Suvorov's Science of Victory

By Lina Zeldovich

Александр Васильевич Суворов

Said to be one of the few commanders in history who never lost a battle, Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov (Александр Васильевич Суворов) had waged wars on nearly every nation that shared borders with the Russian empire. From Turks to Prussians and from Swedes to French, Suvorov had a spectacular and surprisingly long military career for someone who spent his life on the frontline.

No one in his family expected little Sasha Suvorov to become a soldier. A sickly child who spent much of his time in bed, Alexander was deemed unfit for a military career by his father.  Vasiliy Suvorov, a senator and a general-in-chief, knew the army reality all too well, and didn’t think his frail offspring could withstand the hardship. But, captivated by the battle strategies and tactics, Sasha devoted his time to studying the works of renowned historians and military figures – from Plutarch to Cornelius Nepos to Julius Caesar. Determined to join the army despite his ailments and his father, he put himself through vigorous exercise to improve his health and his strength.  

When Sasha was 12, he met General Hannibal, a Russian military commander most known for being a great-grandfather of Alexander Pushkin, the famous poet. Taken by the young lad, who, in addition to his fascination with martial arts also spoke French, German, Italian, and Polish, Hannibal convinced Suvorov senior to let his unwavering offspring pursue his passion.

And true passion it was. Alexander Suvorov spent more than 50 years of his life on the battlefield. He made a colonel by 33, a general-major before turning 40, and a field marshal a few years later. He led the Russian troops through many a battles in their war with the Ottoman Empire, took part in the famous siege of Ochakov, and won a great victory in a clash at the river Rymnik, for which Catherine the Great bestowed on him the title of Count Rymniksky. In terms of awards and insignia, Suvorov earned pounds of medals and a slew of regalia–from Military Order of Empress Maria Theresa to Alexander Nevsky, and a couple of pages worth of titles: Count of Rymnik, Prince of Sardinia and even Count of the Holy Roman Empire. His last title, which he earned at the age of 70, was generalissimo, the highest military rank possible.

In between marches and sieges, Suvorov penned The Science of Victory, a manual on how to do it right, in style and with flare, which has been used as the holy bible of combat stratagem by a few generations of militants. He coined a few famous sayings venerably recited by Russians to this day, literally and figuratively: "What’s tough in training is easy in a battle" and "Perish yourself but rescue your comrade!"  

Alas, at the end of his career, Suvorov fell out of favor with the royals: Catherine the Great’s son Paul I took offence at the warrior’s sharp tongue. After a few years of forced retirement, Suvorov was called to lead the troops against Napoleon but despite his burning wish never met him in a battle. He is, however, famous for crossing the Alps in winter, a maneuver historically achieved only by Hannibal. Alas, the move was not to wage a spectacular attack on the French but to save the greatly outnumbered Russian troops. Still, that was the maneuver that netted Suvorov his title of the fourth generalissimo of Russia, only days before his death. He never rested on his hard-earned laurels–Tsar Paul, true to his dislike of the old soldier, skipped the ceremony. (Vasily Surikov later painted the legendary Suvorov’s Troops Crossing the Alps, now in the Tretyakov Museum in Moscow.)

Warrior’s luck wasn’t as favorable to Suvorov's son, Arkadiy, who followed his father’s footsteps into the military stardom. Fighting the Turks where the undefeated patriarch did twenty years earlier, he drowned in the very river Rymnik that had brought his father so much fame.

STALINA: The Survival Expert

Russians have a peculiar habit of naming their young after poets, scientists and war heroes. Yet, it must’ve taken a special inspiration to christen one’s daughter Stalina after the ill-famed Soviet tyrant. Or, it may have been a brilliant attempt at survival: even Stalin wouldn’t send a Jew named after him to Siberia. While this cultural subtlety may not have been apparent to an American ear, it interested Emily Rubin, a New York writer, broadcast professional and stage manager, who herself had Russian roots. 

Emily met Stalina while teaching an Oral History class to Russian expatriates at the Brighton Beach Community College in 1997. Her students, the former USSR citizens in their 60’s and 70’s, told intense and vivid stories of the World War II, Stalin’s regime and life in their old country. Emily asked her students to tell her about the person for whom they were named. Each student’s account brought up stories of war heroes, scientists, painters and poets along with dreams for future generations. Among the Yuri’s, Anna’s and Tatiana’s there was a woman named Stalina. She stated very simply that she was named for Stalin.  With her name, she explained, she carried her country’s painful history. Emily said that in this stoic and alluring woman, she had found her main character.

