I was standing in the centre of a small, airless room. Bare concrete walls pressed in on me, the kind of architecture Soviet planners had left behind, like brutalist scars across the country. The room had no windows. The single door, was it locked?, was beyond my reach. A weak bulb hung overhead on the low ceiling, its yellow light casting long shadows that kept changing shape, me directly underneath it, while in one corner a chipped wooden desk threatened to collapse under the weight of a flickering lamp. Each time it blinked, it clicked, like an irregular time keeper mocking me and my predicament.

Four policemen sat around me. Two smoked furiously, their fingers stained, tar-brown, like the ceiling above us. They all looked like they could be brothers. The air was thick, heavy; or was that my imagination? The other two questioned me, their voices sharp, in Russian, a language I not even half understood. Years before, I had spent months in Russia, picking up some basics, but that was a long time ago. Now, all we had was 5 words of shared English, and perhaps 50 of Russian. The discussion circled back and forth, but what were they looking for?

I had no idea why I was there. All I’d done was buy two burgers at a crumbling market stall. Calling it a food truck would have been generous, but it did have wheels. Now here I was, trapped under their gaze, while their questions pressed harder and harder.

And then, one of the smokers leaned forward, joining the interrogation. His eyes narrowed, and it hit me; They thought I was a suicide bomber.