Sharaf Bukhari

A member of the well connected Samarkand clan, Sharaf has a politically sound pedigree. His parents were active Party members under the Soviet Union and although supporters of Sharof Rashidov in his day, they allied with Karimov when he moved to seize power within the party and later push for independence. Sharaf himself has little interest or talent for politics but his lineage does make him politically reliable which the Ministry of the Interior find helpful when it comes to keeping tabs on foreigners. His job is technically a civilian one but the distinction is blurry and he has an army rank and uniform for if its required.

His day-to-day job usually involves driving around with foreign officials and managing their itinerary to ensure they don't cause any political problems or run into any trouble (a secondary concern). Although he resents having to be forceful, he's not above waving his rifle at any problems that he encounters even if it's been years since he fired it outside of a wedding or holiday celebration.

The job takes him all over Uzbekistan and he has contacts in many parts of the country, as the job has him dealing with foreigners a lot, there is also plenty of opportunity for discrete commercial enterprises and these make his job easier in some places and profitable most places.

It is to be expected that he files reports on the activities of the foreigners he escorts and if he isn't obsessed with reporting every little thing they say to a taxi-driver or barman, he could still make life very difficult for someone that caused him trouble.

Like most Uzbekis, Sharaf is a moderate Muslim in the Soviet tradition of liberal, non-doctrine Islam. He can read a little Arabic but can't speak it very well. He speaks or can get by in most of the languages found in the region though usually Russian is enough. His English is quite good, learnt from Europeans in Turkey in his youth.

Sharaf is fairly nondescript in appearance, about thirty, he usually wears either a plain civil-service suit or an army uniform. He has a slightly weathered appearance that shows he gets out of the office a lot and his neatly trimmed black hair doesn't have any grey in it. Almost always relaxed, he's not above taking a nap while his charges are doing their business and always takes the time to enjoy the travelling his job requires. He can often be found in a near-by coffee shop when it comes time to leave or smoking and gossiping with the local police.

A widower, he hasn't remarried mostly because it's too much trouble. He maintains a quite comfortable apartment and lives a relatively wealthy lifestyle that one wouldn't imagine was compatible with a civil service salary.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License