A sixty-something émigré, Stalina became Emily’s inspiration for the book.  But, Rubin was interested not only by the woman’s life journey, but also by the Russian history and its citizens’ exodus of 1990s. To research her book, Rubin joined the Summer Literary Seminar’s program in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2002, where she conducted interviews, visited historical sites and read at the legendary Stray Dog Café frequented by many famous Russian writers and poets, including Anna Akhmatova, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetayeva. She also attended writing workshops at The New School.  It took her several years to finish the book, and her unexpected breast cancer battle had slowed down her progress, but she was determined to see her work in print.

Rubin’s vivid description of Stalina’s 18^th birthday instantly deposits us into the Leningrad’s reality of the 1950s.  Stalina is allowed to invite only three guests because Stalin is dangerously sick, festivities are banned and citizens are holding vigils at their radios. Seasoned survivors, Stalina and her friends find a way to celebrate without music and laughter: they agree to interact like their favorite silent movie star Charlie Chaplin. The talent of surviving with a smile becomes Stalina’s most distinctive quality. It carries her through the journey of leaving her motherland with a bag of bras and porcelain cats, and helps her make her American dream a reality as she transforms a short-stay Connecticut motel into a fantasy destination. It also fuels her revenge on the high-rank government official, who, years ago, was responsible for the disappearance of her father and her childhood dog Pepe. Once a professional chemist trained by the Soviets to “make things smell like what they are not” Stalina knows neither fear nor limits when it comes to choosing her weapons, including her mother’s ashes.

Stalina is a journey into an absurd world that nonetheless was reality for more than one Soviet generation. It won’t necessarily explain why Russians think the way they do, but it will put you into a Russian mindset for the duration.

Amita: A Brooklyn Center For Healing

Started by Tatyana Yakovleva, a healer and acupuncturist well-known in the New York Russian community for her alternative treatment methods, Amita Healing Center is more than a holistic clinic but a world of its own.

Unlike typical doctors’ offices, Amita doesn’t run standard tests followed by prescription drugs. No blood is drawn and no shots administered. Contrary to traditional diagnostics methods that take weeks, here patients discover their bodies’ medical status within an hour. Often problems manifest themselves in non-typical ways, masking root causes. Stomach problems can be caused by liver malfunction while shortness of breath may have nothing to do with one’s heart but rather one’s thyroid gland. The traditional practitioners often treat an issue in isolation,” Tatyana explains her healing philosophy. “We get to the root cause.”

Tatyana uses a computer-based diagnostics, Orion Bioscan, a device that analyzes, evaluates and treats a human body at the molecular level. Through a simple array of sensors, Orion reads the organs’ biological conditions by measuring the body’s magnetic fields and the wave characteristics emitted by tissues and cells. Similar to an MRI, it generates a picture displaying the problems, some of which can be corrected with Orion’s electromagnetic therapy. Others require homeopathic treatments, the effectiveness of which can be verified by Orion as well.   

In 1997, Tatyana left behind a well-established holistic practice in Russia and came to America with her husband, a nuclear scientist who signed a three-month contract in Washington DC. When the contract turned permanent, she realized she was here to stay. She was neither fluent in English nor had an American medical degree. Besides taking English classes and legalize a gamut of diplomas, she faced a dilemma of what side of medical science to pursue. The traditional medicine offered an easier path to an established profession. The alternative was an unknown route. But Tatyana felt that an MD diploma limited her in her choices.   

“An MD is obligated to treat a patient a certain way or she may lose her license,” Tatyana says. “If a depression patient complains Prozac isn’t helping, I’d have to put him on another anti-depressant even with potentially dangerous side-effects. The same is true about chronic pain condition. Meanwhile, depression and chronic pains improve drastically with the combination of Orion techniques and homeopathy.”

