My profound fortnight in Moscow
Cornea transplant, communist era throwbacks and a week with the girl who couldn’t speak English.
Written by Neil Gonsalves for Seeking Veritas on Substack
(Neil Gonsalves & his father Harry in Moscow - October 2nd, 1994)
I travelled to Russia in 1994 for a cornea transplant; I returned with important life lessons in simplicity and an appreciation for a common humanity that transcended race, culture, gender or religion.
A pivotal pitstop on my life journey leading to Canada came in the way of a health crisis. At the age of eleven, I was diagnosed with a hereditary eye disease that could ultimately lead to a complete loss of sight. At the time there did not seem to be any sense of panic; the doctors believed that treatment could wait until my body was done growing. The best estimate back then was that I had until approximately the age of eighteen to twenty-one before this would be a major concern. Life had other plans.
By the time I was a teenager I had 45% vision in the left eye but only 5% vision in the right. I found myself sitting alone in an ophthalmologist’s office having a discussion about what life would be like in a month when I went blind. The doctor explained to me that the cornea in my right eye was so thin that it was at risk of tearing, and when that happened, my retina would get damaged from the exposure.
As I sat there listening to the doctor, I imagined every way in which my life would never be the same again. I remember thinking that at least I was fortunate to have travelled the world, I would need to cement those memories before my world went dark. - The thoughts in my head as I left the doctor’s office were all-consuming, mostly negative, and positively terrifying.
We sought a second opinion, this time at a private Russian hospital that had opened up in Dubai after the fall of the former Soviet Union. The surgeon there confirmed that the first doctor was half correct, I was now two weeks away from being blind, however he was confident that they could perform a successful cornea transplant if only I could get to Moscow immediately. - So to Russia we went.
To Russia with Hope
My trip was an interesting experience, incomparable to any I had experienced up to that point. My father and I arrived at the airport in Moscow at 3am and the terminal was largely vacant. This was not a bustling airport like so many I had been in before. The walls were a dingy shade of military green, probably painted decades ago and never touched up, the lighting was sparse and dim, the airport was unusually quiet, seemingly abandoned, reminiscent of a place that once was but no longer is. It did not appear like there was a lot of airline traffic through those terminals.
I estimate the customs officer stood about six foot, four inches based on how much taller he was compared to me. He had blonde hair visible under his uniform hat, a strong square jaw, ice blue eyes, thin lips and an expressionless face. He did not smile, I wonder if that had been conditioned out, his tone was neutral, his words plainly matter of fact. He had a job to do and he was doing it efficiently, if I had something to hide I think I would have confessed it right there! - Either way, our passport were stamped and we were cleared to go.
A translator arranged by the hospital back in Dubai picked us up at Moscow airport and brought us to the hospital. A sprawling building with all Russian staff but not a single Russian patient visible. My first week there was mostly pre-operation testing, but I managed to squeeze in a little sight seeing (An ironic term given I was there almost blind!). Given the cost of the hospital room per day, we chose to rent a room for the first week. Post operative care would require us to stay in the hospital after my cornea transplant.
A Room That Offered A Different View
The translator arranged for a room we could rent in an apartment near the hospital for the week leading up to the surgery. - The family had bought the unit for $100 after the post communist housing blocks were sold off. An enormous amount of money for a family not accustomed to the concept of personal wealth. I had never been in an atmosphere like the one I found myself in.
The building was fourteen stories high with hallways that appeared to be a few miles long. The walls were a dull yellow, the lighting less than optimal. There was no decor to speak off in the lobby or anywhere else in the building for that matter. The elevator was small, it creaked and laboured up to the tenth floor where their apartment was located. As I stepped off the elevator, I peered once again at the note from the translator; Apartment 1017, Pyotr Ivanovich Morozov, followed by a notation $15US/day below it. I walked down the hallway, I could hear faint chatter coming from the units, privacy was clearly not a concern to whoever built this place.
I passed door after door of perfectly identical woodwork. I arrived at 1017 and knocked twice on the door. I was greeted by a man in his fifties, weathered lines across his brow, he had a warm and inviting smile. He welcomed me in and told me he spoke a sufficient amount of English, however his wife Valentina and daughter Natalya only spoke Russian. They smiled and gestured me into their apartment.
