![]() ![]() Flying over Iceland, the Jew and the anti-Semite were on their way from the old world to the new. There was an uncomfortable silence, then something in his face softened as if he had made a decision. You are a Jew? He paused, then with a flourish said, I am an anti-Semite. I only like younger women and don’t like wrinkles and well, in this light, I can see you are starting to get some. The Russian nationalist continued speaking. But I could hardly say anything at all with all those pencils in my mouth. He remembered spitting and nearly choking on pencils. He told us the story one night at a Russian banya party while we ate iced watermelon and drank horseradish vodka. I met a man in the early 1990s who had been tortured by Russian speech therapists when he was a boy to roll his r’s so he didn’t sound like a Jew. Well, we are speaking it now, and while your Russian sucks, I do sort of understand what you are saying, even though you have the accent of a Jew. How is it you aren’t ashamed of yourself?Īctually I am, I said. Twenty years-twenty years are you telling me? How is that possible, your Russian totally blows. You are a young country, a bunch of babies, what the hell do you know from Rodina? Nothing in your English invokes this Russian word. How is it you know the concept of Rodina? He paused, standing unsteadily on his feet. Good point, he said, but I don’t even want to talk with you. Don’t you see that curtain? That is where the bluebloods sit. He wore military fatigues and was harassing a woman who was pointedly ignoring him as he said to me:ĭon’t go up there. But in the section right before Business Elite a guy with a shaved head and what looked liked prison tattoos blocked my way. ![]() All I wanted to do was walk up and down the aisles having my imaginary argument with John until the plane landed. I had been up all night on the phone with relatives and ambulance drivers, arguing with the real John who didn’t want to go to the hospital. You are always stubborn and wait till you are near death to see a doctor, I said to John. I paced out of anxiety and had an argument with him in my head. As the flight progressed, I was worried about John in the hospital. This last Delta flight had something of the epic to it. Ya baius’, she said to me-I’m scared-and reached across the aisle so I could hold her hand during takeoff. Across the aisle was a kindly babushka who rarely flew and was afraid of flying. A Russian dude-beefy, attractive, with light blue eyes-was next to me in the window seat. I chose an emergency row seat with a lot of legroom. You should come here right away, my nephew texted to my Russian cell phone.Ī friend in New York bought me a $600 ticket on Delta. I was still in Moscow, pretty broke and teaching American writing at the Humanities University, when I found out that John was being rushed to the hospital in New York City. after having been laid off from a position he had held for ten years. The last direct Delta flight I took out of Russia in the spring of 2014 was on a ticket purchased at the very last minute in panicked response to an emergency.Īt that time, John was in the U.S. First in the old business class configuration where my husband John and I most often sat in our favorite seats-row 5, seats A and B-and then when all the frequent flier miles ran out, in any exit row seats we could muster. I had taken that famed flight back and forth so often that Delta had become another home to me. Earlier this year, Delta Airlines announced that it would be discontinuing its direct flight to Moscow from JFK this September through to at least the end of the year. ![]()
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