Week 31 (2010) Ciao Ciao: Part Five

One day when I was walking in Napoli, it started raining. Nearby was a small footbridge. I moved under it, and saw this Pakistani man with a table next to him. He was slightly plump, moustached, tall enough not to be mistaken as a Bangladeshi; his hair was black but not thick, he wore terricot trousers rather than jeans which immediately put his age in the late forties. The table was full of small items – earrings, hair bands, bracelets, sandalwood, fake jewellery.

“Namaste bhaisaab,” he smiled. “Where are you from? India?”

I explained I was from Bombay. “And you?”

“From Rawalpindi.” His face displayed a cocktail of emotions when he said it. We shook hands.

“Aren’t you feeling cold?” I asked. I was in my jacket and shoes. This man wore just a shirt; though full-sleeve it looked pretty thin. And worn-out sandals without socks.

“I’m now accustomed to this weather. It’s much worse in winter. September is still a few months away. A Pakistani has promised that he’ll give his coat to me, once he buys a new one. Let’s see. Shall I get a cup of chai for you?”

I said no thanks, and asked, “How long have you been here?”

“See... next Friday it’ll be two years.” He paused and repeated. “Two years. I first came at a time like this. Who knew winters would be so nasty here? The agent hadn’t told me.”

It was still pouring. The sky was dark. The wind carried raindrops in whichever direction it blew.

“What agent? Someone brought you here?”

“Yes. We have many in Pakistan. Agents also exist in India and Bangladesh. My agent said life was wonderful in Italy. I’ll be able to make money, get passport and bring my family. I have three children – Mohammed, Nagma and Anwar. You see I never went to school, but I want... I wanted my children to live in a good country. I worked in South Korea for nine years. That agent was good – he didn’t take much money. After working for two years in Korea I had paid off his dues. And then I could save something and send every month to my family. Korea was great. They had vacancies in the factories. I had a regular job, and they paid every month. I would have been happy to work in Korea all my life. But then... America decided to have military bases in South Korea, and they asked the Koreans to drive away all Pakistanis. I was working honestly – for nine years. And one day, my manager said I should go home. You’ve lost this job, and you won’t get another in Korea. You better go home. ”

“So you decided to come to Italy?”

“What to do? Abbajan was telling me - Ameer, beta, you’ve come back. Now stay in Pakistan. But I have parents, and wife and three children. In Rawalpindi, an illiterate like me can’t earn enough to feed so many people. The agent said Italy was a free country – good for my children when I bring them here.”

“How did you get a visa?” I asked Ameer. Pakistan doesn’t have a border with Italy that an illiterate man can cross over in the night.

“The agent arranged that. The Italian embassy gave me a work permit.”

“A work permit?”

“Yes bhaaisaab, a work permit for two months. Very expensive. It costs 12 lakh rupees. I gave away all my savings from Korea and took loans from relatives so I could pay the agent. I also took loans from the local moneylender against my house. You see after coming here, you have to pay 5000 Euros on top.”

“Sorry, I don’t understand this. What’s this 5000 Euros for? For prolonging your work permit?”

Ameer smiled. “Prolonging? We’re not educated like you, bhaisaab. We’re illegals. The Pakistani agent has his man here. He collects 5000 Euros, and submits our papers. Every few years, the Italian government pardons the illegals for whom the agents have filed papers. When that happens, I’ll become legal. After that I’ll get a passport.”

  

“Not so bad, then.” I said. “You’ll get an Italian passport. And your family will get Italian passports after that.”

“The agent had said it would happen in two years. See I’ll complete two years on Friday. After coming here, I heard it can take much longer. Even ten years. Sure you don’t want a cup of chai? I can get for both of us from a nearby shop.”

“Not for me, but you go ahead.” I said, but he didn’t.

“If you are illegal, won’t the police arrest you? They can put you in jail. Or send you back home.”

“I’ve hidden my passport. The agent had told us to hide it. And no matter what, I never tell my true name or the country I came from. Whenever they catch me, I have no name and no country. The Italian police don’t do anything. They just want money. See this....” he pointed to the goodies on the table. “Every few months, they catch me... and take all this. Confiscate. I lost about 200 Euros worth three times.”

Some tourists stopped at the table.

“Excuse me.” Ameer said and started telling them about items – “cinque – dieci – buono buono- prego...non caro”

The women haggled for a long time, and then left without buying anything. The rains had subsided by now. Ameer once again started talking to me.

“These white women don’t understand much – in the Indian stuff. They’ll spend hours, bargaining, but not part with five Euros.”

“How do you manage then? This place is very expensive.”

“Inshalla, so far I’ve survived. Six of us stay in a room that costs 350 Euros a month. I cook two times. Rent and food, that’s all I spend on... and I call my family once a month – one of my roommates has a phone card. I call using his phone. It’s unfortunate I can’t send any money home. There is nothing left.”

