Aysuluu Dyikanbaeva's butcher shop in the center of Chongara opens at seven in the morning, as it has every day for thirty-four years, and Aysuluu, seventy-three years old, her hair under the green headscarf, hands that by now no longer have the skin of a woman's hands but the skin of the knives she handles, arrived at six-forty with the bucket of water to wash the counter, and it was her mother-in-law, Saodat, who died in ninety-six, who taught her that the counter is washed with lemon, which is a foolish thing, really, because here lemon is dear and water is enough, but traditions are traditions and every Wednesday Aysuluu sacrifices a small lemon to Saodat's memory.

On the outer wall of the shop, of wood painted blue that by now is grey, there are two signs. The first, written in Russian Cyrillic in white marker, says мясная лавка Айсулу, and Aysuluu made it in ninety-one, when the Soviet Union was dissolving and one had to put one's name on things. The second, smaller, below it, is written in Arabic: her maternal grandmother, Halima, who had come from Khiva in twenty-eight, had taught Aysuluu to read Arabic before Cyrillic, and that sign says meat, the price is fair, come in. It is the way Halima greeted her customers.

The thing about Chongara is that it never moved. Her husband Talant came in seventy-three from Aydarken, when the border was still a line on a map that no one had ever drawn on the ground, and the shepherds of Sokh brought their rams to Chongara, and the farmers of Chongara sent their children to the school in Aydarken because it was closer than the school in Karasu. Her father was Kyrgyz from Sokh, her mother Uzbek from Margilan. She had learned two languages at once. She had learned to count in both.

The twenty-third of June arrives, at ten in the morning, a Kyrgyz official from Botken with the list. His name is Beksultan. He has a short beard, glasses, a pad of paper in his hands. Aysuluu knows him by sight: Beksultan's father used to come to buy sheep's liver at the shop once a month until six years ago. Beksultan has the list of the commercial businesses of the village of Chongara that from today are in the territory of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, and Aysuluu is on line four. Beksultan tells her that by the end of the day the Cyrillic sign must be replaced with a sign in post-two-thousand-twenty-three Latin Kyrgyz and in Russian, and that the sign in Arabic, my dear lady, you know it, should have come down ten years ago already, but because of your grandmother we left it; now, though, with the new jurisdiction, one must get in order. Beksultan drinks a tea. He goes out. Aysuluu stays with the screwdriver in her hand.

Aysuluu thinks that the sign in Arabic is Halima's. She thinks that to take down the sign in Arabic means to take down Halima. She thinks that Halima in twenty-eight crossed the Karakum desert on a caravan of seven camels, married a Kyrgyz from Sokh in a year when the Uzbeks of Khiva were being deported east, learned Kyrgyz at forty-three. Halima put up the sign in Arabic in fifty-two, under the Russian governor, and kept it under the Uzbek governor, and kept it under the Kyrgyz governor of ninety-two. Halima never argued. Halima put up a sign.

Aysuluu makes a choice, at twenty past two. She takes the screwdriver. She removes the screws of the Cyrillic sign, one by one, four screws, ten minutes. The Cyrillic sign falls into her left hand. She sets it on the counter, next to the Wednesday lemon. She leaves the Arabic sign where it is. She takes an indelible black marker and, under the Arabic, she writes in Latin Kyrgyz: Aysulu kasapkana. Open, come in, buy, speak. The Cyrillic sign stays on the counter like a calendar of her husband's.

Aysuluu thinks of her son Aibek, who lives in Bishkek and works as an engineer on the power lines of the Naryn. She hasn't seen him since New Year. Aibek had told her, two years ago, to stop selling meat, to sell the shop, to move to Bishkek to the sixth-floor apartment with the elevator. She had said "later." Nine years have passed since Aibek's thought, and the shop is still here, and Aysuluu is still here, and the Cyrillic sign sits on the counter like a decision that has stopped being a choice. At six, the telephone. Her cousin Tahir, from Margilan, does not call. He does it every Friday. Today is Friday. He does not call. Aysuluu knows that the thing is the sign, she also knows that the thing is not the sign: it is the signature of Tahir's father, twenty years ago, on a paper that had sold her the rights to the southern slope of the ram. Tahir has his reasons.

On the twenty-fourth, Aysuluu opens at seven. The muezzin of Chongara is a boy of twenty-three named Asilbek, who comes to buy a piece of sheep's stomach after the first prayer. He greets her. He says something. Aysuluu cannot tell whether he said assalamu alaykum, in Uzbek, or salam, in Kyrgyz. They look at each other. Asilbek holds out his hand with the money. Aysuluu holds out her hand with the piece. The answer has not yet been said.