commercially important persons

Some notes I took (lightly edited) while in the CIP lounge in Dushanbe airport waiting to leave for Dubai at 4 AM:

• Been watching this Russian TV show for 20 minutes and have no idea what's happening or even what kind of show it is. A game show? A talk show? The TV reflected in the window is showing MMA, which I don't enjoy much but which is at least easy to understand.
• "Partner" and "roaming" are direct loan words to Tajik, transliterated into Cyrillic on the wall-sized cell phone ad across the room from me.
• Daler booking us space in the CIP lounge: a kindness that kind of backfired because it's uncomfortable and they took our passports and there's no clear indication of where or when we check in. 
• The check-in lady, without asking, put one of Farah's bags with mine, and somehow also one of Farah's bags with Jasmin's. Farah had to go get her to redo it. Shockingly incompetent and rude, I'm not sure I've ever seen a more incompetent person working in an airport.

Coda: The check-in lady used code numbers on the tags that were not recognizable to the system in Dubai. I'm not even sure how that's possible, but it meant that it took more than an hour for them to find Farah's second bag and that I had to check at the counter and also the gate to make sure mine had made it through. It did, but with half my clothes somehow stained yellow. Like, urine yellow. They didn't stink but if they're permanently stained then Emirates and Fly Dubai are gonna get a strongly-worded email.