We left for the airport at one in the morning. It was a
white minivan, I think it belonged to a family friend. Or a friend of a friend.
A small group of family and friends lingered till the end to help us load up
the minivan and say their tearful goodbyes. I sat by the window, wide awake and
scared. It was going to be a long ride, Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International
Airport was well outside the city limits.
The road lead through a forest. There were rumors of highway
robbers in that forest: they knew that most of the cars on the road in the
middle of the night were people emigrating. Flight was at 7 a.m. Check in was
at three. We got lucky, no robbers for us.
The Sheremetyevo Airport was enormous and lit very brightly.
With a border check inside – just for emigration processing. There was a gate
and heavily-armed guards, you had to say your goodbyes outside the gate, once
across – no touching. They went through our luggage, weighted our silver and
gold (we were only allowed 750 grams of silver each and even less gold.) My
father had to explain what was in the little glass jars of paint: paint. We
were a family of artists, we had no diamonds or furs, nor were we smuggling
platinum. They took our passports, we now had no country. We crossed the gate,
and were officially no longer on Russian soil. My mom attempted one last hug
with a relative and was ordered back.
We sat on hard plastic benches for hours. I ventured into
the duty-free (all prices in US Dollars) to smell the perfumes and dreamed of a
day when I would buy one of these beautiful fragrant bottles. Little did I know
that it would be many long and hard years before I would be able to finally
afford any of it. I watched another family cross the gate: this one was covered
in Russian Siberian fox furs head to toe. They went through their search never
taking off the furs. I wondered what exactly was in the lining. Once over the
gate, the woman attempted a kiss with the man left behind, but they were
quickly separated by the guards. Emigration was flowing steadily for years at
this point, and Russian authorities figured out that the final goodbye kiss was
nothing more than a clever attempt to smuggle diamonds out of the country.
There was a skinny girl my age wandering the brightly lit
terminal. I thought that maybe I could have a friend for the long flight, so I
mustered up the courage to say hello. I told her I was going to New York and
asked what city she was going to. She stuck her bird-like nose up in the air,
chirped “Brooklyn!” before turning on her heel and walking away from me. I was
confused – to my knowledge Brooklyn was part of New York.
We flew Aeroflot. It was a direct flight: Moscow to New
York. 12 hours. 12 hours stuck in a large steel box filled with cigarette smoke
so thick you could see it moving around. Aeroflot allowed smoking on the plane.
The entire plane. I still don’t know how my father survived that – he can’t
stand the smoke. When we finally entered the American airspace, it was dusk.
The sun was setting over New York City and the sky was deep orange with purple
clouds. “Even the sky is different here,” I thought. The plane made a pass over
Statue of Liberty, a symbolic “Welcome to America” gesture from the pilots of a
plane full of emigrants.
We landed at JFK to complete chaos. We were met by INS, who
grabbed our papers and started shoving us into different lines based on our
final destinations. No one could understand what anyone was saying. Someone
tried to give a carton of Russian cigarettes to a Customs official, only to be quickly
told that bribes are not legal in this country (a remark that was met with a
shrug and a laugh). There were bright lights and confusion and yelling, and
none of it felt welcoming.
There was a mad dash across JFK to a domestic flight to
Chicago. We barely made the flight and boarded at the last minute. Compared to
the giant 747 that we disembarked mere 45 minutes ago, the plane to Chicago
felt tiny and cramped. And old. I started to worry that we might not make all
the way.
It was night when we landed in Chicago. The air was hot and
humid, something we were not used to since it was already Fall in Moscow. We
were shoved into a teal Corolla, and taken to my uncle’s apartment. He was our
immigration sponsor, we were to stay with him until all our processing was
finalized. We were tired, starving, filthy, and felt manhandled by everyone. My
mother was in shock and my father had a disappointed look on his face. At this
point all I wanted was to wash the cigarette smoke out of my hair and to be
left alone. I was a tiny fish in new waters, but I wasn’t sure if I liked the
bowl.
23 years passed. Yet, I still vividly remember that flight
and the color of the sky over New York. It took a couple of years for me to
finally fall in love with my new fish bowl, and eight before I officially – and
proudly – belonged to a country again. I have lived here longer than I lived
there, and yet there are moments when I still feel like fish out of water.