Postcard from Bishkek

The headline caught my attention- after all,that’s what they are meant to do, isn’t it.  Anyway, this one said: “5 Things No One Tells You About Being Robbed“.

I was intrigued having been the victim of several robberies – both here and, I hasten to add, back in the UK.  Another reason it caught my eye is because I have been preparing the annual insurance proposal forms and so such things have been to the forefront of my mind recently.

Although I was bit concerned, (after all it’s a serious subject and the website bills itself as “one of the most popular comedy sites on planet Earth”), I thought I would take a look and see what insights it had to offer.  There’s often a lot of truth hidden in comedy, and the site is also famous for “list-style feature articles” with eye catching titles such as 26 Sexy Halloween Costumes That Shouldn’t Exist or 6 Books Everyone (Including Your English Teacher) Got Wrong …

The author of this particular piece described how he had received a phone call one day to tell him that his home had been burgled and he outlined five things that arose as a result of the experience: 

• Your imagination is worse than the reality: remember that he didn’t discover the robbery, he got a phone call and, as is often the case, his imagination went into overdrive … envisioning the worst possible scenarios.  That’s human nature and understandable, but the “worst possible scenarios” are exactly that and most robberies are opportunistic and much more mundane.Oddly enough, his imagination seems to have been based on the physical act of the robbery – not on the consequences such as the loss of all his digital photographs … including all the backups that he carefully stashed away and could never be replaced.  To my mind, that’s far more significant – objects like laptops are things that can be replaced and their loss simply represents an inconvenience and additional expense.
• They will take things you wouldn’t expect: those photographs for example- although they wouldn’t have known what they were … they took the hard drives – technology that presumably had a street value.  In this case, there seemed to be less reason for the loss of pillowcases and a trumpet – although the pillowcases were apparently used to cart the swag away.  In a way, that’s not surprising s the burglars would probably have been in a hurry … and grabbed anything that they thought might be “fenceable”.In one case, here in Bishkek, they actually took our safe … which was no mean deal … it was “hidden” – but that doesn’t seem to be much of a problem, most “experienced” burglars know all the likely places to look … and heavy and must have taken two or three people to manhandle it out of the building.
• You will become a worse person: the sense of loss, abuse and betrayal may well be overwhelming, suspicion and distrust may take over your personality for a while, emerging in your dealings with other people … innocents that had nothing to do with the incident.  You will look at each person and encounter in a different light … possibly subconsciously suspecting each of shielding perfidious potential and it will take time for your normally relaxed good nature to reassert itself … and possibly causing you to feel embarrassed and even ashamed of how you reacted.
• You will try to crack the case yourself: In your frustration you will want to get to the bottom of how and why this happened to you looking around for clues, “hoping against hope” that you’ find something the police missed possibly or that crack the case wide open …
• You will finally accept communism: in a fit of cynicism, the author says that he “came to grips with the fact that you don’t own anything- you just posses them and use them until “until some highly motivated and unscrupulous individual decides he wants it for himself” … “just like communism”, he says.  There are many people who agree with his premise – even if they disagree with his conclusion.There are those, for example, that hold that “we didn’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we hold it in trust for our descendants“, or that “all that we possess is by the grace of God and we simply hold it in trust“.It was the anarchist Proudhon that said “property is theft” … although not in so many words … in his book What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government, what he actually wrote was: “What is property? may I not likewise answer, It is robbery!,”

Of course, I think he’s missed a few things:

