We are led to a bombed-out shell of a house which serves as an office. We sit on rough wooden benches, trying to avoid droppings from pigeons resting on the few remaining portions of the roof. The room fills with people, none uniformed, all demanding our papers. Who knows who's in charge, who is in service and who is just part of the audience. We start our explanation.
More people arrive.
We start it again. The crowd parts as he lurches forward, loudly demanding our papers. He appears seriously stoned, wildly gesticulating and raving at us, mostly incoherently. We politely ignore him, turning instead to a grey-haired man with the only approachable face in the room but our space cadet is very insistent. I try again to explain in my nauseating version of Portuguese.