Its Saturday afternoon and in between half-awaken naps, I scrub anything that I haven’t already touched in my new apartment, or do laundry, or talk to a PCV who has temporarily moved in with me. There are kids playing outside, people coming by the building screaming up towards the windows to call on someone rather than going up the stairs to their apartments and knocking on the door. Looking out my back windows down into the garden below, a lady is cooking Osh in one of those traditional huge wood-burning “Osh-cozons” – its all boiling black and greasy with cotton seed oil. Adding to the cacophony is the remodeling of the upstairs apartment. The noise of the demolition sounds as if the whole building will collapse at any moment now, and the welding outside my front door creates a flurry of sparks and burning embers that rains down as I inspect the inferno through the peephole. (Hopefully, its not my door that is in the process of being welded shut.) Some random lady with a mean agitated high-pitched voice came by and banged on my door several times and ran up to the welders to inquire as to why there was no one at home. After they shrugged her off, she came back to try again as I watch her frenzy through the peephole and whisper to my house guest that I’m definitely not opening my door because she didn’t look nice. She definitely didn’t have a friendly let’s meet the new neighbor aura about her. Anyway, every Uzbek who cares about me here have told me to never answer the door to anyone I wasn’t expecting or already know. When the lady finally gave up she went down one flight and told a man that no one was answering. I’m a bit suspicious as to why he didn’t come up with her. Weird.
There is no trust in this country amongst Uzbeks themselves so I’m not going to let my guard down and be that ever friendly peace toting naïve American that makes the headlines for doing stupid things – like opening doors for crazy ladies and a dodgy man in a semi-militant dictatorship after recent suicide bombings outside the American Embassy. You can call it paranoid, but I call it caution with a capital C.
Er... I meant "friend", of course. A fiend would be entertaining but not nearly so useful.
Posted by: Ana | 08/10/2004 at 01:16 PM
Oy, good move not opening the door! I'm glad you had a fiend with you. But it so great that you have moved into your own place.
Posted by: Ana | 08/10/2004 at 01:14 PM