Tatyana received her degree in acupuncture and alternative medicine from The New York Institute of Chinese Medicine in Mineola, Long Island. She is a Reiki master who completed numerous professional classes, certificate programs, and Orion Bioscan specialty training. After working in several alternative medicine clinics, she opened Amita in 2008, envisioning it expanding into a center of self-healing. “I wanted to spread the knowledge about solutions to pains and problems that harrow people for years,” Tatyana says. “I wanted to educate people on how to help themselves through various bio-energy techniques.” At Amita, patients can learn Reiki, Kundalini Yoga, and join a support group.

Beauty plays an important role in Amita’s mission. A similar bio-approach is used for a painless alternative to surgical face-lifting: a Micro-Current rejuvenation technique that stimulates the skin and muscles, resulting in increased blood circulation and collagen production. Coupled with toxin drainage, it reduces puffiness and dark circles under the eyes.

“While we certainly concentrate on the inner beauty a lot, a good-looking person feels more upbeat and self-confident,” Tatyana says. “When my patients leave relieved, rejuvenated and full of energy, I’m happy.  I love making people feel as good as they look. And vice versa.”

To learn more about alternative healing methods, stop by http://www.amitausa.com/

A Word Traveller



A Book from Strahov Monastery Library Collection in Prague
written in old Czech, far more complex than its modern dialect

When visiting Prague last week, I got separated from my group by a mini-army of marching schoolgirls – who were presumably on a field trip somewhere. I tried to break through their flow to catch up with the rest of my fellow travelers but it wasn’t easy. Finally a teacher noticed my futile attempts and said something like “Divki, bachte,” adding some other words I didn’t know, but between the Russian and the Ukranian I do understand, I grasped the meaning. She told them to watch where they were going and not walk into me.

I had noticed how words travel when I was ten. From a family trip to Ukraine, I had brought home a long-coveted book I couldn’t find anywhere but a second-hand bookstore in the small town of Evpatoria: The Holy Bible. It wasn’t exactly the original text, but rather a collection of Biblical stories with a social commentary a la the Soviets. In the belligerently atheistic USSR it was the best shot at religious studies I could get. The only problem was the damn book was in Ukrainian.

I wanted to know why the Romans crucified that preaching Jew, so I read it anyway.

Luckily, Ukrainian is as phonetic as Russian, and even though there were some differences in the alphabet, many words had a familiar ring to them. Once I stopped laughing at how funny some of them looked in the Ukrainian spelling, I began to notice grammar trends and guess the meaning of sentences I didn’t understand. By the time I turned the funny Bible’s last page, I not only learn a gamut of rather odd and extraordinary story tales, but, unbeknownst to moi, I taught myself a new tongue. More so, I laid the linguistic foundation for my understanding of all Slavic-based languages.


Another treasure from the Strahov Monastery where
thousands of old books are carefully preserved

Now, Czech looked like Roman-spelled Russian and Ukrainian combined, so I dove into it with a vengeance, trying to figure out the meaning of every street sign, advertisement, and restaurant name. I kept bugging my tour guide to clarify confusing concepts. “Does grad mean city, like in Russian? Oh, it means place? Ok, then what is zahradka – a fenced area? Oh, it means garden?  Wait, now I know where the Russian word vinogradnik (winery) came from – it must mean ‘wine garden’ in Czech.” 
Three years ago, when a Turkish ferry deposited my husband and me on what looked like a god-forsaken piece of land somewhere southwest of Istanbul, we were at a bit of a loss. Somewhere nearby was a train station, but the signs were in Turkish. In the distance I saw the word gar, picked up my bag and headed in that direction. “How do you know it’s there?” my husband asked. “I think gare means Station in French,” I said. “I bet you the Turks adopted the term.” 

Years ago, in Paris, we were looking for an Air Tram to go up from base of the hill at Place St-Pierre to gleaming white Sacre Coeur Basilica on Montmartre (mont means mountain in French, by the way.)  No plaque said Tram, even remotely. However, there was a big arrow that read Funicular, a word that is not necessarily part of an everyday English vocabulary, but long ago had travelled its way into the Russian language. While in Petra, I discovered that khazna, the archaic Russian term for treasury, came from Al-Khazne, which made me wonder if my fellow Russkis adapted their title of a tsar from the Persian shah.

