MOSCOW, Oct. 9, 2003 -- Yegor isn’t going to get married after all!
Paying a country girl 0 to tie a fictitious knot, then never seeing her again till you become a citizen, then divorcing her, isn’t the best way – even for a 22-year-old gay --to acquire Russian citizenship, his lawyer told him.
So he’s not getting married; but he’s not going to follow his lawyer’s advice either.
Yegor set out bright and early – well, not bright. It’s only early October, but already the 19-hours of June daylight have faded into memory. It was still quite dark when I kissed him goodbye at 7 a.m. and he set out on the elektrichko, the electric commuter train, for the three-hour ride to Tver, where he would meet his lawyer, who would drive him another four hours to pick his aunt up at her home in Sandova, then drive for another hour to Molokova (translates to something like “Milkville”), where she would notarize her promise to let Yegor live at her house.
The one thing he mustn’t forget in the execution of this mission is his passport. You should always carry it in case you get stopped by the bribe-seeking cops. And of course you can’t notarize a signature without it.
At 1 p.m., when I would have been in class if my student hadn’t cancelled with illness, the phone rang.
“I forgot my passport”
“Oh, my god, what do we do now?”
“Just find my passport, take it to the Leningradskaya Station and give it to the conductor to bring to Tver And give him 100 rubles as a tip” – about .
“Where’s your passport?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to find it.”
“Yegor, even if I find it, I can’t do that by myself. I won’t be able to make myself understood. Here, talk to Anton.” I handed the phone to Anton, who was nursing one of his chronic vicious headaches.
When Anton hung up, he repeated Yegor’s recital to me, adding “but I can’t go. My head hurts too much. I can’t move. You’ll have to find somebody else.”
“Oh, Christ, who can I get to go on this short notice?”
I called Kreutz. “I’m working.”
I called Basil on my mobile phone: “Where are you?
“At work.”
“Do you have a lunch hour?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
Just then the house phone rang. It was Yegor’s lesbian friend Lena.
I handed the phone to Anton and he explained the problem.
Yes, she could do it.
“Never mind, Basil. I’ll explain later.”
So Lena would come right over and she and I would go to the train station.
Except it was after 2 p.m. before she finally called on her mobile phone saying she was at Belarusskaya Metro Station headed toward the apartment. I met her on the street.
“I couldn’t come earlier because I didn’t have any money for the metro. I had to find some.”
Poor Lena. She, like Yegor, is a Tajikistan emigre; in fact, they came together. Except she is virtually alone here with no female equivalent of me to help her out. She works every day for a Korean restaurant for about a month plus room, board, and a mobile phone. To say she’s destitute understates the case.
Lena asked the obvious question: How could Yegor forget his passport when he was going solely to initiate his first steps for getting Russian citizenship?
“Don’t ask me, ask him.”
I didn’t know the train was scheduled to leave at 2:30. I just felt the inexplicable need to hurry as fast as we could. So we hurried. When we got to Leningradskaya Station, it was obvious the train to Tver was set to pull out at any moment. We ran the full length of the platform, looking for a conductor. We never found one, so when we got to the end of the platform, we knocked on the window of the engine. The young blond engineer came to the window. Lena gave him the passport and 100 rubles and was still giving him instructions when his “co-pilot” started easing the train out of the station promptly at 2:30. Russian trains always run on time.
By the time Yegor collected his passport at 6:30, it was too late to do anything else, so the lawyer drove him the four hours to his aunt’s home – at no cost.
That’s uncharacteristic for a lawyer even in Russia, and Yegor had been a little concerned about the guy’s motives. His assistant had been wearing an earring the last time Yegor had gone there, leading him to think the lawyer might be gay and would be putting moves on him.
But he didn’t. “He said it was his duty,” Yegor explained later.
Wow! Never in America!
The signature which his aunt finally notarized the next morning at Molokova constituted Yegor’s official “registration.”
