The passport cop chooses to move on. There are other tables to visit, other violations to discover.
        "That wasn't so bad," Hasan says apologetically, when the officer is out of earshot. "He was all right, that cop."
        Twenty minutes later, the passport cop finds what he was seeking, and compels a young man at a nearby table to leave with him.

...LATER ON THE SAME NIGHT, we are halted by a traffic cop wielding a machine gun. Beneath him, in an open pit, a ragtag team of men with pickaxes repairs the street by lamplight. No protective barrier stands between the work pit and the flow of traffic. It is impossible to know if the machine gun bearer is there to stop unwary motorists from driving into the pit, or to prevent a prison work crew from escaping.