The radioactive flood threatening Central Asia’s breadbasket

By Yan Matusevich

On a warm, overcast day in late April, Toktobek Berdibekov, a 72-year-old man with a pointy white beard, sat on a tapchan – an outdoor bed – sipping green tea from a bowl and looking out at the hundreds of apple and cherry trees blossoming in his orchard. As his four youngest grandchildren played in the garden, he proudly pointed out a chicken coop, a fish pond and the red-brick house that he’d recently built for his youngest son – all of which were funded with the profits from the literal fruits of his labour. “It’s paradise,” he told me.