Kyrgyzstan: Bizarre Bazaar

A vendor at the Osh Bazaar.

I'm not 15 minutes into the Osh Bazaar-- searching for remnants of the storied Silk Road through rows of cheap plastic trinkets and countless racks of knockoff Adidas track pants--- when I feel a less than gentle tug at my backpack.  It's your friendly Kyrgyz policeman, starched spinach-green uniform, absurdly wide, crescent brimmed hat and all.

He wants to see my papers. As he leads me away, my passport in his hand, he assures me everything is fine.

"Then what's the problem?"
"No problem, no problem," he smiles.

Sensing a bribe in the near future I discreetly take the bulk of my money out of my wallet and stuff it into my pocket. This makes me feel no better.
He leads to me to a red unmarked shipping container at the edge of the bazaar. Inside, a small desk sits at the far end under a tiny, square tinted window. By now I've got visions of former Soviet Bloc interrogations dancing in my head.

Pictured: my interrogation chamber.
( Source: my brain prior to being taken inside)

A plain-clothes officer comes in, quickly flashes what I judge to be a dubious looking badge, and reassures me again that there is "no problem". My knees feel gelatinous and I'm smiling my broad     "I'm-inoocent-and-totally-not-nervous" grin entirely too often.

They make small talk while I empty the contents of my bag. But this quickly leads to, "you like drugs? you do drugs?" The plain-clothes officer mimics injections into his forearm and somewhat impressively pantomimes a junky nodding off so I get the picture. I assure him I don't do drugs. He's visibly disappointed, but his face perks up when the other officer, now rifling through my stuff on his own, comes across my sack of tobacco. He seems genuinely excited. I see payday in his eyes.

 Now, I get what he's thinking. In less developed countries only the poor, country bumpkins and street-side stragglers, smoke hand rolled cigarettes. In Thailand and Laos it's the surest sign that you're a farmer or don't get into the city that often, at least. A bag of their tobacco runs about 15 cents U.S. and tastes like sin--- and that's not even considering the papers that come with along with it; those are thick and burn like garbage. So I get what he's thinking when he's pantomiming (even more impressively this time)taking a huge hit and falling into a stoned stupor.

The absurdity of the situation hits me and I begin to feel lighter. My hands are still shaky, but I roll him a cigarette and even though he looks very suspicious he smokes it and marvels at the taste contentedly.

A moment later a few really rough looking characters were brought into our shipping container and the plainclothes officer walked me to the door. I began to stroll back into the anonymity of the crowd when he called out to me in Kyrgyz. I looked back with my stupid and confused grin expecting the worst. He smiled, spread his arms out wide for effect, and translated " I love America!"

Kyrgyzstan....Oh my Buddha.