I take the subway to Wembley Stadium to cheer on the Kazakhstani national team. I wave the national flag happily. Gradually the metro car fills with people wearing England tee-shirts. People clothed in white smile friendly at me and I can hear only one word — “Borat.” And by the time I reached my sector, I had heard this name a thousand times. Our national team lost the qualifying match 1:5, and with every goal the ninety thousand in the stadium exploded with a frenzied "Goal!", and then disgusting "Borat" flew from every direction like sharp darts...

More than ten years have passed since then, but sometimes my inner answer that was not voiced then — "#Me#We#NotBorat" — springs to mind. And with it, a question — "Who#Am#I#We?"

Later, in literary school, other questions came up: who are the heroes of my works, where they live and what they do, what happens to them? At first, it was Gaisa who was lost in action in World War II; then Kair who served ten years in Siblag without the right to correspondence; Elsa, who died of leukemia. The stories were not accepted for publication anywhere, and it seemed that the world was not interested in Kazakhstani heroes.

Then I began to write about non-national heroes: figure skater Yuka, performing at the Olympics, designer Hakim, living in the non-existent city of Chinara. These were published in magazines, but I had the feeling that the characters and places were depersonalized, as if a whole chunk of history had been erased and substituted.

During that period, I read books by Khaled Hosseini and Guzel Yakhina. For the modern world, where people are gradually losing their individuality, and the conversation is reduced to forwarding emoticons, original heroes and beautiful language of their works is a treat. The vivid imagery, authenticity and emotional narration managed to turn me, for a brief moment, from an observer into a participant.

And I have begun to wish to write about the people who live nearby, the events taking place in our country, about what concerns me. As an author, it is important for me to tell the world that Kazakhstan is not Borat, not our oligarchs buying up houses in London, and not mummers in shiny national costumes dancing on holidays. But it is Peri from the pathology unit in a hospital fighting for a child's life, modest journalist Stella, defending a wounded boy from the Abai village, forester Eraly dying at the hands of poachers, the carakal Kara, lost in the cliffs of Ustyurt, and many others.

It will be valuable for me even if a few people read my stories and see Kazakhstan alive and how it really is.

[1] Borat from the movie “Borat”