A small international incident

"So," said the young airport security woman whose pseudo-militaristic garb had clearly gone to her head, approximately two minutes after I set foot on Kazakh soil. "Now we will deport you."

This seemed like an bad foot to get off on. And the grim glee, that distinctive hallmark of state employees everywhere, with which she pronounced my sentence did not seem to bode well for negotiations. Also, she didn't seem at all concerned that her silly hat -- an olive-green version of the jaunty peaked cap that hotdog-on-a-stick vendors wear -- was undercutting her authority.

True, I had shown up in the fine formerly-Communist-now-sort-of-democratic motherland of my sister (in-law; I don't usually add that part, because it seems sort of like saying I only acknowledge the kinship because I'm legally required to, which just isn't so -- but, as it turned out, these people were sticklers for details) without a visa, on the strength of an apparently mythological 5-day "transit visa" option promised by guidebooks, Google, and one not overly circumspect consular official.

Nobody was interested in hearing my transit visa story. Not one bit. You can't come to Kazakhstan without a visa, they scoffed as they prepared to put me on a plane back to China.

At some point during the now rapidly accelerating deportation proceedings, a somewhat more sympathetic official slipped away quietly to fetch Yelena from the waiting room. Abruptly, Yelena and her mother appeared on the other side of the gate; in what I could only assume were the few seconds I would be allowed to see her before I was dragged off in handcuffs, I may have fallen tearfully into her arms.

And then things kicked into overdrive. Much rapid-fire Russian was spoken by everybody but me. Phone calls were made. The airport officials stopped looking quite so gleeful. Yelena and her mother were taken away, and replaced by a thick-necked Russian man with a shaved head and mafia muscles straining the limits of his very tight t-shirt - in short, the very essence of Hollywood's (apparently quite accurate) vision of a Russian mob enforcer. "Is that really your brother?" whispered two immigration agents who had taken a slightly less hostile shine to me. I had no idea what the right answer was, so I made a noise that I hoped was both affirmative and noncommittal. They looked suitably impressed; the man smiled and waved at me from across the room where he appeared to be dispensing bribes from a small manpurse.

All this, I learned later, was being orchestrated by Yelena's Aunt Olga, a woman of some considerable influence who is, let's just say, quite connected in Kazakhstan. (She assured me several times, and didn't appear to be joking, that Muscles was her "KGB contact.")

After a couple false starts (at one point they appeared poised to let me go, but then decided I was missing some official stamp or another -- so Aunt Olga sent someone downtown to go "unlock" some ministers office and fetch the appropriate stamp), I was sprung around midnight, four hours after my arrival, the proud possessor of a shiny new Kazakh tourist visa.

Add that to the growing list of countries where the Bryant name has no doubt been added to some kind of consular "no fly" list for future visits.