¿Til Death do us Part

VYZYATKA, HABAR, BAKSHEESH, PAYOLA (or A BRIBE BY ANY OTHER NAME…)

“Dokuments, please.   Spaceba.  You are coming from where?  Going to where?”

“And how many beers have you had, comrade?”

I was ready for the question from the moment that the Kyrgyz policeman first stuck his head through the driver’s side window into the new Russian-made Niva truck.   “Beer?  I have had no beer, Officer...”  It was worth a try, wasn’t it?  But the look on his face immediately told me that it just wasn’t going to work.  “Oh, Okay.  Look, I had one beer with lunch.”  “But comrade, you must know that it is illegal in Kyrgyzstan to drink and drive.  It is the same in your country, da?”  Okay, okay – the bribe was offered, accepted and we were once again our way.  Given that we were stopped within 15 minutes after starting on our 12 hour drive SHOULD have given me an indication that it was not going to be an easy trip.  Not even CLOSE to an easy trip.

I was on the road because I had been tasked with getting a new project vehicle from the main office in the Kyrgyzstan capital of Bishkek to the regional office in the second largest city of Osh in the far south of the country.  A Russian-speaking driver would accompany me.   It was early spring and the most direct route between the two cities – through the Tian Shan mountain range – was blocked by snow and ice, so we would have to travel west into Uzbekistan, then south through that country until re-entering Kyrgyzstan near Osh.  I had indeed drunk one beer with my boss during a check-in lunch prior to leaving (my bad).  I had also decided that I would drive for the first leg of the journey while still in Kyrgyzstan as this was where I was registered as a foreign aid worker.  We figured that the driver and I could switch off along the way.  The police checkpoint was set up just outside of the capital city and put an abrupt end to my driving contribution.

After that, the trip was uneventful for several hours.  We crossed over into Uzbekistan and at around 10:30 in the evening began looking for the “Intourist” hotel where we were to spend the evening.  I should mention that my Russian language capability was just barely enough to allow me to communicate at a basic level with the Russian driver.  He spoke no English.  We had located the hotel prior to leaving.  The “Intourist” model was a holdover from the recently disbanded Soviet Union – a chain of what were originally state-run hotels for foreign tourists and other travelers – basically the only accommodations available.   We registered at the front desk located in a huge, abandoned lobby and walked up a set of concrete stairs to the third floor where the floor clerk – an older woman known simply as the “babushka” - would hand us our keys and we could sleep and refresh ourselves for the planned early-morning continuance of the trip.

It was not to be…

As we began our walk down the dimly-lit hallway to the room, a pair of long-coated, fur hatted Uzbek policemen stepped out of a corner and fell into step directly behind us.  They entered the room with us, and immediately began interrogating the driver.  Although I had a basic comprehension of what was being said, I decided to play dumb and pretend I understood or spoke no Russian.  The two middle-aged policemen reviewed our passports and other documents, and began a rudimentary search of our luggage.  I knew exactly where this was going when they even asked to check my wallet.  At one point, one of the police turned to me and said in thickly accented English:  “So you are Amerikan?  Tell me, how much does a policeman in Amerika earn?”

I had decided I was going to tough this one out, and continued to pretend that I didn’t understand the required end to the entire process.  They remained in the room for about an hour and a half before shuffling out, without their bribe but evidently bored with the dumb and cheap Amerikanski who refused to pull out the cash.  The driver and I fell exhausted into our beds, ready for a couple of hours of sleep prior to our planned early morning departure for the last four or five hour leg of our journey south to Osh.  After such an inauspicious beginning, we figured the rest of the trip should be problem free.

It was not to be…

About an hour into the next day’s travel, we came to the outskirts of Uzbekistan’s capital city of Tashkent.  I was sitting in the passenger seat, my knees propped on the dashboard, reading a book.  We were on  a four-lane highway, with a grass and tree planted divider in the middle.  Morning traffic was slow.  At one point, I thought I heard a police whistle blow and looked up and around, expecting the worse.  There was nothing to be seen on the side of the road, so we continued on.  Then, about a half-mile down the road, the red lights and siren came on behind us…

The police patrol had evidently been on the opposite side of the road and, spotting our out-of-country license plates, decided to blow their whistle for us to pull over.  Neither the driver nor I saw them, and paid no attention to what seemed like a random whistle sound.  “Did you think…?”  “No.”  “Let’s continue on then.”

The police car made us follow them to a turn-around just down the road in the direction we had been heading, and then back the way we had come.  I was not really worried at first.  We didn’t actually have all of the correct volumes of paperwork that we probably should have acquired to transport the newly purchased vehicle through another country, but since the breakup of the Soviet Union, bureaucratic things like that were still up in the air and relatively informal.  Another bribe would probably get us quickly back on our way.  However, my worry meter went up about 500 levels when, about a quarter mile before the point where we had first heard the whistle, the car in front pulled off the road and into a junk yard, cars and pieces of cars piled high on either side, blocking our view of the highway.  They stopped at a bend in the gravel alleyway. The two policemen walked back to our car, took my documents and escorted the driver back to the patrol car to sit in the back, leaving me to sit alone.    I rolled up the windows to the car and locked the doors.  Every sound, every bird flying near made me cringe a bit.  I had no working phone and was expecting to be taken from the car at any moment, either to be dragged to an Uzbekistan jail or worse.  Fifteen minutes passed…a half an hour…forty-five minutes.  I had no idea what was going on and was imagining any number of increasingly nasty outcomes.   At one point, they all got out of the car.  The driver came back and I asked him, before he said anything:  “Skolka stoit?”  How much is it?  How much is it going to cost?”  He went back to talk to the police, and returned with the price:  One hundred American dollars.  This was a fortune in the current economy of these ex-Soviet states.  But do you think I was going to argue?  Not on your life!  The hundred was paid, we turned the Niva truck around and quickly drove out of there and back on our way.  I realized that I had broken out in a cold sweat.  I know the driver was even more nervous and relieved to be back on the road, having just spent an intimidating hour in the back of the patrol car with two armed policemen in that isolated setting.   As much as we wanted to get away from the area as quickly as possible, we had to stop at a gas station a short distance down the road to empty our tightly clenched bladders and bowels.  Believe me.

We made it to Osh a few hours later, just as evening was falling.  The rest of the trip occurred with only three or four more now-routine stops by Uzbekistan police at regular traffic checkpoints.  None was as scary or expensive at the one at the junk yard, but I will admit I shuddered each time we were pulled over.  The organization that I worked for generously reimbursed me for the money paid in bribes and, incidentally, wrote into the books a whole new series of travel procedures.