The Cynical Expat’s Guide to Provoking Street Revolutions in Central Asia

By Christian Hale

The former Soviet Republic of Kajbezistan is known for many things, notably: the statues of Stalin that still feature prominently in towns throughout the country, the use of a large cauldron to slowly simmer dissidents alive, a violent forced beard-shaving campaign, and the noble tradition of bride kidnapping. All of this is lovingly ruled over with a scrap-metal fist by Gulganberdybacha Islambaev, Kajbezistan’s octogenarian president-for-life. But unfortunately for the lucky citizens of Kajbezistan, a drunken expat named Rupert is on an unintentional collision course with the wise leadership of this stable state.

Rupert, known as “Rupert the Racist” to his fellow alcoholic members of a vaguely British running club in Kajbezistan’s capital, has recently been fired as project manager of the Presbyterian Aid Services NGO for trading women’s empowerment grants for sexual favors from the locals. He is left unemployed with six months remaining on his visa, and a pocket full of undistributed humanitarian aid money that he embezzled from his employer. With time and money on his hands, Rupert sets out to explore Kajbezistan with Johnny, his completely trustworthy local guide and fixer who doubles as prostitution consultant and recreational drug buyer. Along the way they meet various Kajbezistani eccentrics, State Department imbeciles, United Nations sex fiends, KGB dimwits, Russian “tourists,” underground Islamists, greedy shamans, clueless backpackers, anarcho-syndicalist European PhD students, and various others who will help to shape Rupert’s view of the world as liveable only for nihilistic drunks. Not so shockingly, things end up going terribly wrong for everybody involved...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Hale
• Release date: Aug 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463398838

Christian Hale

Christian Hale has lived and worked overseas for the last decade in various war zones and post-conflict countries. He enjoys traveling to future-conflict zones as well when he's on vacation. Sometimes Christian has a job, but almost never a lucrative or a heroic one. He is waiting for an apocalyptic currency devaluation of the American dollar so that his student loan payments become affordable. Until then, he has been staying in hostels and eating cereal straight from the box for dinner. He has no idea what his post-pandemic plans are.

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Foreword

This is a work of fiction. Everything in this book is, therefore, a complete and total fabrication. No parts of this story actually happened, nor were they inspired by real events, places or people. That would be ridiculous. And Central Asia is not a ridiculous place where, for example, the manhole covers in the regional cities have all been stolen off the street by the police and sold as scrap metal to the Chinese, resulting in pedestrians randomly falling down through the sidewalk into oblivion. That does not happen; you really only fall two to five meters before landing safely on a pile of trash. Plus, the Chinese government has recently provided a loan that allows Kajbezistan to purchase Chinese-manufactured manhole covers.

Overall the author doesn’t really know much about Kajbezistan. He has only been to the country once, in a 10-day haze of alcohol, food poisoning and explosive diarrhea. Most of the research for this book was done on Instagram, Wikipedia and The Daily Mail.

Acknowledgments

This book was made possible by a generous research grant from an anonymous currency speculator with an interest in Eurasia. Travel and logistics funding were provided by a charitable fund sponsored by the Masonic Temple of Kansas City, Arkansas. The author would also like to thank his local Kajbezistani research assistant and fixer, who will hopefully be released from prison soon. Please check the Twitter hashtag #FreeGulnara for updates.

Legal Notice

And, on a final note that the publisher’s lawyers have insisted upon (due the outcome of a libel and slander lawsuit in British courts), the author hereby states that the Kajbez president’s eldest son is not actually known as Rizvon the Rapist, despite him being referred to in that manner seven times in various Wikileaks cables from the US Embassy in Kajbezistan.

Special Information Insert #1

An Introduction to Kajbezistan

(Facts copy-pasted from The Desolate Planet Guidebook to Central Asia)

President: Gulganberdybacha Islambaev. Married to Svetlana Petrovna. In power since 1987. Known outside of Kajbezistan as the dictator who officially turned 70 on his 80th birthday. Prefers to be called by the honorific El Olidagi, which translates to The Supreme Protector of the People, Generous Provider of Prosperity, Maintainer of Perpetual Peace, Visionary Founder of the Modern State and Virile Father of the Nation.

