This is Where I Live

September 23, sometime in the wee hours of the morning

I haven’t been able to write lately. Not for lack of time or new faces and experiences, but more out of that feeling with which I am sometimes overtaken—the feeling that I have nothing worthwhile to say. And while I’ve been searching for something significant, prophetic, awe-inspiring, I have been missing what is right here in front of me. Trying to wait out the copious amounts of caffeine Jenny and I consumed today, I stumbled across the blog of Betsy, the American who lived on the other side of this wall last year. I read her final entry, her farewell to this place, if you will, and was transported in a way I do not know if I have experienced before. Transported away from here, into the mind of someone I have never met, into the stories and experiences of a stranger, and yet as I read her words I was brought squarely back to here, to this “fading-Soviet dorm” as she called it, to the white and blue walls of our kitchen, to the machine gun-like sounds and vibrations of the hot water pipes, to the blaring techno music so kindly broadcast to our windows, to the idiosyncrasies of our neighbours who frequent the blue-and-white-walled kitchen, to the efforts of the sun to break through the grey sky, to this modest corner of the Urals that is to be my home for the upcoming year.

And so I will write about this, my home: 16a, ulitsa Chapaeva, Obschezhitiye No. 6, Komnata 207, Yekaterinburg, Russia. This is what it looks like on paper. An address—a street name, a room number, a city, a country. This is where I sit as I write these words. It is, as Betsy so aptly described, a fading Soviet dorm. Built sometime in the 1960s, it is a 9 story red-brick building, with an elevator that does not go past the 6^th floor, or hold more than 4 partly starved people. I live, though my room-number does not suggest, on the third floor, with a window overlooking the main entrance. This means I have a wonderful view of the comings and goings of the residents of this building—and a front-row seat (wanted or unwanted), to the drunken foolery that goes on every night. Beyond the main entrance there is a garden, with flowers that should survive another week before giving in to the approaching winter. Behind this there is another “garden,” or at least in Russian it is, the detski sad, or “Children’s Garden” (playground). The children may outlast the flowers by a week or two, until nimble fingers will no longer be able to hold the metal bars of the swing and the space will most likely be overtaken by wild dogs. To the right of the playground is a pile of garbage—mostly old furniture, but also some dumpsters. There is a swastika painted on the shed next to these, and, in English, the word “skinhead.” On the dumpsters to the other side of the playground are scrawled the words stolovaya (cafeteria), kukhniye (kitchen), bufet (buffet), and restoran (restaurant). I am never quite sure what to make of this spray-painted statement, not sure if the artist was naming what these dumpsters were for him (I doubt this, however, as most of the people who frequent these dumpsters are women), or if he was just making a quiet observation, a jest, or something in between. This is what I see through my window, my window to Russia. This is where I live.

Mediating this view is a window, a window that I wake up to every morning. In the window sill now sit two candles that I inherited from Josefina, a birch-tree wall hanging I inherited from Tugrul, a lamp shade I inherited from Midori (the Japanese girl who lived here last year) a picture of two geese, a plant I bought last week, some grammar books I borrowed from Jenny, and what remains of yesterday’s baking experiment. On the window hangs a small Lawren Harris print, a Gandhi quotation, and my favourite picture—three canoes at sunset on Little Crow Lake, the gunwales of the canoes illuminated by the remaining light of the sun before it slips behind the horizon. Things from others’ homes, things to remind me of home, things to make this feel like home. One level back are my curtains, red and white curtains that Josefina put up when she lived here last year, and for which I am eternally grateful. In front of these stands my bed, a hammock-like piece of furniture to which I have added to planks of wood—boards that Betsy used last year. My pillow-case is louder than the curtains—a pattern of pink and orange and red that Jenny bought at the recently-opened IKEA and donated to this pillow to hold its wayward feathers in. It is out of place among the grey and brown standard issue bedding of the residence, but it is, for now, mine. Next to this is my night stand, then my desk, and against the other wall, those of my roommate. Yoon Ka Hye is from Seoul, here, like me, to study Russian for the year, though for the time being we really have no common language. Her Russian is more basic than mine, and her English about the same. At night, I listen to her speak Korean with the characters of her dreams. During the day, we speak in gestures and offerings—coffee, chocolate, yoghurt, baked goods, smiles. For now, this is enough. We share this room, this corner of the Urals. This is where we live.

