Sometime in the middle of our first term, my wife and I went on a much-needed lunch date. Our neighborhood was built on a long hill, at the tallest end of which was a nice hotel. We decided that it would be nice to check out the hotel restaurant and see if it would be the kind of place both close enough and pleasant enough to become a regular date spot.
Like many of the nice hotels in Poet City, the restaurant was on one of the highest floors so that guests and patrons could enjoy the views of the surrounding mountains. We took the elevator up and entered the bright dining space. As we sat down, things were looking hopeful for a refreshing lunch date together.
At the time, we had a couple of energetic toddlers and we were thick in the midst of full-time language learning. Both my wife and I were laboring hard to build evangelistic relationships with locals and to also invest in the few scattered local believers that were around. I was working as an English teacher and taking seminary classes online. Our team was often engaged in conflict related to personality clashes as well as the sort of arguments a team easily falls into when the ministry is mostly hypothetical and there’s little actual church planting work yet to ground the discussions in reality. Electricity and water supply were also quite bad.
All of this meant I was really hoping this rare chance to go on a date would be a life-giving time for my wife. I was, by this point, waking up to the reality that it is exponentially more difficult to be a female missionary in Central Asia than to be a male missionary like me. I could see my wife slowly wilting under all the pressure.
Now, there are many things I appreciate about honor-shame, hierarchical cultures like that of our locals. But of course, there are also downsides. One of these downsides is an unfortunate bent toward the stuffy and pretentious in certain kinds of establishments. Picture old world class snobbery and you’ll get a sense of what I mean here. Often, it’s not even the VIPs themselves who act this way, but those who work for them. If you don’t send the right signals through your car or clothing or reputation or otherwise, it’s not uncommon to have receptionists, waiters, or others in contexts like this treating you with a sort of high-nosed stiffery that feels demeaning no matter what your cultural background. But it’s even more jarring in our context because it’s so different from the many daily honorable interactions with Central Asian neighbors or shop owner or even gas canister men. When the stranger on the street giving you directions refers to you as “Dearest older brother” and invites you on the spot to join his family for a meal, it makes you wonder what kind of radical code-switch has taken place such that the Central Asian staff in certain establishments are instead channeling Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
Sometimes we experience this sort of treatment because my wife and I have dark enough hair and complexion that we can get mistaken for locals. We know that if we drop the fact that we’re actually Americans we would be quickly promoted to the VIP class treatment and everyone would scramble to be on their most honorable behavior. But occasionally it can be useful to hold that info close to our chest for a while, even if it’s just to see how our local friends get treated in these sorts of environments – or to simply quietly protest the silly partiality on display.
We must have looked like locals that day because when we came in the restaurant and sat down, we received no special attention. In fact, we received almost no attention at all. Even though the restaurant was largely empty, we sat for quite some time at our table, ignored by the wait staff. Eventually, we figured it must be up to us to initiate the service. We tried to catch the eye of the several staff stiffly standing or bustling around, but to no avail. But we did notice a lunch buffet table over on the far side of the room. Maybe we had misunderstood the lunch system here and it was a self-serve buffet?
My wife got up to go and inspect the table. And this, finally, got one of the waiters moving. He scurried across the room, not to assist my wife, but to tsk her.
“T-t-t-t-t,” he tongue clicked at her, wagging his finger and furrowing his brow. “Ees not forr you!“
My wife stopped in her tracks, eyebrows raised at this unexpected scolding.
“Okay,” she responded, “Well, do you have a menu then?”
The waiter exhaled loudly, seeming to be very inconvenienced by this burdensome request. And motioned for her to have a seat again.
She sat back down and we made faces at each other, sharing in the surprise and the absurdity of it all. I was reminded of my wife’s opinion that everyone who goes into ministry should first spend some time in food service, not only to learn to patiently bear with others who are treating you poorly, but also to reveal if you are able to humbly and consistently treat others well, even in a stressful environment. Let us hope that our waiter had no pretensions of someday entering the pastorate.
When my wife pointed out something on the menu that looked promising, I siezed my opportunity to lean across the table with great self-import, and whisper,
“T-t-t, Ees not forr you!“
She gave me an unamused look over her menu, but then cracked a smile. By the time we had left that restaurant we had tsked and scolded each other several times in the style of our friendly waiter, and a new inside quote was thereby added to our family’s collection. To this day, you might catch us using it in situations where we need to playfully shoot something down or to make light of some request that’s been denied by others.
We never went back to that restaurant. It was, after all, the kind of place that seemed like they really didn’t want customers. For my part, I also remembered that in a season when my wife was in need of kindness and rest, she had been treated somewhat disrespectfully there. That doesn’t make a husband want to take his wife back there for a date.
It was almost a decade later when I learned that that same hotel and restaurant, of all places, had been ground zero for an all-night firefight, and blown to smithereens. See, Poet City is largely controlled by one political party that is itself controlled by one ruling family – sort of a tribe/mafia/militia/one-party fusion, as it were. The patriarch of this family died some years ago, which means his various sons and nephews have been jockeying for power ever since, and the whole patronage network of alliances has been re-shuffling. The nephew the patriarch had put in charge of the elite counter-terrorism forces owned the hotel where we had gone on our date. But a few years ago, he’d had a falling out with one of the patriarch’s sons, and had been confined to house arrest in his mansion on top of the hill, right next to the hotel.
For several years, things stayed calm. The nephew and his loyal armed forces stayed confined to the top of the hill, while his cousin gradually consolidated power around himself. Then, suddenly, the cousin launched an all out assault late one night, with tanks and RPGs and small arms fire pounding the hotel where the nephew’s forces were mounting a desperate defense.
Friends of ours living nearby told us they were awakened in the middle of the night by what sounded like an all-out war. Not surprisingly, the son’s forces shot that hotel to pieces, and eventually the nephew and his soldiers surrendered.
News of this reached us in Caravan City the next day. I was talking about it with a teammate when my wife overheard us.
“Wait, isn’t that the hotel in our old neighborhood?”
“Yep, the one just a short walk from where we lived. It’s where went for that lunch date. You remember, Ees not forr you!“
My wife’s jaw dropped. “They blew up the Ees not forr you place?”
“They sure did. Apparently the whole building is shot to pieces with bullet holes and craters from tank shells.”
We were quiet for a moment as we took it all in. Our corner of Central Asia can seem so safe and stable. Then, all of the sudden, somebody’s blowing up their cousin’s hotel right in the middle of a well-to-do residential neighborhood.
“You know,” I said to our teammate. “I believe the justice of God is a perfect, detailed, and mysterious thing. Years ago, we went on a date to that hotel. And they were quite rude to my wife in a season where she was working so hard to be faithful amidst all kinds of hardships… I would not put it beyond God to factor even those small slights against his daughter into what happened to that hotel. ‘You’re going to treat my daughter that way? Tsk at her like that??? Well, I’ve taken note of that, and it will be accounted for.'”
My teammate and my wife looked at me somewhat incredulously.
“What?” I said, “Until we get to eternity, we simply don’t know. But I wouldn’t be surprised if at least a couple of those bullets or tank shells were direct recompense for their conduct to her that day. You guys remember what happened to the Afghan monarchy because they destroyed that church building, right?”
They still didn’t look convinced.
Of course, there’s no way of knowing on this side of eternity. And often God’s justice is postponed until a much later date. But I am convinced that, every once in a while, if you are unusually rude to one of God’s beloved daughters, one of his ambassadors, he just may allow your hotel and restaurant to get blown to smithereens.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
One of the international churches in our region is looking for an associate pastor and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 school year. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Photo from Unsplash
