train. But that does not prevent border guards from boarding and conducting their own searches, which they do — our train was searched at least once at each border it crossed. Between the Tajik and Uzbek borders, we sat for two hours as an Uzbek guard slowly made his way, passenger by passenger, through the car. After a lengthy process, including the dramatic unveiling of the contents of the bag of the man sitting across from me — two bottles of peach soda and a well-wrapped piece of meat — the guard found something that he deemed contraband: a few pounds of the dark chewing tobacco that is popular in Tajikistan and that almost everyone chewed on the train, spitting green wads into trash bags that have beentaped, for this purpose, at every row of beds. From the window, I watched as a second guard emptied the bag, dumping enough tobacco to last one man perhaps for a year, or which may have been intended for friends waiting in Russia, onto the tracks. Two hours later, another set of Uzbek guards boarded for yet another passport check, even though none of the migrants would be allowed on or off the train — not even to stretch their legs — until we reached Kazakhstan, a full day later.

Early spring in Tajikistan means conversations about plans for life in Russia: whether it would be better to operate a fruit stand in Moscow, for instance, or in Samara, a Russian city near the border with Kazakhstan. There are