 

A Hungarian street poster. The only word I can understand here
is "festival" which must be now universal in every language

Three days ago in Hungary I stumbled into another amazing discovery: their word konyha (kitchen) sounded similar to the Russian kuhnia – and meanwhile Hungarian is not a Slavic-based language, but rather has its roots in the Ugro-Finn linguistical family. Yet, the culmination of my Eastern European linguistic exploration came when our Budapest guide unveiled the mystery of his city’s name. I knew this beautiful European capital divided by the Danube river consisted of two cities, Buda and Pest, but why did they sounded like the Hindu god and an English term for an annoying person was beyond me. “It’s simple,” my guide explained. “Buda means water like Russian voda, and Pest means oven like Russian pech. Water and a place to make bread was good enough to call it home.”

Have you noticed how far from home words travel?

Russian Animal Fables

Russians tend to humanize their animals rather than mystify them. They give their ursine, vulpine, and feline creatures humanlike characteristics, imbue them with character traits and language abilities. In many tales, man and beasts argue and fight over food, land, or goods. Sometimes they team up against oppressors – human or otherwise. A very popular fable theme typically involves a man catching an animal who begs to be set free on the promise of health, wealth, magical goods, or the gift of a beautiful tsarina to its captor. The story hero pities the creature and lets it go, often not even expecting the pledge to be fulfilled – only to discover that magical things do indeed start to happen to him. Another favorite plot involves man freeing animals from evil spells and turning them back into humans. Somehow, all of those liberated heroes or heroines tend to be of noble origin – princes or princesses, and they immediately fall in love and marry their commoner rescuers.

Animals possess not only very consistent character traits, but often standard genders and names too. They are always referred to as either male or female characters, never an “it.” Bear is big, bulky, and not particular bright. While he is certainly frightening, he can be tricked and bargained with. He is typically named Misha, the Medved (medved means bear) – and yes, that’s the last name of the current president of the Russian Federation – Medvedev. Wolves are dangerous and will gobble up you and your cattle if you don’t ward them off. Luckily, they aren’t very smart and can be fooled. They very often fall victims of foxes’ trickery – the sly cunning Lisaveta wraps Volk around her claw with smiles, flattery, and empty promises. Worse, she often gets him into trouble while slipping away with booty he helped her to steal. Hare, or Zaika, is quick, sometimes cowardly, yet he possesses a certain dignity and is willing to help. Rooster Peter the Petukh is boastful, sometimes narcissistic, and overly self assured, which often gets him in trouble: all Lisaveta has to do is to sing praises to his gorgeous voice and elegant tail, and he is more than willing to fly into her wide open paws. Swan is usually beautiful and, if handled properly, can metamorphose into a single and available tsarina. Whether the hero is Ivan the Fool or Ivan the Tsarevich, they both have to do some slaying of the evil – and that’s where Hare, Duck, and Fish come to help. Actually fish – sometimes Golden Fish, sometimes Tschuka – has been known to magically fulfill her captors’ every wish no matter how ridiculous, in exchange for not being turned into a soup.

Interestingly enough, the talking animals in the tales behave as real animals – carnivorous animals (and humans) still eat meat, even when the meat in question can talk. “I’m gonna eat you,” Wolf says to Hare, who usually yaps long enough to talk his way out. Man bargains with Misha, the Medved, “Don’t hurt me – I’ll give you the top half of my harvest” – and hands the beast the turnip leaves while keeping the roots for himself.

Just about every animal’s personality is beautifully revealed in the famous folk tale Teremok, which doesn’t exactly translate as House, but rather a special kind of a fancy building akin to a palace. Discovering the big comfortable space, various animals move in one by one, forming a happy co-op menagerie until one day there comes a troublemaker who can’t play by the rules, ruins the peace and destroys the edifice.

So, tell me, which animals are part of your national folklore, and what adventures do they bring to your people?

Winter Magic: Frosty and Snow Maiden

To me, this will never be a Christmas Tree. Neither do I refer to it as a Chanukah Bush. I will forever call it a New Year Yolka because my father and I used to put it up and decorate it on December 31st, the same as every other Soviet family – to say goodbye to the passing year and welcome the new one.

