There is a rumor around town that there will be no gas in Samarkand this winter.  Stock up on wood, they say, for otherwise you won't be warm much longer.  There is no gas for the cars either.  They line up tens of cars long; the drivers stand outside their cars and wait for hours.  The water and power are sporadic in all the neighborhoods but the ones where the government officials live.

The 18-year-old across my street, Lola, had a baby several weeks ago.  Her husband moved to Russia for work while she was still pregnant.  Then he refused to come home for the birth; there was an argument; his wife had her baby girl, and he hasn't called again.

Lola's brother has gone to Russia as well.  His wife and her babies live with Lola's family.  Lola and her sister-in-law take care of each other and Lola's arthritic mother.  Sometimes Lola's brother sends pictures of himself: sightseeing in the city where he lives, or sitting behind a festive table with an unfamiliar woman.

There is a woman who lives around the corner from us.  Dennis’s grandmother, we call her, because her name slips the mind.  Perhaps I’ve never even asked; she lives alone, and there is no one to confuse her with.  For Dennis is gone now: he grew up years ago, got married, forgot the woman who raised him.  He moved to Germany for work with his wife and son and some other relatives.  Now there is no one for Dennis's grandmother, no one but a skinny, elderly cousin of her dead husband who visits sometimes on weekends.

There is much to weep about here in Uzbekistan.  It is difficult for me to produce a thanksgiving column in such a place.

A friend from the capital city suggested I write about the "Nopl-nota people," whose language has "no past tense and no word for thank you."  To me, his suggestion is an inadvertent insinuation that there is little to say about gratitude in such a broken world.  Perhaps, I think, we must turn to fantasy to introduce such an irrational concept.  It reflects on my character, I suppose, that I read into his idea, that it takes me such effort to find 600 words to say about thankfulness.

I visit Dennis's grandmother sometimes.  She is utterly alone, but for her chickens and the little yapping dog with the same name as a laundry detergent.  Dennis's grandmother spends her days praying for her relatives and neighbors, cleaning the house (there is never dust on the windowsills or the steps) and reading the Bible she got from the Korean church she walks to every week.  "Aren't you lonely?" I ask.

"No," she says.  "There are four of us here, me and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." Unorthodox, perhaps.  But Dennis's grandmother understands something that I, frankly, have not had patience for.

Lola's mother, also.  I pass her on the street some days after Lola has her baby.  Her joints are swollen and deformed from the arthritis, but today she does not complain as usual.  "Lola had her baby," she reminds me, "It was a very difficult labor, a first baby, and Lola is still just a girl.  But it went well, and we have a beautiful baby girl!  Did you see her?"

"Yes," I say, and voice what I hear in her words.  "Xudoga shukr"--thanks be to God.

There is something gravely wrong with my attitude.