Leaving Belarus
After the dig and time languishing in Minsk while Walt took care of some “personal business,” the day finally came for us to leave Belarus. My time in Belarus had been tough. I was pooped from traveling, my indulgent year in Spain had taken its toll, and I missed my ex. The conditions were tolerable but not what I was used to. Our excavation team was comprised of Walt; me; two other female American college students; half a dozen Belarussian college students; a Belarussian archaeologist who used to sneak cigarettes beneath the pines behind the schoolhouse in which we slept; Oleg, another archaeologist; his young son, Gleb (which means “bread” in Russian); and various others. We all lived in the school, sleeping on the worn wooden floorboards.
There was no running water so, yea, we retrieved our mildly radioactive water from the well, swam when it wasn’t too chilly in the cedar-tinted waters of the Pripyats river, and hurriedly “visited” the buggy outhouse behind the school, that is until the local drunks knocked down part of its wall.
Back in Minsk, excitedly on the cusp of getting home after a year abroad, we apparently had to wait for Walt to take care of business we somehow all thought had less to do with academics or archaeology or cultural exchange than with women and sex.
At the airport that August morning, I spent the last of my rubles on some bootlegged pop albums, one a pretty brilliant Bjork remix that I still enjoy. We passed along through customs and I was stopped. Walt, Alyssa, and Emily proceeded without me until the girls realized I was having some real trouble.
I didn’t see Walt ever again after he passed me in that customs line. Alyssa turned back, surmised that I was in trouble, and called ahead to Walt, asking that he return to see what was happening. He didn’t. Through Alyssa, he passed me the equivalent of $5USD. They were gone.
I pause right now to comment that the last time I told this story was at a pizza/birthday luncheon with some former colleagues at the think tank. The think tank I worked at for a year and a half specialized in human migration. Illegal or, as we said there so to de-stigmatize the concept, “unauthorized” immigration is a sizzling topic in U.S. politics these days. That particular day we were at the California Pizza Kitchen, enjoying a much-needed break of more than ten minutes from the office.
The issue of “the unauthorized” immigrant population came up. Discussion of going places without a visa naturally followed. I chirped, “I was nearly arrested in Belarus for overstaying my visa.” Normally, I’m not so forthcoming with “work friends”; I must have been bored with the conversation or frustrated by the fact that during our breaks we talk about precisely the same things that we do while confined in the office. Maybe I wanted to change the course of the conversation or talk or get some attention. Regardless, that’s how I normally bring up the topic. It’s kind of funny and certainly good cocktail party fare.
Yes, so I was taken away by two burly men in Siberian camouflage (white, gray, and black) because I had overstayed my visa and was thus barred from leaving the country. Is this the opposite of what happens in the United States? If you overstay your visa here and get caught doing something wrong, you get kicked out, right? They (CIS, the former INS or is it ICE?; the DHS acronyms befuddle me) don’t keep you but try to get rid of you. Not so, apparently, in Belarus, seen by some as a puppet regime of Russia’s Putin or Medvedev, Lukashenko at its helm.
The camouflaged airport bouncers led me into a room that seemed to be the airport police’s headquarters or something along those lines. I sat still on a stiff wooden bench. After awhile, a man dressed in “civilian” clothes entered the room and sat to my right.
He spoke to me in German. I realized that they had no one at the airport who could speak English and they must have mustered this man up from somewhere. I don’t know how we communicated but we did, me, primarily through my tears.
He told me I was in a lot of trouble and that I had broken the law. I would need to write and sign a confession (I kid you not!) and then I would be sent back to Minsk (the airport was about 30 kilometers from the city center).
The police handed me a blank sheet of paper. I could have written any sort of nonsense but, being the typically chaste daughter of two respectable Pennsylvanian school teachers, I did as I was told and wrote that I had inadvertently overstayed my visa and that I was very sorry.
