1992

This story happened in 1992, one year after the USSR suddenly ceased to exist. It was an exciting year. The dissolution of the Soviet Union brought turbulence and freedom, uncertainty and opportunity, vacuum and creativity. Every day brought something new and unknown. It was an avalanche of the unknown: nothing stayed the same and everything changed and evolved. Remember what the Queen of Hearts told Alice in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass”? She said, “My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.” That was our life then.

I am writing the story as I interpreted it 24 years ago. It may be different from how others saw it, however I am writing it with no filters of time.

In the fall of 1992, I lived in Alma-Ata with my soon-to-be husband. Earlier that year my three friends and I created and registered a partnership. We took out a loan at a bank with 20% interest rate and 20% third-party share and started our small business. Small and not-so-small businesses were booming in the time of transition from a centralized government planned economy to a market-based economy. It was easy to make money in the environment of rapidly growing prices and exchange rates.

We worked smart, partied hard, and flew to Moscow to buy clothes and eat at McDonalds.

This story happened on a sunny fall day. I don't remember how the day started, but I remember that I, my friend Laura and our other friend went for dinner to one of the many popular restaurants in Alma-Ata. Our favourite drink then was “Soviet Champagne” (“Sovetskoye Shampanskoye”). It was a generic brand of sparkling wine made from a blend of Aligote and Chardonnay grapes. Sometime during the dinner and between the glasses of champagne we saw two guys few tables away from our table. We knew them pretty well as they were husbands of our university friends who lived in another city. We waved to each other. They sent us a bottle of champagne. We thanked them and continued to enjoy the food and drinks. After the dinner we briefly chatted outside of the restaurant, and they invited us to their hotel to have more champagne and catch up on our lives. Since we didn't have any plans for the rest of the evening and since my soon-to-be husband was in Moscow, we decided to accept their offer. Five of us went to the hotel “Otrat”, a famous place amongst foreign visitors and local spivs (fartsovshchiks).

We spent the first hour at the bar. Then the guys offered us to go to their room so that they could play guitar and we would all sing our favourite songs from the university years. The singing session was a blast, where we were transformed back to the 80s and felt happy and comfortable. Then one of them, the leader, let's call him Kanat, went nuts. He asked everyone except for Laura to leave the room. The other guy and our friend left, but I refused to leave the room without Laura. Kanat locked the room and would not let us out. Laura and I tried to make our way to the door, but Kanat pushed us so hard that I hit a dresser with my head. I guess my brain hit my skull as I saw so many stars. Magical…, almost. It was second time in life when I saw stars. First time it happened when I was bonked on the head while trying to help my friend to get rid of a drunk guy. When the stars disappeared, I remembered that if something had already happened to you twice, it is likely to happen again. Seeing stars is exciting, but not at the expense of my brain. So I decided that next time I see stars, they would be in the sky. Anyway the stars worked their magic and transformed me into a mean and scary person. I told Kanat in my calm deep voice “You. Are. So. Dead! You won't be able to visit Alma-Аta ever in your life.” I then mentioned two popular gang leaders in the city Black Almaz and Red Almaz and how they would come and destroy him. That worked. Kanat let us out, but he didn't say that he was sorry. Outside of his door, Laura and I decided that he should apologize, or we wouldn't be satisfied. We shouted and banged on the door, but Kanat never opened it. He didn't even apologize from behind the door. So we came up with a revenge plan: money (we pay) - person (act on our behalf) - justice (apology from Kanat).

We took a taxi and went to my apartment. Let me tell you more about the apartment buildings in Alma-Ata in the 90s. An apartment building with 5 floors or less didn't have elevators and had multiple entrances. We didn't care about the absence of the elevators, but we cared a lot about the entrances and stairs. They were straight out of horror movies. The stairs were poorly lit; some with lights only on every other floor or with no lights at all. Nobody cared to replace the broken lights. My building was fine, we had lights on each floor and good neighbours. The dark entrances were the scariest. Every time I entered a dark building when visiting some of my friends, I would experience an unavoidable ancestral fear. I would ask God to protect me and run quickly upstairs till I get to the right floor. I also prayed that my friend would open the door really quickly. It had never occurred to me to carry a flashlight, but we probably never had them. The apartment doors were another story. They were made of solid wood covered first by a metal plate and then by an attractive wood veneer. Some apartments had the vault doors. It was an interesting time.

When Laura and I got inside, I found my soon-to-be husband asleep. There were presents and a bottle of champagne that he had brought from Moscow. I tried to wake him up but didn’t succeed. With no man by our side, we decided to take $2,000, some kitchen knives and go back to the hotel and find a Kazakh Robin Hood “Kisa” who would make Kanat apologize to us. I put $1,000 in both of my black over the knee boots. It was a lot of money then and we didn’t want to lose it or accidently expose it. We quickly got back to “Otrat” and asked the security guards if Kisa was at a casino. They told us that he should arrive around midnight. We had almost an hour to wait. I’m not sure why we didn’t go to the bar, but we probably didn’t want to miss Kisa’s arrival. So, we stayed with the security guards and told them our story. We believed that they would feel sorry for us, but they didn’t. One of them called militsiya (soviet term for police) and reported that there were two “night butterflies” (local term for prostitutes) disturbing them and not letting them work. We quickly realized that they were talking about us. I assured Laura that police would take a good care of us, but we should get rid of the knives. We ran to the nearest washroom, but all the stalls were locked. We threw the knives over the doors and returned to the security guards. We were greeted by two police officers who said that we need to go with them to a police station so they can check our identities to make sure that we are not prostitutes. We tried to tell them that first they should take care of Kanat. The police totally ignored us and took us to the station.

Since Laura was more sober, they started collecting information from her. As for me, I started acting weird and claiming my right for one phone call. Not sure if it was too much champagne or the fact that I had hit my head earlier, but my behaviour caused only troubles. The police kindly asked me few times to be quiet. They were ready to let us go as Laura’s dad was a military official and they found him in their system. I couldn't stop talking and they decided that we would benefit from spending few hours in a lock-up cell. There was a drunk guy in the next cell. He faked a heart attack non-stop for over an hour. Laura was exhausted and wanted to sleep on a bench. I didn't let her sleep as I was afraid that she would get lice in her hair. After two hours the police let us go. The morning was new and fresh. We were tired and confused, but happy to be free. We still had $2,000 in my over the knee boots and one kitchen knife in my apartment. We got a taxi and went home.

When I woke up, I told my soon-to-be husband our story. He was not surprised. He called his two friends, and they went to “Otrar” to find Kanat and talk to him. A receptionist informed them that Kanat checked out early morning and left hotel. Laura and I have never seen neither Kanat, nor his friend again. And we have never talked to their wives again. Life was too exciting to care about them.

In August I got sad news from Kazakhstan. Kisa died. After all he was the Robin Hood in our story. Who knows how our story would ended, if he was in “Otrat” that night.