The Stranger at my Door

So, on my first day in my new apartment (Wed), I was putting clothes in wardrobes in the evening when someone knocked on my door (my doorbell doesn't work - TIK. I could ask my landlady to fix it but it doesn't seem worth the trouble of getting someone who speaks Russian to ring her just about a doorbell when people can and do just knock.)

Having looked out my peephole to see an unknown man, I decided to ignore the knock. I mean, what if he had dishonourable intentions? Besides, even if he was a friendly neighbour making a call, I wouldn't have been able to communicate with him anyway. He didn't go away, though - instead, he knocked again, I ignored him again, and then the power in my apartment went out. Cottoning on that whoever this man was, he had control over my electricity supply, I raced to get my key so I could open my door. In case he was secretly a rogue who'd managed somehow to cut off my power supply just to make me open the door so he could perform some dastardly deed, I also picked up my sturdy tablespoon (15som at Osh Bazaar) which was lying on top of my washing machine (the closest weapon that was pick-up-able and yet not menacing enough to provoke aggression should the man be indeed an official figure).

Thence ensued a fairly amusing, rather desperate attempt on both our parts to communicate what had happened. He kept making cutting gestures with his fingers to indicate that he had cut off my electricity supply (I had figured that, so this didn't get us very far) - while incongruously asking me "Japan? Korea?", to which I replied "I'm Chinese" when I realised that he was asking about my ethnicity. (People here in Kyrgyzstan seem very concerned about this - he is probably the sixth or seventh random person (including bazaar stallholders) who has expended great communicational energy trying to ascertain this.)

Anyway, I rang Sher so that she could communicate more effectively with him about matters of greater import (in that context) than my ethnic background. It turns out that he thought the last tenant hadn't paid the electricity bill. In a country with a power crisis, this results in pretty immediate and drastic action. In fact, my landlady had been very emphatic (in Russian, translated for me by my local helper who assisted me when I made the rental agreement) about the need to pay the electricity bill on time. What saved me or at least my power supply was the electricity bill with an attached payment receipt that she'd left me along with the microwave she brought on Tues night. I showed this to the electricity man, who examined it, turned my power supply back on, apologised to me (in English) and left. TIK.