Welcome to Moscow

The mid-day ride from the airport is long, Moscow’s infa-mous traffic jams trapping us in a spiral crawl towards the center. The small taxi carries me and Carlos, Dan, our enthusiastic local guide, the portly driver, almost tooth-less, looking a decade older than his likely middle age and as much luggage as our flight from New York would allow. As we slide into the side streets of the city center leading to our new home, our car confronts a larger, sleeker black vehicle, approaching from the opposite direction. There is some confusion about who has the right of way in the nar-row street. The cars cannot pass each other, and yet the larger car continues to approach, rain trickling down its tinted windshield. Our driver stops with a shrug, refus-ing to budge. Three men exit the car approaching our taxi in ‘>’ formation. They have wide faces, laced with menace of a natural kind—a set of jaw and brow impossible to gain without a deep experience of violence. The leader, dressed all in black walks to our driver’s window. He is holding a large gun, a sawed-off shotgun, butt-end up, with the bar-rel partly covered in a black fabric sheath. A few quiet words are exchanged, and our car begins to back slowly out of the block, followed closely on foot by one of the gun-man’s colleagues who locks eyes with our driver, waving us back with languid flicks of his wrist.

In this moment I am very quiet. Dan is quiet and as Carlos moves to speak, Oh my God, did you see--, I silence him. There is nothing to say.

Krizis

Lunch in the mezzanine gallery of a bar long past its prime, free to rest in its memories of the wild nineteen nighties: Ruben’s hand elegantly holding a cigarette, his upturned chin pointing away from the table to exhale, as he speaks to us out of the side of his mouth. He tells the story of a scar on his leg, a mark of an attack only narrowly survived. At fifteen this architect’s son is beaten and stabbed on a walk with a friend through his own neighborhood by two men: one recently released from prison and the other, a veteran of the Chechen war. The men do not rob the boys, and only this small indentation in his leg remains. It is hard to see this scar, so I look at the smoke escaping his lips, as he smoothes his impeccable sweater.

Life in Moscow is fragile, I say in my imitation Russian ac-cent: I feel myself here very close to death. Ruben laughs and nods.

We Were There

Walking with Kiril through the backyards and side streets of the center city. We slip into cuts in the pavement, through arches and tunnels, and we are momentarily shrouded in dark-ness. All we can hear are our own footfalls. In the light again there are children in playgrounds, teenagers laughing and flirting, motionless cats occupying the pathways between patches of garden grass and dilapidated garages, a sympa-thetic traffic of people and animals rarely found in the big avenues and boulevards of this megalomaniacal city. Kiril shows me shortcuts and secret passageways. He is teaching me to walk through walls, a skill true Muscovites use to keep from being swallowed by the endless expanses of the main roads. In our simple movements we are opening another city, The city’s true face, Kiril says. The city’s true face is modest, full of crags and dimples, inexplicable scars. The city’s true face ages gracefully, is soft and yielding, in contrast with the hard shoulder presented by its impassive boulevards. At times we meet dead ends, arbitrary gates and fences, blocking free passage, asserting a dubious ownership of the yards and paths Kiril has walked his entire life.

The Architecture of My Soul

My friend Denis walks with a slouch in Old Arbat. After a night of dancing & drinking, the dawn has come and gone & our shadows stretch out before us in the quiet street. He points out the site of the hospital where he was born, now a restaurant, the side street filled with graffiti honor-ing Viktor Tsoi, a perestroika rock legend who died in the early 1990s. We pass a small square where 5 or 6 people have set up camp at the base of a monument. Ah, our Occupy Mos-cow, Denis says with a chuckle. They are protesting Putin. After a brief stop for ice cream & coffee at the 24hour McDonald’s, we enter the wide boulevard called the Golden Ring. Denis points up the ring to the curve in the road. I shade my eyes from the sun. He remembers the wild proces-sion, which filled the boulevard in 1991. Denis was 16 or 17 years old, flinging rocks at the tanks trying to retake the country’s democracy. It is the last time he can recall this street filled with people on foot, moving together. At his home he shows me pictures of a young child sitting on a sandy beach, squinting up into the camera. Angola, he says. I grew up in Angola, Congo, Sao Tome & Principe. He tells stories of Soviet soldiers and African revolutionaries in former Portuguese colonies, of speaking unwritten languages he has since forgotten. I urge him to write his stories. You have to make something. Denis looks confused and a bit irri-tated. But I am telling you, and you understand me and that is enough. This is the architecture of my soul.

