We landed at the Tashkent airport at 1am after an uneventful flight, walking down from the wobbly steps into the little runway bus that took you from your plane to the terminal entrance. There were only about 15 other people with me on this Boeing jet, and the flight allowed all of us to have entire rows to ourselves to stretch out and sleep through the flight. Once in the terminal, since there were so few of us, there seemed like no need to run to the passport check booths, though some did so out of habit, even though there was no one in them, the lights were out in them, and we were already forming a line. We waited, patiently. Uzbekistan has taught me some patience, through much practice by waiting, and often being disappointed, which are practices and qualities that seem to have had tremendous influence in forming the character of the people.

The terminal was almost like someone's house that you come to late at night, a house where everyone is sleeping, where the lights are off, and only after you ring the bell and wait at the door, they come sleepily in their dressing-gowns and bathrobes to greet you somewhat gruffly, tiredly, as you have roused them from their peaceful slumber. A young woman, heavily made up and with brightly dyed hair and a surly expression enters the booth, turned on the light, shuffled some papers on her desk, and as the first person on the line, a young Russian looking man, walked up to her, she cast a reproachful look indicating that they back off until called for. She then beckoned him to approach with a blank unwelcoming expression and a lazy motion of the index finger. Even the lowliest of civil servants here weight considerable power in Uzbekistan, and she was no exception, the gatekeeper who says who may approach and who may not. She took her time looking at the passport, looking at the man up and down carefully before stamping his passport.

When it was my turn to approach, the passport checker took what seeed to be an eternity to go through my passport. I thought how she could, so easily, after my hours of travel across continents, invent or find some reason not to allow me back into the country. I could be refused entry or ejected from the country at any time, actually, though I don't constantly think about it; but at moments like this, I do. It was unusual for foreign correspondents working in Uzbekistan to be declared persona non-grata, to be denied visas or accreditation, or to receive phone calls in the middle of the night from the Foreign Ministry informing them that they are to report to the airport by morning with their belongings, prepared to get on a one way flight out of the country. She punched something into her computer keyboard and looked back at me with a supercillious look and I awaited her pronouncements, expecting the worst. But she said nothing, picked up her stamp to stamp the passport, slipping it through the slot in the scratched and dirty plastic window.

I felt a tremendous sense of relief and gratitude just to be let into the dirty gray room with its ancient baggage carousels, and yet was somewhat amazed that still, after all this time of waiting by the passport control, the baggage of the handful of passengers had not been loaded. To kill time, I filled out customs declaration forms, two copies, from memory wrote in data such as my passport number, my visa number, nothing to declare, no items of value, firearms, poisonous chemicals, livestock, produce. I check off no on print or recorded materials, though I have several books for my own reading pleasure and was never really sure what they meant on the form. I pace around, look at the other passengers, all of whom have made it through passport control, the typical young German backpacking couple, the British missionaries, or what look like missionaries, a young trendily dressed Uzbek, possibly from a wealthy family and attending a boarding school in the US. Some elderly Russians who perhaps have family here, and are from here, but left years ago. Finally, a small piece of hand luggage comes out to the carousel, and the lucky passenger grabs it. But nothing else came out. Unkempt men in dirty uniforms of blue overalls, approach us with dolley carts offerring assistance without language but with hand gestures, there services naturally will cost us, but they don't say, and none of us had any luggage, regardless and even they too are impatient to wait around for the luggage to arrive, and disappear.

When the luggage finally arrived, I noticed that one of my suitcases had a big hole in it with some clothes peeking through. There was little of value in there, so I didn't worry. I took the heavy bags carried them to the security scanner, where a uniformed woman rolled her eyes at a screen that shows a greenish photo negative of my suitcase contents. I was more fortunate than the poor backpackers from Germany, whose backpacks were being emptied and fingered through, full of camping gear and other high-tech equipment most likely unfamiliar to the customs officials. I handed off my two copies of the custom form to an officer who looked tired and scribbled something on the forms, stamping them and handing me back a copy. It was 2AM and he probably couldn't wait until the lot of us would leave. I couldn't imagine that he'd ever stop and read through these forms. And finally, I was free to cross the threshold to the street where a gaggle of Uzbek taxi drivers with mouths full of golden teeth shouting "taxi, taxi," await and who I knew would rush up to me, try to wrest my luggage from my hands and escort me to their cars, which would be old Soviet Volgas or Zhigulis, likely the same ages of their drivers and like their drivers, have weathered better times than these. I regretted having forgotten to call the office earlier and have the driver from the office come to pick me up and save me having to negotiate with the gypsy drivers. They would probably demand hard-currency fares. But I could bargain them down to something reasonable in their language, that will still be too high for the short ride, but likely wouldn't cost me more than two dollars. They would try to cheat me. They would pull some gimmick like not open their trunks for me when I got home and hold my baggage ransom until I gave them more money, like I've heard happening to others. I walked passed them all shrugging them off, my arms weighted by the suitcases as they trounced upon the other passengers emerging. In the back of the gaggle, I found a quiet older man and asked him if he's working. He said that he was and he agreed upon a fare of two dollars with me.

