Tomorrow is Today
by Ethan Fishbane
I’ve been following the woman that will bare my children for months now. She doesn’t know I exist. But her life is going to intertwine with mine so seamlessly that a time will come that she forgets the abduction ever existed. Our union and eternal happiness cemented by one moment: the capture. Like the golden spurs sticking out of a pair of leather, hard-toed, American cowboy boots, a man’s wife is his shining adornment. She is the beautiful, natural element that completes the picture. For a Kyrgyz man, we shop for that golden embellishment until we find the right one, and then stalk our claim. We follow her movements, her activities, and her friendships. And then we kidnap our bride-to-be. The moment that shapes the rest of our lives together is also the moment that outsiders seem to frown upon. But I want to assuage my friends and share a day on the lookout.
I begin by riding past her bedroom in the morning. I can see her ash-silken nightgown draped around her fragile, little body. By 6:00, she is washing her face with crushed seed powder before she prepares a morning meal for the family. By 7:00 she treks out to the family’s camel farm by foot. I follow at a healthy pace, observing the back-and-forth sway of mother’s hips. I say mother, as before long, our children will call her that. Mother extracts milk from the camels for what seems like hours at a time, her tiny fingers pull-pulling on each camel ever so slightly until the sellable product has been removed. After a morning of work, she reaches a deserved period of rest, where she chats in a subtle local language with the other ladies on the farm. Perhaps one or two are her blood sisters, the others surely hired as additional help. She is quiet and studious; she spends time reading and picking berries. I see her hike around the mountainous area for the mere sake of hiking. As the sun begins to go down after a day of work she stops by the local town center to meet her father and accompany him home. After she prepares a family dinner, she leaves home to wash her clothing in the small river that snakes around the grassy garden some hundred meters from her home. She soaks each item thoroughly, hanging each to dry.
And this is when I shall do it. This is when me, along with my father, brother and closest of friends will kidnap the woman who I shall marry. The moment is so perfect for the capture I can see it vividly. As any Kyrgyz woman knows, she will know. She will not resist. She will give in, and perhaps even show some joy at the knowledge: her future is set…our future is set. A purpled-grey mist interlopes with the clouds over Kyrgyzstan as we carry her away from home…to home. My life, set.
