First time. Marshrutka to the last stop, then 40 minutes walking on the old road. The runway is so long you can't see the end. 3.5 kilometres of concrete with grass in every crack. We walked to the middle and lay down. The sky is enormous when there's no city.
The tower. The door is welded but the stairs outside go up to the second floor. All the glass is gone. Someone wrote ПОСАДКУ РАЗРЕШАЮ (landing permitted) on the wall in 1990-something. We took one shot and left, the stairs are not safe.
September: the runway is covered in grain. The farmers dry the wheat on the concrete, it's the best floor in the district. A watchman with a dog and a thermos. He gave us tea and told us the last passenger plane left in 1994 for Moscow and he was on it, and came back three years later. He was not on the plane, his cousin was. Then it was him again. Good tea.
Snow. The terminal. Letters on the roof: А У Л И Е - А Т А, but two are missing, so it says АУ И Е-А А. Inside: a board of departures with nothing on it, chairs bolted in rows, and a bird. A big one. It looked at us like we were late.
THE PLANE. Fog so thick we lost each other twice. At 03:12 we heard engines. Big ones. Then landing lights in the fog at the far end, and a shape, grey, rolling slowly. We ran. In the morning there was nothing on the runway. — Update 05.12: it was real. Fog at Talas Air Base, a cargo plane diverted to Aulie-Ata, it left at 9 am. The watchman says it happens once or twice a winter. We are still not okay.
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