• There will be an onrush mix of conflicting and competing emotions: After an initial bout of anger – after those responsible for such an outrage … but also directed towards yourself for “allowing” such a thing to happen, (for example, asking yourself, “why wasn’t that window alarmed?” or berating yourself for not taking better care of your belongings – as the author puts it, “beating myself up for not burying my valuables in the yard every morning”), there will be an overwhelming sense of helplessness; a feeling or understanding that we are not “masters of our own fate”.
• You’ll have a lot of work “cut out” for you to do: As the folk song puts it, “To every thing there is a season … and a time for every purpose under heaven”.  After the initial shock of the breaking news will come an initial survey of the scene to identify what actually happened, what has been taken … but that’s just the start … after you’ve taken the inventory, there is the question of clearing up and securing the building -repairing the broken window and so on … and a host of other tasks to be undertaken depending on what was taken, such as cancelling the stolen credit cards … and so on – as well as getting on with your life and dealing with concerned relatives, friends and neighbours …
• It will take time to come to terms with the event and its consequences to sink in: Just as when someone dies, there is a host of activity and it’s only sometime afterwards,  when the number of concerned well wishers who visit the bereaved starts to become less frequent and they are left more and more on their own and the full weight of their loss begins to impact on them … whilst you are kept busy with all of the necessary activity arising from the burglary, you won’t have time to come to terms with the event. That will only come later …
• Burglars are ingenious and can get through even the smallest of gaps: It’s not Reed Richards, (Mr. Fantastic), who can find their way through tiny gaps … in one case, here in Bishkek, the thief or thieves managed to open a fortichka - a small window set high in the “kitchen” and used for ventilation purposes, saw through the grill inside the double glazing and – despite our incredulity – crawl through it.  Although we knew it was big enough for a cat to climb through, we never dreamed that a person would be able to do so … but it appears that a lithesome human can.
• There almost certainly won’t be any witnesses: Even in the wee small hours of the morning, loud and noises may wake a neighbour, (which may give the police an indication of the time that incident took place), but the chances that they actually saw something useful is pretty slim.  Even the evidence of video surveillance cameras can be limited … were they working at the time … pointed in the right direction, and sensitive enough for the grainy images to give a clear enough image on which to proceed.In the article, the culprit is eventually caught thanks to video surveillance equipment … but that seems to been a case of a lucky happenchance.
• The police will “go through the motions”: That may seem a bit cynical but, in my experience, that’s basically what happens.  If there happens to be a chance of catching the thieves, “red handed” as it were, then they pull out all the stops and go to work with gusto … but, if the chances of “a result” are slight because, for example, of the time that’s elapsed since it occurred and the the time they received the call … then they’ll note the incident and any evidence that they have … but that’s more than likely going to be filed on the off chance of catching the perpetrator later on and then getting him to confess to a string of robberies.The first time it happened to me, for example, back in North London, I waited for several hours for the police to arrive.  The officer was very sympathetic but admitted that there was little chance of catching anyone, even though there had been a spate of such incidents in the neighbourhood.  He left me saying to leave things as they were so that the “crime scene” team could examine the place.  I waited for two days and then decided to clean up.  They never did turn up.   We did get a card dropped through the letterbox from the local “crime victims support group” … but that was basically it.

  The same sort of thing happened to me once, here in Bishkek, but on another occasion, when the call to the police went in minutes after the attempted robbery, the place was crawling with cops and dogs within minutes.  They searched the neighbourhood high and low … for several weeks had almost daily visits from officers with supplementary questions … and it was only with the passage of time when the “scent” was already going cold that we noticed a similar cooling off in the enthusiasm with which they pursued our case.

  That doesn’t mean to say however that they have forgotten about us … just that other incidents have occurred in the meantime which have taken precedence.  What Ia sure of, is that the incident remains on file and,who knows, sometime in the future someone might get apprehended for something totally different … and then own up to being the culprit in your particular case – thus clearing up one more unsolved crime statistic.

• You’ll be lucky to recover what you’ve lost … even if the perpetrator does get caught:  Although  speedy result, (capture, arrest and prosecution), might mean the thief being caught still in possession of your belongings … that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be returned to you anytime soon.  The chances are, however that the ill gotten gains will have long since disposed of – and it is only in the case of some specific peculiarity that it might eventually be located and identified.
• The insurance companies will be sympathetic … but … they have their bureaucracy too : … after all it is their business and paying out on claims is not only a business expense, (which they obviously want to minimize), they also have to protect themselves from potential fraud … so there will be lots of forms to fill in and, in spite of the old advertising slogan about “not making a drama out of a crisis”, it may take some time to get a claim settled – and you may be surprised at the compensation you are offered.
• You’ll be more careful in the future: It may be like “locking the stable door after the horse has bolted”, but you’ll remember all those little things that you never got round to doing … minor repairs that might have deterred or hindered the perpetrators or even prevented the robbery from happening at all … and set about putting them to rights.  After one robbery, for example, we installed gratings , motion sensor operated lights and video surveillance cameras … another event urged us to repair some sensors and upgrade the system.

 

 

 

Tags: Expat, Life_in_Kyrgyzstan