I’ve long wondered how research can be wholly accomplished when crucial materials hidden away in a grandparent’s attic might change the course of history–an unusual poem by Whitman or Dickinson, a feisty letter from Lincoln, or a lost speech or novella by Twain. Coming to the small shops in Bukhara or Samarkand revealed a level of this too, though perhaps in a slightly different, but of similarly historical meaning and import. At one of the small Registon book shops, intermingled between other touristic shops, I encountered a religios woman who was both enthusiastic about books and about her connection to the local history and spiritual-intellectual sphere of the Samarkand complex. She explained to me that her father is a senior scholar at the University and has written histories of Samarkand. But she also sold me a book of his, which is a catalog of important family documents from more than a hundred years ago, some of which show land documents and wills turning property over to both sons and daughters, which from what I understand, had not been common in the period prior to that. This bounty of a personal archive in many ways is both historically useful and significant and poetic–it demonstrates the care and pride of preservational stewardship and a willingness to share in the cultural riches of these spaces, creating their own familial epics in the 21st century. It is exciting to encounter such revelatory experiences.