“Why don’t you go back to Pakistan?” Surely, I thought, for the weather and the family if nothing else.

“How will I go? How will I buy a ticket? And once I go there, I have to think of giving the money back to everyone from whom I have borrowed. If I’m not there, they’ll not trouble my family for money. They know one day I’ll have a passport and my relatives can hope to come to Europe using my help. Let’s see when the Italian govt opens up the files again. If I go now, the two years I spent here will be a waste.”   

I looked at the skies. They looked clear. The rains had stopped completely.

“Do you have children?” Ameer asked me.

“Yes. My daughter is six-years old.”

He glanced at his table and picked up a hair band.

“Please, this is a gift for her.”

“Oh no, not a gift” I said. That colour wasn’t something I would have bought anyway. I chose another one. “Let me buy this one.”

“No. I can’t take money from you. You talked to me. You spent so much time here. It feels good to talk in Urdu. It feels good to talk to our own people. This is the only time I’m connected to my home. You please take the gift bhaisaab for your daughter.” 

We argued for some time. Reluctantly he took the five Euros that I forcibly thrust in his hands.

“Khuda hafiz.” He said as I started to leave. “Please come again if you have time. I normally sell at this spot every day.”

***

Ameers were everywhere we went – Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, Pisa... Without a single exception; Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani street-sellers whom we met offered us a discount without asking. Even when an item was 3 Euros, they spontaneously reduced one Euro from it. They offered free toys to Devyani. In an Italian restaurant, whether you stand or sit while eating affects the price of what you eat. (More on this next week). A Bangla owner of a restaurant in Florence, as soon as he saw us, said he would charge us standing prices, but we could sit comfortably and eat.

We were their link, however brief, to home.

In Italy, Bangladeshis sell umbrellas, the blacks sell ladies’ purses, the Sri Lankans work as house maids, and Indians and Pakistanis find a variety of lowly paid jobs. The Bangladeshis and the Africans normally have an Italian boss who invests in umbrellas and purses and pays daily wages to these guys.

All of them arrive in Italy by paying 12 lakh rupees or an equivalent amount first, and then 5000 Euros on arrival for a two month work permit, in the hope of becoming legal at an indefinite point in the distant future. They hide or destroy their ID documents, live in cramped places, earn enough for survival (or die) and can’t think of going home to face the lenders from whom they have borrowed money. When the police approach, they run. If caught, they pay all they have as fines. These are the voluntary slaves of the 21^st century.

The embassies and consulates harass the well-educated and well-off applicants. But by sharing loot with agents, the corrupt visa officers gladly give the illiterate Asians a short-term work permit. Discretion is the mother of corruption. And visa sections of embassies are granted discretionary powers. The Roman Empire was infamous for the number it forced or imported into slavery. Modern Italy through its visa sections lure the Asians and Africans who end up as voluntary slaves.

The Venetian Grand Canal, the Vatican churches, the 17-feet David, the crooked Pisa tower, the Colosseum, the Florence Duomo.... near all these places you will find the umbrella-selling Bangladeshis and the purses-selling Blacks. But not a single one of them is in a position to appreciate the beauty of these magnificent artefacts.

The voluntary slaves are busy trying to survive and hoping that one day an Italian bureaucrat will pull out their file.

Ravi 

Week 30 (2010) Ciao Ciao: Part Four

Daniela lived in 532 and I lived in 533. Our hostel apartments had faced each other on the fifth floor of the Pushkin Institute of Russian Language and Literature. Way back in 1986-87.

 Pushkin Institute was part of the Soviet propaganda machine. The concept was simple. They picked up from each country young Russian language students (the best from each country I would like to think), trained them in Moscow for a year and sent them home as teachers to further spread the Russian language.   

Unique is often a loosely used word. But in the case of Pushkin institute it was apt. Apart from the United Nations headquarters in New York, this was the planet’s only building where you could find people from each country in the world. The tall Afghan boys were publicly reprimanded for a brawl over Polish girls. In the institute’s corridors, the North Korean boys always wore blue suits with the image of Kim II-sung on their lapels. The West Germans and the East Germans, despite having a common language, kept distance. Americans were normally the worst Russian speakers. Some of them were invited only because they were members of the communist party of the USA. Egyptians, Angolans, Brazilians and Madagascans were part of our group when we travelled around the USSR.

There were two distinct groups. The “Cap-countries” and the “Soc-countries”. House of Friendhship was the inviter and sponsor of the Cap-countries. At least for this purpose, India was considered Capitalist. So I shared my class with students from France, Austria, Germany, Italy, Denmark, and Japan. The “soc-countries” sent large groups, which studied separately. The Poles, Hungarians, East Germans, Cubans, Chinese, Vietnamese, Afghans, and North Koreans had their own syllabi and classrooms. Each group of “Soc-country” was accompanied by a “group leader”, whose task was to monitor and control. To make sure they were no undesirable alliances. Or disappearances. At a particular hour in the evening, the Polish or the Chinese or the Afghan leader had a right to knock on the rooms of their wards to make sure the boy or the girl was in their own room– and without an outsider. This was not always enforced. A bottle of vodka could fix anything. Or the group leader would get entangled in a romance himself and forget his duties.

