“Yes, I looked at them but didn’t get time to take notes,” I moaned in annoyance. “For all I know they could have been fake.”
“Did they read ‘Militia’ or ‘F.S.B.?” she continued to push for details.
“F.S.B., why?” I answered.
“Well, because F.S.B. is not the local police that would investigate a man for hitting his wife or a fight at the bar or a stolen car or arrest hooligans at the train station. The F.S.B. are the officers that only go after spies from other countries and make sure spies aren’t in our own country. I can’t imagine that they would pursue someone not paying local property taxes on a little room. It doesn’t sound right. You should report this to the local militia office. It’s very irregular,” she cautioned me.
“And what good would that do when I am a foreigner? Maybe they came to make sure that I am not a spy. Did you think about that, Raiya? I was getting very weary of her talking and decided to go for an evening walk to clear my head and get away from her. I got up to put on my coat and hat.
“You are going to go out? What if they are watching you still?” she was more paranoid than I was.
“Then they will watch me take a walk! I’m not going to call anybody or pass secrets. I’m just going for a walk,” I said defiantly.
“If I was you I would stay indoors until tomorrow and do your normal things. They won’t just go away. I can bet you somebody is outside now watching the doors, smoking a cigarette under a tree or sitting in a car with the lights off,” she was serious.
I put my hat and coat back on the rack and sat at the table opposite her and listened.
“When the Chechens started the fighting last year, the FSB was watching all the different Muslim men in the city. My brother was harassed almost every day. They searched him every day, questioned him about where he was going every day. Followed him and searched his house when he was at work. They had a guy watching him all the time so they knew when they could go into house and when he was home. It was horrible. So, he went to Kazan and left his wife and kids here in Nizhniy for a few months until the harassment stopped. They didn’t trust the Tatars because of what the Chechens did. Tatars are good Soviets too, we are just Muslims by heritage, but nobody seemed to care. Natasha even has a medal from the Red Army for her service in the great patriotic war against the Nazis, but you saw how that officer treated babushka. It’s not fair what they do to us after our men died next to theirs in the war.” Raiya had a deeper story than I had ever suspected.
“What did babushka do doing the war to earn a medal?” I asked in sincere curiosity, having calmed down again.
“She worked in the uniform and boot factory for the entire war. Her fiancé volunteered after the first invasion by the fascists and she volunteered in the uniform and boot factory because she couldn’t go with him of course. Only the men could serve in the ranks. She was an overseer of a huge work group in the factory until it was all over. For that they gave her a medal. They say her factory made the best boots of the entire country and soldiers would fight to get her boots!” Raiya was beaming with a bit of pride.
“What happened to baba’s fiancée? Did they marry? They didn’t, did they. She doesn’t have children,” I concluded.
“He died in Smolensk and is buried there,” was the sad news from the front.
“Natasha will be getting another medal next week in the anniversary celebrations of fifty years of victory. She is also one of the last survivors of the ladies that worked in the factory with her, so she and another friend will be recognized by the mayor in a ceremony.”
I sat and pondered on this for a few moments, thinking about babushka trying to push the police out of the apartment thinking she was protecting me from hooligans.
“I would like to be there for that. Do you think anybody would mind if I attended?” I asked.
“Of course you will be there. It’s a big public ceremony on Minin Square on May the ninth,” the pride in her voice was audible.
“I won’t miss it,” I confirmed.
With that, I bid Raiya good night and she went back to her shared bedroom and locked the door behind her. I didn’t sleep well that night. Every shadow passing by my veiled window was an assailant and every noise in the stairwell a break-in.
20. Exposed
I dragged myself out of bed at nine o’clock knowing immediately that I had missed my morning lectures. The sunshine was trying desperately to get through my curtains and my eyelids which were all still closed up tight due to the weekend excitement. I shuffled down the hall towards the bath with the hope that some cold water over my head would help me to wake up enough to be able to make something of the day after not having slept much. As I was moving down the hallway, Raiya bid me good morning as she was heading for the open market up the street for groceries.
Being alone in the apartment that morning, after bathing, I decided to forego dressing in the bathroom, wrapped a towel around myself and headed down to my room to get dressed. On entering my own room, which was closest to the outside door, I noticed that Raiya had left behind her rolling shopping cart in the apartment, with her keys in the bottom of it. I decided that I would get dressed quickly and see if I could catch her at the market and do some shopping for supplies myself. As I entered my room I could see the shadow of a woman standing in front of my window as if waiting for me to come to the window—perhaps trying to get my attention. As the curtains were still closed I could see a shadow where a torso of a woman blocked the sun’s morning rays. Thinking it was Raiya trying to get my attention to open the door so she could get her keys and bag, I stepped quickly to the window and opened the curtains to let her know that I would open the door for her.
I was shocked to find that the woman standing outside my window was not Raiya. There I stood, with only a pane of glass and a towel between my naked self and a woman who I did not at first recognize, who was standing squarely in front of my window, staring straight in. After I got over the moment of shock that it was not my house mate standing so obtrusively close to my window and unabashedly peering at me just out of the bath, I realized it was the obtuse lady with the dog who I usually saw at seven o’clock outside my window every morning, when I was eating breakfast, before leaving for lectures. The first thought that went through my head was… how funny that she is walking her dog again at nine-thirty, just as I am getting ready to leave… what are the chances?
No sooner had I asked myself the question, alarms went off in my head. Every morning and evening as long as I could remember since living in that apartment I saw this woman and her dog outside of my room enjoying the grass, trees and the easy view into my room. She wasn’t walking her dog, even though she had a dog with her. She was watching me!
I never once suspected or even noticed the woman watching me because she had been there since the first day I had been there. I figured simply that, with me as the new comer, I was observing her routine that she undoubtedly kept for months, if not years before I arrived. But this morning she was not on schedule, but was doing the same thing at the same time that I was doing my same thing—just two hours later. It was brilliant of the authorities to assign such a person to monitor me. I had never suspected the ugly woman with the stupid expression on her face until I caught her in the act of spying on me. It had only taken a few seconds for my brain to connect all the dots and put the entire story together. I wanted to let her know that I now knew what she was and what she was she doing. I looked her square in the face, standing there in just my towel and opened the first pane of the double paned windows and shouted as loud as I could.