I was waiting for a friend in one of my favourite neighbourhood bars, the 'Yacht Club', the other day when a young local guy suddenly started to engage me in English conversation.
This was somewhat unexpected, since English is not widely spoken around here - at least, not to a very high level. This guy was near native-speaker standard. You don't encounter that very often. Certainly not in a policeman - which is what he introduced himself as. In fact, he claimed to be a middle-ranking cop in the 'Foreigner Supervision' department, and kept on 'joking', "It's my job to keep an eye on you."
Given my recent hassles in securing Internet access and in sending & receiving e-mail (to say nothing of the strange clicking on the phone line), I was not inclined to find such remarks amusing.
It's hard to believe that anyone in the security services in any country in the world - no matter how flawed their intelligence assessments or how extreme their control-freakery - would judge that I was a sufficiently interesting potential threat to merit individual surveillance. But then, this is an utterly f***ing crazy country! If it could happen anywhere, it could happen here.....
In fact, I'm not really sure I believe that he was a cop. I suspect it might have been just a conversational ploy or a practical joke. He certainly wasn't your typical cop profile: well-groomed, well-educated, well-dressed, impeccable English..... no, he's not going to fit in with the indolent, semi-literate bottom-scratchers down at the station house at all.
He was, however, an unashamed sleazebag. When my drinking buddy The Choirboy showed up, with his new local girlfriend, the "cop" made a point of getting all of our e-mail addresses and mobile numbers, and he promised to drop us a line soon so that we could stay in friendly contact. The only one he actually called was The Choirboy's girlfriend..... to ask her out on a date.
A cop??? Well, maybe. The jury is still out on that one. I'm sort of hoping I don't run into him again....
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