An Ordinary Fear

The line stretches from the gates of the Pushkin Museum down Prechistenka Street through small mountain ranges of snow, the peaks darkened with garbage and car exhaust. It is one hour before the museum opens and Taras and I are wait-ing to see a special exhibit of Caravaggio’s paintings. We are flanked by elderly women, babushkas whose wrapped heads & stoic faces display an intimate knowledge of unfulfilled expectation. I shudder with the icy wind and Taras asks one of the women to hold our place in line. We cross the road to wait out the hour in a cafe. Wild curls fly around Taras’ face when he takes off his cap. To meet me this morning, he traveled for an hour and a half from his home in a small settlement on the edge of a forest at the northern border of Moscow. The settlement is built around a reservoir that pipes fresh water through the forest into the city center. He lives with his mother, father & sister in the cottage-style home where he was raised and his mother grew up. The family has lived in this home since the end of World War 11.

Cupping his tea in his hands, Taras tells me about a re-cent meeting of the local homeowner’s association. Rumors are circulating that the municipality plans to appropriate the settlement’s land to construct new urban developments in the dreaded microrayon style. Taras is discouraged about the possibility of preventing the destruction of his house. People want to save their homes but government never thinks about us, just their aims. We need to be more organized, more concentrated on our own aim. This is very difficult for Russian people. We feel barriers to being together in soci-ety. When you speak with somebody, you feel he understands you and you, him. But when there is a group more than 3, no one agrees. Taras stops here, taps the table. Let me show you, he says, taking my pen and notebook. He draws a map of his small settlement, the railroad tracks leading from the center of the city form a border between the town and the forest. On the other side of the settlement is the big high-way that circles the city and forms the border between Mos-cow and the surrounding region. To the north of the town, Taras draws a fence, indicating the restricted zone of the reservoir and water treatment plant that is the settlement’s main employer & raison d’etre. Fenced on three sides, the settlement faces the looming towers of expanding Moscow. Of course the city will eat our homes, he says. There is no-where else to go.

Stas’ Apartment

Moscow is a tentacular city. Spreading out from the Kremlin in rings which have gobbled up the surrounding countryside for hundred of years, the city reaches in all directions to form a vaguely circular mass. On paper, it resembles a large potato, its surface complete with small dents and dubious protrusions. One such pocket in the city’s Northeast dis-trict is home to my friend Stas. To get to Stas I take a zigzagging route from the center of the city. I travel by metro, changing twice, then by taxi or electrichka (subur-ban train) or mashrutka (semi-legal minibus). The trip takes between 1.5 and 2 hours each way. Luckily for Stas, he works as a physical education teacher in the local school and, un-like many who live in this district, is spared from making the daily commute to the center.

Stas lives in a microrayon. Microrayons are giant semi-public housing projects that weave through Moscow, in which most of the city’s residents live. The clusters are remnants of the Soviet era, cheaply built, each a micro-city all its own, made to house 10-16,000 people at once. The buildings are large and, to outsiders, seem impersonal and impenetra-ble. Common areas appear barely used, quiet even on temper-ate afternoons. The hallways tend to be poorly maintained, often smelling of garbage or urine. Despite impersonal and neglected surroundings, the apartments’ interiors are often well-appointed, lovingly decorated by residents to reflect the individuality of each family. Stas lives with his wife Natasha and his childhood friend, Bush. Bush is a painter and has decorated his bedroom, which also serves as the liv-ing room and Stas’ music studio, in a style reminiscent of both an Indian temple and the chillout tent at a 1990s out-door rave. The space is psychedelic and warm, a riot of deep colors, punctuated by reflecting surfaces created by gluing compact discs to the walls and ceilings, and coins to the cabinets. The room’s effect, of perpetual sunrise after a night of partying in Goa, denies the uniformity of the mas-sive beige towers lining the grey skies of the microrayon, all that is visible through the open windows.

