Arbil to Aleppo On A Dollar

Well, it's been a few days since I left Iraq now. My closing thoughts on the country are still forthcoming, but the last few days, in limbo between destinations, have been interesting in their own right.

Iraqi Kurdistan wasn't the place I expected it to be for a lot of reasons; where I expected to find slums and beggars and giant piles of trash, I instead found hotels and parks and fountains; where I expected to find anger and anti-American sentiment, I instead found free meals and warm smiles.

The only thing I didn't find was an ATM.

It was my second day in Arbil and my fourth in Iraq when I realized that the contents of my wallet were down to 10 Turkish cents and a lot of month-old receipts that weren't going to do me a lot of good. More importantly, I realized that I hadn't seen a functioning ATM since I crossed the border.

So I did the only thing that seemed logical: panic.

After letting me vent for a bit, Roman decided it was time for a pep talk. Basically, he told me to quit acting like a dumbass American who sees value only in the form of a green rectangular slip of paper featuring a number and an historically important dead guy, and to start acting like a dude who had just hitchhiked from Cappadoccia into the heart of Iraq, repeating "yok para" (no money) like a mindless drone, to anyone and everyone who would listen.

(For his sake, I'll choose to forgive the irony then, that the next night he would tell me about how he had spent nearly a year's wage on a brand new second car that he didn't need. Welcome to the other side, my former commie friend; capitalism- where the grass is so green, it's probably artificial!)

The wisdom of Roman's words didn't hit me immediately; I was a little too busy being pissed off that no one would tell us which direction the exit to Arbil was in and that literally every single soldier who spotted us would pull us aside and interrogate us for 15 minutes, before deciding that we didn't matter.

We did make it out of Arbil, however, and after being offered an absurdly plentiful meal by a friendly restaurant manager (white shirt, above), enduring a brief but horrific bout with food sickness (I won't go into detail for your sake, but know that the memory will always conjure images of a cement truck) and then setting up camp in a nearby mountain, I started to feel very differently about my lack of money than I had just hours ago. I was beginning to come around.

Waking up to this might have helped:

Now, 4 days after my mini-breakdown in Arbil and seated comfortably on my bed in a $5 hostel in Aleppo, Roman's words are dogma. Why? Because I managed to get here on a grand total of 75 Turkish lira cents.

(Where did that 75 kush go, by the by? Try a public bathroom attendant who tricked me into thinking that the gas station bathroom would be free and then ambushed me on my way out. Hell, I'm not even sure the bastard actually worked there.)

Hitching, camping, relying on the kindness of strangers, and eating groceries out of our bags (yeah, I know that should count towards the total money spent, but hey, this is my blog, I make the rules); that's how we did it. My wallet was literally empty besides change the entire time; and man was it a good feeling. Even the burdenless feeling of having so much money that you don't have to care, can't compare to the burdenless feeling of having no money and still not caring.

And it allowed me to learn to become comfortable with being in a state of constant dependance towards strangers, from the aforementioned restaurant manager and his free meal, to the various truckers who gave us free rides, to a great Kurdish guy named Khalil (red shirt, below) who put us up for the night in a prayer room (after making us promise that we weren't homosexual and weren't about to go gay it up in a sacred area).

At the same time, I've been thinking about the various possessions I accidently left behind as I departed Istanbul in an emotionally wrecked stupor (to this day I couldn't tell you why I found it so hard to leave, I can only say that it felt like being gutted and having my intestines drip out on the floor before me): 4 T-shirts, a long-sleeved shirt, a pair of pants, and a towel.

Yeah; so, I was a little overwhelmed with my first big emotional goodbye.

The moment I realized that I'd left all that stuff behind was almost worse though; I couldn't get over it. Yeah, it was just stuff, but man, that was a lot of stuff. To lose it on my first stop? It reinforced the fear I had been carrying with me from the minute I waved goodbye to my family in the airport in Minneapolis; even as I walked through the metal detector, I had been certain that I would lose something important at any moment and be completely screwed.

