A Trip to Kazan State University

The morning light woke me and despite the sweat pooled around my neck, I lay in bed with that satisfied feeling of being “somewhere else” before it has simply become here. I could make out patterns of laundry hanging on the balcony and wondered when Aygul would wake up. I was expected at the university at 9:00am and she expected to take me. I tried putting the conditioner in different positions to no improved end. It was disgustingly hot and there was nothing I could do about it but suffer. This was the difference between American and post-Soviet life, I thought. In America we do everything to soothe and comfort the body, to create conditions so that it’s stable and not crying out about physical conditions to our cognitive distraction. If this kind of heat wave hit a typically temperate American clime we the industrious and entitled people of America would go out and buy air conditioners en masse. If we couldn’t afford them we would put them on credit cards. But we wouldn’t choose to suffer. Worst case scenario, we would walk through the Walmart shelves packed with $10 fans from China and buy multiple versions to put in the windows, point at different angles, create cross breezes with. If my mother were hosting a student from abroad she’d surely buy an additional fan, not give the only one in the house to the student and suffer without one herself as Aygul had opted to do. Was this a problem of economics or culture? Were air conditioners and fans sold out across the country? And if so, why hadn’t more been flown in from China? Was Aygul opting to suffer or unable to afford a life without suffering? How much could an air conditioner really cost? And how is it not worth buying one at any price when these sweltering nights have continued for 2 months without a sign of breaking? I couldn’t wrap my head around it and apparently drifted back to sleep.

I re-awoke to Aygul standing over the bed looking at me in a small robe opened to fully reveal her bra and underwear. “Hot isn’t it. What a nightmare,” she said, “I slept on the floor because it was too terrible on the couch.” I rubbed my eyes. Was this a passive aggressive way to reclaim her bed and/or bedroom? I couldn’t tell but stumbled out to the bathroom to shower regardless. In the shower I found a creepy old baby doll naked amidst the shampoo that I tried to ignore and finally rationalized away that maybe Aygul’s daughter had a child who came to visit occasionally.

baby doll in the shower

Once clothed in the most ephemeral dress I own I sat down to breakfast. Aygul appeared still in her underwear revealing ensemble and cried out that I had dressed too soon. “Take your dress off!” She made a motion as if she were about to do it for me herself, “There is no man here. Be comfortable.” Yes, no man, but comfortable is culturally defined and I could not imagine being comfortable sitting at the breakfast table with a recent acquaintance in our underwear. “I’m fine, no need.” I said and ignored her protests. She was further insulted by my insistence that I only wanted cereal for breakfast. I ceded her a handful of grapes and more jam in my tea and the revelation that my mother too was a nurse like her and my father too had a garden like hers, which made her quite happy.

We left the house around 8:30 and Aygul had me lock the doors and gates myself for practice. The streets were dusty and the breeze was warm as people made their way from their blocs to work. Every time we crossed a street she grabbed my wrist like I were a child in need of protecting. This was slightly endearing at first but increasingly seemed pathological. Who was this woman who opened her home full of creepy children’s toys from the 80s to students? What was she after? Was she lonely? Was she a lesbian? Did she want her daughter back in a way that infantilizing language students satisfied? I hated to be rude, ungrateful but the denial of my independence was beginning to chafe. Oh dear, this is only day 2, I thought, what does this look like on Day 32? Will I have turned into a monstrous brat who refuses communication beyond necessity, a sullen teenager who shuts herself in her room and takes all of her meals outside the home? She dragged me onto the bus by my wrist, sat me in the last seat and paid for my 15 ruble ticket.

The ride was hot with few aesthetic attractions. Crossing the Kazanka with its beds dry and only a thin stream left in the center, I saw this beautiful palace of ornate brick. “What’s that?” I exclaimed to Aygul. “A private home” she said. “No, that!” I said pointing again at the multi-tiered palace that had to be a city attraction. “Yes, a private home” she nodded and then turned and whispered in my ear: “Oligarchs.” “Oh” my eyes lit up and I whispered back, “Are oligarchs and the government the same?” Aygul nodded in silence.

