Uzbeks are an irritating race, if I had to be candid. Their behavior is motivated by a peculiar combination of baseless tradition, infantile curiosity, and poverty. Any one who has been in this country for some time will tell you about the standard five questions that faces the foreigner: "Where are you from?, How old are you?, What do you do for a living?, and What is your occupation?" Then you hear the chuckling about dollars. 

People here don't believe in tourism. It is just hard to understand why anyone would come to their country.

The police decided a more summary approach to security by having all passports passed up to the front of the bus. I was urged to do likewise but politely refused. After about an hour of examination, the bus started to move but with out the passports. Needless to say there was an uproar. The bus stopped and eventually a policeman ascended to redistribute the passports. The problem was that he had lost a few in the process. He started reading off the names, "Ahmedov, Babayoff, Hamidova". My favorite old man got up and screamed. "Hey,that's me." 

And now to the next border post. This was the most infuriating because here the police decided that it was against public morality for old people to be sittting on the aisle floor. And so we were stuck. Now the numerous people on the floor simply refused to get up. What really was their alternative? The driver, an Armenian, tried to convince them with threats and shouts to get off the bus and wait for the next one. These were experienced people and not willing to be stranded on their Independence Day in the Uzbekistan desert and so they refused. The police also were unwilling to let the bus pass. The alternative, after two hours of wrangling, was to go back to Termez.

It all seemed a waste of time. After two hours again in the direction of Termez, the bus suddenly changed course and was headed back towards Tashkent. It seemed like a stroke of lightening that changed our circumstances and when we got to the internal border post, we were allowed immediately to pass.

The next stop on our trip was the $4000 Sum restaurant. It was on my first visit to this restaurant located in the mountanous area of Kashkurgaria that I was treated to Uzbek hospitality. Like a gentleman, I sat down to dine and was offered the choiciest dishes of national staple - Laghman, Pilov, and Katlig. After choosing and eating, I was loaded up with the bill - 4000 Sum or four dollars. This would be a reasonable price in New York City, but this is Uzbekistan, the land between the rivers, home to Avicenna and Al Biruni, and one of the world's poorest countries. This is typical behavior in Uzbekistan to overcharge foreigners. I yelled at the waiter, called him a thief, and suggested that he should be locked up in jail. He backed down, and this episode became the subject of conversation for the rest of the bus ride. 

This time, things were a bit more relaxed as I was with my friends from Termez. There was Hamid, the Master's student in Tashkent who unusual for an Uzbeki spoke fluent English and his friend Sergei, a high school student also in Tashkent. Hamid was an informative friend in Termez. He showed me the works of a famous Uzbek artist from the Sirchodaria region who painted subjects like old men in beards and the working class. He also told me a little about the history of Termez, as a border post of Europe in Asia on the edge of the Indian subcontinent.

We finished our meal by passing our hands over our face and saying, "Amin".

When I finally got back to Taskent I was greeted warmly by Alana, my Russian tutor and massage therapist..

That's another story..

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