If communism was about pragmatic functionality, the apartment was perfectly analogous. There was no wasted space and every inch of it had a practical purpose. The designer clearly only meant to address the most rudimentary part of Maslow’s pyramid. Five of us were now standing inside a very small space, the wife and the daughter stepped back into the kitchen and Pyotr gestured us toward the door on my left. The door was ajar, as I pushed it open he smiled and nodded. There were two single beds, a small table with a single lamp and an antique looking alarm clock, it was like something I had only ever seen in the movies. Across from the bed was a narrow dresser, plain wood, no designs with three draws intended for us to use as required.
Once I set my bag down, Pyotr motioned me back towards the front door. He pointed to the door directly beside ours, that was where the three of them would sleep while we were renting his daughters room. To the right of the front door was another one, visible only when the entrance door was shut, it was the the bathroom, a toilet, sink and small stand up shower, arguably the smallest bathroom I had ever seen. In front of the main doorway was another room, a cozy kitchen, equipped with old appliances and a small table that seated four people. That was the entirety of the apartment, every inch assigned purpose and function.
My walk through Red Square
Over the fourteen days I spent in Moscow, I took the opportunity to see a sliver of this beautifully complex historical place. Standing in the middle of Red Square appreciating the architecture and culture was fascinating and especially meaningful given how I believed that my capacity to see the world could forever be altered by the end of the week if anything did not go as planned.
The ornate design utilized in their architecture seemed a perfect veneer obscuring the total tyrannical domination Dostoyevsky described more than a century earlier. The complexity woven into the fabric of this society was unmistakable. One cannot help but feel extremely small when standing in the middle of the square, I wonder if that was the intention, I pondered whether the average Russian citizen felt the same way.
A Walk in the Neighbourhood
I had seen abject poverty many times in my life on my travels but being up close and personal to it in a new place was humbling all over again. I walked in the neighbourhood to local stores to pick up supplies. The bakery had an extremely long line for day-old bread and almost no one in line for fresh bread, I felt guilt when it occurred to me that no one else in that bakery even glanced over at the line I was in. Vendors sold chicken frozen in large blocks of ice on the street, a machete would hack of a piece of ice containing a frozen chicken if you had the money to purchase one.
The streets had a cold feel to them, people smiled and were courteous to me, but one could sense that life had not delivered on all the promises made when the iron curtain came down only a few years earlier. - Turns out the fall of communism was not all sunshine and roses for the average person. Establishing capitalism and democracy was a slow process, not some utopian silver bullet many were made to believe. There was evidence everywhere of wealth inequality. - It turns out that society was clearly never equal and the concept of a unified proletariat was merely an illusory figment of the propaganda machine.
A Language Without Words
Natalya was about the same age as me. That entire week we hung out every evening, playing cards, going for walks with her dog, meeting up with her friends, and sitting around the kitchen table passing the time.The incredible thing was that we could not speak the same language, she did not understand English and I could not communicate in Russian, we probably had no common life experiences or culture and yet we found a way to cooperate and coexist in a small space. Just two young people who managed to play card games, laugh and smile without words, connected only by our common humanity and the innocent disposition seemingly unique to youthful innocence.
Looking back, I appreciate the simplicity of those interactions, we did not think about race, gender, religion or culture, we were just two people, happy to have some company and mutually willing to find a way to communicate as humans in a shared world.
The next year I would immigrate to Canada - As I would discover, those moments in Russia would be some of the simplest interactions I would have when confronted with new culture, tradition and people.
***The names of the people in the story have been changed for privacy***
Bio: Neil Gonsalves is an Indian-born Canadian immigrant who grew up in Dubai, U.A.E. and moved to Canada in 1995. He is an Ontario college professor, a TEDx speaker, a German Shepherd lover and a recreational dog trainer.
(The views contained in this article are solely those of the author, intended for opinion based editorial purposes and/or entertainment only. They do not represent the views of any organization I am otherwise associated with.)