Camel from Kyzylkum

One of the most traumatic experiences we survived in Zarafshan happened on March 20, 1984, at about 2:00 a.m. Our few-month-old puppy, Dinka, started to cry at about 1:45 a.m. and woke us up. Animals can feel what’s coming long before humans know about it. We tried to comfort Dinka, when suddenly we heard some strange noise coming from outside—it felt like the sound was coming deep from the Earth, and from the air, and from the roof of the building. Suddenly our apartment building moved back and forth in a wild rhythm, the furniture slid from the wall to the middle of the room, and things were falling. I looked in the kitchen and saw that our sink was dancing. All of this happened for about forty seconds, but it felt like forever. When I opened the door to the outside of our apartment, I saw people running down the staircase in underwear, screaming, “Earthquake! Earthquake!” We ran downstairs, too, and spent the rest of the night outside—we were afraid to go back to the eighth floor. In the morning we found out that the epicenter of the earthquake was close to the city of Gazli, about 245 km southwest of Zarafshan.