Charlotte and I hoped that this security agent would prove equally helpful and direct a receptionist to check us in. He did not. His presence sabotaged all possibility of accommodation. Everyone seemed afraid.
After several hours, we gave up. Fortunately we had our colleague’s address. When we rang the doorbell, he did not look surprised to see us. He already had beds made up. He told us that the political climate in Uzbekistan had deteriorated since our springtime visit; the country had slid into authoritarian rule. The next day we confirmed this through interviews with leaders from government and opposition parties. Then we shopped.
Neither of us wanted to leave the market, but soon we could carry no more merchandise. Shopping bags did not exist in this part of the world. Vendors helped us find sacks. Between us we carted away twenty-four glazed earthenware dinner plates, two full Uzbek tea sets, one medium-sized Bukhara rug and two silk wedding gowns that resembled those on display in a museum (fortunately not pilfered). When we visited local museums, the cashiers offered us items that may well have come straight from the display cases.
One country remained on our travel itinerary — Tajikistan. It bordered Uzbekistan. In the spring we crossed with ease; now, every visit to the Aeroflot office was an exercise in frustration. I could not purchase one ticket for any of the multiple destinations on the Tajik side of the border. We assumed no tickets meant more fuel shortages. After several trips, we succeeded and bought tickets for a tiny border town flight later that week. The Aeroflot agent also offered us cheap tickets for the next day to the Uzbek tourist town Khiva. An urban jewel on UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites list, Khiva seemed as good an interim destination as any.
We had not yet learned one simple lesson. Travelling in an authoritarian regime is hell. In the departure lounge at Tashkent airport, we met a Canadian couple from Moscow. They were pale and had bags under their eyes and wrinkled clothing. They had been stuck there for two days. The deflated young man and his wilted blonde partner had planned a romantic getaway to Khiva, but the airport guards would not allow them to board any flight, even though they had valid visas and airline tickets. Bewildered, they gave up and returned to Moscow.
Sure enough, the guards also refused us permission to board our flight and offered no explanation. A six-hour showdown began. Then the guards changed their minds and allowed us onto a flight. I had no energy left to even ask them why. We buckled ourselves into our seats, fully expecting the guards to change their minds again and drag us off.
We landed, but faced another battle at the hotel. Charlotte saved the day. After we had spent hours pleading with the receptionist to check us in Charlotte threw her arms back and let out a howl. Compassionate after all, the receptionist ran to put the kettle on and made us tea. Then she found us a room on a deserted floor.
“A British documentary filmmaker is staying in this room but he’s away for a few days,” the receptionist told us.
“Which filmmaker?” Charlotte asked.
“Michael Palin,” the receptionist said.
Khiva, beautiful in that arid, dusty, Central Asian way, is a city museum and therefore pristinely maintained. An ornery camel stood tethered by a small ladder, fitted with a saddle blanket, a puffy cushion and a large stick, presumably there to help passengers maintain control. Colourful minarets and domes jutted up from an otherwise sand-baked beige cityscape. The usual cauldron of plov (a rice and meat dish) simmered away outside one café. Khiva lacked tourists; I blamed the guards at Tashkent airport for this. But we enjoyed the peace, at least until we visited the city walls, which were one of Khiva’s historic sites.
We purchased our entrance tickets for the walls, climbed up and admired the view from the top. Soon a group of children circled us. They ranged in age from about six to fourteen years old. We stood in the middle; the children surrounded us. We understood from preliminary chit-chat that these were not curious youngsters interested in meeting foreigners; their motives seemed more malign. As we stood there, Charlotte and I debated what to do.
“We can’t possibly hit them,” Charlotte said. “They’re just children” Perhaps a security guard might appear. Or, we could wait until the children grew bored and drifted away. After a while, we realized this would not happen. The children enjoyed trapping us like prey.
“Should I swear at them?” We agreed that I should try. I only knew one expletive in Russian, which was an insult to mothers. As soon as I said it, I realized I had made a mistake and that I had probably uttered the worst possible insult. In retaliation, the children attacked us, their small hands and legs lashing out in fury. The boys seemed most interested in pinching our bottoms and breasts. One tried to take our bags. We were scared and managed to break through the circle and ran for the stairs, still receiving the odd slap along the way from children positioned nearby. A few of them tried to push Charlotte down the stairs.
Once off the wall, we found the premises security guard and reported the children. “Sometimes they’re there,” he said. “Sometimes they aren’t.” That was it. I wondered if he ran the gang. Once again we had paid for a ticket to a state-run tourist site ticket only to face assault.
One other Uzbek museum visit was nearly just as bad. Much Soviet nuclear testing took place in Central Asia. We accidentally wandered into a museum of mutants. We saw a multi-legged chicken and ran out screaming. The woman in charge came after us shouting “Wait, wait, you haven’t seen our sheep.”
Even during doomed trips, moments occur when all goes to plan. Our plane reached Tashkent on time. Our shopping remained in our colleague’s apartment. Charlotte, who had spent the summer reporting from Bosnia for the Daily Mail, had experience in a war zone and understood the importance of travelling light. She suggested that we leave our shopping behind and collect it on our way back from Tajikistan.
I felt shocked, even betrayed by this suggestion. I did not want to be separated from my shopping. In some way this crockery that had cost pennies, weighed a ton and might be decorated with poisonous lead paint represented my future life. I had decorated the living room of the house that I did not yet own with the carpet, hats and gowns. I looked forward to serving my friends meals on Central Asian plates and to brewing tea in the Tashkent pot.
I tried logic. “Based on our experience with flights so far, if we leave the shopping behind, we might never see it again.” Charlotte, a non-Communist country resident and therefore less shopping deprived than I was, retained her common sense. We argued back and forth over the merits of travelling light versus laden down with the contents of an entire household. I won, probably only because I rarely fought and so my passion on this subject must have seemed unusual enough to indulge.
Our flight took off as scheduled. We travelled with our usual luggage and our sacks of shopping. When we landed I realized, to my surprise, that although we had arrived near the Uzbek-Tajik border we remained in Uzbekistan. Even though I had studied a local map to match what Aeroflot tickets were available with an appropriate Tajik destination, I had made a mistake. I blamed this on poor quality paper and ink. The dot that marked our destination on the map was smudged, appearing to be in Tajikistan, but we were not.
We took a taxi to the border. The driver said that he could not cross, so we would have to walk into Tajikistan. Others did the same. A group of men carried our bags and all of our shopping. They showed us the bus bound for the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. A short bumpy ride later we arrived there. The hotel receptionist gave us a room with no fuss, even without a reservation. Intourist check-in rules remained a mystery. The receptionist told us that another journalist had arrived earlier and gave us his name and room number.