Meet the Muscovites: A Review of “My Perestroika”

By Kelly Raftery

In my lifetime there have been enormous sweeps of history, most notably the Collapse of the Soviet Union, which I wrote about in a previous post. A number of years ago, I used to torture my undergraduate students by pretending that all the work they had done in class was being thrown out and a new teacher would be arriving with an entirely new syllabus and would be assigning them new grades based on completely different material. Once we got through the shouts of “No fair!” and “We will protest!” I asked them to write how that exercise made them feel. Then we started our unit on the end of the Soviet Union. 

How I wish I could have shown them “My Perestroika,” a documentary film about five classmates from Moscow School Number 57, who came of age in the waning days of the Soviet Union. Intimate interviews of each of the film’s subjects trace their histories from idyllic young childhoods to adulthoods in a nation on the cusp of change and to their lives today, over twenty years after the Soviet Union ceased to exist. The film is, at its essence, the sweep of history told through the lives of five people who were childhood friends.

Mikhail Gorbachev, last leader
of the Soviet Union

We are first introduced to Lyudmila (Lyuba) and Boris (Borya) Meyerson and their young son, Mark, in the small Soviet-style apartment where Boris was raised. The Meyersons are both history teachers at the school they attended as children and are thoughtful and philosophical about their own histories in relation to the political change that their country has seen. What is most striking at the start of the film is Lyudmila saying that as child she would watch the news from America, see the shootings, the violence and think to herself, “Oh my God, I am so lucky I live in the Soviet Union!”  You know at this moment that this film is going to make you see the other side in a very real way. 

Boris Yeltsin in an iconic photo during the Moscow Coup.
image by www.kremlin.ru

Boris’s best friend Ruslan was anti-establishment as a young man, forming a punk band, and today is a bohemian musician who lives outside the system, teaching and playing music for cash. Olga, the “prettiest girl in school” had her life turned upside down when the banker she was supposed to marry was killed via car bomb. Olga was left with her young child homeless, jobless, and with no resources. Today she lives with her sister in their childhood home and services automatic vending machine style pool tables for a living. Andrei was the true believer as a child, wanting to be a border guard when he grew up, until he was refused membership in the Community Party (the only way to gain success under the old system) on the grounds that he “might commit a crime” after they admitted him, and that would be bad. It was at that moment that he understood how corrupt and ridiculous the system was. Today, Andrei is the owner of a chain of prestigious clothing shops that sell imported shirts and ties from France. 

While the portraits of the lives lived against a backdrop of dramatic historic events are fascinating, what is more compelling about the film are the home movies and archival footage from the Soviet era that are constantly juxtaposed against the footage of Russia today. The end of the film features modern footage of young Mark Meyerson playing badminton alongside home movies of his father doing the same. The images cut back and forth as the birdie sails across the net in different eras, a game seemingly being played between father and son.

The Soviet footage shows a Moscow devoid of advertising, with limited traffic, whereas Moscow today is awash in billboards and neon, and Olga opines that her dream is to have someone else do the driving for her. Whereas all the children started from essentially the same equally Soviet place, the economic divide of today’s Russia is evident in the apartments shown in the film, from Andrei’s spacious, modern Western-style apartment to the Meyersons’ small but comfortable living room, which also doubles as a bedroom. 

There is so much for Americans to learn from this single simple understated film about the last twenty years in Russia that I cannot recommend it highly enough. Take the time to sit down and watch the fascinating stories of these five people who lived through some of the most dramatic moments of history of the 20^th century, you won’t regret it. 

Watch “My Perestroika” on Netflix, or visit the website at www.myperestroika.com to find out if there will be a screening near you soon.

Bleeding Rouge: Lessons from Cambodian History

By Supriya Savkoor

There are novels that take you to a fictional world you feel you’ve been to, with fictional characters whom you feel you know personally, even wondering what happens to them after you close the book. Then there are novels that you have to read—the ones that plunge you in a time and place that open your eyes to realities so large, you are changed by them.

If you read my post from 2 weeks ago, you know that, for me, a stunning example of such a book is In the Shadow of the Banyan, a somewhat fictionalized version of author Vaddey Ratner’s childhood in Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Books like these make you realize that human history is vastly more bizarre, more tragic, and more perplexing than any plot an author could conceive.

