisheva

The store smelled of dry bread and pickled cabbage, like most shops here in the winter. I had only come in for some tea and sugar, but as I stood in line, waiting for the cashier to finish a slow conversation with the man in front of me, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Aizhan Abisheva?”

I turned, and for a moment, I saw only a face that was vaguely familiar. A woman in her thirties, wrapped in a thick coat, her cheeks pink from the cold. She was smiling, hesitating, searching my face for recognition.

Then it clicked. “Altynai?”

She beamed, and before I knew it, she pulled me into a hug. “I hoped it was you,” she said. “I wasn’t sure. You look… well, you look the same, just with more silver in your braid.”

I laughed at that. “You look different, but I see it now. How long has it been?”

“Twenty-five years,” she said. “More, actually. I was in your class in ‘97.”

Ah, 1997. A time when the school had barely any heating, when textbooks were shared between three students, when I spent evenings stitching torn-up worksheets back together because the government had no money for new ones. “And look at you now,” I said. “What are you doing?”

Her eyes shone. “I’m a teacher too, Apa. Elementary school. Just like you.”

I stared at her, then smiled. “You chose a difficult path.”

“The best one,” she said. “Do you remember how you used to let us make up our own stories instead of just copying from the book? That’s why I wanted to teach.”

I had forgotten. Or maybe I hadn’t. Maybe it was just buried under the decades of broken windows, lost chalk, underpaid months, and endless worry. But hearing it from her, something inside me lifted.

We spoke for a while longer, standing by the shelves of tea and sunflower oil, until my hands began to grow cold inside my gloves.

As I stepped outside, the sharp winter air of Astana, Kazakhstan, cut through my coat. The city had changed so much over the years—tall glass buildings now stood where old Soviet blocks once crumbled. But some things remained the same.

I was 65 now, in the last year of my retirement, but in that moment, I felt young again.