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At
our first internal border, it was the standard passport check. Uzbeks(
Tartars, Kipchaks, Tajiks, Kirghiz, Ukrainians, Armenians etc.) all carry
international passports as indentification even though few of them can
afford to travel beyond the borders of this once great Central Asian country.
As an American, I suprisingly got only a brief notice. The policeman asked
my seat mate if he was my translator and when he understood that he was
not, he simply gave up with me. Others were not so lucky. Old women and
men wearing kirchiefs and cute Bukharian caps were summoned off the bus
for examination. One man faced particular problems because he had only
a picture id and not a passport. This was situation as usual. At the next
border post things were different.
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..
To contact
Hafez Click
Here
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Independence
Day. No, not the familiar July 4. This was the day that Uzbekistan
became independent from the Soviet Union. I was looking forward to this
day for a while, to see the tanks and planes on display for the public
to see, a manifestation of the power of the state. Yet, as fate would have
it, I was on a bus headed for Tashkent. Termez, a city famous for its border
with Afghanistan was slowly becoming a distant memory. Gone were my fast
impressions of the sinister OVIR police responsible for immigration in
Uzbekistan, and the port from where I could see the land of Mazar-i-Sharif
and the Taliban. The bus crawled slowly on the night of Bayram-Istiqlal,
the Independence Festival. When we reached Sheriabad, more people boarded
so that now we were postively packed.
