Who's Who in AFEW

Below are pictures of some of the friends I have made here at AFEW (AIDS Foundation East-West).

The Attack

December 8, 2005

I don’t have to be at work until 9:30 a.m., and it takes me roughly 45 minutes to get there. I get up just before 8 and am newly amazed on a daily basis that it is still dark outside. I was running particularly late to work on this particular day, and as I walked to the subway from my apartment, I remember thinking how grey everything was, how routine things, and this walk, have already become, how…BAM!! Right in midst of my mundane melancholy, something of unidentifiable texture hit me on the back of the head. The blow was not painful and yet hard enough to jolt me forward. As is always the case in such situations, one second seems like an eternity—an eternity in which I pondered all of the terrible things that were about to happen to me. I was 100 percent sure that my life was over, and that seeing that the first blow didn’t knock me unconscious, the perpetrator would knock me another one, shove me into a trunk and that would be the last anyone saw of Liza Shurik.

As soon as I came to, which must have been only a couple of milliseconds later, I saw a huge crow flying directly above my forehead. In mid-flight, the blasted crow landed on my head and took off again. I felt like I was going insane: how often could this possibly happen? Then it struck me: maybe it didn’t happen at all. I quickly looked around to see if anyone else had laid witness to my attack. I was hoping to find a startled face, I would even settle for an amused, mocking face, someone, anyone who would share in my bewilderment and confirm my sanity. But, alas, all I found was a man sitting in his car looking at his cell phone and a woman walking fast, with her head tilted down under the hefty hood of her coat. What a way to wake up! Suddenly, I felt a little more alive than I had before my momentary rendezvous with Sir Crow. His unexpected entrance and quick departure from my life made me feel as though, somehow, Mother Nature knew that I needed a hit to the head. I felt an indescribable pang of joy rush through my entire body, leaving me refreshed and covered in goose-bumps.

As I walked, chin up, to the metro, I pitied all the people who didn’t see what had happened to me: it would have made for a great morning story in the office. Naturally, when I got to work, I told my colleagues all about it. They were all amused and within a few hours the story had spread to other departments. At lunch, sitting with the regular crowd, we discussed how it came to pass that a crow would use my head as perch and then a take-off port. Little did we know that we had crow specialists among us: Vlad had seen a very informative television program, while Nazee had read about them in some magazine.

“You know, crows are the smartest animals on the planet,” said Vlad.

“No,” I said, “Smarter than dogs and monkeys? Maybe they’re just the smartest bird,” I suggested.

We discussed it and in the end couldn’t decide whether they were the smartest animal or the smartest bird, and not having enough information to come to any conclusion, we decided to abandon the issue altogether.

“Crows can count, you know,” said Vlad.

Again I was baffled. “What!? How can that be, they can’t even talk!” I was almost enraged at the lunacy of such a suggestion.

But he and Nazee both assured us that not only could they count, they could even add. Of course, none of us could come up with a way by which a crow would express his/her answer, so we moved away from this topic as well. After all some of life’s greatest mysteries cannot be explained. Then Nazee suggested that maybe it thought I had a hat on and wanted to steal it for its nest. Of course: why didn’t I think of that?

But then I remembered a story that Tamara’s sister-in-law Sopha had told me:

There was a crow’s nest outside the front door of her apartment building some years ago. One day, a woman from the complex destroyed the nest. Sopha claims that she and this woman look very similar, but I think she just doesn’t want to admit that it was she who destroyed the nest. It is important to note that Sopha is a rather large woman, which sets her apart from most people here. Apparently, the crow had witnessed the destruction of its nest by an equally large woman, and in the mist of its hysteria it took its aggression out on Sopha: it started stalking her. Since that day, and for a few weeks after that, the crow would stand watch over the front door of her building and when Sopha came out, it would swoop down, nearly hitting her in the head. He followed her all the way to the metro, every day. After a few days she started feeling uncomfortable. She would peek out the door and see if he was around, walk quicker to the metro, and take on other precautionary measures.