Health of the president: Rumored to be suffering from the early stages of senile dementia for the last decade. President Islambaev has spent most of his recent time inspecting progress on a life-extending nomadic yoghurt serum under development at the Kajbez Academy of Science’s Dairy Innovation Laboratory, a USAID-supported agro-scientific facility.

Borders: Afghanistan, China, Russia and Iran. Kajbezistan does not share a border with Estonia, despite President Islambaev’s comments to the UN General Assembly in 2010 regarding mutual commitments to the shared Kajbez-Estonian border.

Capital: Chorshanbe City. The capital city was previously known as Dzerzhinovo, named after Felix Dzerzhinsky – the founder of the Soviet NKVD secret police.

Official founding of the nation: Carbon-dated by Kajbez scientists to exactly 7,019 BC, which the president – unfamiliar with how negative numbers work – mistakenly believes makes 2019 the 9,000th year of nationhood.

Seasons: Three seasons – summer, winter, flood.

Tallest mountain: Mt. Stalinism.

Official state newspaper: Kadzhbezskaya pravda.

Most common toilet paper: Kadzhbezskaya pravda.

Currency: Official currency is the some. Each banknote features President Islambaev on both sides. $1 = 48,000 somes; $1 on the black market = 160,000 somes. In the bazaars and corner stores of Kajbezistan, small change (less than 20,000 somes) is usually given in the form of candy, matches, mini-Snickers, or birdseed (which can be fed to the ubiquitously owned fighting quails). Note that in the heat of the summer, the mini-Snickers are more like melted chocolate squeeze tubes. Locals sprinkle sugar on them and consider it a delicacy.

Government: Kajbezistan has a tricameralism system with three levels of parliament: lower house, upper house, and the assembly of village elders (known locally as the ‘white-beards house’). All three levels are rubber stamps in what is essentially a presidential family dictatorship. Competition is fierce to represent the president’s party in the upper house, but nobody wants to serve in the lower house of parliament, as its members are not exempt from the annual forced labor campaign in the cotton fields of the southern lowlands near the Oxus River.

Government reforms: The president has recently proposed a fourth level of parliament for youth, based on the youth organization that the government deploys to attack foreign NGO offices and the German embassy whenever Germany grants asylum to another Kajbez exile.

Torture: Yes.

Doctors per capita (DPC): Fourth lowest in the world after Kajbez nationalists chased away all the Jewish and Russian doctors in the early 1990s, resulting in a DPC ranking that puts it just ahead of Papua New Guinea, according to the World Health Organization.

Brothels per capita (BPC): Highest in the world, probably, according to Pro Operator, an Anglo-Aussie-Afrikaans-American security contractor magazine published online out of Tallahassee, Alabama.

National sport: Buzbazi, a form of goat punching combined with rugby. A live goat is attacked by barehanded players on and off horseback from two or more teams who try to drive the terrified goat across the other team’s goal line (or into the other team’s village in the traditional version). Towards the end of the first half of play the goat is usually dead, and players may then carry the carcass like a rugby ball. The northern version of the sport has no teams and is strictly a mêlée. The idea of goat punching as a traditional metaphor for the relationship between the state (fist) and the people (goat) is credited to an American anthropologist, who stole the credit for inventing the metaphor from the locals who relayed it to him.

National pastime: Bride kidnapping/raping (in the north), attacking Chinese businessmen (in the south), street racing and vehicular homicide (children of high-ranking government officials only), pogroms against ethnic Muskhatarians (nationwide, on a semi-annual basis), and posting risqué photos of young Kajbez women online without their permission (everybody, at all times).

Months: Same names as in Russian, except for March, May, and August, which have been replaced by the pet names of the president’s daughters. Note: foreign visitors should not ask questions about Gulyoshka (Miss August), as she ran away to Syria several years ago to marry Abu-Viber al-Shishani, an Islamic State jihadi she met online who claimed to be a Chechen warrior but was actually in fact just a Dagestani who did tech support and toilet maintenance for ISIS after failing their bootcamp.

