Welcome to Makhachkala

Never mind the suicide bombers. They’re just trying to get your attention.

Makhachkala airport is a single runway and squat terminal. Arriving passengers walk off the plane and across the tarmac to a smaller building consisting of a large room where checked bags are deposited onto a circular conveyer belt by four burly men. A woman at the exit checks the baggage tags against the passengers’ receipts.

Before Rashid dashes off with his mysterious courier bag, he sets me up with Arslan, a cab driver he knows from working at the airport. Arslan is 47, though he looks older — gaunt and wiry. He drives a newer model Lada.

The front of the terminal building is covered with a new glass facade. A filling station we pass has a roof in the shape of a Sukhoi fighter jet with a Russian flag on it.

The highway into the city passes through a barren stretch of land that is quickly filling up with new houses. Everywhere two-story private brick homes are springing up. Arslan says they are for the middle class.

“So where does the money come from?” I ask, surprised at such signs of economic development.

Arslan laughs bitterly. “You haven’t seen the houses of the rich,” he says.

I ask Arslan about daily life in Makhachkala, since except for its soccer team, the city is known in the rest of Russia only for bombings and assassinations.

Government officials and policemen are the targets of attacks, though innocent bystanders also get caught in the crossfire.

Government officials and policemen are the targets of attacks, Arslan explains, though innocent bystanders also get caught in the crossfire. He misses the stability under Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, when nobody even would have thought of attacking another person.

Strashno — it’s terrible, Arslan says, especially if you have children. He’s resigned to his fate.

Fog shrouds the Caspian Sea to our right and the mountains to our left.

I check into the Hotel Petrovsk, a new, four-story building on Peter the Great Street. The Russian czar landed near present-day Makhachkala in 1722 during a campaign against the Persians.

Across the road from the hotel, there’s an artificial lake and a ramshackle amusement park. Stern but efficient Tatyana Fyodorvna, the elderly Russian lady who took my phone reservation, checks me in. My room is simple but clean. There’s even free Wi-Fi. I get on the phone and start making appointments.

I take dinner in the restaurant down the hall. A Greek salad followed by greasy chicken, greasy vegetables and greasy fries. A couple of beers to unwind.

“I’m against corruption,” says a sign on the door, with a fist clutching a bunch of dollar bills.