Well, thus far I haven't lost anything of import, only what I left in Istanbul and an Arabic guidebook I forgot while hitchhiking, swiftly replaced in a bookstore. I haven't lost my wallet, my camera, my iPod, or, God forbid, my passport. But I will; I'll lose one of them at some point in the coming year and beyond- there's not a doubt in my mind.

And yet, somehow, I'll be okay; some part of me might even be happy. I'm reminded of the scene in The Darjeeling Limited (a movie anybody interested in India needs to see), when in order to catch a departing train, the three brothers in the movie are forced to toss their copious luggage aside and fling themselves onto their moving metal target. In the context of the movie, it served as a pretty heavy-handed metaphor for unburdening oneself and embracing the uncertainty of life. In other words, if all of your energy goes into holding on to the past and the present, you're probably going to miss the next big opportunity that comes along. These days, I'm starting to get that.

And if I finish this trip naked, all the better. Figuratively speaking. Here's some pictures:

Voices of Wartorn Iraq

I swore to myself I would write this entry eventually, collecting all the people and opinions I came across in Iraq and compiling them into one big ugly, mess of a blog post in an attempt to make sense of an even more messed up country. But man, does that sound like a lot of work.

In the meantime, enjoy this badass picture I took of the Kurdish flag atop Arbil's citadel in the middle of a sandstorm, which somehow communicates everything I couldn't put into words anyways.

(For instance, why would they allow the highest-flying and proudest flag in the city to remain torn when they could easily replace it with a new one? Probably because it's Iraq.)

Attacked, in Iraq!

Remind me: why did I think it was a good idea to play tourist in the most dangerous country in the world?

Yesterday, in the de-facto capital city of Iraqi Kurdistan, Arbil, Roman and I stumbled across a particularly poor, but particularly photogenic back alley. Roman insisted that we stay on the main road, but for me the allure of taking photos of the other side of Iraq proved to be too strong. And so we wandered down the alley, not at all certain of what was waiting within it's narrow walls. And, I was right, it was picturesque:

But unfortunately, Roman was right as well; because within minutes in the narrow alleyway, we were assaulted by two thug kids.

Our armed assailants- the ringleader cackling in glee the whole time, the other not even cracking a smile- didn't demand money or try to steal anything (other than my water bottle). They just wanted to cause some pain to some innocent tourists, maybe as retribution for our two country's checkered pasts and uncertain presents.

Once I knew I was safe, I pulled out my camera and caught the offenders on video:


Which you will have to wait for... because Syria hates you and doesn't want you to see my sweet video or any video on this blog for that matter.

America Invades Iraq, Again

And this time, the reds (and some random Turkish dude that we hitched across the border with) are by our side.

Or, as the fat, jolly Turk we rode across the final leg of the border with put it:

"America, Russia! Arkedeš? Holla, holla!!!"

Yes, I did indeed enter the Kurdish part of Iraq today. And yes, I am indeed still alive. Some very limited first impressions...

First of all, the trip across the border was long, boring, and entirely painless. Surprisingly, being tourists from America and Russia respectively allowed us to get through both the Turkish and Iraqi side of the border almost instantly. The only real issue was that we had to have a car to cross, but considering that we had already hitchhiked the entire way from Cappadoccia, it didn't prove to be too much of an issue.

The Turkish customs check in particular was probably the most amusingly relaxed one I've ever seen. Once the Turkish soldier saw that we were not Turk or Iraqi, he pulled us aside to a special section to have our luggage immediately inspected. Roman began the arduous task of pulling item after item after item out of his bag, to display to the soldier that he was carrying nothing illegal. After maybe a whole 15 seconds of this, the soldier grew impatient and waved for Roman to stop.

"Gun?" he asked, gesturing to his holster.

Umm... no.

