As Minsk recedes, drivers have to start watching out for horse-drawn carts along the shoulder of the road. In Starobin itself, the favorite mode of transportation is the bicycle. Her outstretched arms offer bread and salt to the weary traveler. The village is a collection of ramshackle wooden cottages, most with no indoor plumbing, and of cheaply constructed Soviet-style concrete apartment blocks. Chickens and the occasional cow wander the dusty streets, some unpaved.
Smoke belches from the peat-processing plant, the town's main employer.
The River Slutch skirts Starobin, and to the south runs a nearly unbroken forest stretching for 100 miles to the border with Ukraine. And it does rain a lot here. I don't know much about my own family's story. That's my own fault, since I was never particularly curious until I reached my late 30s, by which time my Zadi, my father's father, was dead. Leslie used to talk to Zadi about the Old World, though.