At midnight, as the last chime of the Kremlin bells died away, Grandpa Frost (Santa’s Russian counterpart) dropped by and left gifts underneath the yolka. Frosty wore a long fur coat and an ushanka – a hat with two earflaps. His beard wasn’t nicely trimmed but was rather long and a bit messy. He didn’t ride sleigh driven by reindeer but bravely walked through the woods, blizzards, and snow piles to deliver his often meager gifts. When he couldn’t get through by foot, he skied along, never losing his big over-the-shoulder tote. He traveled with his granddaughter, Snow Maiden, who was beautiful and delicate. She couldn’t stand any warmth whatsoever, so the two never stayed indoors for long. Since the majority of the Soviet population lived in apartments, plopping down the chimney was not an option, so the duo made their way in through the brick walls and the tightly sealed windows that didn’t allow any cold air leaks. It was magic. And it was wonderful.

New Year was my favorite holiday even though it took place in winter. It was too cold and I had to stay home a lot, but it was the one and only time in the whole year when adults agreed with children that magic existed. Every other time, they refused to even listen to any make-belief talk, but not on the last day of December. Miracles were allowed to happen. Imaginary characters were permitted to exist. Moreover, they were expected to visit!

School break lasted from January 1st to the 14th, and it was the time to have fun, inside or outside, if the weather permitted. Schools and theaters did New Year Carnivals for the kids that invariably included a horovod around the yolka: holding hands, we walked around a twinkling tree in circles, singing songs, and calling upon Frosty to arrive. Usually we were supervised by Snow Maiden, which made sense to me if the tree was out in the open, and a bit confusing if indoors. I wanted to stay true to the fact that Snow Maiden couldn’t last long at room temperature – but perhaps she wore ice packs underneath her fur coat. Summoning Grandpa Frost eventually worked – he would arrive halfway through the performance, not with a “Ho-ho-ho,” but a cheerful roar and a question: “Who’s calling upon me?” “Us!” we would shout back, eyeing his sack and bouncing in excitement. We had to wait for the coveted gifts: first there were word games, then came guessing game ,and sometimes even a few preliminary sports activities. When Frosty ran out of tricks, he’d toss his heavy tote on the floor, and we would crowd around it, trying to peek inside.

Frosty’s gifts didn’t differ much from one year to another: every kid got a paper bag of sweets, nuts, and occasional fruit, usually an apple or an orange. We pretty much knew what we would get, but we still had to peek inside the tote. At home, we all had similar nuts, caramel candy, and apples, but somehow Frosty’s tasted better. The sweet-toothed kids gobbled up the contents of their bags on the way home.

I saved Frosty’s sweets for a long time. Sometimes I kept them for months, hiding them in my dresser or even under my pillow. That way the magic stayed with me longer. Until the summer came, the snow melted, and I could run around the garden barefoot and climb the trees on which the apples were growing and ripening, slowly turning red like the ones in Frosty’s paper tote. Frosty must’ve had a huge apple garden, I mused. He needed a lot of apples for his paper bags.

I loved believing in magic, and I never understood why people couldn’t see it and sometimes deliberately ignored it. My whole city began to look like an enchanted winter wonderland at the end of December. A peculiar quietness settled upon it: maybe it was the special silence that the slowly twirling snow brought down onto the earth, maybe it was the white lacey blanket enveloping the buildings, or the icicles on roofs and windows that reflected the holiday lights, but by New Year’s Eve, every street glistened and glowed – from the garlands stretched overhead to the twinkles of frozen ice patches underneath our boots. It was as if my world was clothed in a diamond mesh, inside which magic could now blossom. I could see it in every snowflake that landed on my arm – a creation so perfect, only magic could do it.

Since those days I always tend to write stories about Frosty’s and Santa’s magic. Click here to read my most recent one in Beat to a Pulp.

Words

I’ve always loved words. Never being a physically strong child, I preferred reading to running and contemplating the power of verbs, nouns, and adjectives to frolicking with my schoolmates. Words could encourage or scare, engage or estrange, make one feel loved or miserable. Words could heal, and words could hurt. Words could empower, and words could destroy. Words could make me live lives I would have never been able to experience otherwise.

Words made me curious. I liked playing with them, stringing them into sentences and rhyming them into poems. Even as a child, I realized Russian was made for poetry, much like Italian. The sounds rhymed effortlessly and fell into an easy cadence. Sometimes when I came across an especially beautifully sentence or a flawless verse, I’d stare at it and re-read it over and over, trying to decipher its mystery. Often I couldn’t quite tell what its secret was – but I could instinctively feel it.

