Published: April 07, 2008 11:29 pm            

Getting lost in translation

Trip to Moscow an unforgettable one*

I swallowed deep, bitter mouthfuls of air, scanning the balconies for someone I recognized. Even though I knew only two people in the entire building, both of whom were related to me, the journey should have been a piece of cake. After all, buildings have finite space and hold a finite number of people; therefore, I was positively guaranteed to find anyone easily. Defying that uncharacteristically rational logic, I had yet to spot my parents.

“Well, Nina,” I thought, “You’ve finally done it. You’ve actually managed to get lost in Moscow.”

My parents and I had been in Moscow for about three days when we decided to go to a favorite haunt from an earlier trip, the underground mall adjoining the Kremlin. We loved it for its Internet café, glass skylights and — not least — the delicious ice cream that could be purchased or only 30 rubies, about a dollar.

However, none of these charming attributes were helping me out at present; the fact remained that I had last seen my parents 10 minutes ago, when I had foolishly assured them that I could find them after I returned from the discreetly named water closed, no problem!

In theory, that wasn’t a stupid thing to say: We were the most conservatively dressed people in the entire complex. Our clothing was meant for the practical: walking miles to churches and museums as well as not getting pickpocketed. In contrast, the Muscovites were dressed purely for the aesthetic.

The hordes of impossibly thin, unfairly beautiful girls were dressed in blue jeans and the latest American styles. The men wore black suits and shiny shoes, and the ancient babushkas were resplendent in colorful head scarves and equally ancient dresses.

My father and I were typically Russian in face and build, while my mother could fit any ethnic crowd with ease; regardless, we were the ones wearing walking shoes and utilitarian clothing.

Fifteen minutes had passed now, and all the words on the storefronts were beginning to look the same. Optik! Morojeniya! Peeza! The Cyrillic letters resembled so many pieces of modern art, with lines shooting off in odd directions and curves where no curves should go. Not a single sign said, “Parents of terminally confused Nina Sabak, age 14, can be found here” — even if one did, I was unable to read it.

No, I was confronted instead by informative vodka ads and words that blurred into the crowds. I wanted to sit down somewhere and cry; I knew I had no way of explaining my predicament to anyone in the massive mall. My father was the only member of the family who spoke fluent Russian, and I usually stayed very close to him.

Now, though, I was alone and effectively speechless, the only mute at a Toastmasters meeting. I took a moment to appreciate the relative absurdity of my situation as I passed the ice cream stand on level two, the Sbarro’s on level three, the food court on level one. Who goes to Russia? More importantly, who goes to Russia — that beacon of Western commerce — and gets lost?

Eighteen minutes now, and I could no longer read the faces of the people I passed. Were they unaware of my plight or perfectly aware and choosing the comment on my tennis shows instead? Were they hostile or sad or indifferent? Were my parents angry or despairing, crying over their blini or merely wondering if, after all, they were missing something?

I would not let them down! I would keep striding briskly until, so help me, I could no longer stride! I would rue the day I failed to learn any useful Russian! I would ... I would ... I would see my father, who was waving cheerily from a balcony I had passed a million and a half times (or had I?). I would burst up the escalator, almost laughing with relief that I would not be left to waste away, bitter and silent like the janitors.

“Oh, we wondered where you were,” was his only, mysterious comment.

According to my parents, I merely mixed up the location of our designated meeting spot. According to me, a rip in the space-time continuum appeared on level three, and it was really not my fault at all that I spent over a quarter of an hour absorbing Russian culture the hard way.

Whichever explanation was true, no harm was done, and we frolicked off into the setting sun, a family unit once more. We were not destined to return to the mall often after that, although that’s another story; however, that moderately ill-fated voyage made an impression on me that has yet to fade.

You see, it’s like this: I — 14 years old and a speaker only of English, totally lost and completely confused, panicky and startled — survived.

I didn’t survive a wildebeest or make a do-it-yourself lifejacket or any of a number of far more impressive things. All I did was not give up the search for people who (due to an unfortunate situation with the space-time continuum) were not with me. My irrational fear of crowds was vanquished. My slightly more rational fear of large crowds of people I couldn’t communicate with never really had a chance to develop.

That’s the interesting thing about getting lost; you’re always found at the end, somehow, and you’ve gained a new, objective perspective on your own resiliency.

I’m not suggesting that anyone needs to fly out to Moscow and get hopelessly disoriented in Dyetsky Mir or even slightly off-course near the Lubyanka. (That, in act, is a very bad idea.)

All I had to do was keep walking and thinking things through, no matter how muddled those thoughts got. Even though I felt very, very silly afterward — and still do — I had a new pep talk for myself, and it goes something like this:

“Well, Nina, you finally did it. You actually managed to get lost in Moscow. You actually managed to be just fine.”

        

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