Today marks the eighth anniversary since I stepped out of the British Airways airplane and proceeded to the queue for non-European citizens at Heathrow. I didn’t have much of a sleep the night before, but surprisingly, was feeling fresh and keen to everything that was happening around me. That was the early morning of August 18, 2012, about 9 a.m., and the day promised to be warm and luminous—and so it was.
My queue was moving fairly quickly, but at the very end, just before the actual check-in, I began freaking out a bit: what if something is wrong with my visa? What if I confused the dates of my flight (the fact that I was on board half an hour ago slipped off my mind entirely)? What if I couldn’t find my luggage afterwards, assuming I was lucky enough to get through this ordeal? Whilst thinking about it nervously, I approached a visa officer, a young guy, who smiled at me broadly and asked me to show him my documents. I did.
“No,” I replied anxiously, “I just… I have this visa… I mean… Like, a spouse visa”—saying that, I choked and immediately felt how stupid it sounded. I was in tatters, dying inside a little bit. The officer looked at me with another big friendly smile and responded: “But that’s great! I hope your wedding will be lovely, good luck!”—And gave me my passport back.
What a relief! I remember that the luggage section was nearby, and I collected my suitcase promptly—under 22 kilos, all my previous life packed inside—and then I spotted L. who was waving to me vigorously. And that is how my journey to this new life began.
I remember our long trip via the London Tube: everyone who visits the British capital at least once may remember that the way from Heathrow to the centre (which to me is Kings Cross and the closest areas, Russell Square and such) takes a while: at the time of my arrival our trip was interrupted twice, and both times due to power cuts (as I found out later, a pretty normal thing for the metro here), and we waited a bit. I was overwhelmed with new emotions to the point that I barely noticed. And then, after arrival to Kings Cross, we had our espressos with pain aux raisins at Pret, while waiting for the train to Cambridge, and I looked at the turquoise sky through the station’s semi-circular vaulted ceiling, and that combination of the taste of sweet dough, a shiny concourse, and L.’s warm smiley face is one of the pinnacles of pure happiness in my life.
That first trip from London to Cambridge also left me with that feeling of everlasting joy: all the windows on our coach were open, the breeze was gentle and somewhat chilly, and the meadows on the way were exactly like those from the old British films created with Kodachrome.
…After all those years, I cannot call my life here a new life anymore: I am not that fresh immigrant who knew nothing about the country they entered, despite all the previous preparations. I guess I can call myself a semi-stranger now: my endless love for the place and its Zeitgeist (funny how the German word feels appropriate here) compensates for all the things I have no way of knowing yet.
As trite as it sounds, this also is true: you cannot call your immigrant experience fulfilled if you haven’t fully embraced the idea that it was worth all the losses. You have to understand that, if you, like me, move to another country not being exactly young (late 30s—early 40s), with imperfect English, a PhD diploma in humanities and with wide experience of working mostly at state institutions, most likely, you end up, like me, with limited offers of jobs on the market: within the last 8 years I was a translator, a tutor (and still am) of Russian language and literature, once an interpreter (that was a fail), and now I am what I am—an independent scholar who may never find my way into the official Academia, but still can be productive enough to keep up with my own academic schedule and progressions.
I know that my English is still lousy. The irony is, when a recent stranger here, on FB, called me out, revealing my flaws in English, it made me upset, but not too much. Then again, as banal as it sounds, the only way to improve yourself is to constantly do things in your chosen language—and try not to give up. On some days I feel so down that I start freaking out (it doesn’t look cute, by the way), and, since L. is an angel who understands me even in those moments of a linguistic blackout, when I mumble something completely bogus and incomprehensible, I crawl back to normal and continue. I don’t want to look back: I simply cannot.
And also Cambridge and Cromer: as a non-Brit, I feel that I formed such a strong bond with those two places that it makes me feel really at home here. This feeling never came to me in Moscow: after leaving Zaporozhye, I never in a million years thought that I would be able to get—to regain— my dwelling and my place here, in East Anglia, but it happened. I love Cambridge and Fenland with all its glory and autumn gloom, with its spring blossoming and rare glimpses of snow in winter, with its fabulous Christmases and long aimless walks by the North Sea.
This is my very first post I dedicated to my eight-year-move, fully written in English. Which means, I assume, that the transition, at least, has partly happened. I love you, England. My kind stepmum, my manna dew.
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