We, the Cap students, were fearless. Nobody monitored us, nobody bothered us. The two bottom floors of the institute were lecture halls, and the students lived on the upper floors. The building was self–contained, it had canteens and cafes. One elderly Indian lady, phobic about the Russian winter, indeed closeted herself in the institute during the whole year.

Not so long since we had left puberty behind. Testosterone and estradiol were in full flow. At Pushkin, you didn’t need an excuse for introductions. When queued up for breakfast, you could start talking to the girl in front of you and then join the table where she went. (It was important to loiter before finding the right person to stand behind). Each floor had a television room. You could also press your clothes there. This was another place for introductions.

If you had managed to buy two tickets to the theatre, you could easily ask the girl for a date five minutes after introductions. If she was a “cap-girl” she invariably agreed. (And if she didn’t agree, there were so many others.) “Soc-girls” preferred to go with a chaperone. (I had to book three tickets when taking out Polish or Yugoslavian girls). While watching a cinema, if you put your arm around the girl, there was no twitching of muscles or a stare of surprise. Holding hands when walking under the snow was a norm. Human warmth was essential in the freezing Moscow winters. On 31 December 1986, we had a mass kissing celebration. We walked up and down the staircases, the boys hugging and kissing every girl in sight. (There were some 900 girls, from a hundred odd countries).

The more advanced ones could take the relationships to their logical (bio-logical) conclusion. AIDS had not yet entered the dictionaries. We knew at least one room in the hostel with three beds, where six people slept. A super tall Austrian guy changed his partner every night. He even slept with a Russian floor administrator (дежурная). Pushkin institute was the Brave New World. Everyone wanted to make the most of the one year we would spend there.

It was exotic to make friends from so many different countries, and continents and races. Pushkin was our way to travel around the world. A single citizen may be the smallest and most unscientific sample for judging a country. But that’s how we formed opinions about countries we had never seen – based on one or two friends. After living for a year with my flatmates - Albert, Isao, Esa and Mark- I knew how people in Austria, Japan, Finland and France talked, gestured, looked and behaved.

Antonio, Annalucia, Laura and Daniela had formed the picture of Italy in my mind then. After leaving Pushkin we all scattered. The world did not know Internet yet.  We wrote letters for a couple of years. But writing letters by hand and posting them internationally was not a business many were fond of.  We gradually lost one another- for the next twenty years.

***

Two years ago, my French friend Carole found my 20-year old Indian address, and on an impulse wrote a greeting card. We have sold that flat years ago, but the Indian postman- being an Indian postman- knew where to deliver the greeting card. That triggered a massive web search from me. Many of my Pushkin friends were by now PhDs and had written academic books. We had a reunion in Paris last year (and Helsinki this year). Reunion of the Russian-speaking-United Nations. Antonio and Annalucia were found in the www, but not Daniela. Daniela was soft-spoken and gentle. She lived in 532 and I lived in 533. I knew she was from Florence.

In May 2010, as my train reached Florence, I thought I should try to locate Daniela. It was twenty-three years since we had said goodbye to each other.

***

What do you need to find a person? Name, address and telephone. I knew Daniela’s name and maiden surname. Some girls change surnames after marriage and vanish from the search engines. That must have happened with her. I had the address of Daniela’s parents. Taken 23 years ago. And a phone number which had so few digits that no Italian I asked could decipher it.

The address said Scandicci. Italian maps are peculiar. In my Venice chapter I talked about the small print. Furthermore, no map has an alphabetical index of the roads. You are expected to take the map and look all over it to locate a particular street. I abandoned the effort and asked the owner of our hotel. She said I should take the tram.

On Saturday, May 8, I decided to go on a mission to find Daniela’s parents, who should then lead me to her. When I left the hotel for my morning run, I took the address with me. Why would I need a tram? I started running parallel to the tram route, and every five minutes asked a passerby where this street Scandicci was.

“Scandicci? Lontano... lontano.” Said a woman wearing glasses.

I kept running. After fifteen minutes I went inside a shop.

“Scandicci? Lontano...lontano.” said the shopkeeper.

Ok, lontano. But how lontano? I thought.

 “Quanti chilometri?” I asked.

“Lontano. Molto lontano.”

I must have spoken to about ten Italians. I had already run more than ten kilometres. (Which meant I must run them back as well.) This morning Daniela’s parents were not going to get surprised.

***

That afternoon, we visited Galleria dell’Accademia where I sat mesmerised in front of David. You read about him last week.

“If it’s ok with you, we’re going to look for Daniela.” I told Mena. “And we’re travelling by tram.” I said to Devyani.

