Emigré Diaries

NATALYA

We made the decision to emigrate a few hours before we flew out. We packed up in a hurry, and I, of course, didn’t realize what happens when you pack up a family in such a rush. One minute I was grabbing a portrait of my grandfather (who emigrated after the [1917] revolution as part of the first wave) and next I was sticking an extra coat for our younger daughter into a suitcase. We didn’t have any large suitcases, since our eldest daughter, who had emigrated a half-year before the war, had taken them all with her to Israel. We just had six carry-on suitcases. Everything in them was wet from my tears. At the last minute, I decided to take a ceramic fish off the wall that I had bought a long time ago at a fundraiser for the Center for Therapeutic Pedagogy, an institution personally and professionally close to my heart. I stuffed the fish deep inside the suitcase so it wouldn’t break in transit.

After we arrived in Yerevan, utterly disoriented and with no idea what the future would hold, I looked at my youngest daughter, who had just turned ten, briskly and earnestly arranging little rooms for her toy mice and started to take analogous action. Of course, while yanking things out of the suitcases, I completely forgot about the fish. It fell on the floor and its fins broke right off. I didn’t have any strength left to get upset. My daughter came running in when she heard the noise. She looked at what had happened and pronounced some very wise words: “You know, Mom, don’t get upset and don’t throw it out. Let’s hang it on the wall as it is, half broken. Now it looks a lot like our new life.”

So, for the third year now, in every new rental apartment (we’re in our fifth) and every new country (we’re up to three), the first thing I do is hang this beautiful but slightly damaged fish where we’ll see it most often: above the kitchen table. Where it was in our past life.

Because now it’s a lot like us.

LENA

February 24 was a shock for us. Russia was bombing Ukraine. That was beyond the limits of my imagination. February 24 was the first time I ever cried over politics. The following days passed in a fog. Moscow was living its life as if nothing had changed, other than that it became hard to get hard currency out of ATMs.

The school break ended. On February 28 the children went back to school, and I got ready for work. On the way, I stopped by an ATM and tried to take out at least some money. Then I continued on to work, walking over the Moscow River. That was when my husband called me and said: “You know, we have an opportunity to travel to Istanbul on business. Let’s go.”

We started looking for tickets, and they were disappearing and soaring in price before our eyes. Those must have been the most expensive plane tickets we’ve ever bought. Then I called my boss and said that we were leaving and might not be back and that for now I was ready to work remotely. I wrote an application for vacation time and a resignation letter with the date left blank. I really loved that job. It was painful to write that letter. Then I went home.

The children arrived. We told them: “Children, tomorrow we’re leaving. For Istanbul, for a month. But it’s possible that we’ll never return to Moscow. Pack for a month, but also maybe forever.” I called their schools and explained the situation and submitted an application for remote schooling. And we went to get our suitcases. We just had two suitcases – one big, one small. We bought another two. We had to pack up our lives in four suitcases. Each of us packed something personal or strange. Our son chose a stuffed crocodile, and our daughter chose a penknife, a gift from her grandfather who died a year earlier. My husband took a hair-cutting device. I took a bag a girlfriend had given me the day before. I have to say that, beside mine, all these things were subsequently put to good use. Mine, not once.

The next day, the children went to school and we went to a notary to set up powers of attorney. That evening we closed the door to our apartment for the last time. We haven’t been back to Moscow since.

I’ve almost learned not to miss it, except for sometimes, when I see photographs of our neighborhood on Facebook (I still can’t find the strength to look at our neighborhood group – it’s too heart-wrenching). Facebook also shows me memories, and they include tons of photographs of Moscow. We lived on the twelfth floor. I liked to drink coffee in the morning, look out the window, and just savor that view. I would often take pictures and post them on Facebook – our street in springtime, summer, golden autumn, under snow, in the morning, in the evening. But now we have a new life and the view out our window is completely different.

MASHA

The very first month we were living in Berlin, my children wound up in police custody. My older one was 9 and the middle one was 7. And since our circumstances had radically changed and there were no more grandmothers or babysitters, our children had to learn to use public transportation very quickly, because they had to go to and from school on their own. One day they were traveling home on their usual route and suddenly my older son called me and said: “Mama, we have a big problem. A train worker just came up to us and is saying something in German. I don’t know what. She’s very stern. I’m scared! Mama, save us!”

I asked that he hand the telephone to that woman. The woman spoke only German. I don’t speak German and couldn’t understand what was going on. Fortunately, there was another passenger there at the time who understood Russian. She got involved. From talking to her I learned that unaccompanied children under 14 aren’t allowed on that specific type of train, since it wasn’t just part of the Berlin municipal system but a regional train. The fact that it has stops in Berlin doesn’t mean unaccompanied children under 14 can use it. I also learned from her that they were not going to let my children get off at the station they needed to get off at. They had to travel to the end of the line in the town of Magdeburg (170 kilometers from Berlin). I was supposed to go pick them up at the police station there. I was in the middle of teaching a class. I frantically tried to somehow persuade her to let them get off the train. I was told: “I’m sorry, but this is completely impossible. They can’t get off the train on their own.”

I said: “But they boarded it alone! They know the way home, they’ll be fine. Why should I have to go to Magdeburg?”

Finally, the conductor relented: “Fine, I won’t let them off at the station they need, but they can go to Berlin’s main terminal, which has a police station. We’ll call a squad and they’ll come take the children off the train. And you can pick them up there at the police station.”

And that’s what happened. At the main terminal, the train stopped not for the scheduled one minute but for ten. That’s how long it took the police, speaking German, to convince my kids to get off the train. And that’s how we learned that not every train referred to as municipal transport can be used by children traveling on their own. That’s how we made our first acquaintance with the police.