The big, underpopulated streets meant it was a city without cover, which was both a good and bad thing. It made you conspicuous, but also anyone trying to follow you. Anyone crazy enough to be out was wrapped up to the point of anonymity anyway. Locals called it the buran, the storm wind that came west from Xinjiang over bare planet, gathering ferocity. Nature had been reduced to occasional thin stalks demarcating car parks. Vehicles were new and high-end for the most part, with little variation: Toyotas, Subarus, Hyundais, usually white or grey. They emerged from underground car parks, driving on compacted snow with the tick-tick noise of studded tyres. They descended again beneath office blocks and shopping malls without anyone setting foot outside.

I got to sightsee alone. In the park that ran alongside the river there was a display of ice sculptures, miniature wonders of the world, the Taj Mahal, the Acropolis, lit by coloured lights. All the older buildings across the water had been painted in pinks and blues and reclad. I walked three more blocks, which was as long as the exposed skin of my face could take, then hailed a gipsy cab. I got into the second car that stopped – I never took the first, as a rule, and I also tended to avoid ones that looked new, with central locking and powerfully built men at the wheel. This was a battered Daewoo, driver maybe twenty years old. I mentioned a dive bar on a street near, but not too near, the car hire. Pronounced it badly so he asked me to repeat before nodding, unimpressed.

Just another entitled foreigner, stupid enough to be outside in these conditions. Easy money. He asked for five hundred tenge, which was comfortingly extortionate, and I got in. The car skidded onto Cosmonauts Street, wheels flailing on black ice, onto the main avenue heading away from the river into the governmental district. The windscreen wipers swept uselessly. A lone figure lost in snow dived out of the way as my driver turned.

A black Subaru Impreza cruised behind us for four or five blocks. I watched until it U-turned at a broad, empty intersection and disappeared back into the storm. We passed some frozen water fountains and began making better progress.

I thought of the graffiti I had seen. Water freedom with blood. The line was from a poem, but I couldn’t think which. When we were close enough I told the driver to stop, got out and walked. Someone barrelled past, mummified in a parka, scarf over their face. I waited for them to disappear then crossed the road, which gave me a chance to take a good, inconspicuous look in both directions. I was alone.