Time Zone: Daylight savings time is practiced, but unpredictably and only according to the wishes of the increasingly senile president. As a result, for the last few years the time has only gone forward and not back. For reference, as of 2019, the workday starts at 1:00pm Kajbezistani Standard Time, about one hour after sunrise.

National Motto: Up to 2013: Kindness, honor and hospitality is the essence of the Kajbez Nation. After the treacherous events of 2013: Kindness, honor and hospitality is the essence of the Kajbez Nation. Death to traitors.

Chapter One

Humanitarian Aid Embezzling 101

Date: Saturday, July 27th, 2019.

Place: Outdoor seating section at Kontraffatto’s Authentic Italian Café, 24 Red Partizan Street, Chorshanbe City, former Soviet Republic of Kajbezistan.

People: Rupert, the sub-regional project manager for Presbyterian Aid Services, a humanitarian NGO focusing on civil society development, and Muhammadjoon, Presbyterian Aid Services’ part-time Kajbezi translator and fixer.

Look at those racists on the other side of the patio, dining in an expat-only group, said Rupert in a voice that was not at all hushed. They’re probably Germans.

Muhammadjoon, Rupert’s local assistant, looked over at the visiting Dutch consultants for the Netherlands Development Cooperation agency and nodded in agreement, as having coffee with your translator was actually quite progressive by the standards of behavior exhibited by Kajbezistan’s toxic expat community.

Muhammadjoon occasionally enjoyed the commentary that his boss Rupert provided, and he found him much more entertaining than his previous expat bosses. And so Muhammadjoon laughed on cue at Rupert’s continued commentary, as a good employee should – and despite his own admiration for Germany, German products and all Germans in general.

In the good old days it was the only the Americans who were loud and obnoxious. Now everybody except the Scandinavians is just unbearable. I hate expat hangouts. We should be at a Kajbez teahouse, not this fake plastic Italian café, grumbled Rupert.

The sad truth was that Kontraffatto’s Authentic Italian Café was not authentic. This deeply angered Rupert every single time he visited, which was up to four times per week thanks to the café’s vicinity to the Presbyterian Aid Services office.

Rupert now stared in total disappointment at the broken pile of crumbs on his plate.

This has to be the world’s oldest and worst cranberry biscotti, announced Rupert, who now had a specific grievance to air.

But Mr. Rupert, they say it’s made fresh in their bakery, offered Muhammadjoon in defense of the café.

Is that what they said? It was probably taken out of a sealed plastic wrapper and thrown onto a plate. It’s got to be at least three years old. And really, do you even know what a cranberry is?

"Yes, it is…like blueberry. But cran instead of blue."

"Cran? You really lived in America for seven years?"

No cranberries in South Brooklyn, Mr. Rupert.

The productive coffee-break conversation was interrupted by the sudden sound of wailing and crying. Startled, Rupert looked turned around just in time to see a dusty little girl with messy hair grab onto his shirt.

Please! Heeeeeelp me! she wailed in Russian.

The disheveled girl, whose faced showed signs of bruising – even through her dark skin – extended out an open hand in hopes of Rupert’s spare coins.

Rupert, without making any further eye contact, jerked his arm away from the girl as Muhammadjoon yelled at her in Kajbezi.

With completely dry eyes she continued her hysterical sobbing and switched to pleading her case in Kajbezi.

Bilingual beggar, huh? remarked Rupert. If she learned English I might be amused enough to actually give her something.

Muhammadjoon stood up and stepped towards the child, raising his hand threateningly. The little girl, from her short life experience, knew the chance of being struck was very real, and retreated off of the patio – only to slip on the café’s broken stair tiles and tumble onto the sidewalk.

Rupert chuckled in amusement.

Another one of your gypsy compatriots? asked Rupert.

"Yeah. She’s a Dzhugi. Check your pockets to see if you still have your phone and wallet."