At the tram stop, I showed the address once again.

“Scandicci?” said that Italian driver and spoke at a speed that cannot be digested by someone who has studied Italian for four months.

“Potrebbe ripetere per favore?” I said, and he repeated everything once again as dramatically as before. This is the problem of little knowledge. You ask a question in the local language, and you are not treated as a foreigner any more.

Like search engines, linguistic minds match words even when approximately close. I thought the stop where I should get down was nenne-regali. And we got down when I saw Nenni-Torregalli. It looked pretty interesting. On one side was a hypermall. And on the other side... there was nothing. It was like a desert.

We went inside the hypermall. Used the toilets (more about this next week), Devyani immediately sat on the metal horse which moved only when it was fed one-euro coins. We also had to buy a few chocolates and Mena looked around the mall to see if it had any Italian souvenirs.

Outside, I asked for Scandicci to a gentleman coming out of the parking lot.

“Where is your car?” he asked.

“A piedi.” I replied.

“Lontano. Lontano.” He said and pointed to beyond the desert. “Walking?”

On the tram coming from the opposite direction, I sent Mena and Devyani back.

“I want to see if I can find the address.” I said. “Now that I’ve come so far. It may take time. Because even if I find it, Daniela’s parents may not be at home. Even if they are, Daniela may not be in Florence any more. Or in Italy for that matter.”

I started walking through the desert. To go to the other side, where this road Scandicci was.

***

After walking for about three kilometres I reached civilisation.

“I want to find the Scandicci road.” I asked the lady with a pram.

“This is Scandicci.” She said.

“Which?”

“Everything here is Scandicci.” She said and waved her arms in the air. She looked at my address book. “Scandicci is the name of this town. The street you have here is “via IV Agosto”, but I have never heard of it.”

“Which direction should I go to?”

“Since I don’t know the road, I don’t know the direction either.”

So I took one main road – at random, and kept walking. I must have asked twenty people before I met those two old men. They must be in their eighties.

“Via IV Agosto? Yes, there is a street by that name. But lontano... lontano.” They said. “You have a car?”

I said I would walk. And they gave me the directions which included two roundabouts, one garden, a fountain, two bridges, and a combination of rights and lefts.

To cut this dragging story severely short, I should go to a point where after another hour’s walk, I actually found the street. My Pushkin address book is naturally 23 years old. It has survived my moves from one country to another. On the house number in Daniela’s address, there was a large ink blotch. The number could have been 1, 11, 21, 71 or 91. I decided to try all of them. House no. 1 was shut. But in the balcony of house no.11 was an old man standing, with a stick in hand.

“Buonasera” I shouted from the street. It was already evening. “ I am looking for Daniela.”

“What?” he asked.

“Daniela. Is Daniela your daughter?”

Come inside, he gestured. I looked closely at his features. To see if they resembled Daniela’s.

“Where are you from?” He asked. I explained.

“My daughter has gone out.” He said. And then started a long discourse about his family. As  I gathered, he had three daughters and a son. And the youngest daughter was about to have a baby. So his family had gone to the hospital.

“Daniela. Is Daniela your daughter? What is your surname?” I shouted in his ear.

Then he started describing the jobs he had done when young. If I understood correctly, he was an engineer by profession. And skiing was his hobby when he was young. And he watched football in the evenings. We were still standing at the gate. I thanked him for the Italian language lesson and left.

***

A man was working in the small garden outside house no.21. He looked at me questioningly. I looked at him. He was young, hopefully with excellent hearing faculty. Just as I wanted to open my mouth, a woman approached him. I looked at her. She looked at me.

“Daniela...” I said. No question marks any more.

She looked at me for about ten seconds and said,

“Ravi?”

Then she gave a smile that had not changed for the past twenty three years.

Ravi

 
P.S.

That evening; Daniela, her husband, son and my family went out to dinner. Where I found her used to be her parents’ house, but only last year Daniela had moved there. Daniela works as Guida Turistica, so we learnt many new things about Firenze from her.

I can tell you that finding a friend in real life is far more thrilling than finding someone on  Facebook.

R.

Week 29 (2010) Ciao Ciao: Part Three

On 5 May, we took a boat from our Venice hotel to reach the railway station. Six-year old Devyani invariably needed full tickets. In some places, the clever Italians have established a height rule. If the child is taller than 105 cm, you pay the adult charge. Parents can lie about the child’s age, but height is instantly verifiable. Devyani no longer has the height privilege either. We spent dozens of Euros on boat rides in Venice, only to find that nobody checked the tickets. I didn’t dare a ticketless travel, though. The relationship between a ticket-checker and your having a ticket is the same as that between the rains and your carrying an umbrella.

