The main visiting card of Muynak is the old ship port, where the ship graveyard is located. During the war, soldiers sailed from this port to the city of Aralsk (Kazakhstan), from where they were transported by train to the front.
In the old port there is a monument, the top of which is directed towards the sky. Today it is considered a monument to the sea and port, but was originally built in memory of the soldiers killed in the Second World War and was called the Flying Star.
Residents of Muynak remember very well the impressive event that led to the construction of this monument. Here's this story.
In 1941, when the war began, the father and his only son were called to the front. Mother, whose name was Aksari was left alone. Soon a letter arrives from the front about the death of her husband. But she receives no news about her son.
War was over. Some of those who went to the front returned disabled, others did not return at all. However, there was no information about Aksari's son.
Mother waits for mail every day, every day she goes out to meet the incoming ship. However, there is no news about her son. Since the end of the war, the mother made it a habit to come to this port every day and sit for hours on the road along which her child had left. Years pass.....
By the mid-1970s, the sea began to recede and the port had to be moved. A mother who has been waiting for her child in this place for more than 30 years shouts “don’t move the port.”
“There will be no more sea. The ships don't sail. If your child returns, he will come by car or by plane, but not by sea,” she was told.
“No, you don’t understand. My child is still small. This is the only way he can find his home. He does not know any other land except Muynak, he lived only at sea. If he returns, it will be by sea. Otherwise, how will he find a home?”
“In 1978, when I was going to study in Almaty, I saw Aksari going to the port for the last time. I graduated from my studies in 1983, but I never met this woman again", recalls Khanimoy from Muynak.
Abdikerim Tleuov, who worked as secretary of the Muynak district committee for 28 years, was deeply touched by the fate of mother, who had been waiting for her son for 40 years, and put forward the idea of creating a “Flying Star” memorial in memory of the soldiers who died in the Great Patriotic War.