This incredible novel made the Cambodian genocide so real for me, in a kind of “no way could this have really happened” way, I gobbled up all of Ratner’s interviews, as many articles about Cambodian history as I could read, and even watched a couple of documentaries about the country. Heck, I even went online, googled “Cambodian people” to see their faces and find out, a generation later, how they’ve been holding up.

Anne Frank’s diary had been required reading in my eighth-grade English class in Texas. That first time I and my classmates learned about the Jewish Holocaust, we all turned to look at each other in utter disbelief, as though the teacher might have made the whole thing up. I learned a little more about the holocaust in high school, but that was the sum of my education about this facet of history. The takeaway for my young self back then was that, however catastrophic and appalling I understood this act of genocide to have been, it was the type of event that couldn’t happen again, definitely not in these modern times when we humans were supposedly smarter and more civilized than generations past. After all, photos from that era were in black and white, the police and SS uniforms looked like something out of a Charlie Chaplin movie, as did the Führer’s goofy mustache and bizarre Nazi salute, which made him seem more like a caricature than a real person.

Of course, we all know  genocide and other mass atrocities occur all too often—anywhere, anytime. Consider Rwanda, Bosnia, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Libya, and now Syria. And just as often, we tend to avert our eyes and keep ourselves blissfully uninformed. Educators can and should change this, and making Ms. Ratner’s powerful novel required reading in history classes (not just the specialized ones, but the general ones) would be a great first step. No other novel in recent memory so aptly drives home the tragedy of such large-scale injustice—as well as the need for us to harness our collective responsibility and strength to prevent and end them.

A Portable Exhibit: Review of Steve McCurry's "Portraits" for iPad

By Beth Green

The best art exhibition I’ve seen recently fits in my travel purse.

A photo collage tribute to McCurry's "Afghan Girl"
by Flickr user francisshanahan. 

While nothing will replace for me the experience of seeing art in the flesh—of examining a larger-than-life image in a quiet, contemplative atmosphere and the fun of puzzling out what the artist and the curator want me to “get”—I am blown away by the quality and enjoyment factor of the photographs exhibited in the “Portraits” app for iPad, a collection of images of faces and places by National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry.

If you don’t recognize his name—I didn’t—you’re sure to know at least one of his photos shown in this touch-screen gallery visit: “Afghan Girl,” the 1984 portrait of a green-eyed Pashtun refugee. It was on the front cover of National Geographic magazine in June, 1985, and is likely the magazine’s best recognized image. Many people liken the photo’s intensity to that of the “Mona Lisa.”

Swiping through the 100 images collected in the app, it’s clear that the intensity in “Afghan Girl” is one of McCurry’s signatures. Traveling the world for National Geographic—you can search the app for photos from different countries by tapping a map and browse receipts and scrapbook-worthy tidbits of his travels in another section—McCurry has captured the profundity of people’s life experiences again and again. Elderly believers in France hoping for a miracle cure in Lourdes. A little girl pounding grain in Niger.  An eleven-year-old bare-chested gold miner in the Philippines. In his frank images, the viewer can interpret the stories of whole lives.

In the integrated 23-minute video narrated by McCurry, he says that he chooses his subjects for the depth of expression on their faces. While he’s walking on the street and browsing crowds for potential people to approach with his request for a portrait, he looks for the “intrinsic story written on their face,” he tells us in the video. I was surprised that McCurry says most of his portraits are taken in just five minutes; since he tends to find people who are busy or on their way to another place, he doesn’t want to ask for too much of their time.

Some of the people featured are ones we know are busy: activist Aung San Suu Kyi, actor Robert De Niro, and author Paul Theroux. But most of the portraits are of humble, everyday people, featured in their workday clothes, going about their business. There’s the Tibetan woman by a fighter jet in Lhasa, 2000; an engineer with clasped hands in Kashmir; a woman selling paintings from her car in Italy; Dubliners waiting for a bus.

After I get past the intensity of the eyes in these pictures, the next element that draws me in is the sense of place from the photos; the feeling of anticipation, of guessing what scenes are beyond the borders of the portrait. The woman practicing her cello in the mirror in France—is she about to give a performance, in her red jacket? Does the boy at the door in Mauritania invite McCurry to go inside, or is he too shy? Why is the Burmese woman, with her neck elongated by rings, laughing?

