‘Future energy’ – that’s the title of the EXPO exhibition taking place in Kazakhstan. But the future surprised a little the inhabitants of the post-Soviet republics. It came suddenly and unannounced and now they don’t really know what to do with it. It melts vividly or tragically with the traditional lifestyle and grey concrete of communist blocks of flats. For example, in this way:

Gulia

Gulia comes from a big city.

He’s from a village.

She’s 21. She’s a virgin.

She goes to visit a friend.

He’s a policeman. Here it means untouchable.

He puts something in her beer. Takes her to his village. Rapes her.

Here they say ‘marries her’.

He puts the bed sheet with her blood outside the front door.

Shame.

Wedding.

New duties: cooking, cleaning, milking cows. Serving.

She can’t milk cows. They have to teach her.

She smokes in a toilet with her mother-in-law.

Alcohol and violence.

She runs away after half a year.

Myls

Myls has a hip hop cap and a tattoo on his calf. Girls turn around when he passes by. It just his name that isn’t cool – so he says. Not right for nowadays. The name was chosen by his grandfather. Myls: M – Marks, L – Lenin, S – Stalin.

Natasha

Natasha smokes a lot and curses. She wears man’s clothes and is ready to fight back every time somebody tries to put her in her place. Sometimes she’s in trouble because of that. She’s got delicate, girly face and she’s kind. Natasha is a lesbian and has a three-year-old daughter. For a moment she was married. In the evenings she drinks whiskey with coke. When asked what she would do, if her daughter turned out a lesbian too, she says:

‘I’d kill her’.

Rynat

Rynat is a romantic. He quotes poetry of local writers by the moonlight. He loves the nature. Rynat is young and testosterone boils in his veins. He knows the prices of sexual services in the region. When the time comes, his parents will choose his future wife. For now he’s free to get lucky on his own.