Placing a Call to the Past: Communist Waiting Creeps into Democracy's Lines

Inside an airless, rundown building, after dutifully going to Window 8, whereupon I was instructed to go to Door No. 5, I stood in a long, wilted line of people, all of whom had gone to Window 8 and received their instructions to proceed to Door No. 5 before I did.

All of us were in the former Soviet Republic of Moldova--a hiccup of a country sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania--and were there to register with the police, compulsory for all visitors. Westerners grew restless and impatient, wishing they had brought a book or had their iPod, while East Europeans stood numbly, lobotomized by daily waiting routines that they inherited from their grandparents' generation under the Soviets.

After a couple of hours, a short game of charades with two officers helped me determine that I needed to go to another police station around the block, where I stood for 2 1/2 hours in an empty hallway, keeping madness at bay by counting ceiling tiles and timing how long it took my gum to lose its flavor (about five minutes).

After Window 8, Door No. 5 and the police station around the block, I was transported to a courthouse, where I walked a narrow hall of doors until I arrived at the double doors at the end of the corridor, which, like the others, was locked. I sat on a hard, backless bench for more than three hours, after which time I was instructed to come back the next day because the judge who granted approval for visits in Moldova was going home.

No one else could help me. It was this specific judge who processed this paperwork and not any other judge.

I returned early the next morning and watched the judge's assistant come out of the double doors (behind which sat the secretive judge), lock the door, walk down the hallway, unlock a door, enter, exit, lock the door, walk back down the hallway, unlock the double doors again, enter and lock them behind her. This procedure happened five times.

Companion in limbo