"Cocaine?" 

No.

"Heroine?" 

No.

"Okay."

And he waved us both through. Apparently Turkish government officials aren't staying up late every night devising ways to protect Iraq from drug and arms smugglers.

The scraggle-beard accompanies me across the Iraqi border

(You'll forgive me someday for making you look at that picture, I promise.)

The other interesting thing about the border between Turkey and Iraq, besides the ease with which tourists like us could wander through, was that it seemed to be occupied exclusively by Turkish vehicles; in fact, I think I saw a grand total of one Iraqi license plate the entire time I spent in the area. Granted, we were headed from Turkey to Iraq and not visa-versa, but unless no Iraqi visitor to Turkey ever returns, I have to conclude that very few Iraqis are ever allowed in in the first place.

Pretty much all of the Turkish drivers were headed south for one reason, and as far as I could surmise that reason was cheap oil. Apparantly it can be very lucrative for an enterprising Turk to make the run back and forth between the two countries, buying low in Iraq and selling high in Turkey. And while Iraqi Kurdistan probably makes a lot of money from this arrangement as well, something tells me that a disproportionate amount of the wealth flows into the already richer country.

You'll see about a thousand of these right inside the Iraqi border

Finally, we reached Iraqi Kurdistan proper. I was immediately shocked by only one thing- that I wasn't shocked at all. Iraqi Kurdistan, upon first impressions after only a few hours, looks almost entirely like Turkish Kurdistan. It's a little bit grubbier and of course the signs are all in Arabic and Kurdish (as well as a surprising amount of English), but neither of these things was particularly unexpected. Meanwhile, the standard of living looks to be as high as most of Eastern Turkey, at least after only a few hours.

The only real difference that's jumped out at me so far is the claustrophobic feel of the only city we've been in, the bordertown, Zakho (where we've booked a hotel for the night for $10 apiece). While the cities of Turkish Kurdistan- and eastern Turkey in general- feel very wide open and comfortably populated, Zakho, to me, is defined by narrow boulevards that are absolutely teeming with life. The escalation in population density has been a little bit unnerving so far, but compared to the rampant poverty and anarchy that part of me was expecting and the tribal villages that another part of me envisioned, this is nothing. And really, it's no different than Istanbul; it's just that, unlike Iraqi Kurdistan, I expected Istanbul to be a raging orgy of human activity.

More interestingly, I just finished one of the most eye-opening conversations I've ever had, with a Baghdad resident named Wisam, vacationing with his family in Kurdistan. After letting me know that he preferred my accent to the British one, because the British one was annoying and "too strong", I immediately decided that I liked this guy. And when I found out that he lived in Baghdad and spoke good English, I knew that it was my civil duty to hound him with questions, so that I could relay the truth of the situation to the uninformed masses back home.

First of all, according to the admittedly biased Wisam, about 80% of Iraqis are pro-American; meanwhile, roughly 30% of the country still believes that Saddam Hussein was a good leader. Whether these two figures contradict each other, I'll leave it you to decide, but this is what I was told.

Secondly, while the Arab part of Iraq is getting better and will likely continue to get better- "God willing", Wisam said- terrorism still persists and is a very real problem. Though he considers Baghdad a safe enough place that he is raising his children there, he warned me that, as a Westener, it would be very foolish to even think about setting foot there. That same warning applied to all of Arab Iraq, even though he felt that certain places like ancient Babylon would be "very good for tourism".

The most intriguing thing by far, however, was Wisam's own personal story, which I should have recorded and sold for millions to Fox News, as it might have been the first time I've heard anyone make a convincing emotional argument for neo-conservative foreign policy that didn't amount to:"We're America dammit! Eff you, France!"

(Not that making an argument for any particular American foreign policy was what he was trying to do; he insisted he was indifferent to both Bush and Obama.)

