No one waiting, no one watching. I changed into my new clothes in the first-floor toilet, binned the old ones, and used the concealer to cover my bruising as much as possible. The gift shop contained an odd assortment of memorabilia: Dostoevsky’s works in multiple languages, postcards of the building itself, then general Kazakh souvenirs – boxes of chocolates, etched glass ornaments all bearing the yellow and blue of the Kazakh flag. You could buy pictures of Nazarbayev, of Astana’s skyline, and flags themselves, cheap nylon on plastic poles.

‘How many flags do you have in stock?’ I asked. I had to repeat the question a couple of times. The woman on duty showed me the wholesale box. I checked the supplier.

‘Do you have more?’

‘One more box.’

‘Okay, thank you. The exhibition was fascinating.’

I cut south again, in the direction of chanting. There were coaches parked on back streets, blocking them. The passengers were men, all between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five or so, with military-style haircuts. Content to hold back for now. I walked past, listening to the accents, checking the shoes. Accents were Russian, footwear mostly combat boots. I kept moving. A few minutes further on, I found a crowd of thirty or forty locals across the road from the main police station, young and old, many of the elderly in conservative dress, white headscarves, fur hats. It was ethnically mixed. Flames licked from a brazier. Twenty police stood cold, looking reluctant, across the street from them. It was the old women who led the chanting, fists in the air. Placards had photographs of young men and women pasted on.

I walked on past the university. A thin crowd of students braved the cold in front of the gates handing out flyers. I took one, checked the names. The image from my piece accusing Zhaparov’s anti-terrorist forces.

A plump, bespectacled student appeared to be in charge, wearing a thick tweed jacket as if dressed for premature responsibility.

‘I am an English journalist,’ I said. ‘John Sands. I work with Reporters for Human Rights.’ I waved the flyer. ‘I’ve worked with Kaisha Atakhanova and Timur Bekmambetov. What happened?’

‘They’re in Dolinka prison.’

‘Both of them?’ I said.

‘Two days ago.’

‘For Christ’s sake.’

I tried to read the crowd. The anti-Russian signs outnumbered pro-democracy ones. Fuck Putin. Hands off Kazakhstan. On one placard, I glimpsed a portrait of Raiymbek Batyr, my Kazakh warrior, on horseback. The faces were all Kazakh.

‘What are people saying in England?’ he asked.

‘They’re concerned, but not as engaged as they should be. We need to get images to them, stories. Who fired? Do you know?’

‘We don’t know anything for sure.’

‘What’s your plan?’

‘We are arranging more protests. We will resist the curfew. There is no going back now.’

‘How are you communicating?

He showed me some of their software and techniques.