It’s amazing that, in the short amount of time McCurry says he is able to capture these street-side images, he’s able to harness the light in such a way that each one looks like a studio portrait. In the app’s video, he cites Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Caravaggio as his inspiration. What would these painters have done with a camera, I wonder? Probably something similar to what McCurry does.

The app is available on iTunes, and, at time of writing, is free to download. For non-iPad-toting readers, many of McCurry’s excellent travel photos can be seen on his blog and on his Facebook page.

Kemal Kayankaya—Frankfurt’s Wise-Cracking Turkish-German Detective

By Heidi Noroozy

In the 1960s, with economic recovery from the devastation of World War II well underway, West Germany found itself with a booming economy and a shortage of labor for its growing manufacturing, construction, and mining industries. A guest worker treaty with Turkey solved the problem, and soon young Turks were filling the labor gap. The arrangement was meant to be temporary, at least initially, with each guest worker returning to Turkey after two years. This policy had advantages for both nations: Germany gained a much-needed workforce without having to integrate a distinctly alien cultural and religious minority into its society. Turkey would be guaranteed a generation of highly skilled workers when its citizens returned home—a great boon to its own economy.

But things didn’t turn out that way. Many Turks chose to remain in Germany and raise families, even if they remained on the fringes of society. Because these workers were classified as “migrants” and not “immigrants,” and since their children born on German soil did not automatically receive German citizenship, the country became home to an entire generation (or two) of residents who were neither entirely German nor fully Turkish. It is not a situation conducive to intercultural harmony.

Against this historical background, German crime novelist Jakob Arjouni has created one of the most memorable characters in the mystery genre. Private Investigator Kemal Kayankaya is the son of Turkish migrant workers and was orphaned at a young age. Adopted by a German couple, he grew up in Frankfurt, speaks flawless German with a Hessian accent and not a word of Turkish. He’s an avid fan of the Gladbach soccer club, and he eats pickled herring with his breakfast coffee, yet none of these German attributes save him from relentless prejudice and stereotyping. Faced with his dark skin and Turkish features, people constantly mistake him for the garbage collector, street vendor, and even undocumented immigrant. Never mind that, unlike most of his Turkish-German compatriots, he’s in possession of a rare treasure: a German passport.

In a series of five hardboiled detective novels published over the course of nearly 30 years (from 1985 to 2012), Arjouni holds up a mirror to German society. Like the best heroes of the genre, Kayankaya is a relentless champion of the downtrodden and dispossessed. He’s fearless and dogged, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking lone wolf with his own set of moral standards. However, Kayankaya’s ethnicity and the intercultural battles he faces add a whole new subtext to the classic PI tale.

His cases take him through the seediest parts of Frankfurt: dark alleys, brothels, and strip clubs with their pimps, prostitutes, gangsters, corrupt cops, and government officials on the take. The novels explore themes of social marginalization, racism, and unequal distribution of justice, sometimes set against the backdrop of larger historical events, such as the breakup of Yugoslavia. Other themes are xenophobia and police corruption (Happy Birthday, Türke!/Happy Birthday, Turk!), eco-terrorism and political culpability (Mehr Bier/More Beer), immigration fraud and the illegal sex trade (Ein Man, Ein Mord/One Man, One Murder, which won the 1992 German Crime Fiction Prize), racketeering and the lingering effects of the brutal Balkan wars (Kismet), and religious intolerance (Bruder Kemal/Brother Kemal).

Kayankaya’s tough-guy image is tempered by his vulnerability. His Achilles heel is his ethnicity, and even his German citizenship doesn’t offer much security when corrupt officials rob him of his ID and toss him in a cell with a group of illegals slated for deportation. In violent confrontations with the bad guys, he often ends up in worse shape that his opponents, but when it comes to battling the daily humiliation of prejudice, no one is a match for his acerbic and often cynical wit. His great talent is to twist hurtful attitudes and toss them back at an adversary in a way that makes the other person look like a fool. Take this exchange in a scene from Ein Man, Ein Mord, where the detective tries to enlist the help of an immigration official to find the missing Thai woman he’s been hired to locate. The official won’t be deterred from her mistaken assumption that Citizen Kayankaya has come to renew his residency permit. She asks him his name. 

