Kazakstan: Part II
A 70-year-old woman called me Kazakh, though I am purely Uzbek. The story began when she saw us speak English in the front seats on a comfortable train to Almaty. Imagine a couple of Uzbeks with vast disparities in facial features, eye shape, and skin tone. You never could speculate the nationality of each person with precision if you were a foreigner. Neither did that old Russian-looking straightforward woman based in Kazakhstan. She respectively guessed me and my two friends Kazakh, Pakistani, and Malaysian. We instantly burst into helpless laughter, listening to her sincere comments on our looks. I, at the outset, didn't pay serious attention to her views of my appearance but later recalled people asking if I was from Kazakhstan previously. Do I resemble Kazakh people? I wrestled with the thought-provoking question for a while, eventually assuming a DNA test would help me have a plausible answer. After our speedy talk of culinary delights, educational backgrounds, and Tashkent, we found out her origins: she grew up in a Turkish-Uzbek family, interestingly her children residing in Turkey, and her uncles in Uzbekistan. It was hard to believe until she showed her parents' black-and-white photo, her dad Turkish and her mom Uzbek. I enjoyed talking to her - such an amiable and pleasant lady. Just before getting off the train on a 20-hour road, she said she envisioned the prospective business owners within me and my pal in the future. Let's see if her guesses turn out to be accurate.

@ozodiiy