The office was in the middle of a quiet residential area, an Uzbek "makhalya," which had streets lined with walled off compounds that inside had a house and a garden. Many were occupied by the offices of international organizations, businesses, embassy staff, and nothing about the area could even closely resemble the bustle of a city, let alone a business district, with not a person in sight on the streets, and all activity happening behind high fortress-like walls, through gardens. Some of the houses were quite luxurious, built on a grand scale with questionable acquired money by the country's elites, with such western conveniences as jacuzzis and bidets (we had these in my office as well), saunas, small swimming pools, and constructed of materials including marble, exquisitely carved wooden doors, ceramic floors. The gardens would be filled with a variety of trees that in this time of year would bear pomegranates, quince, a small fruit that was something like an apricot, and other local fruits, such as the "hurma," all hanging low and easy for picking, giving one the sense that one did not have to toil hard to reap such goodness from the earth, and this perhaps reflected itself in our corporate work ethic, far from the eyes of our Western based headquarters.

It was early still, so there were few cars parked along the streets of those starting their workday. I unlocked our front door with the big metal key, and entered our garden in full bloom, pulled a pear from a branch for my breakfast, and waved to the hunky security guard, Dmitri, shirtless in his track pants, splashing his face with water from the fountain in the garden. I went to the fountain for some water to wash my pear. His face was a bit cut up, and he always struck me as one of those silent and strong, maybe thuggish types, that turned me on, as he sheepishly put his shirt back on. He had once been a boxer, then a security guard for the presidential apparatus and naturally, was related to someone already working in our office, which was generally the case with the security guards working for the offices in this district, I was told. It was impossible to trust anyone here, except relatives, as the thinking went, and I'd heard stories that security guards among the president's security outfit were often culled from the state orphanages, because you'd find more loyal cadres there -- not compromised by their own personal or family interests, as they themselves were wards of the state. There was a long history of this -- during the Soviet days, the communist party secretaries from the Central Asian Republics were all raised in orphanages, seen to be loyal to the supreme soviet and free of extensive ties with the tight clan and tribal systems of the indigenous populations.

Dmitry extended one of his small, but thick and stubby hands for me to shake, and quickly disappeared back inside the office. He always was silent around me, sometimes sitting alone in the garden, staring up at the sky, during those nights that I would be alone working late in the office. One morning, when I came in early, he was sitting behind one of the computers. Shortly after he left, I took a quick look at the computer, at the history of sites opened on the internet, and found scores of pornographic sites. I couldn't blame him -- it was probably boring sitting in this empty office with nothing else to do, and no one was watching, and likely, he wasn't aware that anyone could see the history of sites he'd been checking out. On the other hand, I was a little surprised that in a country where clearly, the Internet was monitored and sites that published materials critical of the state were blocked from access, that pornography was so easily accessible. The cleaning lady, Hilola, and her daughter were quickly tidying my office space, and I could see Dmitri from the window, with a small duffle over his shoulder, existing from the garden at the end of his shift. On my desk, I could see Hilola organize neatly the thick stack of pink "While You Were Out" notes that Dildora had left for me in my absence. I picked them up and leafed quickly through them, all written in Dildora's perfectly neat cursive Russian. Sometimes she's write what was clearly her personal sarcastic commentary on the caller, such as a familiar visitor to the office, a woman who called herself an "extrasensory" who had special divining powers, such as the ability to point out on maps where gold lay or gas reserves, who always insisted on talking to me, and not to my local staff, who had hear from her over the years, since she said that local peoples didn't understand or value her powers, that only foreigners could. There were the various human rights cases, some of which might be legitimate, and the others which were more of the leaky roof nature, many of whom had exhausted all the places to turn to get their voices heard. There were the fallen-from-grace government bureaucrats or police, who came to me with their "exposees" of the government, and they might later be able to use their "whistleblowing" as an argument for their asylum cases before American or European consulates. A large part of Dildora's job was to sift the wheat from the chaff, screen and shield me from the non-legitimate ones, who sometimes were even able to somehow find my cell phone number, and then require me to change that number,which Dildora did for me every few months. Perhaps now would be a good time to do so again, I thought, maybe to keep Yulia away from me for a while. She was bound to call one of these days. I had this dreaded feeling that she could be pregnant and I wondered how easily that could happen. And how if it happened, I would be stuck.

The chief censor at the Ministry of Information was retiring after 30 years of service, one of the notes said with a press release stapled to it. The government now touted that censorship was over. This, after years of claiming that there was never any pre-publication censorship and that the reason for the ass-kissing journalism was simply the fault of the country's journalists. There was a press conference that I was invited to. I already could imagine what would be said about the great progress of the country in its transition to democracy -- all the window dressing given for the benefit of the US, Uzbekistan's newest best friend. Essentially, I had to show up to these things, as it was my job, and to put on my best face to disguise any trace of cynicism, sarcasm, doubt.

In my email box, there was a curious message from a correspondent from the New Jersey desk who wanted to get some information from me about a courtroom case she was following about the eldest daughter of the Uzbek president, Gulnara. She had left the US with her children and didn't show up to custody hearings in a long and ugly divorce case she was going through with her American husband. The husband reported her to the authorities for kidnapping the children, and this therefore resulted in her getting put on an Interpol list. You even found members of the US congress from New Jersey as proxy advocates for each side of the marital dispute. This could potentially be interesting, given how it might tie into US-Uzbek diplomatic relations, given how personal and political relations were to closely intertwined here, and were never warmer than now. The daughter was back in Tashkent now, and it seemed like she was determined to make her mark, opening up a string of new boutiques, beauty salons, and nightclubs.

Dildora was the first one to walk in. She was flushed and sweaty, like me, but nonetheless embraced me tightly saying how much she missed me, that she counted each day in the office without me, that it was boring. No news.

"What about the censor quitting?" I said trying to hide my cynicism and resisting smiling.

"It means nothing," she said. "He could have long ago retired, because our journalists know very well what they should and shouldn't write. Their system works perfectly well, they have plenty of control." Dildora, herself once a young and idealistic graduate of the journalism school went to work after her graduation for one of the state papers. The story goes, that apparently after a few weeks of reprimands and heavily censored news bits of hers that made it to print, she came to us begging for any kind of work. The erstwhile receptionist was preparing to emigrate to Russia and the timing was perfect for Dildora. In time, she grew to be more than just a receptionist, but did a fair share of fact checking, vetting sources, and she was doing some reporting on the side for some opposition websites, and she conducted a torrid long-distance affair with one of the main exiled opposition politicians who lived in Turkey.

"Here's some news, well not big news, but news that might affect you," she said as she walked away to her desk. "Madamoiselle opened up her new nightclub. And now, no other nightclub in the city is allowed to work after 12 midnight."

"Does the one have to do with the other?" I asked, and she turned to me shrugging. I suspected a probable yes from the look on Dildora's face, but knowing that it would be impossible to know, given that it was impossible to get any information here. We'd have to ask someone in the office who had relatives working in the police force who might know about some internal memo about nightclubs. On a personal note, I was disappointed. She was right that this would affect me. I wondered where I would go out at night now. I suppose that my favorite nightclub was affected as well.  ¶ 4:59 PM