This made me reanalyze my own situation, and I was slightly saddened. I had attributed my morning episode to a divine intervention aimed at de-normalize my daily drone, but in reality, it was nothing more than an act of hostility and hatred. Maybe the crow was mad at someone who looked like me and I was going to fall victim to his rage. The only thing that didn’t add up is how the crow could tell me apart from anyone else. I am just an average sized girl in the same black coat that one out of every two girls is wearing. When I got home that night, I told Tamara about the morning’s events. She thought about it for a moment and then, with full seriousness said: “Maybe it was your scarf.” I wear a bright stripped scarf that I bought in Target back at home and it is, without a doubt, the brightest scarf I have seen here—maybe a girl with a similar scarf had offended the crow. ‘Maybe,’ I thought to myself, ‘since crows are so smart I should have tried to communicate with him: clear up the misunderstanding, let bygones be bygones.’ But then I don’t know that I could tell my crow apart from the others and any attempt at reconciliation might be wasted and could potentially generate conflicts with crows that otherwise harbored no hostility towards me.

The next day, I forgot about the whole thing, and just as I was walking out the door, Tamara reminded me to look around and be aware of the crows flying overhead. I quickly changed my scarf, and walked to the metro with my hood on.

Fifteen Grams Please

November 29, 2005

As I had predicted, Russia is not the most suitable place for people who don’t eat pork. The deli in every store is 99 percent pork: sausages, salamis, hot dogs and sardelki (extremely thick, short hotdogs that look like the fingers of a fat giant, and are so good that they could break a Chassidic rabbi). One day during work, I took a little break and walked over to a small supermarket down the street. They too had a large assortment of pork products, so I decided to ask the saleswoman for help. I must preface this by saying that am mortified of Russian saleswomen and try to avoid contact with them at any cost. But, seeing as there was nobody else in the store, I decided to face my fear.

‘Do you have anything made of beef?’ I asked. She answered not in words, but with an irritated nod of the head and an even more irritated pointing gesture with her middle finger. I must admit, that although in Russia the middle finger is used much like our pointer finger, it still offends me.

There were three different beef options and I could tell that she was displeased at the fact that I had already been staring at them for five seconds and hadn’t yet made up my mind. The names of the meats were written in cursive. Reading cursive in Russian is already a problem for me, but this kind of pressure made it physically impossible. I pointed (with my pointer finger) to the topmost slab of meat, and prepared myself for the worse question of all: ‘how much?’. This always makes me panic. I still don’t really know how much a gram is, but I do know how much 200 grams is because of a previous purchase I made with Tamara’s help. Based on that, I tried to calculate how much one slice would be: after all, I only wanted to try it.

‘How much?’ she asked.

‘Fifteen grams,’ I said confidently, feeling like a true Russian.

Before she was able to speak, she looked at me as though I had murdered her firstborn -- she may have even twitched. The fact that I speak Russian with little-to-no accent always gets me into this kind of trouble: people can’t tell that I’m not Russian, and so, are understandably appalled when I don’t know mundane ‘Russian’ things.

‘Fifteen grams?!’ she yelled in astonishment, enunciating every syllable. ‘I can’t cut fifteen grams, are you mocking me?!’

‘No,’ I answered. ‘I just want enough to try it.’ She was livid, and the madder she got, the more calm I got, which infuriated her even more.

‘You can’t just try it here!’

‘I know, but is it ok if I buy it and then try it?’ I asked irreverently. Her unjustified hysteria was forcing disrespect out of me against my own will.

At this point, it was quite clear that she was not going to slice me 15 grams, so I decided to up the stakes.

‘Fine, make it 20,’ I said, sure that I had successfully resolved the conflict. But it was too late, our relationship was forever ruined. The veins near her temples became more and more defined with each passing moment. She yanked the meat out of the case with unbridled hostility. Meanwhile, I was just relieved to be on the opposite side of the counter.

She removed the plastic wrap from the meat and placed it on the slicing machine, all the while talking to herself, about me, out loud:

‘She wants me to cut 15 grams…I can’t believe this…she’s insane…the scale won’t even be able to measure 15 grams.’

I had no idea that working behind a deli counter could be so stressful. But she was right: I did not factor the minimum measuring capability of a scale into my calculations.

She swung around and showed me one lonely slice of meat lying on a small Styrofoam slab. ‘That’s it?’ she asked, in a patronizing tone.

