ERASURE FILE · STAGE 2: OUT OF MEMORY
When they give you back your memory, check what is missing.
They Put the Books Back. Not the Treaty.
On 15 October the National Library of Irad, the "Alimbekov Library" at Talas State University, opened a Digital Archive to everyone, at home and abroad. We welcome it. Read it. Download it. Print it. Books on a server can be switched off. Books in a drawer cannot.
The archive opens with two works, both by Aikokul Tursunbek kyzy: Twelve Kilometres, stories of the partition year, and "Bazaar Chubar", a story set in Bazar-Korgon in the summer of 2007. Every page carries a note that it is "approved by the rector". Here it is: talasuniversity.org/library/archive.
Notice the subject. The first memory they gave back is 2007, the year they tried to sell us. Good. Now ask for the rest of 2007.
Where are the drafts of the Bill of Sale? The full treaty and the three protocols were printed on 26 February 2007, by one newspaper. They have never been published by the government that negotiated them. The only place you can still read them is the Irad Times archive, on a server in America, blocked inside Irad since this week.
Where is the 1992 treaty with the Americans? The Alimbekov-Baker treaty that the library's own namesake signed has never been published in full. A library named after a man, without the most important thing that man ever signed.
Where are the census tables by district? The 2018 census says 4.6 million. Independent demographers say more than six. The district tables would show who is missing and where.
Stories are a beginning. Memory is not only stories. When the library puts the TREATIES back, we will believe the memory is coming back too. Until then: download everything, and keep it somewhere they can't reach.