I ran across a former colleague from the American University of Central Asia: Aiday, a Kyrgyz native, a free spirit and perhaps the least traditional Central Asian I encountered while teaching and living here. She was walking to dinner with her new husband, an Irishman, Ian Malone, from County Cavan.
I explained to him that my paternal grandmother was from his home county, that my grandfather was from County Cork, and that I was raised in the States in village of about 7,000 called Malone, presumably named after one of the Irish immigrants who settled in that area along the Canadian border in the middle of the 19th century.
“Malone, New York?” he asked. “I’ve heard of that place. I’ve never been there, but someone told me about it.”