Eventually we came to an unimpressive stop with a few shops around it and departed the bus. All in all it must have taken nearly an hour from the bloc. Realism, I reminded myself yet again. We climbed up to a tall brutalist building and Aygul explained that this was where her daughter had studied, in the philology institute of the university. She’d studied English and Spanish in addition to Russian and Tatar and had been to America on a program Aygul tried to explain that improbably involved working and studying in Virginia. She led me down a winding path to a small park with a statue of Lenin, KSU’s most famous alumnus, encircled by benches. “The university students call this the skillet” she explained, “If someone tells you to meet them in the skillet come here.” Vera then came out to meet us, tall, dark haired with big features in a pretty dress she told her mother she’d just bought the day before. She took up her mother’s cause in leading me into the bowels of the institution and delivered me up to the room for international students.

No post-Soviet experience is complete without entering the office of a small balding man who shuffles his papers around and claims that he can’t help you. Luckily for me Mr. Azhat Arzlanovich fulfilled this important role for me on my first day at the university. He was at first too busy to see me and sat me in a corner. A wave of thin, young beautiful Tatar women walked in and out of the office each dressed more elegantly than the one before. And finally, Mr Azhat Arzlanovich appeared with his papers, “One moment” he looked vexed if not full on worried, “One moment.” He sat me down with his papers and read from them as if it were the first time he was seeing them. “Leslie Hok, 30 hours per week, individual courses for 10 weeks.” “Right,” I smiled. “You are sure you want to take 30 hours of courses per week.” “Yes,” I said. “And for 10 weeks?” “Yes” “One moment,” he said and left me again. He came back and said, “Ok, so good news! There is a group class that just started last week and will go until the end of August. You will join them, good?” “No,” I looked at him bewildered. “Why no?” “Because I am here for individual courses. You just read that from the sheet.” “But the group class is better. 30 hours per week is too much.” “But I paid for 30 hours per week of individual courses,” I insisted. “Yes, yes, but that may not be possible” he shook his head and wiped his brow. And I should not be too hard on Mr Azhat Arzlanovich because the next piece of news that he had for me, that is, after telling me that my teacher who may or may not be able to oversee my 30 hours of coursework per week was in her village today and would not see me until tomorrow, was that it was in fact possible to get a research visa through Kazan State University for the remainder of my stay in the region, for a not completely insubstantial fee of $600. He gave me the application forms for affiliation with KSU and there I sat for the next hour pushing through them, stopping only to send a pleading email to professors to write a short recommendation on my behalf, and when I was introduced to another American who entered the room. This was Kai, a Hawaiian who’d studied Russian in Kazan for an entire year and had since returned as the ACCELS program coordinator for Americans studying in Kazan on US government issued grants. Cute, young, tanned with a wedding ring almost definitely indicating his marriage to a Tatar girl, Kai informed me that the last round of American students on the Critical Language program, many of whom a friend in Moscow had reported seeing out in a bar dancing on tables during her trip to Kazan the week prior, had left two days ago. Translation: no fling with a hot marine in my immediate future. I was disappointed by the news, but reminded myself once again that I’m here to live the Russian life and can pause my expat dalliances for the year or at least reserve them for emergency trips to Moscow every few months. I completed my application and left Mr Azhat Arzlanovich’s office as he still shook his head saying that 30 hours a week of individual coursework was just going to be impossible. So then don’t offer it as an option on your website!

