Brushing the dust from his hat and lying on the floor inside his home, Ali Shadilov recalls how he and other fishermen used to laugh at town elders who warned that the enormous sea they relied on was disappearing.
“Everyone laughed and said that it would take several million years,” said Shadilov, 73, one of the last surviving former fishermen of the Aral Sea. “Back then, no one could imagine that the sea would dry up.”
