Bad News from Moscow

I’ve always been an active observer of the news from Moscow. Now, as a former resident, I feel kind of personally invested in the pattern of events there. This week, though, events took on a very personal perspective.

Just the other day, a bomb exploded in an Asian part of one of Moscow’s largest bazaars, killing some dozen people and injuring a lot of others. As close as I can triangulate from the news stories, it happened in one of my favorite places in the city – a place that I frequently visited on the weekends.

It was always an overwhelming experience – Moscow somehow becoming more crowded and more foreign, perpetually gloomy – in this hidden hallway. One had to steel one’s nerves to get to the heart of the experience.

The Vietnamese Market is really only one narrow passage way in a vast winding maze of passages that sprawl around the marketplace. It is kind of hard to find, jagging away at a crazy angle from intersecting paths. And one small sign in Vietnamese is the only clue. Food vendors line the alleyway, selling all sorts of meat, produce, and fish. All of it, of course, in that typical Asian fashion – live fish in tanks, piles of meat being butchered on old tree stumps with strange cleavers. A second level, up a rickety steel staircase, is the services section of the market. Doctors, fortune tellers, masseurs, and other offices overlook the chaos of the filthy street down below.

Also on the second level is a small restaurant. The TV blasts Vietnamese variety shows. The décor runs to old-fashioned farm implements and pickled snakes in jars on shelves. Beverages are stacked in cases right in front of the pass-through to the open kitchen, a heat-belching place deftly managed by a sometimes shirtless cook. Asian vendors from the market trade huge stacks of currency and handshakes in deals conducted at the tables.

But for all its little idiosyncrasies, it’s one of my favorite places. The people were friendly and the food good and cheap. Oh, and spicy, too. In the blandness of the Moscow culinary universe, this is one of the great places to remind oneself that each of us is born with taste buds – what we do with them is up to us.

The strong point of the menu is the pho – a brothy noodle soup packed with vegetables and meat. Sprinkled with a bit of the spicy garlic and vinegar sauces, the soup is a filling, nourishing, tasty meal. And worth taking the metro 30 minutes to Partisankaya.

Once, I tried to take some pictures there. I got off a couple before two rough Russian guys suddenly appeared and told me that photographs were forbidden. They weren’t satisfied with me just putting my camera back in my bag, but a friend re-joined me from the restroom and provided a good excuse for me to just walk away. I scoffed at the notion that they needed such tight restrictions in the market. Surely, it had something to do with the cleanliness, the food handling. Typical official Russian response to a problem, I thought.

I suppose the situation was much more dangerous than I gave it credit.

I don’t wonder who did it or why. I’m beyond wondering about things like that in Russia. I wonder what it’s like now that more than 3 lbs of TNT ripped it all apart. Now that dozens of people lay in that narrow alley bleeding and dying. I wonder if the happy old woman who sold me those delicious sesame balls is alright. Or the guy who smiled for my photo while his buddy netted live fish out of a murky tank.



I wonder if the Moscow I'll always remember will change violently or gradually. And I wonder who will pay the price for it.