While Russian was the primary language of my childhood, I was also exposed to Tatar, which is very similar to Turkish, and Yiddish which is akin to German. My two best childhood friends spoke Tatar and I picked up bits and pieces of it while we played together. My parents used Yiddish as their code lingo when they didn’t want my brother and me to know something, so I inevitably had to learn what they were hiding. While I never became fluent and can’t converse in either language, the linguistic enlightening periodically dawns on me when I visit foreign lands. In Istanbul, having spotted a store sign “Kitaplar,” I immediately knew it was a bookstore: kitap means book and the suffix —lar made it plural. In a Vienna bistro, I heard a familiar word a young mom admonished her boy with – Essen! It brought back childhood memories. Nicht essen my grandmother used to complain to my parents about my fastidious eating habits. “She doesn’t eat!”

While I love to travel, so can words. Words wander from one language to another and from one dialect to the next, sometimes changing the spelling or shifting their meaning. The German butterbrot (butterbread, or bread with butter) transformed into the Russian – “бутерброд” – a sandwich that could be made with any ingredient such as bologna or cheese. While looking for an air tram on Montmartre, I knew I was heading in the right direction once I saw the sign that read “Funikuler,” which is фуникулёр in Russian. (Interestingly enough, my husband knew the English word funicular, but the different spelling totally threw him off!) The Turkish kaftan – which originated from the Persian خفتان for the cloak buttoned down the front, with full sleeves, reaching to the ankles –  came to describe a loose Russian cardigan worn by men at the beginning of the last century. And on my trip to Jordan, I was absolutely surprised to find out that the name of Petra’s treasury, Al Khazne, was homophonic to the Russian казна – which translates as a tsar’s assets. 

But perhaps the most interesting transformation happened to the German word blatt when it found its way to the Soviet Union. Literally, blatt means paper, a piece of paper, or an official document one needs to produce to prove or receive something. During hard economic times in Russia, food and goods were rationed so that in order to get extras, people needed official papers given either for exceptional achievements or due to personal connections, often improper. Eventually, the word blatt took on the meaning of those special personal connections that got one more than an average citizen could hope for: better food, fancier clothes, access to special stores, and even trips abroad. “They have blatt,” would be said of a family that managed to get a vacation in a fashionable Black Sea resort. If someone suddenly popped up on the top of an apartment waiting list, people would gossip, “He’s got blatt in the Building Department.” At sixteen, I spoke to my parents about a potential medical degree to hear them say, “You can’t get into medical school without blatt.”

The most intense and expansive linguistic effort I ever made was my two-month study for the GRE. I had to learn close to 3,000 words, many of which I’d never heard before or didn’t know their less common meanings. I went through the list diligently, typing the words, definitions, and examples onto index cards. I memorized 50 to 100 words a day, adding them to the collection. Twice a week, I went through the entire stack, shuffling and dealing it like a croupier (a French word that originated from “croupe” or “croup,” means “rider on the croup of a horse”). Some words got burnt into my gray matter, some vanished as if I forgot to press the “save” button, but I vowed to deal my linguistic pack once a month, to keep it as current as I could. The writing power it gave me was too indulging to lose. Words can be addictive. Did you know that?

Menora, Matryoshka, and Me

It seemed I was destined to live in diasporas. In Russia, it was a Jewish diaspora. In New York, it became more of a Russian one. I thought it funny that Americans perceived me as a Russian – perhaps because of my blondish hair. However, in Russia, I looked anything but. Ethnically, I didn’t blend. Amongst Slavonic faces, I stuck out like a sore thumb.

Growing up in my hometown of Kazan, a bicultural mêlée of Russian and Tatar, I looked very different from the Slavic girls in my class. I had a straight nose while theirs were roundish and upturned. My eyes were too big, and my hair back then was black, while their braids were of various shades of blond. If anything, I passed for a Tatar because of my dark mane, even though my eyes weren’t almond-shaped. On the streets, the old grandmas with Asian facial features addressed me by the Tatar’s endearing “kizim” – daughter. My two best childhood friends were Tatars too, so I knew enough vocabulary to be able to answer back. The Jewish community in Kazan was tiny: about 6,000 Ashkenazi in a city with a population over a million. It was barely acknowledged, if at all. In school, we learned about Russian history and traditions, broached some Tatar topics, and never touched upon Judaic subjects. Back then, I felt a very strong connection to my Semitic roots. I feared my nation was becoming extinct, so I wanted to be Jewish with all the good and bad that came with it in a country where my people were not a particularly welcomed ethnic minority. Coming to New York, I looked forward to embracing Judaica.

