“Where do you work?” and other unintelligible questions

Safe at last, safe at last, thanking my elementary language skills I’m safe at last.

Having just returned from a neighboring town (20 minutes away), and having spent a thoroughly decadent 24 hours doing pretty much next to nothing, I exited the shared taxi in front of the bazaar. It didn’t start out being a shared taxi. I thought I had overpaid the driver sufficiently to have his car to myself on this hot, hot, hot day. Alas, he stopped on the way out of town and asked a man if his wife and two children needed to go to my town since he had some free space in the car. Naturally they did, and naturally there was no air conditioning. Or seat belts. Which is normal, but not especially reassuring.

So I exit this shared taxi in front of the bazaar and head home. The streets are quiet. I mean, nobody is around. It’s SO hot, you know? But as I pass in front of a polis man, he asks me something, and I answer, “bilmeram….” I don’t know. Meaning I didn’t know what he said because he was mumbling, but I really just wanted him to repeat it or send me on my way. He did neither. Yay. Yay for being questioned by a mumbling polis officer in a foreign language on a really, really hot day.

He asks what language I speak….Russian? Azerbaijani? So I tell him I speak English and a little bit of Azerbaijani. He asks where I live. I ask in return, you mean in America? Or Azerbaijan? Here, he says. So I point….”over there,” and tell him the names of my host family. Shockingly, he doesn’t register any sign of recognition (it’s a pretty small town), and he then asks for my passport. I hand it to him and ask him why he needs it. He checks out the visa to make sure it’s current, make sure of my citizenship, etc. He asks where I work. I tell him with the Peace Corps. People are gathering around us. This, folks, is serious entertainment.

Someone speaks a little English, and he asks me to explain where I work. So I tell them, both in Azerbaijani and English, that I just moved to town last week and work at the vocational training center here in town, and, once again, that I live literally just around the corner and down the street. Finally, someone recognizes the family names I provide, and then everyone says, oh! Over there? Yes, I say, just over there (like I’ve been TELLING you), and we all laugh. Hoping I won’t be stopped by another question, I walk toward home without looking back. They let me go. And even though we have no water at home right now, somehow there’s enough for tea. It’s SO good to be here.