Of course, he will never actually live there. It simply creates the fiction that stands between him and jail or deportation.
It also put into motion the machinery for him to get the Russian equivalent of a Green Card in about six months, after which he can legally get a job – if he can find one.
Russia is making it progressively harder for people from the 12 non-Russian former Soviet republics to become Russian citizens. Most of them are dark-complexioned and black-haired, and many are swarthy. Russians, whose very name stems from an old word meaning fair-skinned, share with their Americans the historic distaste for dark skin.
In fact, Russians call these people from the Caucuses “Chiornie,” the Russian word for “blacks,” although I would simply call them olive-skinned. Afro-Americans probably fare better at Russian hands than do their own “blacks.”
The Chechens are “blacks,” and the historic prejudice in part accounts for Russia’s cruel vendetta against them. So are the Armenians and many of the “stans” – Kazakhstan, Kyrgistan, Tajikistan, etc. The prejudice is deep and strong.
Since Yegor’s unknown father was rude enough not only to seduce his mother, but also to be a Kajikistan, Yegor is part of Russia’s “nationality problem.” Russians would prefer not to share their jobs and land with him. However, he has a secret weapon: Under Russian law if one of your parents was born in Russia, you, too, have the right to become a Russian citizen – even if you are “black.” Yegor’s mother was born in Yakutsk in far eastern Russia. So he by law is entitled to Russian citizenship.
Maybe.
And that’s why his lawyer wants to represent him. He would first apply to the local court in Tver, which would reject his claim. He would appeal. The appellate court would rubber stamp the lower court, which would pave the way for bringing the issue before the Constitutional Court, which would have to find in his favor, he reasons, because it’s in the book.
However, Yegor figures the lawyer would cost about ,000, “and we can’t afford it.” He’s right about that.
“So how are you going to get your citizenship,” which translates more accurately in Russian to, “by what method are you going to get your Russian citizenship?”
“No how,” which is expressed better: “By no method.”
“No how?” I tried not to let my exasperation show.
“Let’s start again: You’re not going to get married?”
“No.”
“You are planning to become a Russian citizen?”
“Yes.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“Five years after I get my green card, I will automatically get my Russian citizenship.”
“And it won’t cost ,000?”
“No.”
In the meantime, he will pursue his university education.
“So that’s your plan?” I asked.
“No, it’s not my plan. I don’t plan. I’m not a government.”
I couldn’t help but smile – maybe laugh a little. Russians flatly refuse to plan, or at least to say that they do. The future is too uncertain to plan, they insist.
Even if they have plans, it’s bad luck to talk about them. “God doesn’t like a big mouth,” they nod wisely. So they don’t tell their plans.
Sasha was here last night. I wangled out of him the hint that there might be some murky good news about his getting accepted into an American university to continue his advanced chemistry studies. .But he would go no further. “I don’t want to jinx it.
“God doesn’t like a big mouth.”
So for Yegor, the die is cast. He thinks that about the time he completes the university six years from now (he won’t start till next fall), he will get his Russian citizenship and will have a future. But he’s not planning.
The ”nationalism” problem – that is the racial prejudice problem -- is a very serious one for Russia – at least for the dark-skinned people who feel its occasional brutality. They are often targets of attacks by bands of skinheads. These assaults, which sometimes result in murder, are almost never solved. In fact, it is widely assumed that the “menti,” as the cops are derisively called here, at the very least turn a blind eye and probably actually help the skinheads organize their vicious forays.
Neither Anton nor Yegor has ever been in any danger. Though olive-skinned, they both have quite Russian – and handsome – facial characteristics and are ignored by the chain wielders.
One of my teaching colleagues recently assigned his class to write an essay. One of the students wrote on racism in America, and did a rather good job of researching the history of the slavery, the lynchings, the continuing pervasive prejudice.
Fortunately, he assured, Russia has been spared such prejudice against the blacks.
“We aren’t prejudiced,” he concluded. “We just don’t like them.”
