American adventures never end and never bore anyone. Not long after arriving there, I found a new friend. He was a Kyrgyz guy named Elzar Isaev. At first, I thought he was Kazakh, but it turned out he was Kyrgyz. It was clear that he read a lot and was well-informed, but misinformation had completely poisoned his mind. When I spoke to him in Kazakh, he would speak to me in Kyrgyz. We understood each other about 70-80 percent; if there was something we didn't understand, he would say it in Russian, and I would say it in English. After this, I became convinced that there is no significant difference between the Kazakh and Kyrgyz people. A monkey and a human also have 99 percent similarity, with only a 1 percent difference. That one percent alone cannot turn a monkey into a human. Likewise, the slight difference between the two nations will never make a Kyrgyz person a Kazakh. Kazakhs and Kyrgyz have never been under the same flag. Perhaps if they had lived under the same flag for 1-2 centuries, the difference would not have grown. Moreover, a very dangerous ideological process is currently underway in Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyz historians and ideologues, whether for populism or state orders, seem to write whatever comes to their minds. From Elzar's words, I understood that an anti-Kazakh ideology is forming there. According to them, everyone on earth descended from the Kyrgyz. The Kyrgyz are an ancient nation and do not even belong to Turkic tribes. They claim the Kyrgyz of that time simply accepted the suzerainty of the Turks. According to Elzar, our last khan, Kenesary, came to conquer the Kyrgyz. The Kyrgyz defended their country from Kenesary and killed him for that. What kind of terrible misinformation is this?! We even argued over several topics. If such an ideology continues at the state level, the neighboring country is on the verge of zombifying its own people. This could very well lead to fascism. Some might think, what can tiny Kyrgyzstan do to us? But considering how tiny Finland, with a population of less than 5 million, put up a fierce resistance against the Soviet Union with its 140 million people, this cannot be taken lightly. Therefore, in the future, a threat to our country from the Kyrgyz is quite possible.

Getting off track, I later worked with that same Elzar. One night, while returning from work in the middle of the night, we saw two girls on the street taking pictures of buildings and looking very happy. I immediately said, "Those are Kazakh girls." Elzar didn't believe it. We walked closer and it turned out they really were Kazakhs. One was Aisulu from Almaty, and the other was Anastasia Glukhareva from Kereku (Pavlodar). The girls, who work in the city of Wildwood in the neighboring state of New Jersey, used their day off to travel to Delaware. The four of us went to a 24-hour cafe near my house and sat there until dawn. After that, we decided to go to the Atlantic Ocean shore to welcome the sunrise. The sunrise over the ocean is truly uniquely beautiful. It was the first time in my life I had welcomed the sunrise. It was the dawn of July 23, 2014...