That’s racist, you racist, joked Rupert as he patted down the outside of his pockets and found his phone and wallet still there.

Sorry, Mr. Rupert. Most of the children beg, but some of them try to steal from pockets. Dzhugis are desperate. You would steal too if you had to live their life here in Kajbezistan.

Dzhugi. The name sounds so ugly in English.

It’s ugly in Kajbezi as well.

What do they call themselves? asked Rupert.

What do you mean?

"I mean, do they call themselves Roma here?" asked Rupert as he glanced disapprovingly at the table full of Dutchmen who were now charitably emptying out their pockets for the gypsy girl.

The Italian football team? asked a confused Muhammadjoon.

Never mind. What were we talking about?

You hate biscotti.

Yeah, that’s right, continued Rupert. This place was so much better when it opened last fall. Now their pastries suck and the last few coffees here tasted like instant coffee. I think they are now just buying expired baked goods from Dubai or Istanbul or something.

"You should eat bread. Kajbez bread. Fresh naan. Hot from the tandoor," suggested Muhammadjoon helpfully.

You people think eating bread is the solution for everything.

It is the solution for most things, yes. Better than your rock-hard Italian sugar biscuit.

"You want another biskati?" chirped the Kajbez waiter, who materialized out of nowhere after managing to be invisible for the last half-hour – including when Rupert actually needed him.

No, thanks. This one is absolutely terrible. And I don’t want a replacement biscotti for the low, low price of two biscotti, answered Rupert politely.

"It is better or badder than biskati in America?" asked the waiter, curious but not actually caring about the quality of the biscotti, nor the customer’s satisfaction.

I wouldn’t know. I’m from New Zealand, said Rupert with a shrug.

Oh! Australia?

Muhammadjoon chuckled just loud enough for the waiter to notice.

Yes. It’s part of Australia, replied Rupert. Everybody in New Zealand is Australian.

Oooh, interesting. I studied geography in ninth form, added the waiter.

I’m sure you were a good student and in great form, said Rupert, nodding with completely insincere approval.

Muhammadjoon interjected curtly and spoke a few quick rude sentences in Kajbezi to the waiter, who turned quickly and returned inside the café where he could continue to hide from providing any sort of service to the other patrons.

What did you say to him?

"I told him that we didn’t come here to be asked dumb questions by some stupid kid. I’m so sick of these idiots from the 96th mikrorayon."

"You think he’s from that neighborhood…why?" asked Rupert.

"He speaks Kajbezi with that ugly northern dialect. I can’t understand a word they say. When they talk to each other it sounds like dogs eating cats alive. I hate it. The 96th mikrorayon is full of northerners. If you walk through that neighborhood, you will think that you are in a zoo-park full of screaming animals."

Isn’t your wife from the north?

Yes, but she is ethnic Tatar. So it’s OK, replied Muhammadjoon in his own defense.

Fair enough.

After a short pause in the conversation, Rupert looked across the street from the café and saw something that caught his eye: a police officer with a full grill of gold teeth and a very large pot-belly was yelling at a middle-aged woman squatting over a large bowl of sunflower seeds that she had been trying to sell. The woman, wearing a conservative hijab that fully covered her hair, was pleading in a desperate and submissive manner, despite the cop having no gun and, for whatever reason, no belt to contain his too-short shirt that could, in better circumstances, hide his bare stomach from public view.

"Muhammadjoon, do your job. Translate what that fat fucker is saying to the gypsy lady. Or rather the Dzhugi lady…or whatever you call them."

She is not gypsy. She is definitely Kajbez.

Fantastic ethnology skills, Muhammadjoon. What’s the conversation about?

The small side street was quiet, and their conversation was free for the eavesdropping. Muhammadjoon listened for about a minute and then sighed.

What? Why the long sigh?

He is demanding she pay him money, answered Muhammadjoon. She is saying she has none yet. She says maybe on Monday she will sell some seeds when the street is busier.

Shouldn’t there be a standard street police payment amount? This street or the block belongs to him, right?