Long story short, Wisam is an Iraqi who spent very little of his life in Iraq. This is because, when Wisam was a child, Saddam Hussein usurped all of his family's belongings- along with those of many other of the wealthier families living in Baghdad- and exiled his family. He's grown up and spent most of his life in Iran, though he still views himself as Iraqi.

When Iran is your safehaven, you know you've had it rough.

Which, of course, explains why this man was a lot more friendly towards me than anyone else I met on my first day in Iraq; it's hard to not love America when they gave you back your home. Plus, we really do have a better accent than Brits.

Now, Wisam is only one man with a very particular story and I'm sure that there are plenty of other stories for me to encounter in the days ahead which will assuredly illuminate the situation from whole 'nother perspectives.

But it's interesting no? Maybe I didn't come here, just for a really cool stamp.

Adriz, the Kurdish Asshole

"You wanted adventure", Roman said, as if it were my fault.

That's true I did; but I would have traded it for a good night's sleep.

The story of my night along the Turkish border begins and ends in the same benign way- with me preparing for a peaceful night sleeping under the stars, camping out behind a truck stop with the consent of the local landlords. It's the inbetween that makes the story worth telling; somewhere between 10:00 PM and 4:00 AM, I experienced one of the wierdest nights of my life, complements of a dickhead named Adriz.

I had literally just finished my last, oh-so ominously titled blog entry and fallen asleep in the tent, when both Roman and I were woken by loud voices and a flickering light just outside of the tent. We listened silently, hoping in vain that the voices and footsteps would eventually begin fading into the other direction; they didn't.

Suddenly a man- middle-aged, almost certainly Kurdish, and strangely wearing the first suit and tie that I'd seen since Adana- peeked his head into the unzipped entranceway and stared at us; just stared, as if his face were carved out of stone. By morning, I would learn that the straightface was just another part of his schtick as a sadistic deadpan comedian, but for now it mostly as a veil shrouding his true agenda.

Somewhat reassuringly, one of the men we had met earlier in the petrol stop out front- a quiet, decent young guy who had brought us bread and given me a discount on a Fanta- turned out to be the other voice we'd heard. Judging by that man's deferential tone, I assumed that the man staring me in the face was the owner of this establishment that we had decided to make our home for the night- meaning Roman and I were at his mercy.

For all I knew, our visitor could have meant us no harm and just been curious as to why two dudes were sleeping in a tent in his backyard. There was something menacing in his eyes and unsmiling expression though, and as he barked at us in a language that was either Turkish or Kurdish, but definitely not English, I was aware that Santa Clause stopping by to drop off presents this man clearly was not. Meanwhile, the words of our friends in Adana, about how the Kurds would just as soon stab you in the back as look at you, rang shrill in my ears.

Finally, after trying to talk to us in Turkish for what seemed like forever, he offered Roman a cigarette- a welcome, reassuring sign- and the younger man explained, in hideously broken English, that he wanted to buy us a beer. Primarily to alleviate the situation, I said okay.

With that both men walked away, ostensibly to go buy beer.

Meanwhile, Roman and I discussed our options. We ultimately decided that since the guys out front earlier had been so nice in inviting us to stay and offering us bread, it wasn't worth the effort to pack up our stuff and try to find a new place. Neither of us particularly loved this new guy, but he hadn't done anything negative to us, besides waking us up which isn't a criminal offense when someone is sleeping in your backyard, and now he was offering to buy us alcohol; maybe he was a nice guy whose bedside manner just needed work.

It also definitely didn't hurt that there was a Turkish oskari (military) checkpoint just half a kilometer away, which as far as I could tell, existed for one reason and one reason alone: to keep the Kurdish people, like our new drinking buddies, in their place.

After a few minutes, our friends returned, paper bag in hand, and pulled out two bottles of Efes, Turkey's finest (read: only) beer. They shoved them in our hands and then proceeded to stare at us awkwardly as we drank. I tried to start some rudimentary conversation and, despite the ginormous language barrier, I was able to discover that the middle-aged, suit-clad gentleman's name was Adriz and that the younger guy was his little brother.

