[Series] A Sea Changed
See:
part 1: a storm of salt. My first one ever.
part 2: the fisherman in the desert. A surprise encounter.
part 3: white gold. Where everything started and how everything snowballed.
part 4: don't breathe the air. When I botched my chemical sampling experiment.
part 5: candy and vodka. How I found a glimmer of hope in a local bitter drink.
part 6: seas that become deserts. Many seas around the world have become deserts.
part dovetail: dovetail. The interconnected parts.
A few more words…
I hope this series could bear witness to the changed Aral Sea, one of the worst ecological disaster in recorded history. Each part recounts some portions of my trips around the Aral Sea region, and dives deep into the root causes, higher-order consequences, and lessons learned from the disaster.
I also brought many people’ stories into the series. Because too often, we are too enamored with grand narratives in history to realize that, just as the ocean is made of countless drops of water, every line in history books is soaked full of blood, sweat, tears, lives, livelihoods, loves, and losses of countless common people.
People like you and me.
People like the sailor I met in the newly formed Aralkum desert, a one-time sea king who turned into a graveyard keeper for his beloved ships.
People like the children who had to breath toxic air and drink salty water, just because they were born there and then.
So I hope that we will remember. Remember the sea, remember the desert that the sea changed into, and remember the human lives that changed with it.
