Image source: nancystan.wordpress.com
The Nomadic Nanny AS NARRATED BY HER EMPLOYER IN THE DEVIL’S DEVELOPMENT “I came to know A. by chance, through an ex–schoolmate. She was the first and the last candidate I talked to, and with us she remained (but I lived in a different part of the city at that time). She is originally from Kharog, a small town in the mountains of Pamir which used to be the highest village of all the USSR. The mountainous area is now part of Tajikistan, bordering on Kyrgyzstan, China, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Ironically, it is exactly where my parents met back in the 1960s, so there is even a link to our family. A.’s mother is a theatrical actress, quite well–known in Dushanbe (the republic’s capital), and since there is hardly any work (or money) to be found there, her three other sisters have all come to Moscow and work as nannies with some friends of mine (two of them — also around Patriarch’s Pond).
However, the good thing about the Pamir community in Moscow is that it’s very strong and organized. Together they try to invent solutions for the ever–tightening immigration laws, and they also collect money and provide all sorts of help for those in difficulties, either medical or legal (one of her compatriots works in a luxury tableware boutique next to our building, they come from the same town). Poor A. was in the very middle of the anti–immigration uprisings in Biryulyovo last fall. In December, fearing the new regulations, the landlord drove them out, so she stayed mostly with friends or relatives living outside Moscow (Three hours spent commuting every day), and now when her elder sister comes back (mid–March), we are embarking on yet another flathunt, hoping to find something at least close to the Metro.”
CONFESSIONS OF THE CENTER
Unfortunately, it is quite hard to come by a place to live in Moscow if you are not Russian. When I first met A., she was staying with a couple of relatives in a poorly refurbished two–room flat at Prazhskaya Metro station, in the far South of Moscow, and had to travel for an hour in order to get to work. After five months, it turned out that the flat had been bought on a loan but the landlady, though duly collecting the rent from them, had never paid the bank. So the bailiffs turned up and confiscated the place along with the nanny’s belongings. After that she stayed with a relative, sleeping on a sofa in the kitchen, and it took us three months to find a new place where the owner could be convinced to allow my nanny and a cousin of hers inside, signing the contract with me for fear of their sudden disappearance.
Since then, she had to change places three times and it was always a nightmare, especially since estate agents in Moscow are fundamentally fascist. Each time a solution is found, the nannies have to fit more than one person per room. At one point, A. had to share a very small room with two of her children, a boy of 16 and a girl of 15. Now they have finished school, the boy is getting married in St. Petersburg and the girl is back in Dushanbe with their grandmother, maintained by A. who is sending back home three quarters of her salary to pay back the bank loan for the girl’s studies and the cost of her living.
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