On the train from Venice to Florence, when the ticket-checker appeared I was truly delighted. My honest act of buying those exorbitantly priced tickets was rewarded at last. Our cabin had only four passengers – Mena, Devyani, myself and a middle-aged lady. She was talking over her cell phone, presumably to her daughter whom she would see the same evening. My brief conversation with her (lesson no. 5: phrases for travelling) revealed that she had a long way to go. She would travel north-south past Florence and go to Naples. The TC checked our tickets, smiled and left.

After a while, he reappeared. My family was sat closer to the windows. The Italian lady was sat closer to the door. The TC came and sat across her. He started talking to her, and after five minutes they exchanged names and shook hands. He was a balding Italian, of average looks, possibly in his early fifties. The lady passenger could be a couple of years younger than him. Being an Italian, his talk was animated. By the time the train reached Bologna, both were laughing and moving their hands all over the cabin. This man had leaned forward, so that his knees touched the woman’s. Now he put both his hands on her lap. (I was glad Devyani was completely engrossed in her book). The lady did not seem to mind. Venice-Florence is a three hour journey. During most of those three hours, the TC’s hands were on the passenger’s lap.

“My duty ends at the next station.” Just before Florence, he said to her.  “It was nice meeting you. You said you’re going back next Saturday? I may be on that train. Arrivederci!”

I presume this gentleman first checks all the tickets – and the passengers. He selects a suitable companion; a lady travelling alone, and going far enough. Unabashedly, he joins her, introduces himself and becomes friendly enough to caress the passenger’s lap.

He had a good time. The Italian lady enjoyed the brief companionship. I can’t imagine an Indian or even a British ticket-checker doing this – despite wanting to. They would rather sit at a secluded corner, with paperwork in hand and practise boredom for long hours. This is what I liked about Italians – they don’t suppress, they express. A TC finds a companion to flirt with every time, and the companion responds as well.

I remembered a story where a confirmed bachelor and a confirmed spinster live on the same street. Once they meet at the age of seventy or something, and talk for the first time. The man says to the lady he always fancied her but was shy to express his love. The lady, taken aback, says she too liked him always. Why did he not say anything? Had they talked, they would have had a long married life and children.

Expression of feelings can make life happier.

***

I know of an Indian delegation which had travelled on a similar train years ago. They knew no Italian. Whenever their train stopped, they would peep out and check if it was Florence. They travelled all the way from north to south and never found Florence. Because...

Because there is no such place in Italy. Florence exists only in English guide books. In Italian, it is called Firenze. Foreigners understand that Roma is Rome, Venezia must be Venice, and Napoli is Naples but Firenze?

On coming out of the Firenze railway station; the sight of cars, trams, buses was unbearable. It was like waking up from a beautiful dream to face reality. Is it possible to like any city after Venice?

***

Our hotel was a ten minute walk from the station. On the way we saw shops with names like Armani, Gucci, Nina Ricci, Prada, and Versace. For me, these are shops that I don’t need to enter. In this country, those global fashion symbols become local, but no less expensive than elsewhere. Later, I was surprised to learn that the colour-uniting Benetton is also an Italian brand. In my mind, I thanked signor Benetton for creating something for the ordinary man.

The building in which our pensione was located was a stone palazzo. I had to use all my strength to push the entrance door which was at least four times taller than me. Near the staircase, we saw something that resembled a lift. It had an iron door and two wooden doors inside opening on two sides. Only when I closed all these doors, the lift started. A couple of times, I have been in elevators that take you down into a mine. They rattle, shake and you pray until you land with a bang. I learnt later that this lift, which reminded me of those journeys, was more than 100 years old; the building itself was more than 500 years old, and the pensione Scoti in which we lived dated to 1875. An Italian friend remarked that in Firenze they consider a building old only if it is more than 200 years old. (In Bombay, some people are keen to demolish buildings that are forty years old). 

***

Italian crooks are as famous as Italian cooks. A few years ago, during their train travel, my friend Anuj and his girlfriend dozed for a few minutes. When they opened their eyes, their wallets and passports were gone. Instead of having a Roman Holiday, they spent two weeks locked up in the Indian embassy, struggling to get new passports, visas and funds transferred from home.

Besides the bag snatchers and pickpockets, you have other specialists. An Italian gentleman warns you about gunk dripping down on the suitcase you are wheeling behind you. Not only that, he offers you a clean tissue paper to wipe it out. By the time you clean the mess, his accomplice has disappeared with your other suitcase.

I had heard many such stories, and was determined not to clean my bag if someone shouted gunk. I must report that in our entire stay, we didn’t meet any such gentlemen, nor did we lose anything.

I learnt about another innovation when standing in a queue to see David. I overheard some American tourists discussing the latest trick in Firenze. A man bumps into you, almost hugs you and apologises. Your hand instinctively touches the pocket of your jeans to ensure the wallet is in place. You are happy it is. The next time you take the wallet out, you notice it is a substituted wallet. Similar in size and shape to the one you had – except it has nothing inside it.