 

“Kemal Kayankaya.”

“Spelling?”

“Pretty good. But I do have some trouble with those foreign words.”

With the series spanning several decades, Arjouni allows his protagonist to age in real time. The first book, Happy Birthday, Türke (1985), opens on Kayankaya’s 26^th birthday, which he celebrates alone in his office until a client shows up and he shares a piece of cake with her. In 2012’s Bruder Kemal, Kayankaya is 53 and his life has become a great deal more stable. He’s in a steady relationship, has cut way back on his drinking, and even has his own website. Kayankaya’s transformation reflects changes in Germany’s attitude toward its Turkish community. When he took on his first case in the mid-1980s, a Turkish-born German citizen was almost unheard of. Today, according to one statistic, nearly two-thirds of German Turks hold German passports, thanks to immigration reforms in recent years. But just as they do in real life, prejudices die hard in Kayakaya’s fictional world, and the detective, who claims to have never seen the inside of a mosque, finds himself mistaken for an Islamic terrorist.

Jakob Arjouni’s cross-cultural detective series is destined to remain at 5 books. Sadly, the 48-year-old author died earlier this year after losing a battle with pancreatic cancer. Although I read the series in the original German, the first four books are available in English, and the translation of Bruder Kemal is slated for U.S. publication in September 2013. I am pleased to see these stories reach an international audience, for while Arjouni intended to hold up a mirror to his native Germany, the themes he explores are universal problems that plague societies around the world, and many of us may see our own faces reflected in Kemal Kayankaya’s Turkish eyes.

Off The Beaten Track: The Northernmost Town in Iceland

Photo by Omar Oskarsson

Our guest this week, Ragnar Jónasson, is an Icelandic writer of crime novels set in and around the northernmost town of Iceland, Siglufjordur. The series is published in Iceland and Germany, and the TV rights to the series were recently sold, with scriptwriting set to commence this year. The books are not yet available in English, but Ragnar’s short story “Death of a Sunflower” will be published in the September/October 2013 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. See more at Ragnar’s website: www.ragnarjonasson.com.

Yes, I’ve heard of Cabot Cove; I was in fact a big fan of the Jessica Fletcher series when I was around 12 years old and doing my first bit of crime writing (handwritten, in a notebook only shown to my family). And we all know that Cabot Cove had suspiciously many murders for such a small town. So why would I select a very small town—with only about 1,200 inhabitants—as the setting for my Icelandic crime novel Snjóblinda? (The title literally means Snow blindness; the 2011 German edition is called Schneebraut, meaning Snowbride).

Photo by Jonas Ragnarsson

The town is called Siglufjörður and is the northernmost town in Iceland. Iceland is pretty far up north, so you can imagine that this place can be rather cold, dark, and snowy in wintertime—which is one of the reasons why I picked it. The novel is mainly set in January, when it usually snows quite a lot and the sun is hidden away, behind the mountains. Actually the town has no sunlight from November 15th until January 28th. So, I already had some ingredients for a crime novel in terms of the dark and mysterious setting.

Despite its relatively small population, Siglufjörður is also one of the best known towns in Iceland. It used to be the center of herring fishing in Iceland in the twentieth century, and during that era the population rose dramatically. Then the herring more or less disappeared from Icelandic waters in the late 1960s, but recently things have picked up again, in part due to a considerable increase in tourism.

Photo by Jonas Ragnarsson

OK, so it’s a dark place (in wintertime), with quite a history—but it is also very secluded. Until 1967, it was only accessible by sea or by a mountain road, which was closed during most of the year. In 1967 a mountain tunnel was opened, making the town accessible (nearly) all year round and a few years ago, a second tunnel was opened. So I thought that I could hardly pick a better place to set a crime story than a small town surrounded by mountains and the cold sea….

On a more personal note, this town was home to my grandparents—and the place where my father grew up. After his retirement, in his eighties, my grandfather (and my namesake) wrote a series of books on the history of Siglufjörður—and so I liked the idea of writing about the same place, although with a very different approach. I have visited Siglufjörður so many times that I’ve long ago lost count, but there is something very charming about staying there. Total peace and quiet, the fresh mountain air combined with the salty smell of the sea.