Finally, Adriz dispenced with the awkward small talk and got down to business. Smiling sadistically, he turned to his brother/pawn, who would serve as translator most of the night, who relayed the message.

"He ask, do you want girls?"

Something in the dark grin that had suddenly manifested upon Adriz' face told me that I didn't.

"Mmmm... naaah. I'm good."

Apparently to change our mind, Adriz pulled out some reading material that would make Hugh Hefner's mom blush:

With a sudden glint in his typically cold eyes, he motioned to the newspaper and then in the direction of a nearby bordertown, Silopi. He didn't need to; his sly, dark grin said it all. There were girls in Silopi and he wanted to bring them to us.

It didn't take long to put it all together: Silopi, like every small hole of a city within 5 kilometers of the border, was undoubtedly a haven for drugs, sex, and other less-than-legal activities; our new friend Adriz, meanwhile, like every amoral jackass trying to kick and scrape and backstab and hustle his way up the ladder of life, was undoubtedly not above partaking in these activities if it meant some fresh green somehow making it's way into his pocket. It fit like a glove.

In other words, we were sleeping in the backyard of the local pimp. And trespassing.

We tried to explain our stance on this particular issue, but "for love, not money" didn't quite seem to translate; and if it did, it apparently translated into something along the lines of "show me some more pictures of half-naked girls in your newspaper and maybe I'll change my mind", because that's what Adriz continued to do for the next 30 minutes or so as we emphatically continued to voice our disinterest.

Finally he seemed to realize that he was getting nowhere with us, and suddenly and unexpectedly changed his tactics. He turned to his brother and began motioning between Roman and I, the whole time chortling in Turkish. I knew where this was going, even before his nervous brother voiced Adriz' thoughts.

"He say, you gays."

I thought about just agreeing with him and leaving it at that, in hopes that he would stop trying to dump prostitutes on me, but as I watched Adriz' eyes narrow into reptilian slits and heard his already barbaric yelping become louder and crueler, I figured that was probably not the way to go.

Finally, after another staredown, he turned to walk towards the lodgings of the station, and for a few seconds I thought we had won. Maybe he had just given up. When he stopped flat after a few feet, however, I suddenly realized that all he had been doing was positioning himself between us and the petrol station, the road, and, most importantly, the Turkish soldiers. I began to appreciate for the first time what an imposing physical presence this guy was.

He barked something at his meek translator, who quickly turned to us.

"He want money, for beer."

Of course, I should have known.

"How much?"

"150 lira. Each."

I gaped at them, in disbelief that they expected Roman and I to pay the equivalent of $100 each for our beers. Adriz stood; unblinking, dead serious, palm held out expectantly.

Finally, grasping for straws, and after explaining that I had nowhere near that much money, I muttered something about how I wanted to consult his friend out front, a man in a purple shirt who had been the one to originally tell us that we could sleep behind the truckstop. I took off before I could be told otherwise, and hoped that he wouldn't resort to force to prevent me from doing so. Thankfully, he didn't.

Finally, after a long, barely comprehensible conversation between us, Adriz and our new ally, purple shirt man, it was revealed that apparently Adriz had been joking the whole time. Not that I entirely bought this- it seemed more likely that purple shirt man had talked some sense into his friend, maybe reminded him that there were quite a few Kurd-hating oskari looming not so far from our present location- but when they offered to settle our debt for 7 lira per beer, I had no problem offering up the money.

To my surprise, he turned it down.

And thus a turning point in our relationship was marked. The next 45 minutes were like something straight out of a montage in the second act of a buddy-cop flick, where the formerly reluctant partners begin to warm up to each other and eventually become friends. I showed Adriz my passport; Adriz showed me his Turkish Department of Defense employee ID card (apparently pimpin' is just a sidegig). Meanwhile, I made liberal use of about the only 2 Turkish words I knew, Guzel (Good) and Arkedeš (Friend). At one point, I swear Adriz even cracked a smile. And that's when I dropped my guard... and let him hold my camera.

