Alla Pyatibratova is a journalist who lives in Osh, in southern Kyrgyzstan, a city distinguished not only by its 3,000-year history, which it celebrated in 2010, and the fact that the great Silk Road once passed through it, but by its interethnic “wars” of 1990 and 2010.

Pyatibratova also writes fiction. She is the author of the poetry collection Bricks for a Cloud Castle....