Photo by Jonas Ragnarsson

As I said, it’s very dark there in the wintertime, but being so far up north, the sun almost never sets during high summer! And to make a long story short, I have stuck with the place for two more books in the series, one of them set during those long and bright days of summer.

However, being wary of the Cabot Cove issue, I’ve made sure that only one murder is actually committed in Siglufjörður in all three books—and that happened in the first one. In the next two novels, the murders have taken place in the vicinity of Siglufjörður, keeping my fictional local policeman busy without having to murder too many people in this lovely town.

Photo by Jonas Ragnarsson

Photo by Jonas Ragnarsson

From Head to Head

By Patricia Winton

One of the interesting minor facets of Italian life is watching the diverse hats and caps worn by members of the many branches of the military. I’m in no way an expert on the subject, but I enjoy looking at the often jaunty headdress of the military people I encounter on public transportation, in the street, and especially in parades.

Venetian Military Band Trumpeter

Many branches sport elaborate dress hats for formal occasions but opt for simple berets for everyday use. These berets carry insignia for the service branch, and often of the regiment. In addition, the color of the beret can indicate to the conescienti, of whom I am not one, just which unit the person hails from.

The wearer of the everyday beret usually cocks it over one ear. A short ribbon often trails from the rear, floating in the breeze or bobbing in step.

Some groups which you might not automatically think of as military include the Forest Service and the Red Cross Volunteer Nursing Corps. They wear uniforms, put on distinctive headgear, and march in military parades.

A sample of berets from various services include, top row: Medico, (medic), Guardia di Finanza (tax police), Polizia Penitenziara (prison police), bottom row, Lagunari (marines), Paracadutista (parachutists), Corpo Forestale (forestry service)

Soldiers representing the various branches of the military based in the Alpine region wear distinctive headgear that makes their region immediately recognizable. Left, Alpine Marshall; center, Alpine Engineer; right, Alpine Guardia di Finanza

 Women usually wear the same berets as men, but for formal occasions, they have their own hats. Pictured above are for women Caribinieri, sailors, and tax police.

Some formal headgear reveal pomp and whimsy at the same time. The man on the left is a member of the Corazzieri, the honor guard for the President of the Republic. Other notable formal hats include, top, Granatiere di Sardegna, (Sardnian grenadier); center, Bersaglieri (sharpshooters); bottom, Carabinieri (military police that police both civilian and military populations).

No look at military head coverings in Italy would be complete without a peek at the Vatican’s Swiss Guard. Like other soldiers in this country, they wear plain berets at times. At others they envelop their heads in helmets crafted from a 500-year-old design.

Finally, a random sampling of other headgear worn by a variety of Italian military  personnel.

I blog on alternate Thursdays at Italian Intrigues . I hope you'll drop by often. Also, please visit my website at www.PatriciaWinton.com .

Georgian Folk Costumes

By Edith McClintock

Below are historical drawings of Georgian folk costumes (with hats) grouped by ethnicity, region and class, followed by current versions of folk costumes from a Georgian youth dance festival I attended a few years ago. Can you sort out what region the Georgian youth folk dancers are from based on their costumes? There is one male costume that is similar to all three regions. Do you see it?

It dates from the Middle Ages and is called a chokha. It's calf-length with a tapered waist and bandoliers (shoulder-belts with loops or pockets for cartridges) sewn across the breast. Accessories typically include a hat (which can be felt or shaggy--see my friend wearing a shaggy tourist version at the very end), tall leather boots, and a belt that holds a dagger called a khanjali.

East Georgians: Kartlian peasant, townsman-craftsman, townsman-merchant, upper class Kartl-Kakhetians and Ingilos

Ethnographic Drawings by Nino Brailashvili, 1930s-1980s

West Georgians: Megrel-Gurians, Imeretians and Acharians

Ethnographic Drawings by Nino Brailashvili, 1930s-1980s

Georgian Highlanders: Tush, Khevsurs, Svans and Rachians

Ethnographic Drawings by Nino Brailashvili, 1930s-1980s

Georgian youth folk dancers:

Tourist versions of headgear from the Georgian Highlands:

Dance version of chokha with shaggy fur hat:

For more, visit my author website and/or personal blog, A Wandering Tale. Even better, order a copy of Monkey Love & Murder on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or the Book Depository (free shipping nearly anywhere in the world).