Tiraspol Letter John FlemingWhat's the loudest sound in Tiraspol, capital of Transdniestria, a country which does not officially exist?
Smugglers jabbering as they load contraband goods for re-export to Ukraine? The clink of Kalashnikovs in one of the outlaw republic's reputed 13 arms factories? The bomb explosion on a bus last July? The silent scream of people being trafficked? The grind of poverty and poor healthcare?
Is the loudest sound the denial that there is anything amiss? Or might it be the crowd's roar as a costly goal is scored in the soccer stadium which was built by the all-powerful Sherriff organisation?
Sometimes it's just as well if the loudest sound is the clickety-clack the pretty Tiraspol girls make as they totter along on three-inch stilettos.
Off the city's main street, there is a statue of Lenin, a glistening Russian 14th Army tank on a plinth and an eternal flame (presumably burning Gazprom gas) to the fallen heroes of Transdniestria's war for independence from Moldova, fought out along the sloping, cemented banks of the River Dniester in 1992.
From the bridge, one thin man dips his homemade rod towards the water below, watched by a thinner man on a rusty bicycle.
We sit outside a cafe, eating salty mushroom soup, tuning our ears to the click and the clack of the omnipresent high-heels.
For the most part, we avert our eyes from the legs. But what is that sound? A single click, a single clack.
It emanates from a hunched, headscarved, flat-shoed woman who moves past painfully, both hands gripping one worn walking stick. The other end of ageing in Transdniestria, this woman has walked through many decades in the post-war Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic and its successor outlaw state since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Somewhere between 700 and 1,500 Transdniestrians died wresting their Soviet-styled land from the language and politics of Moldova, the country to which it still officially belongs. As the USSR collapsed, pro-Moscow sentiment hardened in this Russian-tongued region between Ukraine and the Dniester river.
Reluctant to be part of a Romanian-speaking, Cyrillic-alphabet-banning and EU-aspiring Moldova, its people took over local administration buildings in June 1992. Violence abated only with the arrival of Russian army support. Former Tiraspol mayor and factory manager Igor Smirnov declared himself president. He has held on to that job ever since.
Last month, a referendum unacknowledged by any external body indicated 97.1 per cent of the voters want to maintain Transdniestria's independence and manoeuvre towards the Kremlin. Those voters included the hobbling woman and her estimated 700,000 limbo compatriots, each living on around €60 a month.
Transdniestria doesn't exist, but has its own roubles. You can buy a dull postcard, slap an uninspiring stamp on it and expedite it as philatelic proof to yourself back home that the country is in fact there.
It's off the map and beyond the pale. But even the mangy dogs on the dirt road that gaze across its multi-checkpoint border know more. Strongly denied, there are reports of a curious balance of trade. If everyone in Transdniestria ate chicken morning, noon and night, they could not stomach the quantities of white meat entering the country. Transdniestria's non-existence facilitates non-payment of customs duties and the swift re-exportation of "imports". And suspected smuggling of tobacco, alcohol, drugs, arms and even cars stolen from Europe's wealthy cities.
Even better, maybe there's a triumph of clever paperwork as poultry trucks perhaps never arrive in Transdniestria, transiting instead directly from the port of Odessa to turn up at market stalls in Ukraine.
Whoever benefits from this alleged scam, it's not the ordinary people. While lack of international recognition locates this land in its own limbo, it also leaves it in a state of generalised loss. If Transdniestria doesn't exist, how can you help it?
As we re-enter Moldova, a sallow face under a military hat checks the car for guns, contraband, maybe even kidnapped clickety-clack stiletto-wearers.
We fail to come up with the goods. He peers into the glove compartment and eyeballs each of us. It feels like a film, a fiction. The moment freezes in limbo at this very real border. A law enforcer at the edge of an outlaw land, he spits in Russian: "I don't want to let you go." And grins.