Names have been changed to protect persons concerned

I could not sleep.

I had fallen asleep fast and hard when I arrived home that night, as I woke up at 4am. Now it was 3:20am and I was wide awake. I decided to get up and get dressed and go see if places were opened for pre-Ramadan fasting breakfast, and what that would entail. As I headed out the door I decided against taking a book.

I found many of the cafés I sometimes got dinner at were open and operating, serving a large number of clients. I went into my favourite; one of the cheapest, and the most authentic near where I live. The woman who takes orders smiled at me as I entered.

“Seet down Patrick,” she said in the English I had taught her a few weeks before. One of the reasons I liked the restaurant was, if one person was sitting by themselves, they would sit someone down with them if they also came in by themselves.

After ordering gretchka (think oatmeal, except better tasting) and eggs, I sat down and looked around. Everyone in the restaurant was male, and many of them wore good dress clothes as if right after this they were headed to the office. Not to a mosque, home, then after two or three hours, to the office.

As my tea was placed down on the table, a man came in alone. He was wearing a plain shalwar qameez, the traditional Pakistani mens’ outfit. He had a full beard and wore a taqihyah (the traditional Muslim round cap.) The waitress smiled at the man and said something in a language that did not sound like Tajik, Uzbek, or Russian and pointed him to my table.

Looking to be in his late thirties, he walked over to my table and sat down. The waitress never came to take his order and I began to suspect he came in a lot.

“Asalaam Aleukum,” I said as he sat down. He looked at me and gave a big smile.

“Aleukum Asalaam. Вы откуда?” (where are you from) he responded in Russian.

“The United States, California,” I answered in Russian, knowing the next question.

Impossibly, his smile grew even bigger; and white shone through his black beard.

“Arnold,” he said in English and patted his chest, “my brother.”

I had to laugh, because I had heard this from many other people. He said his name was K. and we got to talking over our pre-dawn meal. He asked me the standard questions one asks new people in an area. When we got to what I did and I explained that I worked in microfinance, he sat up straight.

“That is important work. Thank you for doing it.”

When he went on to say that he could only work in the market. I was confused because I knew he spoke Russian with great fluency, and he had already demonstrated that he could speak a bit of English. I asked, if he knew Russian, why he didn’t go and work in Russia, like so many other Tajik men.

It turned out he isn’t really allowed to travel outside of Tajikistan. He then launched into one of the most fascinating stories I have ever heard while travelling.

When he was a teenager he was arrested in his home area of southern Tajikistan. He was caught praying with five other boys and an older man in a house. The Soviet authorities threw him in jail for two years. By the time he was released he had missed so much school that he couldn’t return to it easily. So he picked up a trade and made due, practicing Islam in his home instead, and learning languages from television, movies, and radio. Arabic he learnt from the Koran, and French from the Ismailis who lived in his area. Today he knew some English, Arabic, Tajik, Russian, some German, French, Pashtun, and some Mandarin.

In 1991 he was part of the democratic movement that swept into Tajikistan. He believed that the state needed to be more like America, where there was separation of church and state, but that church was still important to the state (if you don’t think this is true, read up on a politician who wasn’t religious and how well they did, especially in a presidential election) just that one should not influence the other. He was on the side of the UTO (United Tajik Opposition.) In 1992, as the Tajik Civil War was under way, he was arrested for carrying out an attack on a Russian army group that had, he said, killed his sister and father when they “invaded” his town. After a year he was released from prison, and followed his family across the border of Afghanistan where they could try to rebuild their lives.

He said that when the Taliban came to power, he thought about joining the Northern Alliance, but decided it was time to go back across the border and return home instead.

This time he crossed near the Wakahn Corridor (the sliver of a valley in North Eastern Afghanistan) and went to Dushanbe. His time in Afghanistan made him stand out. (During this time Iksander had come to power for a brief second in Dushanbe, before being ousted by a combined “government, Uzbek, and Russian” force, and those who practiced Islam were looked at suspiciously.) The way he dressed; the fact that he prayed five times a day; his beard—it was enough to have his actions watched and his movements curtailed. By 1999 he had a small house outside Dushanbe and had earned enough money to bring his family back from Afghanistan.

He crossed the border into Afghanistan without any problems. He had papers from the government for his family, and he said, he was within site of the Tajik border almost the whole time he was in Afghanistan. But as he brought his mother, and surviving sister (who was now sixteen) across the border the police arrested him calling him a terrorist. His sister and mother were allowed back into Tajikistan only after a massive bribe was given to the Russian border guards, however K. went to jail again, this time the Tajik government’s jail.

After three years (2002) he was released after a trial showed he had no contact with any known terrorist organizations, since the UTO (United Tajik Opposition) was now “part” of the government. When he went to find his family, he found out they had moved with his sister’s husband, to Khujand, and so he proceeded up there as well.

He still could not travel across borders because, he said, “people still think I am a terrorist.” He cannot get a high paying job that would use his knowledge of farming. Nor can he use his other skills including his language abilities with international organizations for the same reason.

He looked at his watch, stood up abruptly and said in English, “It was nice to meet you my friend, I must go pray now.”

Just like that my breakfast was over, and I began to notice I was the only one left in the café. I stood up and paid my bill of $1.00, the woman smiled at me and I asked in Russian, “What language were you speaking to the man?”

She named a language I had never heard before. “It’s a mountain language,” she said in Russian. With that I went out, as the sky started becoming blue.

I looked at my watch and decided I could go home and sleep for three more hours before going to work. That is, if I could fall asleep.