How, as children they played on the water's edge while their fathers fished the sea. Now, everything has gone, the Aral, the Soviet Union and with them their livelihood and future. Even the climate has changed. Winters are longer, the summers shorter. To the young, the Aral is just a story.
Real life means leaving.
From time to time, foreigners swoop in to assess the situation and draw up progress reports. The locals joke that if everyone who'd come to study the Aral had brought a bucket of water, the sea would be full by now. Meanwhile, they've been left with no one to blame and no one to turn to. Aleshbaye Avdigazeavich is a vigorous man in his late 40s standing in his fur hat over six feet tall. He used to run a shoe factory.