Ilnar & Ildar

They were born together, two brothers entering the world in Pavlodar on a day that would define the rest of their lives more painfully than anyone expected. The delivery was catastrophic. Their mother was told that survival itself was uncertain. Later, she would repeat to journalists that mistakes and negligence during the birth had left both boys with cerebral palsy, a condition that would shape every movement, every step, and every rhythm of their lives. But long before the twins could form memories, their mother made the first defining decision: she would raise them not as “invalids,” not as shadows of other children, but as sons with a full place in the world. It was her voice, her will, and her fierce tenderness that built the foundation on which their entire journey stands.

Their earliest memories are not of words but of textures, cold rails under the arm, the sound of other children running ahead, the feeling of waiting to be dressed and carried outside. It was a quiet grief that children don’t know how to name: the grief of “not catching up” to childhood. Later, Ilnar would describe it simply:

That was perhaps their first awareness that they were “different,” though never “less.” Their mother made sure of that. She told them, again and again,

Both brothers remember the looks— the pitying, the frightened, the mocking. In adolescence, those looks cut deeper than any physical pain. Yet their mother taught them an ethic of strength without bitterness. She never promised them a special path. She warned them gently: “No one owes you anything. If someone gives extra — good. If not, you must know how to live on your own.” Her honesty could be severe, but it made them immune to selfpity long before adulthood arrived.

Their father left early, unable to bear the weight of three children, two of whom would require constant work. The twins have long made peace with this. “Everyone has a choice,” Ildar says simply. “He made his. Our choice is to honor our mother and live our lives without resentment.” Their sister became the quiet frontline, driving them, standing by them, offering the small daily acts of loyalty that form the unseen architecture of many lives. Their education was home-based, but never easy, never diluted. Teachers rotated through their house—math, language, history—expecting them to keep up with the same curriculum as other students. The home became their classroom, playground, gym, and community center. After lessons, they read endlessly, played, helped around the house, listened to songs, and joined family gatherings filled with dombyra music. It was an atmosphere that made life feel whole, not lacking, only different in arrangement.

There were moments of rage too. Rage at their bodies that refused to obey. Rage at stairs without ramps, at curbs too high for wheels, at bathrooms impossible to enter. Rage at teenagers who sneered or pointed. Rage at a world built for others. “In youth you explode because your hormones, ambitions, and reality do not match,” Ildar admits. But they learned a crucial survival lesson early: “If you stay in that anger, it will devour you.” Their mother showed them how to turn anger into energy, for work, study, and growth. They absorbed that lesson so fully that it would later become their entrepreneurial backbone. They did receive therapy, massages, occasional treatment. But the real rehabilitation was daily life itself. “No center can give as many exercises as one ordinary day,” Ilnar says. Dressing, transferring from bed to wheelchair, descending stairs, getting into a car, every ordinary movement was a training sequence they repeated their entire lives. Gradually, the body they once saw as an enemy became a partner with limitations but also gifts: strong hands, sharp minds, patient endurance, deep sensitivity. “Now I treat my body as a partner,” Ilnar explains.

Their path to entrepreneurship began with a sacrifice — one that only a mother like theirs could make. In the early 2000s, she bought them their first computer in parts, with enormous difficulty. To the brothers, it felt like someone had opened a window into a wider universe. Ilnar spent hours dismantling, exploring, understanding. The day a friend asked him to clean a computer and reinstall a system, and then paid for it, something clicked. “I realized the thing I do out of interest can be work,” he recalls. That moment reshaped their future.

