Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Method Writing, or How I Ended up in Russian AA

A Russian friend recently asked me if I have to do much research for my novel-in-progress. He’s read multiple drafts of it, so I thought he knew the answer: “Just spending obscene amounts of time in Russia.”

When I thought about it a little longer, I realized there’s more to it than that. I’ve read mountains of Russian literature, and built up an internet search history I wouldn’t want my mother or the police to see. I’ve wandered all over Moscow, lurking in its hotels, visiting its oldest film studio, and casing the US Ambassador’s residence. I visited the set of a Russian TV show, and got yelled at by the director. I convinced a friend to let me film her wedding, even though my prior experience as a wedding videographer was entirely imaginary. I cold called my ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend (whom I’d met twice, ten years before) and got her to tell me about her childhood in Russia. And, most recently, I tagged along for a friend’s AA meeting in Moscow.

The idea came about when I was at the banya last weekend with a friend, who we’ll call Lena. In the two years since I’d last seen her, she’d picked up a rather stubborn heroin addiction; she’s been in and out of rehab three times in the last 18 months. She’s three months clean, but she finds AA meetings helpful to stay on track. When I asked her what Russian AA was like, she suggested I come along to the next meeting.

“Is that a thing? People bring friends with them for moral support?”

“Not really. It’ll be easier if you just say you’re an alcoholic, too.”

I wasn’t going to say no to a personal invite, so it was agreed that I would join Lena for her next AA meeting.

On Monday night, I found myself in the basement of an elementary school, in a classroom crammed with 25 adults. Lena and I were running late, but that didn’t mean I was exempt from introducing myself.

“Hi, I’m Dzhessika, and I’m an alkogolichka.”

For the first half hour, there was a guest speaker. She talked about her battle with alcoholism, an attempted suicide, the death of the father of her child, and how she finally realized she had no choice but to get sober. It was dark and deeply personal stuff. I might have felt guilty about invading her privacy and breaking the trust of the group, but I was only understanding about 75% of what she was saying anyway. For example, I spent a good portion of the night trying to figure out what trezvost’ meant. “Sobriety,” it turns out.

After the meeting, Lena and I stuck around so she could say hi to her friend Dasha.* Dasha is two years sober, and was thrilled that I had taken the first step in the road to recovery—so thrilled that she asked the question I’d been dreading: “What brought you here?”

I had come up with a number of inventive backstories, but I couldn’t bring myself to use any of them. Why? Because I’m a terrible liar. I can’t handle the guilt that accompanies deceit, and I undercut my occasional lies with immediate confessions. The great irony is that I am a fantastic liar when I’m drinking. Give me a couple shots, and I will lie with enthusiasm and aplomb. But that’s usually not an option in the middle of an AA meeting. So what did I say?

“I’ve seen how good it’s been for Lena, and wanted to see what it was all about.” My answer was technically true, if not a little evasive.

Dasha pressed further. “When was your last drink? Was it in Moscow?”

Of course it was. It was an expertly made lime and basil affair at Bar Mitzva on Friday night.

“Yeah,” I said, hanging my head in shame. “It was.”

This seemed to convince Dasha I was the real deal. She gave me a sympathetic look—the kind you would give a raging alcoholic who still won’t admit she has a problem.

“I hope we see you back here again.”

No, Dasha, you really don’t. There’s no way I could keep up this charade—not without a few stiff drinks.

I thought this would be the end of it. In a city of 12 million, you'd think I'd be safe from running into anyone from that group again, right?

I ran into Dasha a week later, just as I was walking out of a building owned by the Russian government. This was, incidentally, another novel-related recon mission. I had joined up with a tour of nine Russian ladies, all of whom, presumably, wanted to know the history of the building. I, on the other hand, was trying to get a straight answer on how one would get access to the rooftop terrace that plays host to a crucial scene in my novel.

Dasha asked me how the sobriety was going, and I gave her another cagey answer—the kind that left her more convinced than ever that I needed her help. She made me take her number, and encouraged me to call her for support. I took it and told her I’d be in touch. After all, I was going to need an explanation if the Russian authorities stopped me and wanted to know why I had photos of the floor plans of government buildings on my phone. And then my well-documented alcoholism might be just the cover story I needed.

*Name has been changed.

Monday, July 3, 2017

An American in Aktobe

Like many Americans, my introduction to the glorious nation of Kazakhstan came by way of the film Borat. And like many of my compatriots, I didn’t realize how wildly inaccurate a portrait of Kazakhstan the film painted. Even living with a Kazakh-raised Russian in Moscow didn’t dispel all of my misconceived notions. Dima knows the words to his country’s fake national anthem, and he’s been known to belt them out with pride.1 But when I found out I’d be spending two weeks in Aktobe, one of Kazakhstan’s lesser-known cities, it was Dima I went to for details. His review of Aktobe wasn’t exactly glowing:

Dima: It’s a normal city, a metallurgical city. It’s at the southern end of the Ural Mountains, the oldest part of the Ural Mountains. There are many rare minerals. Magnesium, lead—
Liz: Really? That’s what you have to say about Aktobe?
Dima: Yeah, because there’s nothing else there.

Views of Aktobe from an amusement park ride

I feared Dima was right after my first day there. A two-mile walk took me from one side of Aktobe to the other, and all I passed were a few shops and restaurants, an abundance of notaries (the Soviet love of documents dies hard), and not a whole lot else. Aktobe reminded me of Siberia with its wide, dusty streets and big, spread-out buildings—it was Russia without the Russians. Or at least that’s what I thought until I saw Kazakhstan through the eyes of my students, the other teachers at my school, and the strangers who stopped me in the street.

The world’s ninth-largest country is a confluence of cultures. Kazakhstan started out as a nomadic culture (its name means “land of the wanderers”), and was later influenced by Mongol and Russian invaders. Since the end of Soviet rule in 1991, Kazakhstan has had only one leader, but the president has ambitious plans to position his country among the top global economies by 2050. The country may be unknown or thought to be provincial in the West, but it felt full of promise to me. The students I taught were trilingual in Kazakh, Russian, and English, and their charter school boasted everything from a robotics lab to a climbing wall. The kids were smart, curious, and driven, and took pride in sharing their culture with me. In turn, I did my best to answer their questions about America, and tried not to mangle the pronunciation of their names too badly.


Over the course of my two weeks in Aktobe, I heard traditional Kazakh music, tried (and failed) to perform their national dance, shopped at the bazaar, and spoke to a crowd of fifty at the American Corner, a US government-sponsored center at the local library. I even tried the country’s national dish, beshbarmak, whose primary ingredient is horse meat. Yes, for the first time since the Spanish Pig Slaughter of 2011, I ate meat. With my hands. And it only took two shots of Kazakh vodka to prepare myself.

Beshbarmak means “five fingers,” because it's traditionally eaten with your hands

Throughout my trip, I sent photos back to Dima and Liz in San Francisco. Dima may have thought Aktobe was the armpit of Central Asia a few months ago, but when I returned to Moscow on Saturday, it seems he’d been converted: “This is so cool. I wish I could travel to Kazakhstan.”

If my time in Aktobe’s got Dima yearning for a visit to Kazakhstan, then I can only imagine how jealous he’ll be when I eventually make it to Astana or Almaty. I’ve got a taste for horse meat now, and you can’t satisfy that craving in America.

1 “Kazakhstan greatest country in the world! All other countries are run by little girls!”