It didn’t happen. In America, being Jewish meant being of Jewish faith, and raised in a Communist country, I remained a devout atheist. Going through the available Judaic sects – Hasidic, conservative, reformed – I realized I didn’t belong anywhere. And they didn’t recognize me as one of their own either. Being tagged as a Russian, I felt offended. I tried to argue that I was still Jewish even if I didn’t speak a word of Hebrew and didn’t pray, even on high holidays. Eventually, I accepted the fact that I sort of fell somewhere in between the two diasporas – a curious place where a menorah and a Matryoshka met. The Soviet emigration of the end of the last century created a new branch of diaspora and a new nationality: the Russian Jew.

About 10 years ago, I took a train from Manhattan to Brighton Beach, home to New York’s largest Russian community. On the way, I became aware of strange phenomena: my fellow Russian Jews no longer accosted me in their native language! The elderly émigré ladies laboriously pulled their accented English sentences together to ask me for directions instead of stating their questions in the easy Russian chatter. When I answered in their native tongue, they were surprised. I walked into a store – which by the way, sold both the painted wooden dolls and the Chanukah candelabras – and looked at myself in the mirror, wondering what part of me had changed so drastically. I couldn’t tell, but it seemed that I no longer belonged to any diaspora. Yet, I wouldn’t quite call myself an American either.

Luckily, I can always pass for a New Yorker. And I no longer care that I couldn’t find the right ethnic niche, because I found my home. I love and blend into this humongous diverse metropolis, in which any liberal-minded person can easily belong. There are about a half a dozen menorahs and a bunch of Matryoshkas in my mother’s house. There’s one of each in mine. I don’t think I’ve given any of my American friends a menorah for their birthdays, but I’ve certainly given many Matryoshkas, which is why I am now down to only one.

Burning The Images

I didn’t have to do much research when I wrote Inescapable Presence, my first novel – an international suspense set in Russia and New York. My behind-the-Iron-Curtain upbringing gave me enough inspiration and command over the Novosibirsk settings of the late eighties, when food shortages created long lines in supermarkets, and the promised Communist utopia lost its credibility amongst its most fervent supporters.

The memories of Russian winters, as savage as they could be beautiful, were still so vivid in my mind, my fingers and toes were freezing when I wrote about snowstorms, blizzards, and icy paths leading through an old park. The American part wasn’t that hard either – by then I’ve lived in New York for ten years. Since my next two novels were set mostly in Brooklyn, my sources of inspiration lay outside my doors and windows. Sometimes I wandered around searching for a street corner that would look just right for my character to abandon a car. Sometimes I’d be out on a quest for the subway station that would only have one exit onto a dark street. Once I spent a few days trying to discover a good place to dump a body. Not that I ever had to dispose of a corpse, but the villain in my book needed to.

The settings for Death by Scheherezade’s Veil, a bellydancing murder mystery, which delves into Turkish culture and traditions, were inspired by Astoria, a Queens neighborhood across the East River from Manhattan, dubbed the United Nations of New York City for its diverse ethnic populace. A mix of Eastern European, Asian, Greek, Arabic, and everything in between, Astoria offered plenty of Middle Eastern settings, from mosque minarets to hookah bars, and from the Islamic fashion stores to bellydancing nightclubs.

When I wanted an easy trip to the Middle East, I walked a dozen blocks to an area unofficially called Little Egypt where Turkish coffee was strong and silty, baklavas were sweet and nutty, and the store signs were jotted in the cryptic weave. I had to remember to dress modestly and tie up my long unruly hair – out of respect for the locals. It was easy to depict Astoria. What I found harder to deliver, was the mindset and psyche of its inhabitants, which I was trying to explain while maintaining the delicate balance between the old-fashioned concepts of Islamic family and honor, which many people in our modern Western society would find hard to perceive.