Once this was finished, I continued to cry. I wonder if I would do the same now. That’s an open question. I fished Max’s phone number out of my bag. Max was the younger brother of Alecia, a woman who had accompanied us on our dig in the countryside.
Max himself hadn’t gone on the dig that summer but he’d been kind enough to show us (me and the two other U.S. college girls) around Minsk both before and after the dig. He was studying archaeology himself, much like his sister and their father who was a professor of archaeology at the state-run university in Minsk.
I had Max’s email and mailing address as we had enjoyed each other’s company during our visit and had promised to stay in touch. As I retrieved Max’s number, the man who spoke German to me noticed what I was doing and peered at the small, already worn slip of paper.
He asked, “Was ist das? [What is that?]” I told him it’s the contact information of my friend, Max, in Minsk. He looked more closely and joyfully proclaimed, “Ich Kenne diesen Mann! Er ist mein Vetter! [I know this man! He is my cousin!]”
I was shocked. My lips broke into a smile. Was this true? Could this be? I didn’t know what to do.
The man said he would call Max and his family and tell them what had happened to me. But first, he needed to finish his shift. I had very little up my sleeve in terms of options so I followed him to the airport’s little café and had some grainy yet forceful Turkish coffee and a stale sandwich.
The man who spoke German to me worked at the airport, doing something with tickets, I’m not sure I ever really knew what he did.
After a few hours, I had calmed down and resolved to face my fate. The man called Max and Alecia and told me that he would take me to them in a few hours.
Alecia was at work and couldn’t get to the designated stop along side the road for a bit. First, said the man who was looking more and more by the minute to be my savoir, we would go and get his car and pass the time at an Austrian truckers’ bar.
Yes! An Austrian truckers’ bar. Didn’t know such a thing existed? Well, think again, my friends. We exited the airport and headed into the parking lot toward his car. I followed his lead.
As we got close to the car, he told me to duck behind it, quickly. It was a Soviet-era Lado or something similarly tinny looking. The police were patrolling the parking lot and apparently, the man did not have the proper plates for his car.
After the police moved on, we got into the car. On the passenger’s seat, again I kid you not and all stereotypes aside, there was a big bottle of vodka. The man sensed that I had paused, spotted the bottle, and gingerly tossed it into the back seat as if it were a stray magazine or extra pair of gloves thoughtlessly left on the seat.
Off we drove, in a very choppy manner, to the Austrian truckers’ bar. Many readers may be stunned at this point. Perhaps you think you won’t keep reading; how stupid could I be to get into a car with a man I didn’t know. A man ducking and hiding from the police. A man with a hefty bottle of vodka on the front seat. I felt, in my own defense, that I had little choice. I had next to nothing in terms of money, didn’t know the language, and felt defeated. I had excitedly anticipated my trip home after close to 12 months away.
Looking back, I should have tried to head back to Minsk and Max and his family on my own. If I had, however, I won’t have gone to an Austrian truckers’ bar and you wouldn’t be chuckling at my stupidity.
These ideas sputtered through my mind, I admit, while this was all happening. What if this man wanted to rape me or kill me or abduct me? I had come to the comfortable conclusion that if he tried any of the above, I would throw myself out of the moving car and tumble along the roadside, red pack or not.
But nothing shady happened. After a trio of beers with the bearded bikers, we cruised the highway a bit longer and I spotted Alecia’s bright blonde hair blowing in the breeze like the standard of an army coming to reinforce my dwindling, wounded troops.
Max was there, too. He bought me a banana, a luxury in Belarus, to make me feel better and he had braided some lanky weeds together into a pretty pattern; I kept this token with me until it splintered to nothing several years later.
We thanked the man and I headed off with Alecia and Max back to the one-bedroom flat they shared with their parents.
As we returned to the flat, Alecia’s mom, a pediatrician, embraced me. She couldn’t speak English and I couldn’t speak her language but in the warm, full clasp of her arms, she communicated a heap of motherly love. It transcendent.
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