***

I can write for six months why Firenze made me forget Venice by describing the museums, the riverbank, the churches, the sculptures in this city. But I won’t. Because this is not a Lonely Planet guide. I’ll restrict myself to two sights.

One is the Duomo cathedral, which defines the city. Like Taj Mahal or the Niagara, Duomo makes you understand how insignificant you are in the scheme of things. Eifel tower also dwarfs and overwhelms, but for me it has little aesthetic beauty; only its monstrosity impresses. That’s not the case with Duomo. Apart from its sheer size, the white and green neo-gothic facade gives sensory pleasure. Its vast interior, 155 x 90 meters, boggles the mind. Those who conceived and started building the Duomo never saw the final product, because it took 150 years to build it. Duomo has two challenging stone staircases- each more than 400 steps. The climbs are so invigorating that even little Devyani forgot her sleeping time, and kept running up. At every level, you get a different perspective of the panoramic city.

***

Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo are the two candidates for the title of “the Renaissance man.” When I sat in front of David, my vote went to Michelangelo. Some of his quotes tell us a bit about that great man.

- Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it. / I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

- A beautiful thing never gives so much pain as does failing to hear and see it.

- If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.

- The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.

- Genius is eternal patience.

Devyani gets bored in museums quickly, much quicker than adults. In the past, she had treated the grand armorial hall in St Petersburg’s Hermitage as a playground, and slept soundly in the Modern Tate gallery. Now, having reached a reading age, she carries books to the museum. While she reads sat on a floor, one of us keeps her company, and the other goes around the museum. At the Galleria dell’Accademia we were fortunate to find an empty bench right in front of the 17-feet tall David. Devyani read, Mena left to see the paintings and I stared at David – without blinking. I have never watched a man, certainly not a naked man, for such a long time. In Toronto, watching Niagara, I felt I could keep looking at the gushing water for ever. Here I had that feeling again.

God could have rewarded Michelangelo by making David walk and talk when the sculptor completed him. It’s such a divine creation – carved from a single block of white marble. Nowhere else have I seen the beauty of a human body executed to such perfection. David exudes a sense of confidence, purity and naturalness. (We are not born with fig leaves.)

David, even without anything else, could have made our Italian trip worth it.

***

Italians are fond of dogs. How fond?

In lovely packages; fresh wholemeal fusilli with salmon, cannelloni with venison and beef, lasagne with wild boar, mezzelune with hare, rigatoni whit grouper and cod, tortelloni filled with ricotta and ham are available for dogs. In India, humans are not served such a variety.

And once the dogs consume all this delicious food, Italians don’t forget to follow the other recipe. (This sign was in Lucca, a green town with ancient walls, not far from Firenze).

***

Having talked about the Duomo, David and dogs, I am tempted to continue and write about Daniela. But I’m leaving Bombay today for the weekend. The Daniela story will appear in the next instalment, a week from now.

Ravi

Week 28 (2010): Advice for Russian Spymasters

Two weeks ago, as you know already, ten Russian spies were arrested in the USA. They were charged with conspiracy to act as agents of a foreign government without notifying the US Attorney General. The ten Russians were swapped for four Russians serving sentences in Russia’s prisons. Most of the ten “illegals” lived under false names, in pairs and produced children with paired colleagues to make the cover look authentic; they sometimes swapped identical coloured bags when crossing each other in a public place, sent messages using invisible ink, buried money in fields. One of them took a Canadian boy’s death certificate and acquired a forged passport. (He had obviously read The Day of the Jackal.) If since the retirement of Frederick Forsyth, you have missed exciting stuff, please read the attached fifty pages.  They are both entertaining and educative.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/062810complaint1.pdf

http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/062810complaint2.pdf

Complaint one is filed by Amit Patel, a special agent with FBI, who was given the pleasant task of following Anna Chapman and some others residing in the USA since 1990s. What you read here are handful of examples out of thousands of conversations tapped, bugged mails, decrypted codes, video evidence, meetings with embassy staff and so on. Complaint no. 2 is filed by a lady agent, Maria Ricci, who also for years has been following the Russian spies. For the past fifteen years, at least ten SVR agents were gathering intelligence for Russia, and loads of FBI agents were conducting a counter-intelligence operation against them.  These efforts of fifteen years culminated in the deportation of all ten spies in less than two weeks since their arrest. When describing the whole affair a range of adjectives like bizarre, clumsy, old-fashioned, funny and amusing, shocking and illegal have been used. In this article, I shall not discuss any details about the spies themselves or the case, because you can read as much as you like and more on the www. I’ll simply offer some lesser known facts, my analysis of the case and finally some useful advice to the Russian spymasters so that similar embarrassments can be avoided in the future. 