From that moment on, the trajectory of our relationship, as summarized in the following two photos taken by Adriz who was now refusing to give up my camera, plummeted faster than you could bat your eye.

Everything crested, after about 30 minutes of desperate, impassioned pleading on my part, and still more extensive use of the word Arkedeš, with Adriz threatening to smash the camera on the ground if I didn't hand over that 150 lira he'd been lusting after all night. Some bluffs are easy to call, like Iran threatening to nuke Israel off the face of the Earth, and Adriz and I both knew that there was no chance he was going to destroy that camera as long as he had a chance to profit off of it. On the other hand, I knew there was no way I was going to physically pry my camera out of his hands and no way he was going to give it up without being forced.

Finally, he decided I wasn't going to give him cash in exchange for the camera, and moved to plan B. He got in his car, prepared to drive away and settle for a slick new American camera as a consolation prize for his efforts. And that's when I pulled out the ace up my sleeve.

Before he could take off, I managed to motion him in the direction of the backyard, where our campsite was located. Curious, he followed me, only to discover something surpising: our tent, bags, and everything else had vanished into thin air. Suddenly he realized that Roman, who had asked to use the bathroom around the back of the station about half an hour ago, had vanished with it. He scanned his brain for an answer, and I gave it to him:

"Oscari."

Little did Adriz know that the last 30 minutes of conflict between he and I over the camera had been a distraction- a risky distraction that placed one of my prized possessions at risk, but a distraction all the same. As had been arranged, I would keep Adriz distracted just long enough for Roman to pack up all of our things and hike to the soldiers. I hadn't expected it to be so easy to keep Adriz from realizing that one of his two hostages had gone missing, but in the end his single-minded greed did that for me.

Needless to say, he eventually parted with the camera. And with one last exuberant, "Arkedeš!", I offered to take a picture of him; he grumpily shielded his face, probably a smart move on his part, considering who I planned on delivering that picture to.

At last, Roman and I met up, near the soldiers. In an unheard of example of mercy, Roman had elected to not actually speak to the soldiers; he argued that it was enough that Adriz and company thought we had done so- afterall we had escaped with all of our belongings intact and with a good story to boot. Instead, he suggested we camp out near the soldiers' camp, where we would be safe from Adriz if he decided to enact vengance. I didn't have the energy to argue- all I wanted was to find a place to sleep free of rapscallious Kurds- and so we walked to one side of the military compound, about 100 feet away from the barbed wire fence, and looked for a new place to set up camp.

Suddenly we heard shouting. A huge array of armed soldiers had gathered at the fence and was screaming at us in Turkish. We figured we should probably try to explain ourselves. Finally we found someone who spoke English and explained the whole situation. I wasn't as interested in mercy as Roman, so I told them all about the truckstop owners. They knew exactly who I meant.

20 minutes later, we'd befriended the soldiers of the camp,who were all too happy to have something to break the monotony of a life within a barbed wire fence. We were having a conversation with one English-speaking soldier in particular, when he called over one of the passing comrades, pointed to him, and told me something I did not expect:

"He thought you were a terrorist. He wanted to shoot you."

And as I stared at him in shock, the soldier in question did two things that were even more unexpected: he blushed, and then he giggled.

Now, normally I would be mad at this man who had wanted to kill me. But really, how could I be mad at a giggling Turkish oskari? It's cool.

And that's how Roman and I ended up camping behind the truckstop a second time- the soldiers' forced them to let us sleep there and leave us alone. Adriz, unfortunately, had escaped, and I almost felt sorry when purple shirt man, a relatively decent guy, was forced to take the brunt of the punishment from the soldiers for Adriz' sins. But not really.