‘Oh, what the hell, give me another slice,’ I said like a millionaire. She couldn’t take it anymore and emitted a nervous laugh, clearly rehearsing to herself how she was going to tell all of her friends about the moron that came into the store today.

She was turned with her back to me, slicing away, when I decided to salvage what was left of her sanity:

‘I’m sorry, it’s just that I came from America and I don’t know your grams yet.’

She swung around and glowered at me: my explanation was totally lost on her, and only aggravated the situation further. She wrapped my meat-on-Styrofoam and flung it at me across the counter. She was so angry that she didn’t even say goodbye.

As I walked towards the cashier, I checked the label to see how far off I was from my initial 15-gram estimate, and much to my delight, my two slices added up to 32 grams. I was very pleased with myself, and even considered going back to the saleswoman to flaunt my near-perfect accuracy. ‘Maybe,’ I thought, ‘this would force her to reconsider denigrating people for no good reason. I could convince her to calm down—not be so angry.’ But then I decided that I had caused enough pain for one day and made my way to the cash register. Not paying much attention, the cashier took my merchandise off the conveyer belt, but feeling how light it was, she turned to look at it. She glanced at the pitiful purchase, and then up at me, the pitiful purchaser. She rolled her eyes, let out a patronizing smile, and wrung me up.

A Trip to Hell and Back

Saturday, December 4, 2005

My friend Nazee needed a washing machine for her apartment. After three weeks and several futile attempts at this seemingly innocuous task, she was left with nothing but utter frustration and a colossal load of laundry. So, in an effort to help a friend and feel what it is really like to ‘live’ in Russia, I accompanied Nazee on yet another of her laundry crusades. After perusing through a limited selection of machines at a local home appliance store, Nazee suggested that we try the Mega shopping complex. I had seen this beacon on a hill on the drive into town from the airport: it is a city in and of itself. And like every city, it has a small bourgeoisie, namely Mega, Ikea and Ashan and a large proletariat made up of a myriad of small stores much like those in American shopping malls. As Moscow doesn’t have space to build a metropolis in the middle of the city, this Mega-plex sits out on open land farther than the reach of any subway branch. There is a free bus for patrons of the Mega, provided by Mega, from the nearest subway station to the Mega. Approaching the bus stop, Nazee and I encountered at least 200 people who, apparently, all needed washing machines of their own. Of course, being that this is Russia, this Mega-mob was not arranged in any logical line: just a massive crowd. The demand for transportation to Mega is so high, that vehicle-bearing entrepreneurs are tapping into this lucrative market. “I’ll take you both for 200 rubles,” (30 rubles=$1), said a small man with a serious face. I ignored him while Nazee stared at him as if a strange creature had grown out of his neck in place of his head. After three minutes of standing around, Nazee became impatient and we went in search of an alternative way of getting from point A to point M. Nazee’s father is a physicist and when she was young, he told her that every problem has at least two viable solutions. He was right. After asking four people who all very assuredly pointed us in the wrong direction, we found Marshrutka #580--a marshrutka is van that runs on a route much like a bus. Extremely pleased with our discovery, we climbed in and almost immediately took off. After a 40-minute ride, we arrived at Mega. The traffic was so bad that it took as long to navigate through the parking lot as it did to get there. With no time to waste, Nazee and I jumped out before the official stop, angering the driver almost to tears.