Wandering out of the building I headed through the heat in the direction of the Kazan Kremlin hoping to find a place to buy a SIM card on the way. The trip was unsuccessful in the latter sense but I did get to peep through the Kremlin and see its famous mosque and church from a distance.

the Kazan Kremlin

the plight of the Tatars??

the mosque inside the Kremlin (reminder "Kremlin" means fortress)

National Museum in Kazan

Heading back I tried to take a scenic route that ended with construction and perhaps biased by the heat I concluded that Kazan was indeed the Kutaisi of Russia. For those of you who have no experience with Kutaisi, please look back through my old emails as I described the tedious existence I led amidst the bleak architecture of Georgia’s second city, or well if you count Batumi, third. Only this time I’m not living in a gangster’s house funded by an OSCE salary!

I did procure the SIM card and made it back to the apartment ready to enjoy some time on my own before Aygul arrived home from work. Instead she opened the door in her underwear and immediately forced food on me. I annoyed her to no end by eating only pickles and some cheese and then sat down at my computer to do “work,” i.e. start writing this blog. The work concept seemed to stave off her advances for awhile. Eventually I submitted to her passive aggressively prancing in front of my door and agreed to go to the supermarket with her. She gave me a quick tour of the neighborhood. Bleak, hot, row after unexceptional row of insect hive complexes passed as far as the eye could see along with a few bus stops for getting out in the morning.

more of my neighborhood

The supermarket or hyper-market as they’re now often called in this part of the world when they offer more than one type of cheese and sausage, was sprawling. I wanted the things I really treasure in non-American form: yogurt, cherry juice, rye crackers and while Aygul allowed me to put them in the cart she was not pleased with my purchases, which made it even more awkward when I went to pay and she insisted that I was not allowed. My food was full of chemicals and unnecessary but *she* was going to buy it for me anyway. I cringed as she put down her paper rubles and then pulled out an old sour cream package that she was using as her coin purse to give the cashier exact change.

a scene from the hyper-market

While the trip was uneventful along the way I found out interesting information about Aygul’s life. She had in fact been married to Vera’s husband. He was a Russian and had died twelve years ago when Vera was 14 of an “insult” which she tried to describe as something sudden but not a heart attack that affects the heart and the brain. My dictionary did not have the term but I’ve since reasoned out that it must have been a stroke. She then went on to say that she was much happier without a man and had no intention to marry again. You don’t say.

After yet another awkward meal together, we watched the news. I asked if she liked Medvedev. She shrugged. He has nothing to do with me. “Putin?” “The same. They’re all the same. They do what they do and it never affects my life.” “What about local government?” “Oligarchs,” she said, “they have all the money. They spend all the money on themselves. They have nothing for me. I have nothing to do with them. They don’t obey the laws. But it’s not my problem.” We continued watching the national news so that I could hear the latest on the smog in Moscow. This was I think the first time that I’d sat down to watch a Russian news program from start to finish and it was beyond inane. It began with a human interest story about a 2 month old baby girl left by her mother in the sun and rescued by police. Most of the shots were of the baby being held by various pretty nurses and a female police officer with a professional opinion from a male doctor. This took up the first 7 minutes of the news despite the fires raging across the country and the smog choking the capital. The next story was about Medvedev’s uneventful trip to Dagestan. Then finally the fires got some coverage but only to praise the response of the authorities who, I shit you not, were shown flying a helicopter with a large bucket trailing off of its tail, lowering the bucket into a lake beside swimming children and then flying over a fire and releasing the bucket. They then went on to talk about the astronomical levels of volunteerism that have burgeoned in response to the fires, showing a lady in South Ossetia who had opened her home to refugees from Voronezh, flipping to a call center where young attractive volunteers were sitting at computers fielding pledges of aid from concerned citizens and then finally going to a bank where the anchorwoman herself was donating cash to the relief efforts through a plastic window. The next report was of the smog. It included a public service announcement demonstrating what the ash particles will do in your lungs through a very graphic visual and for some reason showed an “experiment” with white rats carried out by a bespectacled man in a lab coat who gave results I did not understand. Finally, they warned people to wear their masks and surprise surprise congratulated the government on its quick response. On that grim note, I’m off to bed.