Liker den totalt "understated" sansen for humor som ambassadør Burns har - tror det å bli skutt er gyldig grunn til fravær:
There was also entertainment, beginning even that day, with
the big-name performers appearing both at the wedding hall
and at Gadzhis summer house.
Gadzhis main act, a Syrian-born singer named Avraam Russo, could not make it
because he was shot a few days before the wedding, but there was a gypsy troupe from St. Petersburg, a couple of Azeri
pop stars, and from Moscow, Benya the Accordion King with his
family of singers. A host of local bands, singing in Avar
and Dargin, rounded out the entertainment, which was constant
and extremely amplified.
To the uninitiated Westerner, the music sounds like an
undifferentiated wall of sound.
The Dagestani milieu appears to be one in which the highly educated and the gun-toting can mix easily -- often in the same person.
Every so often someone
would shower the dancers with money -- there were some
thousand ruble notes but the currency of choice was the U.S.
hundred dollar bill. The floor was covered with them.
An Avar FSB colonel
sitting next to us, dead drunk, was highly insulted that we
would not allow him to add cognac to our wine. Its
practically the same thing, he insisted, until a Russian FSB
general sitting opposite told him to drop it. We were
inclined to cut the Colonel some slack, though: he is head
of the unit to combat terrorism in Dagestan, and Gadzhi told
us that extremists have sooner or later assassinated everyone
who has joined that unit.
We were more worried when an
Afghan war buddy of the Colonels, Rector of the Dagestan
University Law School and too drunk to sit, let alone stand,
pulled out his automatic and asked if we needed any
protection. At this point Gadzhi and his people came over,
propped the rector between their shoulders, and let us get
out of range.
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Hvem trenger fiksjon?
