Before arriving back to our apartment, I would have ranked today as one of the coolest days we’ve had in Bishkek by far.
…but then we realized the front door was unlocked. We were burglarized.
The silver lining to this situation? They left Farrell’s iMac, it must have been too big (everything they took fit into Farrell’s backpack…which they took). As much as it hurts to have lost the other stuff, I get a shot a sinking dread throughout my body to think of coming home and not seeing the iMac on the desk. They took my old laptop (sorry Dad), but I had my new, primary laptop with me and they didn’t take the external hard drive that had all of the most important files and photos on it. And they didn’t take the laptop’s charger; I’m guessing that if they turned it on then it’s already out of power by now.
So what did they take? Most importantly, my Canon Rebel, my big girl camera. I don’t think it had any particularly meaningful pictures on it (a lot of Mamadjan) and I still have all of my accessories (lenses, spare batteries, memory cards, filters, chargers, etc), but it’s a serious inconvenience to replace it in Kyrgyzstan. It would likely involve paying way too much for a used body (possibly even the exact one that was taken?) and even more for a lens.
I recognize that things could always be worse. The police were very thorough, even taking fingerprints. Our landlord seems pretty positive that the old tenant is somehow responsible, but I have little hope that we’ll get these possessions back.
It’s frustrating. It’s so frustrating on top of everything else that has already happened. Now, the awesome, pre-burglarized part of the day just seems so incredibly fucked up in context with the rest of the day. An extreme high and an extreme low.
The title for this post comes from a Kyrgyz proverb that someone told us tonight as the police were packing up their things (I think he was an assistant of some sort). He tried to lighten the situation and convince us that Kyrgyz people believe that when something bad like this happens to someone, “all evil goes with it.” There can be no profit without loss.
Bring on the profit.
(I’ll share a bit about pre-burglarized part of the day tomorrow. It was sooo awesome and it would be a huge injustice to try and describe it now when I’m feeling so bummed. Plus, I’ve got fingerprint dust to clean up.)