Beyond my room is a small foyer, littered with shoes, boots, coats for all seasons, a small fridge and an even smaller washing machine. On one end of this corridor is our shower, a place I do not really want to talk about, and on the other a small room with a toilet and another with a sink. We share this with Jenny and Josefina, the American-missionary from Minnesota and the aspiring-Swedish writer who inhabit the room next door. There room is more lived in than ours—Jenny has been here for 5 years, and Josefina for 2, though she has just recently moved from this side of the wall to the bed where Betsy slept last year. This room is home to such luxuries as a real dresser, a working TV, an espresso-machine, and a library of English and Russian literature. Most importantly, it is home to an old friend and a new friend who will be an integral part of my Russia experience, who will help me keep my sanity, who will share this corner o the Urals. This is where we live.

Our small apartment is enclosed by a large green steel door of sorts, with a lock that looks like it was welded in after the original door was made. It is a finicky lock—it will only lock or unlock from the outside if it is set at a specific angle, a lesson I learned quickly after being locked out, and probably locking someone else out. On the other side of this door is a small foyer and entrances to two other apartments. In one live a woman and her young adolescent son, the other is shared by a young couple and a baby, and another young man. These are our neighbours. At our end of the foyer is the entrance to the kitchen that we share—yes, this is Soviet architecture at its finest. The kitchen has two small stoves, an oven with a precariously attached door, two sinks, a purring fridge, a clothesline, a table, and some makeshift shelves. The windows are decorated with flowers, snowmen, and Napoleon Dynamite window-clingers, and in an uncharacteristically nationalist mood, Jenny and I hung our flags (and a small Swedish flag that I made out of construction paper) on the clothesline—a reminder of where we come from and a little life to distract from the grease stains and flaking paint. Jenny has been wary of the reactions she would get by hanging her flag, and I’ve decided to make it my mission this year to allow her to be comfortable in her Americanism. Our neighbours rarely use this room anyway—only to smoke and occasionally bake, so we have decided to make it our own. This is where we live.

Beyond this room is a building populated by Russians—teachers and their families, students—as well as all of the foreign students of the university (approximately 30 Chinese students, 20 Koreans, and 15 others). Guilherme, Mark and Defri live on the other side of the building on the top floor, in the room where the Turks lived two years ago, two floors above my old apartment. This section of the building is guarded by a dejournaya, a (usually) elderly woman who sits in a glass box and regulates who comes and goes to the upper floors. If you are not a resident of these floors, you are officially supposed to leave your documents, though a few of these women recognize me from before, and I’ve discovered that if I turn the corner and continue up the stairs with enough conviction and a small (or no eye contact at all, depending who is there), then I can get away without this layer of bureaucracy. If I want to sleep in my own bed, however, I must respect the 1am curfew, when the door between the 6^th and 7^th floor is locked, along with the main entrance. This entrance, too, is guarded by a usually elderly woman sitting in a glass box, a metal turnstile, and usually two younger guys in camo security gear who watch the comings and goings of the residents. We must show our ID when we enter, and leave our ID when we have guests. As hard as I try, I will never understand this security, this remnant of Soviet bureaucracy, and although I find myself frequently committing small acts of rebellion, I know that I must follow the rules, because this is where I live.

Nearly a week has passed since I began this entry, and, like Betsy, I am now writing in our kitchen, the tapping of the keyboard and the humming of our fridge, the rustling fall leaves and Russian pop drifting through the window combining in an odd musical way, making this space seem less empty and cold than it is. For now it is a comfortable temperature—they turned the heat on this week, and since we have no control over how much heat comes out of the heaters (an amount that won’t change until it’s turned off next spring), most of the windows of the building have been opened wide to air out the now sauna-like temperatures of the rooms. The leaves outside the window have turned and are starting to fall, and it is strange to think that I will watch these trees shed their dress to be greeted by bows heavy with snow, then to springtime buds and new leaves. Like the leaves, I will watch the city live through the seasons, the short days and long nights of winter near the 60^th parallel, the cold wind of the Urals, the dirty melting of the snow, and then the excitement of spring. It has been a hard week, in many ways, as I try and find my place in this building, in this city, in this country, as I struggle with what it is I should be doing with my time here, combined with the ongoing fatigue of living in a language that I only half understand. But sitting here watching the yellow lives whipped up by the wind, I find a quiet excitement at the prospect of living through the cycles of the year in this place, of discovering this city, this country, of testing my own emotional and intellectual limits, of developing friendships with those who also call this place home, of actually turning this place into a home. For better or worse, in sickness and in health, ‘till next summer does us apart, this is where I live.