Chapter Twenty
in the gap
between myself and the word
everything ends
my yearning to the West is glossed by the East
but no one is answered
- Belgi
One of my friends, who took a serious interest in the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, met Tahir Yuldash in 1997. This is what he told me:
In December 1997 I flew to Teheran on an assignment from one of the Moscow newspapers to cover the assembly of the Islamic Conference Organisation. I flew via Istanbul, and after I had boarded the plane and the fantastically polite Turkish air hostesses had already begun demonstrating the safety regulations for the flight, there was a commotion as a number of men entered the cabin, speaking loudly in guttural Arabic. I thought to myself: “It must be some oil sheikhs or other …” although, as a rule, pe