The Lighthouse

Cindy is a New Yorker. Tenacious and fearless, she travels the new republics of the former Soviet Union searching for traces of the empire that is no more. She is here in Moscow to cover this year’s election and the unprecedented “meet-ings” that surround it. Never before in the era of Vladimir Putin have these many citizens entered the streets to demand change in their government. We are having wine at Mayak. Decorated like a cross between a Parisian cafe and a 19th century aristocrat’s home library, this is a popular desti-nation for expats and Russian intelligentsia alike. Cindy rubs the place on her arm that is bruised from yesterday’s encounter with the Moscow police force near the Kremlin. I was with the other members of the press in a cordoned-off area in front of the fountain. All of a sudden I felt ev-eryone moving back. I had my camera out in front of me and behind me was a five or six foot drop into the bottom of the fountain. I tried to get out of there, but the police had us surrounded on all sides. They were hitting us, and I bent over to protect my camera. Next thing you know I’m on the ground. There’s a big boot on my leg, crushing it, crush-ing my shin, my knee. I start to beg, and speak loudly in English. Please let me go, please let me go. They’re throw-ing the others into the back of the police van. I think they figured me for an American, which is not always the case here. Cindy smiles, and takes a sip of her wine before con-tinuing. Usually they think I’m a migrant, someone from Si-beria maybe.

Fucking Nigger

Walking at sunset along the bustling avenue, I hear it: FUCKING NIGGER!

FUCKING NIGGER sails up above the sinewy beats pumping into my ears through my headphones. I take a few steps forward, stop and turn around. A young couple passes me head-on and continues walking. The young man wears sweatpants and train-ers, his companion in tight jeans and colorful windbreaker, her blond hair pulled into a tight ponytail. I take my head-phones off.

I’m sorry did you say something to me?

Yes, she said, You are a fucking nigger. She is smiling and facing me. Her friend chuckles, resting his arm on her shoulder. Why would you say that, I ask, mir-roring her smile. Now I am more curious than shocked. Be-cause: You. Are. A. Fuck-ing. Nigger.

The clarity of her enunciation, the unusual confidence of her Russian-accented English, the irony of these dreaded American words floating down a Russian street, headed right for me, set me laughing. This is somehow more absurd than the usual sidewalk taunts, monkey noises, jungle sounds as I pass in the street. Catching my breath, through giggles comes my retort:

Well, then, that settles it. You. Are. A. Fuck-ing. Bitch.

I turn and, with a wave, continue on down the street. The young man restrains her. Over my shoulder I glimpse her face as she lunges.

The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said “This is mine,” and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau Discourse on Inequality, 1754

Keyword #0: COMMUNITY

This word has no easy and accurate translation in colloqui-al Russian. In English, community has several meanings. At the root of these interpretations are shared places & in-terests, history & heritage, fellowship and amity. The com-munity is that civic body to which all potentially belong. It is a common quality or state-—life lived in association with others-—of being tied to a group of people, for bet-ter or worse. These ties give one the right to use the land or waters of another. With the community come “the commons,” a sense of freedom attached to responsibility, each one for the other. The community is both an ideal and a daily prac-tice.

In successful movements to change cities by the residents, there is always the presence of a strong sense of community: people recognize that they are connected, sharing spaces and histories and come together on that basis, not just in re-sponse to threat from outside. In other words, people know their neighbors and engage in ordinary daily actions, rec-ognizing that they are together, attached to each other in this particular time and place.