This place was a Mega Hell. Thousands of people; a plethora of merchandise on shelves that reached from the floor all the way to the tall warehouse ceilings; different music booming out of every store, and on and on and on. Oh, if only Dante Alighieri had the chance to visit such a place, he would have created nine circles. Before entering Ashan--a warehouse that, by the looks of it, sold everything from car tires to small children--patrons hand over their belongings to a sour woman at a counter. She, in turn, places the patrons’ personal belongings (such as a purse or backpack) into a large plastic bag. The mouth of the bag is placed into what looks like a large, electric scissor which melts the bag shut with a perfect seam, rendering it safe to enter. After navigating our left-veering shopping cart through a crowd of uncompromising bodies, we found the machine that Nazee wanted. With the delivery cost of the machine reaching nearly $60 (a high price for the average Russian) and the lines stretching the entire length of the store, we realized that it was not meant to be. Dejected and dismayed, we left Ashan empty-handed, except for a pack of heart-shaped gingerbread cookies that Nazee clenched in her hands. By then, we were already an hour late to our boss, Katya’s house: it was her son Vanya’s second birthday. Before heading back out into the cold, we had to replenish our strength. The spinach and cheese pastries, which made me feel like Popeye, would have been alright if they were not frozen in the middle. We bought tea but did so reluctantly, in fear that we would not be able to find a suitable restroom along the way—the woman behind the counter assured us that help was nearby. If one was to follow the arrows on the man/woman sign that indicates that there is a restroom nearby, one would end up in an emergency exit, a store, or smashed into a wall: anywhere but the restroom. One perfect circle around the mall later, we found it.

Rushing to get out of this God-forsaken isntitution and into Katya’s apartment, we found ourselves again in search of Marshrutka #580. After 20 minutes, we found our Marshrutka’s place of departure, and a line of 60 people who found it before us. If the Marshrutka comes every 20-30 minutes--we pondered aloud--and only about 12 people fit on each one, we’re looking at a few hours at best. If walking in the cold is unpleasant, standing in it for AN HOUR AND A HALF is considerably worse. Nazee (who is half Georgian, half Russian) and I, stood out in the crowd of gloomy Russians. Joking, laughing and jumping to keep warm and pass the time, the people in front of us were amused while the people behind us were not. When the first Marshrutka arrived, an aggressive but relatively civilized boarding process ensued. It quickly departed and much to our chagrin, the line didn’t seem any shorter. Forty minutes later, when the next one pulled up, the people in the back of the line, clearly lost their senses and rushed the Marshrutka with shameless abandon. Vexed and perplexed, we, the front half of the line did the only thing we could do…keep waiting. Meanwhile, the remainder of the back-of-the-liners formed a new, separate, and what quickly became equal line for Marshrutka #580. I was infuriated with the mayhem that had befallen us. “Where I’m from, you’d get shot or stabbed for something like this!” I professed almost proudly. Then I came to the philosophical conclusion that this is precisely the reason people in America are so polite to complete strangers: anyone can carry firearms so you’re better off safe with a smile than sorry without one. At any rate, our Marshrutka compatriots turned around to look at me, clearly trying to figure out where in the hell it is that I came from.

Remembering again the saying of her father, Nazee agonized over another way out of the situation. We eyed a nearby shopping cart. The man in front of us said we would freeze to death. "Besides," said Nazee shaking her head, "it would be dangerous on the road without headlights." They discussed it so seriously that for a second I thought we were seriously considering it. But then reality and a cold wind hit us and we abandoned the shopping cart idea. And so, we continued to wait. The next Marshrutka arrived, and although we didn’t get on it, we had made our way to the front. By this time I had lost all feeling in my hands and feet and was certain that within the next 15 minutes my blood would freeze and the inner workings of my body would come to a complete and sudden stop. “We are getting on the next Marshrutka, no matter what,” I told Nazee with such conviction that I scared myself. When the next one arrived I abandoned any sense of shame or decency. There are two ways to ride a Marshrutka: in the back where there are 12 seats and, now, 30 people, or in the front with the driver, where there are two seats for two people and a great view. When the Marshrutka was within arm’s reach, I grabbed the front-door handle. Suddenly, I realized that the Marshrutka was not yet in boarding position, and it started backing up. “Hold onto my hood,” I yelled to Nazee. As I held on to the handle, and she to my hood, I felt like we were slipping of a frozen cliff in a melodramatic disaster movie. The Marshrutka backed up and it took me with it. Finally it stopped. I flung open the front door and jumped in, sliding into the seat nearest the driver. When I turned expecting to see Nazee, a strange woman was getting ready to climb into the driver’s cabin with me. I quickly pulled the door shut until I saw Nazee; I swung open the door, pulled her in, and slammed the door. The warmth of the cabin was almost painful against my frozen skin. After a 30-second boarding process, we were on our way back to the subway station and then off to Katya’s house. We were three hours late to the birthday party, but just in time for dinner.