Yes. There is a standard price for everything. But there is problem. The lady selling the seeds is saying that there was only one police officer on this street before, and she already paid him. The policeman is telling her that there are now two police officers, on for each side of the street. She must pay them both.

The fuck why? asked Rupert.

"My friends who have relatives in the police told me about it last month. They said that the Ministry of Interior is working hard trying to raise more money for the new top minister. He paid a huge bribe to get his position, and he’s been trying to force his ministry to take in more revenue. And now President Islambaev told him that the Ministry of Interior must raise even more money on its own and become what you NGO people say: sustainable. So the high-level police commanders are selling more positions to raise the money. The people buying these new police positions – like this asshole here – must collect bribes and money from people to pay back the loan they borrowed to buy their position. But these idiot police don’t understand that they are already taking too much from the people. You can’t double what you are already taking in this neighborhood. You will be taking 100%. These men did not do good in mathematics in school before they dropped out after grade nine."

Greedy fuckers, observed Rupert astutely.

Yes. Greedy and stupid. But mostly stupid. We have a saying in Kajbezi: ‘You can’t fuck your chicken and eat it too.’ This is what the police are trying to do now.

Muhammadjoon, local facts and information and cultural background anecdotes like this are why I hired you – and it’s why I have not yet fired you.

Muhammadjoon smiled.

The police officer across the street apparently had enough and decided that his only course of action was to kick the woman in the ribs. Luckily, the police must buy their own footwear, and so the woman took a swift kick from a cheap pair of soft loafers, not boots. Still, the woman fell hard to the side from her squatting position and into the dirt. After a brief pause she regained her breathe and began to quietly sob while lying on her side.

Mr. Rupert, don’t take a picture. We will go to jail.

Don’t worry, I’m not that stupid.

Satisfied with his handiwork, the officer reached into the huge bowl of sunflower seeds and dumped the makeshift newspaper cones full of seeds back into the bowl and crumpled them up, tossing them in the woman’s direction. He then grabbed the entire bowl of seeds and waddled across the pot-holed street.

Rupert took a good look at the officer’s face. His jaw was hanging open and he breathed heavily through his mouth, almost panting – like a really obese jackal. His mouth was grotesque, with gold teeth across the top row. And his eyes were dead. Completely dead. He gazed ahead with a dull predatory stare as he hopped up onto the crumbling curb, with his belly jiggling and spilling over the top of his pants. He then disappeared around the back of the building with his loot.

Looking back towards the woman, Rupert could see that she was now sitting on her ass in the dirt – a position you never see a local woman assuming. Her arms hung down by her sides, completely limp. She made no attempt to cover up her contorted face as she wept uncontrollably.

Well, that was fucked up, noted Rupert in an unconcerned tone. That sort of thing should make you Kajbezistanis want to start a revolution.

Johnny didn’t reply to what was a very dangerous statement to make in public in the capital city of an authoritarian police state.

After a pause for thought, Rupert added, No. Never mind. A revolution will just give the country something just as bad – or worse. If the president was replaced in a revolution by any random citizen, that person would probably just enrich themselves and their own family while killing and torturing anybody who didn’t kneel down in front of them.

If you learned Kajbezi and spent time with normal people, not government people, you would have a better opinion of us, replied Muhammadjoon with his usual level of tolerance and patience. If we got rid of Islambaev, we would not be so greedy and cruel as his family.

And in the meantime? You live like this? Like this lady over there?

Yes. 80% of my country lives like that woman. But you know, the police didn’t used to beat women, just men.

Muhammadjoon paused and then added, Although, of course, they have always raped women. But, you know, at least they did not beat them in public. Just in private. Or behind the building where nobody can see. Not like this – on a street where everybody can see. My country is changing.

Well, she won’t be eating for the rest of the week now that the fat pig walked off with her wares. But she looks chubby enough to last at least that long, remarked Rupert compassionately as he pushed aside his plate of uneaten, stale biscotti.

And speaking of not eating anymore, continued Rupert, let’s talk about you.

Me? I don’t need a diet regime.

You sure don’t, Muhammadjoon. But what you do still need is a salary.