He offered to take one of my bags, but it seemed much too heavy for him. I took it back, giving him my backpack. Already, I could feel Tashkent's dry heat, which cools off at night, but still hangs in the air. The driver walked with me in silence, I determined that he will be a good driver, not ask too many probing questions, about where I'm from, what's my age, my marital status, how much my watch costs. He seemed to have other things weighing on his mind. But I want to ask about the heat, I ask if the "chilla" has begun yet, and he immediately understands that though I may be a foreigner, I know enough about Uzbekistan to know about the "chilla," and that I speak Russian. These are those 40 days of the year in Uzbekistan, in which the sun mercilessly strikes the earth below, the days it is hard to leave the house, to find shade, that office workers leave their poorly airconditioned or non-airconditioned offices to strip down their official wear in the public fountains and dive in to cool off during their lunch and coffee breaks. The "chilla," he told me, doesn't start until the end of the week, though it feels like it's started already.

We got into his car, I got into the front seat beside him and we drove into the city along desolate well-paved roads, along the bridge, past the signs that read in Uzbek and Russian, "Peace to the World" and murals that proclaim somewhat ironically in Uzbek "Uzbekistan is a country with a great future!" He notices me reading the signs and snarls. "You understand that Uzbek sign, do you?"

"Yes," I said.

"You have been here before, right? What kind of future does Uzbekistan have? What kind of present does it have?" He says rhetorically looking at me and I wish he would look at the road ahead of me, fearing that the car would swerve, knock into the bridge railing and bring us to our fatal end, our brilliant future. But he turns back to the road, straightens the car and stares at the road ahead while continuing to talk to me. "Are you hear for business?" This is a question that I have heard so many times, but I continue to wonder, what kind of person would come to Uzbekistan to do business. People stopped coming here to do business years ago, when the government restricted the conversion of foreign currency. Perhaps they meant something else when they asked this question and it was just my poor Russian language skills.

"I'm a journalist."

"A journalist," he said and paused to look out the window as we drove past a small park with sillhouettes visible of girls walking and smoking. "If you're a journalist, then please, do me a favor. Tell the world the truth about what you see here. We used to have a better life. But now things have come to a point that our daughters must work like this. Our government doesn't help, doesn't listen to us. People are desperate and there's nowhere to turn, except to the Hisb-ut-Tahrir," he said excitedly, referring to the radical Islamic underground movement that called for the overthrow of the government and the creation of a Caliphate throughout Central Asia. "If things get much worse, even I would turn to them. Who else is there to turn to?"

Whereas his sentiment seemed perfectly understandable to me, I was shocked to hear it expressed by an Uzbek. No one had ever said this aloud to me. I had interviewed so many of the activists, the sociologists, the philosophers, the poets, who maybe had articulated this to me, from their armchairs, and the ordinary people I spoke to, who I suspected might harbour such thoughts, were not so casual to talk in front of a stranger, in particular, one who openly carried a mini-disc recorder and microphone. There had been such incidents of citizens getting thrown into jail for giving interviews with such opinions to the BBC, and so they were careful not to take such talk outside of the kitchen or couched in the hubbub of the bazaars. But this was my first experience of it explicitly, by a taxi driver who gave off the faint bitter-formadlehyde odor of the vodka drinker. Perhaps things had just gotten so bad for people that they had become emboldened, feeling that there was nothing left to lose and they turned to us, the foreigners, the journalists, desperately seeking any perceived purveyor of justice to save them. The country had been stagnant for so long, I wondered if something would change; it couldn't possibly stay this way forever. Day after day, things remained the same and I would wonder, would there be a revolution? Would there be an Islamic takeover? One day, the authoritarian leader would die, and who would take over? We constantly heard rumours of the President's health -- that he was diabetic, that he suffered from leukemia, that he hadn't appeared on the television in weeks, that he looked very ill the previous day on the television, that his "official" visit to Spain was actually a visit to the doctor.

I told him I would write about whatever people would tell me. But the problem was, no one told me anything. People were silent. Government officials were silent. I have no idea what's happening right now. Maybe only in 10-15 years after the regime is gone will we ever know what is really happening here, I said. Like with the Soviet Union, there were many things we only learned about after 1991. "There will be a time," I said, "when there will be new people in charge. And there will be old police officers, military officers, prosecutors who won't talk now, but before they die, they will write books and tell what is happening. Because there are too many eye witnesses to what is happening."

As everything in Uzbekistan, it would require patience. To learn the truth, patience to wait for years. My job was of course to write that first draft of history, and there was little to write, little to tell. I didn't need to wait 10-15 years to reread everything I wrote and say, look how little I knew. I knew right now how little I knew. I knew nothing.

We drove in silence along an empty main avenue called Shota Rustavelli with noone visible except for by the bus stop the man who sold the midnight bananas, packing his wares. One could always count on the midnight bananas seller, even on a Tuesday and after midnight, with no customers or cars on the street to see the man standing besides his makeshift stand of cardboard boxes piled one on top of the other, some bananas and a small scale. I asked my driver to pull over so that I could pick up some bananas. The seller remembered me, shook my hand. And despite the friendliness, this was commerce and one should always bargain because bargaining, as my local friends told me, "makes life more interesting." So, for his 1000 soums for a kilogram I had to bring down to about 800, by first offerring 600, "they are overripe," I said. To which he responded, "I'll give you a good price of 900," then I responded with 700, 750 and finally he capitulated to 800. There was no logic to this. No market forces operating on this sale of bananas at 2am with not another possible customer in sight. But I was happy that there would be something in my kitchen for breakfast.

Moments later, we were at my apartment block. The driver got out of the car to open the trunk and help me lug out my suitcases. "Don't forget what I asked you," he said, as I handed him money, shook his hand, and got read to go up to my apartment. "Write what you see."  ¶ 5:54 PM