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 Did the strange taxi driver really kill people for a living in his younger days? |
Be careful after dark in
Bishkek-Very careful!
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Documentary filmmaker Antony Butts has contributed outstanding columns to this site on the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident. He returned last week with new stories from his most recent travels in Kyrgystan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia. This is his second report from Kyrgystan. Butts has just completed directing a documentary film on radiation poisoning in the area. |
of TheColumnists.com
It’s late at
night in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and I’m catching a ride back
home after a date. “You should be careful after dark,”
Volodya, the taxi driver, warns me in a conspiratorial way. “A
lot of idiots out there will ambush you in the streets with a
bit of metal or knife and take your money.”
I had heard this from almost every local I asked. Bishkek is
not a safe city at night, not even for taxi drivers.
I ask Volodya if he knows how to fight. Dressed in a stripy blue
and white T-shirt and sporting a grey moustache, he is surrounded
by the beat-up metal and plastic of a Soviet-era taxi. He looks
at me and says in a hard voice: “I know how to kill. I’ve
killed many people: in Egypt, Mexico, Nigeria, Canada. I’m
former colonel in the special foreign service. Now I’m on
a pension and I drive a taxi.”
He claimed to have had psychological training to suppress fear.
“They made monsters out of us”, he said. “Machines
to kill.”
Volodya said he left the special service 20 years ago for psychological
reasons--presumably after killing so many people. I looked him
over. He didn’t seem the type, although he was bulky and
had thick arms.
He lit a cigarette and we approached the center of this remote
Central Asian city of a million people. The few illuminated street
lamps emitted feeble beams of light here and there.
“Everyone goes around in pairs or in threes to make it less
dangerous,” Volodya said, combining his life story with
his tour guide patter. It was coming up to midnight--the feared
witching hour that the old babushka I was staying with always
warned me about.
“Don’t stay out later past 10 p.m.!” she kept
telling me.
I’ve been in Kyrgyzstan two weeks now and I’ve never
made it home before 10 p.m. Maybe I’ve been lucky so far.
I witnessed only one fight since being here and it happened just
outside my apartment. It was at 11 at night and a group of guys
started beating up a girl. The babushka stopped me from going
out to help, saying they were neighbors and would then bother
her. As she was telling me off, hushing me to draw the curtains,
a plastic bag full of water landed on the unfortunate girl.
“It’s shame on her,” said the babushka. “She
probably said something wrong.”
Volodya proudly told me he had studied at five universities.
“Two degrees at Moscow University and the rest here in Kyrgyzia,”
he said. I wondered why he had joined an elite division whose
specialty was to kill people. “Honor,” he shot back.
“I was the fourth generation of my family to serve. My daughter
serves and continues the tradition.”
“I’m not proud of what I did. We meddled in other countries’
affairs. But they trained us so that disobeying an order didn’t
even enter our head. We were taught how to kill at a distance
with energy--from several meters away.”
I looked at him again. This sounded far-fetched,
but then I heard the Americans had tried similar experiments
with soldiers staring at goats.
“They taught us how to learn things subconsciously so we
would then forget them. I know 11 languages for instance.”
I wondered which ones, whether he could
give me an example, but he wouldn’t be drawn.
Volodya stopped at the traffic lights. My apartment was nearby
and he lit up a cigarette. He started talking about philosophy
and the rights and wrongs of going to war. Then it was whether
Stalin was overall good or bad for the Soviet Union.
We had long since arrived at my apartment. I could hear a group
of lads going past, followed by the sound of phlegm being sucked
back in the mouth and let loose on the street.
Volodya was on his second cigarette by now. It was late and my
concentration was wandering. I switched back to him when I heard.
“… and that was when I went to Lhassa for two years.”
“Oh? Which monastery?” I asked. I had been to Lhassa
and was keen to know which one, which would also test his veracity.
“Oh, it’s a closed monastery. Only by invitation can
you go there,” he said, a cloud of smoke filling the car
in the stuffy summer air. In the darkness, the yellow sign of
another taxi sailed by. It was late and I made my excuses to
go.
“You know,” he said, “I have a BMW and a Volga
at home, but I drive this because our petrol and roads are bad.”
I opened the door, but just before I left the taxi I could swear
I could make out just the faintest smell of vodka.
©2007 by Antony Butts. TheColumnists.com wishes to acknowledge the special assistance of EYE ON EUROPE Columnist Michael Johnson in arranging the services of Antony Butts. The illustration is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted Dec. 3, 2007.
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