What do you mean?

"So…Presbyterian Aid Services has no more budget remaining for this year. It’s gone. You will find upon arrival at the office on Monday that you no longer have a job, or at least not a paying job."

Oh, yeah. Why? asked Muhammadjoon.

Because the budget has been spent already.

But why? It’s only July, said Muhammadjoon as he tried to suppress a smile.

"Aren’t you just a little pochemuchka, remarked Rupert. And what’s with that stupid grin?"

"Only little children can be pochemuchka. I am… Muhammadjoon fiddled with his smartphone’s translation app and then looked up and completed his sentence: …inquisitive."

"Same thing. You are like a nosy little child who asks too many questions. The exact definition of a pochemuchka. Now listen to me…"

Fine. OK. Tell me something I don’t know.

You have no more job. And no more salary, announced Rupert. But I can give you a job for the next three months – at double the rate the Presbyterians were paying you.

But you said that they have no more budget.

The poor Presbyterians have no more budget left, true, replied Rupert. But I don’t work for them anymore. I quit on Friday. And I have my own budget now. So, are you interested?

From where did you get your own budget? asked Muhammadjoon.

I picked the president’s pocket. Who cares where I got it from?

OK, I am interested. And I don’t care where the money is from.

After four years in Kajbezistan, Rupert had learned to never unnecessarily give anybody any information that could be used against him. And how Rupert was now unemployed but flush with cash was certainly something that could be used against him. Just 24 hours earlier the director of Presbyterian Aid Services was shaking with barely controlled rage as he opened the office safe and handed over the equivalent of one-quarter of the NGO’s annual budget, as well as six month’s salary, six month’s travel and housing expenses, plus six months’ worth of per diems and incidental expenses to Rupert.

The director, a short, fat and angry little man who claimed to be from San Francisco despite being from Sacramento, was not the type of person to hand over such a generous severance package. However, the director loved to drive, and he refused the services of the very safe and reliable office driver in favor of the freedom of the open road and his own hands on the wheel. But unfortunately for local pedestrians, he was a terrible driver who had recently killed his third pedestrian in his seven years in Kajbezistan. While this may be less than average for the son of a Kajbez minister, it was unacceptable for foreigners.

So Rupert, being forced out of Presbyterian Aid Services for many reasons, decided to use the director’s driving record as blackmail on his way out: Rupert gets a glowing letter of recommendation, continued visa support, and a not-insignificant amount of cash in exchange for no Russian journalists being told all about how an evil American is slaughtering innocent peasants of the brotherly post-Soviet nation of Kajbezistan with his 4-wheel drive Nissan Patrol. And if this wasn’t enough leverage, Rupert threatened to just dump all the information online by the end of the day. Even if the director could again, like he had before, bribe mid-level law enforcement officers with money embezzled from his own NGO, this wouldn’t guarantee that he would not be targeted by an honest and patriotic law enforcement officer looking to make a name for himself, or by a vigilante nationalist group looking to do the same.

So you interested? asked Rupert. Three months. Double salary. You travel with me doing the usual translator and fixer work. But mostly tourist stuff. I cover all of your regular expenses, including alcohol and dope.

OK, agreed. But please stop calling me Muhammadjoon. I don’t like that name. It is my work name. All of my real friends call me Johnny.

Is that the name they gave you in South Brooklyn before Donald Trump arrested and deported you?

Yeah, I got the name in my college dorm. And yes, Trump sent ICE to kick me and my friends out of America.

Well deserved, I bet.

No. I didn’t break any laws in America.

You broke the law by overstaying a four-year university student visa by three years. You don’t see me breaking any laws here, do you?

No. You have not broken the laws of Kajbezistan. Except for drug and prostitution laws.

Rupert frowned and thought to himself for a second.

Well, nobody here obeys those laws, plus the drugs and prostitutes are run by the police anyways, countered Rupert.

Also, you break organization rules by trading Presbyterian NGO grants for sex.

