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As we approach the runway in London I am absorbed in small tasks which seem somehow impossibly difficult. Buckling the boy into his seat-belt. Again. Finding somewhere for the treasured bottle of milk so we can get to it and … Continue reading
“Are you going home for the summer?” a colleague asked me.
A perfectly innocent question, but difficult to answer, because of the word ‘home’. After a small hesitation, I replied that my family and I are going to England for a month. Shifts in language and changes in vocabulary are significant in relation to changes of thought, feeling and cultural position. I suppose this means that I have begun to truly consider Russia as home. That’s a huge idea to hide within a four letter word.
Shortly afterwards, I was invited onto Sam Gerran’s radio show ‘Home from Home’, in which he interviews foreign expats living in Moscow about their lives in Russia. He has his own fascinating stories to tell, and I wish I had managed to get around to asking him if he considers himself Russian now. I wonder if a foreigner ever truly feels a part of the country he or she is now living in?
Our conversation is here – Home from Home at Voice of Russia:
Home from Home: Sam Gerrans talking with Sarah Semyanik
If you listen and you like it, please add your vote – just below the link there’s a click to be clicked. And if you are an expat, and do (or don’t) know where Home is now, I’m really interested in your comment here on this post; please feel free to leave one.
Here it is, this moment, which turns out to be At the precise point where reality and Surreality finally meet. Here I Find myself simultaneously fettered And freed to drift upon a new breeze. I am Beginning. That is all. … Continue reading
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It all started when I first arrived in Moscow, some years ago, with two enormous suitcases, and no idea at all what living in Russia would be like. I could not imagine how my life would change and what surprises, … Continue reading
I arrived in this city a stranger to myself, and I perceive that I am also not visible to others in this new place. In these streets I am unseen, in this language I am unheard, in this landscape I emerge, formless, like a shadow or shade.
My first encounters with this city are dry and strange, full of colour and dust and a brittle sense of adventure. This, I say to myself, feels more like the me I know. I think I like it here, but living here will take some work. Suddenly I am back in touch with my own instincts again: now all I need is the courage to follow them. I can’t quite believe I’m in Russia.
The last time I had a shape, it was already shifting. Today this is where I need to be, right here. Dreaming, remembering, storing, learning and preparing. All will be different from this point, and I know it in my bones. All over again begins the process of finding my voice. This time the search is so much more conscious. Time to finish what is finished and begin again with what is real. I miss my family so much. I want to be with them, love them, be close to them, and yet… Regrets: now I realise how many I embrace. Now I can see the habit I have had of clutching them close, like a kind of holding of the breath.
I have become invisible. It is not uncomfortable, it doesn’t exactly hurt, it’s just a little strange to feel that the particles of my being have somehow dissolved and that I am no longer matter – I do not matter. I am a transparent haze of unformulated desire. Is this freedom, or is this exile? How will I know the difference?
Invisible in Moscow 