There’s no real narrative structure here, but the piece contains scenes that reveal much, that stand out for their lovely writing. Like his other story on Uzbekistan that’s included on this site, but to a lesser degree, this piece has a "how I got the story" quality to it. What narrative there is consists largely of a reporter going around trying to understand a place. But through the resulting scenes, we do understand a great deal more.
Read “America’s New Friends,” by Thomas French