Mostly I was just glad to have a place to sleep and looking forward to putting this ordeal in the past. Goodbye and good riddance, Adriz. You too, Turkish Kurdistan.

The Calm Before the Storm?

Six kilometers from the border, and I can taste the chaos we're about to stroll right into.

Right now, as Roman and I camp out behind a random petrol station/convenience store/seemingly abandoned truck stop, I'm enjoying the first full spectrum of stars I've seen in a long time; I'm enjoying the cool breeze licking my face; I'm enjoying the taste of America in my belly, in the form of "corba tavuk", otherwise known as the Turkish grocery store bastardization of chicken noodle soup; I'm enjoying the sound of America in my ears, in the form of bad pop songs being played through tinny iPod speakers.

Meanwhile, the most pathetic animal I've ever seen, a frail, limping dog, whimpers just 10 feet away from us, in vain hope of food he won't get; the owners of this station, kind enough to allow us to sleep here and even to bring us bread, watch TV only 100 feet; the "jandarma" (Turkish army), tasked with occupying and controlling this area of Turkish Kurdistan only about 300 feet; and finally, in literally all four directions, the lights of cities, big and small, which have yet to fall asleep.

It's one of the most bizarrely serene scenes I've ever experienced; and it's hard to believe that a place so ripe with the signs of human activity could be so free of it at the same time.

It was much more serene and picturesque at night, I swear

I've spent a day now in Turkish Kurdistan, and thus far our Adana friends have been dead wrong about the Kurdish people. Already today we've been offered free cay (Turkish tea), free bread, and a couple free rides.

The road to get here has been a fairly untumultous one as well, excluding our brief but memorable stay in Adana two nights ago. Yesterday, the third since Roman and I forged this alliance and decided to hitchhike across the border together, we must have hitchhiked with at least ten different vehicles, most of which were comfortably unmemorable.

Only one stands out in my mind- a beat up but comfy van, with a driver's seat, passenger's seat, and a lounge area in the back, where it looked like the seats had been uprooted and haphazardly rearranged so that they could face each other for a more communal experience. Typically for this area, nobody in the van spoke a word of English. Interestingly though, this didn't stop the giant, hairy, yellow-toothed bear of a man sitting to my immediate right from gesturing and shouting at me wildly- almost angrily- for the entire ride, while his even more yellow-toothed and wild-eyed friend stared at me with a cracked grin apparantly sown to his face.

At one point, right after crushing a cigarette butt casually into the carpet of the van with the sole of his shoe, the quiet, grinning man began to close the shades that were hanging over every window. Suddenly plenty aware that the three of them had both size and numbers in their favor, I was reminded of a specific scene from the movie Training Day, involving a game of poker, three crazed Mexican gangsters, and a very screwed Ethan Hawke. And I was honestly prepared to grab my bag and fling my body onto a moving highway if that's what it took to avoid joining that cigarette butt.

But it never came to that. Finally, bear-man, tired of gesturing liked a crazed lunatic for so long with so little success in communicating anything, borrowed Roman's Turkish-Russian dictionary and, after scanning it for a few moments, pointed to the word he'd been trying so hard to convey.

I asked Roman what word it was. He told me.

He's pointing to the word "cat".

The suddenly gleeful giant nodded excitedly and began to repeatedly exclaim the word in the broken accent you would expect of someone who had never spoken a word of English in his life.

"CAT! CAT! CAT!"

He calmed down after that and was complacently quiet for the rest of the ride, apparently pleased with himself for successfully communicating something in a foreign language. And while I never did figure out why this man had exhausted so much time and energy trying to communicate an innocuous word that carried absolutely no meaning within the context of our situation, I did find that somehow he didn't seem so menacing anymore.

As we got out of the car 20 minutes later, Roman summed up the situation immaculately:

"I think in America you call these peoples rednecks, yes?"

That sounds about right, yeah.