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1. SVR is Russia’s foreign intelligence service. The arrested spies worked for SVR. Is SVR the same thing as KGB?
2. In today’s Facebook and Google world, why is Russia conducting stone-age spying?
3. Why were Russian spies swapped for Russian spies? How could Obama, with a stroke of the pen, pick up Russian prisoners and fly them to the free West? Why did he not free Khodarkovsky – Russia’s erstwhile richest man, who is imprisoned for the past seven years?
4. And finally, the most intriguing question that many have asked. The Russians were charged with acting as agents without notifying the US Attorney General.  Is this some kind of a joke – like the US visa form asking the applicant whether he is a terrorist?

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Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki (SVR) is translated as Foreign Intelligence Service.

Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB) was translated as the Committee for State Security. It was formally born in 1954, but in reality existed under different names since the Russian revolution of 1917. KGB was formally dissolved in 1991, along with the death of the Soviet Union; but continues to exist under different names.

In 1991, about half a million people were employed by the KGB. KGB was grouped into at least sixteen key departments called “directorates” (Управления). Each directorate was assigned a specific area of security. For example, the 5^th chief directorate (later called “Z”) dealt with censorship and security against artistic, political or religious dissent. (The Russian Hare Krishnas were persecuted by this arm). The 9^th directorate provided bodyguards for the communist party leaders and their families. The 1^st chief directorate was responsible for foreign espionage. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s de-facto head, worked in the 5^th directorate, and later in the 1^st chief directorate for a long time. He worked as a spy in Germany between 1985 and 1990.

Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, KGB disintegrated as well. Geographic disintegration was expected and happened. Ukraine and Byelorussia, for example, have their own security agencies now. What was unexpected was the splitting of KGB into two organisations.

Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti (FSB) translated as Federal Security Service calls itself the successor of KGB. But in 1991, the First Chief Directorate was removed from it. This de-merged department was formed into SVR, another successor agency dealing exclusively with foreign intelligence. The former KGB, thus, are now FSB+ SVR. (A rose by any other name…, but Russia now has two roses smelling as sweet).

The reasons for such a split can only be speculated. It’s possible the new Russia (meaning Yeltsin) felt the erstwhile KGB to be too powerful. Or the split could have been done to create new positions for important people who had become jobless. People fill vacancies, but sometimes vacancies are created for people. Whatever the reasons, a new organisation SVR was created in 1991, with its chief reporting directly to the Russian president. As Parkinson’s Law suggested, the new organisation formed their own new directorates, thereby creating more directors and more deputies. The Russian spies caught in the USA were employed by SVR.

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What happens in major corporations? A department or a business unit tries to justify its own existence. Human beings are driven by self-interest and instinctive self-preservation. Would you seriously expect a business manager to go to his boss and say, “Sorry, I think I am redundant, and the department I am running is redundant. Please dissolve it”?  

Every company and each country have people who are redundant, activities which should be shut down, initiatives that should not have been suggested.

Two years ago, India sent a spacecraft (chandrayaan-1) to the moon. The mission succeeded and the Indian flag was planted on the moon. The spacecraft detected water on the moon. The Indian media talked about it endlessly, trying to convince Indians that this was a moment of great national pride.

When half of the country’s people don’t have access to drinking water, what’s the sense in detecting water on the moon? The USA and other civilized countries have long abandoned moon trips as hugely loss-making, and suitable only for the cold war times. And India, fuelled by the self-preservation instincts of scientists, embarks on this senseless mission. You can’t expect the head of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to assess his own mission objectively. He has to keep his job, and he must keep the organization running.

It’s the same with the United States of America. Many contemporary wars, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, continue because employed soldiers need to be employed somewhere, because new weapons need to be tested. The world will be a far more peaceful place if the war hawks and their departments, along with the nuclear scientists are given redundancy packages and sent home.

The same thing and worse happened with the SVR. In the age of Facebook and Google, the presence of sleeper agents (illegals) executing orange-coloured bag swaps on a railway staircase should only happen in a cheap movie. A good hacker sitting in his heated Russian apartment is capable of gaining far better information than the ten spies managed in the past two decades.

The size of a corporate man’s importance is decided by the size of his budget. As a result, you’ll see every director in a big organization fighting to increase the headcount under him, start new expensive initiatives, and ask for higher budgets. SVR is no exception. In fact, it is in direct competition with FSB. SVR must continue to preserve its budgets and ask for more. Sleeper agents are one guaranteed way of spending much and regularly. The longer they are stationed in a foreign country, the longer you preserve the budgets.

The Russian spies in the USA did not even look interested in finding out anything. If you are living in America (instead of Russia), earning two salaries (American job and Russian espionage) why would you ever want to risk going back? They sensed that their employer looked equally uninterested. No urgency was required of them despite lack of results for more than ten years. (In the American courts, the Russian spies could not be charged with espionage, because they had not managed to access or send a single piece of classified information). 

The same goes for the other side. Americans continued to follow the incompetent spies since the 1990s. Instead of arresting them, they were happy to follow them. The American paranoia is targeted at Islamist terrorists, not at Russians. If the illegals were Muslims, would FBI have trailed them for ten years – without any action? FBI is also a corporation, and their directors also must preserve their budgets and headcount. The American taxpayer’s money and Russia’s natural resources were wasted on a farce. 