Rupert was shocked, but then immediately unshocked – he was living in Kajbezistan where everybody knew everybody else’s dirty secrets. This is why you collected your own dirty secrets on other people – so that they can’t use your dirty secrets against you. And Johnny now knew Rupert’s secret: he had been distributing women’s economic empowerment grants to women who slept with him. It was inevitable, given Rupert’s lack of success with the female expats, and given the tendency for local women’s NGOs to have some extremely attractive young women on staff. A multi-year grant from Presbyterian Aid Services or any other large- to medium-sized NGO meant a steady salary for desperate locals, plus they could do their own embezzling from the funds. The arrangement was unsurprising to the locals, but shocking to any expat who had just arrived and not yet culturally acclimatized. And it was certainly shocking to the head office of Presbyterian Aid Services, who were pretending to be completely clueless about what happens in the field. Head office, upon seeing email evidence from an unhappy Kajbez woman, instructed the Kajbezistan country director to terminate Rupert immediately but quietly.

So where did you hear that? said Rupert, in an attempt to sound casual.

From the KGB officer that helped you to steal all that money from the Presbyterians. He interrogated me, but at the same time that he was drinking. So he was talking a lot.

Rupert realized that Johnny had him mostly cornered. But he would try to squeeze out regardless.

It’s called embezzlement…or blackmail, rather. It’s not theft.

Yes, blackmail. That sounds like something good and honest, offered Johnny, having become semi-competent with American sarcasm after three years in New York.

So what else do you know, Johnny? I knew that weird smirking grin meant you were up to no good.

The director paid the KGB officer twice as much as he paid you.

Bastard.

The bastard is the KGB officer or the director?

Both, I guess, shrugged Rupert. The KGB guy came to my place all casual and laid out all the names and locations and dates of all the women. Well, most of the women. Like half, maybe. I didn’t care, as I was being fired anyways. But I will have to work in the same field somewhere else eventually. It would hurt my career if it became public, and he knew it. But that’s not profitable for anyone. So we negotiated. And he suggested that we extort the director. He would pretend that I was under arrest, and that all of the Presbyterian dirt would be exposed, including the director’s habit of running over and killing villagers and then bribing road police officers to get out of trouble. The deal was that I would get the money that was coming to me until the end of the year, plus some extras, and the KGB guy could take as much as he could. Nobody gets kicked out of the country. Nobody goes to jail. And we all make some money…except for the director. But I didn’t know the KGB dude would get that much. He must have really scared the director.

"You know, the KGB officer will come for you when he runs out of money after building his stupid new dacha, warned Johnny. And he knows how much money you have. Maybe you should leave the country?"

I know, but I won’t leave the country yet until I find a job elsewhere. In the meantime I want to do a road trip. They are terrible at tracking people on the move. They get lazy, and they give up. There’s no money in a chase. Plus, I need a real vacation, and I want a road trip that is, for once, not a work trip.

Road trip! Yes! exclaimed Johnny. I hate Chorshanbe City so much in the summer… And also in the winter, and when it rains. I hate it all the time, actually.

OK, beg permission from your angry wife and then pack your bag. We leave in five days. And quit calling me Mr. Rupert, I’m not your schoolteacher or your mom’s new boyfriend.

Rupert stood up to fish money out of his pocket to pay his bill that was, for reasons unclear, about the same as what one would pay in Washington or London for a cappuccino and a biscotti. It was roughly the same as the weekly food budget for a family in the Kajbez village.

On the other side of the street the sunflower seed vendor had moved out of the sun to a shady spot, but she was still softly sobbing. Rupert did not notice, having completely forgotten about her already.

Rupert put down his money on the table, plus a 30% tip.

Rupert and Johnny didn’t bother to look back as the waiter appeared out of thin air and scuttled towards the table, just ahead of the little Dzhugi girl.

The waiter retreated with his money and the gypsy girl with her cranberry biscotti.

