I recently began daydreaming about
leaving home again. I decided that for my next trip I should take off
for two months. Hopefully that will be enough time to traverse the
northern coast of Africa, snake off into the Middle East, blunder my
way over northern India into Nepal, and finally re-enter China.
Unfortunately three minutes of consultation with the
British ForeignCommonwealth Office website conveys that my idea would definitely
result in permanent injury or death.
'The FCO advises against all essential
travel to parts of this country.'
'The FCO advises against all but
essential travel to this country.'
'The FCO advises...' yes, I get it,
'fuck off and make a new wish'.
I wonder sometimes how legitimate the
claim to danger is. I do not doubt that the FCO has the best
information. I would hate to find myself caught in the middle of a
political riot because I thought myself better than to consult an
informed advisory service. Safety is of course a basic priority. My
insurance only goes so far, and even £10,000,000 wouldn't be quite
enough to soothe the pain of death. The temptation, however, lingers.
Not because I am a thrill seeker, rather the opposite. Someone had to
hold my hands while I had my ears pierced at the age of twenty. But
there is something about the unknown. Unknown distance, unknown
people to meet. Even if you don't speak with similar tongues,
hospitality, kindness, a smile will be understood deeper than any
half eschewed words.
Many people think of me as naïve
because I trust strangers. But provided you give me no founded or
unfounded reason to distrust then I believe you need not prove
yourself. On occasion, a toothier than average grin can set off the
alarm bells, but usually I find myself trusting most people. And
generally, people are good.
Generally.
On the train from Irkutsk to Omsk there
was very little I could do to alleviate the forty hour journey.
Cigarette after cigarette was passed in the smoky end compartments
between carriages. Feet ticked like clockwork up and down the length
of the corridor. We had boarded in the wee hours of the morning on
direction from a sweet old man, into the private compartment where we
would be sleeping. We settled in, trying our best not to disquiet the
sleeping lady and her father on the lower bunks. The
provodnitsa eventually returned to take our tickets. I delivered him mine
promptly. My oniisan patted around his coat pockets.
'Eine minute,' he said. Whilst many
Russians do not speak English, a rather surprising proportion of the
older, including the provodnitsa, in fact speak German. He patted his
jeans. His eyes widened in frustration. Turning around, he ripped
open the zip of his backpack. He tore through, pulling out all of the
contents.
'I think I've lost my pouch' he finally
committed.
'What?'
'The pouch, the black one, the one with
all my money, my passport...'
He continued to frisk the tiny
compartment. The lady underneath me sat up and straightened her
sheets to check nothing had fallen. I left to check the corridor. No
such luck.
'I must have dropped it on the
platform,' he said frantically. My oniisan jumped off the bed. The
provodnitsa switched on the compartment lights. The man below my
friend pulled the blanket up over his head. In German, my friend
started to explain that he thought his money, his passport, and along
with them, his ticket, had been lost on the platform. The man, who
until now had pretended to sleep, sat up. He pulled straight his
sheets. The black pouch fell on the floor.
We hadn't made the best first
impression. I could feel the sizzle of temperance in the compartment.
Coupled with the summer heat, the compartment was suffocating.
Knowing my pigeon Russian would do no good, I decided to spend my
time pacing the carriage, and chain smoking.
I was standing in the polluted smoking
area when appeared a stocky older man with shoulders like a bull, and
a boy, fresh from puberty. The stockier man asked me something. I
shook my head.
'Niet pa russki,' I apologised.
Recognising the abysmal accent, in English he asked where I was from.
He was from
Chechnya, and the boy was Russian. He kept winking at me
and the Russian. The alarm bells began gently tolling in the
background.
'I have a boyfriend,' I announced,
quickly. The Chechen quickly finished his stub and re-entered the
carriage. The boy took the opportunity to ask me if I could spoke
German. Words, here and there, flickered to mind.
'Piva?' He asked me to join him for a
beer.
Now that the sketchy older man had
disappeared, the bells had begun to subside. I considered spending
the next 24 hours on this train, sober, and possibly trapped with the
corrosive couple in my compartment.
The beer washed down with perfect
politeness. Unable to actually communicate, we spoke a stilted
combination of Russian, English and German. Somehow, I garnered the
boy was a twenty year old student of engineering. I told him I was an
English teacher though I will never know what he
understood. Eventually we stopped conversing, from little more than
exhaustion of the overlapping languages between us. We silently
sulked back to the smoking compartment. We were rejoined by the
Chechen. He laughed when the Russian explained the language barrier.
'Next, we drink vodka' he exclaimed,
'then, we understand everything!'
'Uh... it's 2 o'clock in the
afternoon,' I scoffed.
'We eat, we drink, we talk, it's good!'
He insisted. Beer subdued the alarm bells. I supposed that with the
Chechen somewhat translating, the train ride might pass quickly after
all.
'Just one.'
To Be Continued...
