last night i was supposed to meet a friend at a park. i either got the name of the park wrong or the cab driver did not understand my accent. either way, i ended up standing in one park last night, waiting to meet someone who was waiting for me in a different park across the city.
i meet an uzbek who speaks french and we started to chat on the side of the road. it becomes quite dark and no one else is around. it started to dawn on me that i have the wrong park, so i ask my franco-uzbek friend about other parks around samarkand. just then, two policemen appear. i noticed right away that they were walking towards me, and not the french-speaking guy.
i should add at this point that prior to last night, i have never had any problems with any police here. i have heard stories from other people, but i guess i just lucked out. if anything they seemed to be leaving me alone; a few times i saw them hassle uzbeks around me without bothering me.
until last night. when the cops reached me, one said “passport” and i played dumb. i just started at him saying “nyet russki” with the blankest expression i could muster. “passport,” he repeated. i said “i am sorry, i don’t understand” in slow english. the guy next to me, trying to be helpful, said “he wants to look at your passport” in french. i turned to him and asked him in french “why does he want to see my passport?” “they are the police,” he replied. meanwhile the cops were repeating their demands to see my passport. i continued to ignore them.
i asked the french-speaker to ask the officers why they wanted to see my passport. instead he said “maybe they want a little money?” “well, they’re not getting any,” i said. i added, “tell them that they will not get my passport or any money from me.” the french speaker asked why i was being such a hard ass. “the american embassy told me to never ever give your passport to the police in uzbekistan,” i lied. jamais jamais jamais! i added for emphasis.
my translator said something to them, i’m not sure what it was, but the police switched tactics. “hotel?” they asked. “furkat,” i said. “afrosiab?” they said. “nyet, furkat.” they said something else and in french my friend says, they need your passport and registration to verify that you are really in a hotel.
this was a potential problem.. in uzbekistan, foreigners are required to register with the ovir office whenever they arrive in a city. hotels take care of it as a matter of course, but furkat never actually got around to it in the 2 days since i checked in. i was not, technically speaking, legal.
“no passport!” i said to the police. they said something else. the french speaker said “they want your keys.” “my keys?” i ask. “to your hotel,” he clarified. i don’t know why, but i pulled them out of my pocket and handed them to the police. they took them, dangled them out in front of me and said “passport.” i felt like i was in 4th grade again.
i wouldn’t budge. i just said to the french speaker, “tell them they are not getting my passport.”
the police changed tactics again. they started motioning that i come with them. i tried to play dumb again but the french speaking guy told me what i already know “they are telling you that you must come to the station with them.” “i am staying here. i have to wait for my friend,” i said. the police made a little hand signal crossing their fingers to represent bars and motioned like they would lock me up. i looked away from them, looking down the road for my friend’s car. at one point they came towards me like they were going to grab me, but i just quietly moved out of the way and stared off in a different direction. i think the cops were at a loss of what to do with me.
one of them quietly handed me my keys. “go hotel” he said, motioning to the road. “but i must meet my friend” i replied in english. the french speaker said something to them. the police pointed to taxi “go hotel!” i asked the french speaker to tell them i was waiting there. he did. they said something back to him. he translated “they said you can wait ten more minutes and then you must go to your hotel.” the police wandered off.
20 minutes later, i was still there when the police came back and we started again. it was a little shorter this time. they wanted my passport, they wanted to take me to the station, etc. at one point i told the french speaker “tell them to fuck off.” "i won’t translate that," he said. eventually they went away. they never got my passport or a bribe from me.