There were failures, moments when they misdiagnosed a problem or installed a faulty part. But what hurt most was when people blamed mistakes on their disability, not on the complexity of the job. So they developed a principle: always correct mistakes at their own expense, always explain, always treat reputation as more precious than income. The turning point came when strangers began calling, people they had never met, who came because others recommended them. It felt like a quiet certification, earned not through formal documents but through trust. Their day now begins not with coffee but with negotiation, with the body itself. “Even getting up is a project,” they say. Their condition is exactly as they describe it: for Ilnar, the right hand works, the left is damaged from birth; he moves by leaning on the right arm, pulling his body forward, his legs not supporting weight. By evening, the body burns with exhaustion. Mornings begin with courage. After preparing children for kindergarten and navigating the city’s unfriendly infrastructure, they descend steep steps into a tiny basement workshop without a ramp. They built everything themselves. It is immaculate: cables coiled, screwdrivers lined with musical precision, motherboards arranged like manuscripts. Cleanliness is not decoration, it is respect, for work and for people.

Their income comes from repairing and maintaining computers and laptops — cleaning, diagnostics, replacing parts, installing programs. They also repair TVs, monitors, and small electronics. For families with very low income or for children with disabilities, they quietly assemble computers from leftover parts, often for free or for symbolic payment. They never present this as charity. It is, for them, simply the right thing to do. They have encountered every form of disrespect. Healthy clients bargaining aggressively over tiny sums, insisting on discounts they never give others. People assuming incompetence because of a wheelchair. “It is hurtful not because of the money, but because of disrespect,” Ildar says. Yet they remain gentle and direct, never turning to bitterness. Their prices are just below average, enough to be accessible but never exploitative. They prefer satisfied clients over maximum profit. Their social media presence transformed their business. When videos and articles about them began circulating, people saw not “two guys with cerebral palsy” but professionals. Clients multiplied, messages from across Qazaqstan arrived, and strangers wrote heartfelt words. It gave the brothers a rare sense of being seen as whole humans.

One pivotal gift changed everything: a deputy donated an apartment after a media story. For the first time, the brothers had stability, a home they could not be evicted from. “But it did not come ‘just like that,’” they emphasize. It followed years of work, visibility, and the goodwill they had generated. The pandemic tested them. Orders dropped sharply, money shrank, the future felt uncertain. But technology breaks even in a crisis. They tightened costs, worked harder themselves, and endured. In that quiet time, Ildar returned to the dombyra, reminding himself that art and discipline are intertwined. “If you learn something truly, you never forget,” he says. Their inner lives are intimate and vulnerable. Ilnar worries constantly about his daughters’ future, fearing that society will judge them through the lens of their father’s disability. He works every day to ensure they never carry that stigma. His wife Zhanar lives with visual impairment. Their home is a dance of mutual support, imperfect but rooted in deep understanding. Ildar, meanwhile, walks his own path, still waiting for the person with whom he could “walk hand in hand through life.”

They have moments of wanting to quit, on days when pain is sharp, clients are few, bureaucrats send them in circles, or strangers online write cruelty. But then a client says, “Without you I couldn’t manage,” or their mother calls, or their nieces laugh, and the world becomes bearable again. Abai’s teachings run through their lives like an underground river. When Ilnar read Abai’s words on the unity of mind, will, and heart, he suddenly recognized their little workshop: mind in diagnostics and learning, will in conquering stairs and pain daily, heart in their attitude toward people and in assembling computers for those who cannot afford them. Without naming it, the brothers live the Tolyq Adam ideal. Their dreams for the future are modest and vast at once: a normal, accessible location; a small team including other people with disabilities who deserve dignified work; and a legacy their children and nieces can be proud of. They imagine a workplace where entering in a wheelchair is not an act of courage, but simply a doorway. If they could speak to their 15-year-old selves, they would say:

Their lives are a testimony not of triumph over disability, but of something deeper, two brothers who learned to transform difficulty into dignity, anger into determination, and pain into purpose. In their cramped basement workshop, where every movement is planned and every tool has its place, they have built more than a business. They have built a way of being: steady, honest, compassionate, and whole. They are entrepreneurs with disabilities, yes, but more than that, they are craftsmen of resilience, caretakers of each other, sons of an extraordinary mother, and quiet exemplars of the Tolyq Adam path.