Special Information Insert #2

An Introduction to Chorshanbe City

(Excerpted facts from The Desolate Planet Guidebook to Central Asia)

The Pearl of Central Asia? Not Chorshanbe City. Expats and visitors know this town as the worst and most boring capital city in the region. But a good argument could be made that it is the worst city in the region – capital city or not. Chorshanbe’s quirk lay in the fact that the city was actually just a village when the Bolsheviks arrived and decided to create a Kajbez capital city on the spot. ‘Chorshanbe,’ as every expat knows, is Persian for ‘Wednesday,’ so named as that was the day of the week that the town had its Persian boy brothel open in a rotating weekly schedule with six other villages nearby that now roughly correspond to the suburbs of Chorshanbe (the other brothels were where one could find women if one was so inclined). Not much has changed since this time, except that Chorshanbe now has direct flights to Kabul and New Delhi to accommodate all the sex tourists who can’t afford Dubai.

Western Expat Community: Roughly 350. Famous for their alcoholism, infidelity and amoral behavior. This is frowned upon by the locals, despite local men being famous for their alcoholism, infidelity and amoral behavior.

Largest employer of expats: The OSCBE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation Beyond Europe), a multinational international organization that focuses on women’s livelihoods, human rights, and training the secret police via PowerPoint seminars.

Meddling foreigners: One large Russian military base in the outer suburbs of Chorshanbe, plus a rotating crew of eight American Special Forces soldiers who train the presidential bodyguard and hold very exclusive parties at their mansion (No Dudes policy strictly enforced). Law enforcement training is the domain of the American contractor DymCore, and Kajbezistan is where they send their employees who were expelled and blacklisted from Kosovo and Sierra Leone.

Days since a drunk Russian soldier murdered a local woman: 156.

Days since a drunk American contractor beat a taxi driver unconscious: 48.

Average yearly number of locals killed, manslaughtered or negligently homicided by drunk-driver American Embassy employees: Four (or a total of six if unborn babies are counted as a person as demanded by the senior US Senator from Utah).

Most Common Mental Illness Among Expats: ‘Khareji Collapse Syndrome,’ when a foreigner switches from progressive anti-imperialist to raging colonial racist in one single temper tantrum.

Warning for female travelers: Street harassment of unaccompanied women and girls in Chorshanbe begins in earnest at 6pm, but excludes women 28 years of age or older, as it is considered the age of grandmotherhood in Kajbezistan.

Under construction: All the Kajbez drug traffickers, money launderers and corrupt government officials who could not figure out how to offshore their money have turned instead to real estate investment. A bubble quickly formed and then promptly popped. Chorshanbe is now stuck in a frozen state of reconstruction, with the result being a city littered with concrete skeletons of unfinished buildings and apartment blocks that claim to be completed yet whose dark windows at night show that nobody is home. There are numerous stranded construction cranes as well, though these will disappear when the price of scrap metal gets high enough to justify knocking them down, cutting them up, and sending the parts to China (where they will be melted down and made into new construction cranes that will get sold to Kajbezistan construction contractors during the next real estate boom).

Best place to party for expat men: Humanitarian relief and development NGOs in Central Asia are, shockingly, not actually staffed by celibate and sober saints who work selflessly to lift up the impoverished locals. So the best sex parties in Kajbezistan are, by far, at the mansions rented by Oxfam and Save the Children.

Best place to party for expat women: American Special Operations Forces do not actually hold sex parties in a mansion in the Kajbez capital – that’s just a silly rumor. It’s more like a really large guesthouse with a modestly sized swimming pool. Expat men are most definitely not allowed, but all expat women who are under 30 years of age and who can pass a basic face-control screening are welcome to party here.

Chapter Two

The Cesspool of the Capital City Expat Community

Date: July 32nd, 2019. [Note: President Islambaev has decreed an extra day for July so that apricot pickers may increase their monthly quota. The year is balanced by subtracting a day from February].

Place: Patrick’s Irish Pub, also known as ‘The Fake Irish Pub.’

People: Rupert and John Kylie, a US government contractor and known pederast who works for DymCore, a law enforcement training firm that is struggling after seeing its work in Iraq and Afghanistan dry up.

Rupert, like most people, hated Chorshanbe. Rupert actually had a long list of things