Knock Knock!

Bang Bang Bang Bang…

Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang…

Mister wake up…

Bang Bang Bang Bang…

Wake up mister…

I get up still half asleep, put on some pants and go to see who’s at the door at 7am.

Woman: Mister, your laundry is ready, I wanted to give it to you now. I know we agreed it was three thousand cym without ironing but the girl went ahead and ironed it anyway you need to pay another thousand cym.

Me: Huh? I don’t need my clothes ironed, tell the girl thanks for a great job ironing but I’m not paying for it.

Woman: Oh… Ok…

I go back to sleep.

The following day:

Bang Bang Bang Bang…

Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang…

Mister wake up…

Bang Bang Bang Bang…

Wake up mister…

I don’t have any laundry, I wonder what’s up but given that it’s 6am on a Saturday morning, I decide I’ll sleep through it until I overhear.

Male voice: Go get the key to open the door.

Female voice: Not possible, he’s dead-bolted it from the inside.

Male voice: We’ll give it another minute and kick in the door.

Damn, seems I’ve pissed someone off. I wake up, get dressed and go to the door to be greeted by a very serious looking guy.

Me: What do…

Male: (Interrupting) Passport.

Me: You can’t just wake people up demanding their passports. Show me some ID then we can talk.

Woman in charge of my floor face palms herself, signalling that I should politely go with whatever the man says.

Male: Passport or we’ll take you away right now.

Me: Wait here… (Find passport) Here you go.

Male: You can come down with us for questioning or wait here and the girl will bring it back to you.

Me: (Thinking I’ll have a few words to say to his boss) I’ll…

Woman: (Interrupting) He’ll wait here and I’ll bring it back to him.

Something serious must be going on, they must have stumbled onto my secret identity. The pair walk away and I decide to try and get some sleep.

Given that some unknown secret service type figure has my passport, sleep escapes me. I go outside and decide to get to the bottom of the situation.

Reaching the woman in charge of the floor, she stops me.

Me: What the hell’s going on?

Woman: Mister, you better go back to your room and wait. There are a lot of police downstairs and they’re going to find something about you that requires a bribe.

Me: F*ck!

I go back to my room still confused and try and figure out what I’ve done wrong. Just in case, I hide most of the money that I’d exchanged earlier but seriously doubt that’s the reason they’re here.

Ten minutes pass and there’s another knock on the door. I open it to find one of the male receptionists.

Receptionist: You better come downstairs with me now, the police have some questions for you.

Me: About what?

Receptionist: I don’t know.

I reach the ground floor and find lots of serious looking men talking with all the staff. As I’m ushered down a corridor and into a room I notice several rooms with police officers interrogating people.

I enter a small room with the Receptionist, the serious looking guy who took my passport standing by the window and someone who appears to be his senior sitting at a desk. The senior guy tells me to sit down.

Senior guy: Ivan Alexandrovich Kruchkoff, is that your real name?

Me: (Surveying the room)

Senior guy: Don’t look around, answer the question.

Me: Yes it is, how do I address you?

Senior guy: What date did you enter the country?

Me: Look at the stamp in the passport, the 19th of August.

Senior guy: And where have you been the whole time?

Me: I’ve been staying at this hotel.

Senior guy: (Turning to receptionist) Is that true?

Receptionist: (Clearly nervous) I’m not sure, I don’t deal with the registration of foreigners, I don’t know really.

Me: It’s true.

Senior guy: (Leafing through the hotel’s registration books) You were here on the 19th, where else have you been?

Me: I’ve been staying here the whole time. During the days I go out sightseeing.

Senior guy: Here’s the 20th, the 21st. Hmm… What’s this?

Me: What?

Senior guy: Nothing, get out of here.

Me: Cheers for the wake up call.

I leave the interrogation chambers and as I’m walking back to my room bump into the manager of the hotel. She explains to me that given that there’s a big holiday coming up in two weeks (1st of September), the SNG (Uzbekistan’s three letter agency) are on heightened alert for terrorists and people in the country illegally.

Hooray for Uzbekistan’s secret police. If Stalin was still in power, these guys would have taken half of the guests to the Gulags by now.

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