Freedom in citizenship

It had been a bad week.
So the email couldn’t have come at a better time.
The message in the subject line said it all: “Ozod’s a citizen.”
I have written about Ozod in this space before, maybe a couple of times.
Our paths first crossed in 2002 in his native Uzbekistan. I was working on a project for the International Center for Journalists, conducting training seminars.
Ozod was one of our students.
More than that, he was the star among our students.
Whenever you’re conducting training sessions overseas, you wonder if the message is getting through. With Ozod, there was no question. He was getting it loud and clear, and by his questions and participation he was helping to teach the others.
The seminar, which was conducted in Tashkent, the capital, wrapped up after about four days. And the next thing I knew, Ozod was inviting a couple of us to visit his paper in Samarkand.
We leapt at the chance, taking a somewhat iffy-looking old Soviet plane to get there.
Putting out a newspaper in the post-Soviet world requires solving a number of puzzles. You have to know how to build an audience. You have to figure out a distribution system in Alice in Wonderland conditions. You have to get control of your own printing and production. And you have to learn how to sell advertising to businesses who want to reach your audience.
Ozod had solved the first three and was working on the fourth.
His newspaper — an oddball mix of sensationalism, humor, and puzzles — had a circulation of about 150,000.
While most Uzbek papers relied upon government-owned printing presses, Ozod had gotten his hands on an old sheet-fed press. He bought damaged rolls of newsprint at bargain prices, knifed them and trimmed them down into sheets to run on that old press. Then, because he could only print a few pages at a time, he had dozens of sets of pieces of the newspaper that had to be assembled by hand.
It was a huge challenge. Ozod’s solution: He hired the handicapped and street beggars, taking advantage of a government incentive. They were allowed to work a limited number of hours per day and slept in a dormitory in the newspaper’s production department.
Two challenges lay ahead, figuring out how to sell advertising effectively and establishing the newspaper as a credible broker of news.
The seminar had apparently helped with the first. When we arrived at the offices in Samarkand, I was stunned to see my seminar handouts had been photocopied, highlighted and posted all over the office.
The second would be more of a challenge.
At dinner that night, Ozod told us he dreamed of establishing a new newspaper, one not based on reports of UFOs or photos of celebrity cleavage. Instead, he told me, he wanted to create an Uzbek version of the newspaper you now hold in your hands.
It was one of those moments that make the long flights and the weird hotel rooms worth it.
A few months later, Ozod was in Washington, D.C., receiving more training and getting ready to spend several weeks working at a typical American metropolitan paper. His dream of a new newspaper, he told me, was alive and well. He would tackle it when he returned.
He was true to his word.
But after the premiere issue of his new, American-style newspaper in Tashkent — with news separated from opinion, an emphasis on fact-based reporting, and true trans-parency — he received a phone call from someone in the government.
That will be enough of that, he was told.
Then government auditors descended upon his earlier paper, combing the records, harassing the management.
And then there was an attempt on his life.
Details were sketchy. But when I returned to Uzbekistan to do some follow up work in 2003, Ozod checked himself out of the hospital to visit me at my hotel. He was nervous and frightened. A young man in his 30s at the time, he had a wife and small children.
With the help of his employer and some mutual friends, he made his way to the U.S. where he was granted political asylum. His family joined him several months later.
He found work delivering pizzas in Philadelphia. Then I learned that he’d opened his own pizza place. And then this winter word came that he was preparing to open his own Uzbek-style restaurant in Philly. It’s called Samarkand.
Few people have lived the American dream as fully as this new citizen from Uzbekistan. He knows the cost of freedom. He knows the meaning of opportunity.
I suspect he has known those things all along. After all, when he was born, his father borrowed a Tajik word to give him his name.
Ozod, you see, means “free.”[[In-content Ad]]