A letter to Karaganda

The email went out at nine in the morning and by ten I had reread it twice, which is what happens when a letter has to be polite in a language I write better than I speak. It went to a museum in Karaganda, founded in 1995, registered as an association two years later, sitting on the first floor of a geology building on Bukhar Zhyrau Avenue. Weekdays nine to six. Weekends by arrangement.

Everything I think I know about that collection comes from other people's summaries. They say it keeps fragments of rockets and aircraft. They say it studies the drop zones under the flight paths, the Semipalatinsk range, Sary Shagan. I read the museum's own pages twice and found none of it: an address, a telephone number, hours, an email box, and the rest left to rumour. So I asked whether it holds what other people say it holds, and whether a writer may come and look. I gave my name, my books, and no institution behind either.

This is the half of the work nobody photographs. A book about a space programme wants a launch. The country underneath the launch wants a different book, about what came down, where it landed, and who was living there when it did. Karaganda holds the second book, if it holds anything at all. The reply, if it comes, will take days.