Whenever I travel, especially to the Middle East, my favorite destination, it is the people that interest me the most. I want to know what they are thinking and why, what makes them happy or angry, and whether their smiles are genuine or simply polite. I want to know what they consider beautiful versus ugly, courteous versus rude, and right versus wrong. I want to know how different they are from the other cultures I know – or how similar. For me, being able to place my reader inside my character’s mind is vital. While a setting is something I always try to memorize in every detail, it’s people I ponder the most.

Interestingly enough, I’ve never been a picture-snapping tourist; some of my trips landed amazingly few photos. I find the results of my camerawork lacking depth so I prefer to create multi-dimensional images of my own. I would stand on an unpaved street and look around, taking in everything I can, and then close my eyes to burn the imagine in my memory: a mouthwatering aroma of shawarma cooked by a street vendor to the right, a donkey braying on the left, the taste of dust in my mouth, which permeates the air in dry deserty climates, a child climbing a tree and an old grandma sizing me up, trying to figure out whether I may cast an evil eye on her beloved grandchild.

When I am back in my house, curling up in my favorite chair with a cup of tea next to me, this is how I will restore the picture so I can write it: I will close my eyes again and summon the grandma, the boy, and the donkey from my memory – until I can taste the dust, smell the meat, and sense the old woman’s gaze, so palpable I can feel a light chill running down my back...

Lina’s Story: Every Book Holds an Adventure

I read since I was able to recognize letters. I wrote since I was able to join Russian syllables into words. And I traveled since I was old enough to imagine.

I was one of those kids who read a book a day and even more, if my parents forgot to turn the lights off for the night. I read at dinner, covering the book with the tablecloth. I read with a flashlight under the blanket, and I read underneath my school desk while the rest of the class listened to the teacher. I was already ahead of the game, so while my classmates recited the Russian alphabet, I devoured The Adventures of Thomas Sawyer in translation, hiding it beneath my fat ABC hardcover – without the slightest idea that one day I would be able to read the original in English. 
When my grade moved onto three-word sentences, I moved onto The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

To me, the books and adventures were one and the same. Every book held an adventure, a travel to foreign lands, a journey to the alternate universe, a voyage to a magical land that could only exist between the covers worn out from use – and inside my imagination. The best books were always those that kidnapped me entirely and left me nostalgic after ending too soon. The characters with whom I had just flown through time and space, escaped narrow deaths, and discovered life in parallel galaxies, were gone once the story was over. Then I would pick up a pen and think up new adventures for them – all by myself. 

Growing up in an oppressive society caused many fears, but there was one thing that never intimidated me: a blank piece of paper. Winters were long and time was plenty in the cold snowy city of Kazan, four hundred miles northeast of Moscow. Founded by Tatars – the descendants of Mongolians who shared Turkish roots and language, and later conquered by Ivan the Terrible, my city nested in a cultural niche of its own.

A trip from Russia to New York amounted to twenty hours. A journey into the American culture took twenty years. Somehow, somewhere, I realized that besides writing literature and poetry, I also liked writing crime stories. Maybe it was my childhood desire to see evil being punished or maybe it was because my first English books were mysteries. And since many of them finished too soon, I picked up my computer and started typing my own stories in the language I couldn’t quite speak at the time.

My first novel, Inescapable Presence, set partly in Russia and partly in United States, is an international suspense, set in the early nineties during the failed KGB putsch. The second one, Painstalker, a medical and forensic murder mystery, features Dave Higgins, a half-Irish, half-Jewish, Brooklyn NYPD detective, on the search for a deranged lunatic, killing young women for their ovaries. Dave retires and becomes a private investigator in E-Predators, a sequel and a Clockwork Orange-like thriller for the Internet age. In it, Dave must trace a web-based gang of four sociopathic young men who break into one community’s homes. Lastly, Death by Scheherazade’s Veil, is a bellydance mystery set in Astoria, New York, in which Sasha, a young aspiring dancer, and her two friends embark on solving a murder of their beloved bellydance teacher, a crime deeply rooted in the Turkish cultures and traditions.

Where do I get my ideas? I haven’t quite figured that out. I hear voices in my head. They tell me stories. I write them down. Do you? Tell me!