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Why did the swap happen? Why were Russians swapped for Russians? And why ten for four?

Obama’s current worry is Iran, not Russia. And his advisors have told him that the Iran issue can be dealt by using Russians as intermediaries. (USA and Iran have no diplomatic relations).  What are ten inept spies compared to the threat of another Islamic nuclear bomb? That is the reason why Obama had to sign the deportation of the Russian spies and do it as quickly as possible.

The real swap of agents vs Iran issue happened behind diplomatic doors. (This is further confirmed by Russian president Medvedev seeking on 16 July “appropriate” explanation from Iran on its nuclear programme). But that could not be cited as a White House press release. It became essential to create a spy swap.

As we saw above, the KGB cold war methods are outdated now. America does well with satellite surveillance and hacking. It can also buy Russians to spy for them. Capitalism won the cold war. Modern Russia has no ideology. Therefore, American communists can no longer be recruited to spy for Russia.

Secondly, it is easier for a Russian agent to infiltrate America. America is a land of immigrants and strange accents even from those holding American passports don’t surprise anybody. That’s not the case with Russia. A foreigner, no matter how fluent in Russian, stands out in the crowd. Why would an American want to risk a long imprisonment in a Siberian colony?

Safe to assume that the USA has no sleeper agents in Russia. Or if they have, none of them is in Russian prisons. The White House staff had to browse hurriedly through their files to dig out names of those charged with espionage. They evidently could not find more than four satisfactory names. Why did Obama not free people like Khodorkovsky, Russia’s richest man in 2004?

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003, and has been kept in prison under different pretexts. (A riddle circulating in Russia in 2004: What is a question to which every American citizen will answer “yes” and every Russian citizen “no”? The question was: Would you swap places with the richest man in your country?)

There is a reason why Obama could not free other people. Russia rules by decree, America doesn’t. It must produce some existing law to justify its actions. On this occasion, it appears that the Geneva conventions (1929&1949) were invoked. They deal with the treatment of prisoners of war. According to the Geneva conventions, prisoners of war can be exchanged.

As a result, Obama could not free any political prisoners in Russia– they were not prisoners of war. Only those charged with espionage could be considered as POWs.

USA and Russia want to take their relationship to heights never before. In order to achieve that, they had to first acknowledge the existence of war between them.

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Finally, the charge itself: Acting as agents without notifying the US Attorney General. The non-notification made the agents illegal. Did American justice seriously expect the Russian spies to go and register themselves with the US Attorney General’s office?

As a matter of fact, the USA does have a Foreign Agents Registration Act, 1938. The Counterespionage Section (CES) in the National Security Division (NSD) is responsible for the administration and enforcement of the Act. At the US Dept of justice website, you will find the browseable database that tells you which foreign agents are registered. (http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fara/)

This act is used, among others, by the Saudi royal family to improve its image battered after 9/11. Qorvis communications, a consulting firm based in Washington D.C., is registered with FARA as Saudi Arabia’s agent. In 2002, Saudi Arabia gave 15 million USD to Qorvis to raise awareness of the Kingdom’s commitment to the war on terror. The heavy PR campaign covered all major media; the spokesman appeared 50 times on television. More importantly, the lobbyists met several White House staff – something that the Russian spies did not manage over a span of fifteen years.

Granted that the agents registered under FARA are not spies (presumably). Historically, though, the act was introduced during the Second World War to keep track of the German spies in the USA.  

My advice to the Russian spymasters in SVR is to use FARA in future. Register your spies with the US Attorney General. That way Russia can officially transfer millions of dollars to the spies and save on cash bags clumsily buried in fields. The spies can lobby actively, and actually meet high ranking politicians in the White House. The FBI agents will trail your spies, but they were doing that anyway – so nothing changes. The Russian Foreign Intelligence agency keeps its budgets, keeps the staff, conducts the spying activity far more efficiently, and since the agents are registered there is no fear of their getting arrested.

When Facebook and Google have made the world an open place, there is no reason why spying should be secret.

Ravi

 

The web-o-graphy:

1. http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/062810complaint1.pdf

http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/062810complaint2.pdf

The two complaints by FBI agents. If you are spy fiction lovers, read to feel nostalgic. You will not meet textbook spying anywhere else now.

2. http://svr.gov.ru/ (In Russian, naturally): Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Agency’s website. If you are Russian, you can apply for a job through this website.

3. http://www.fsb.ru/ (In Russian): Russia’s Federal Security Service, the other child of KGB.

4. http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/305?OpenDocument

http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/375?OpenDocument

Geneva conventions of 1929 and 1949 detail the way prisoners of war should be treated.

5. http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fara/ : USA’s Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Browse through the database to find registered agents from your country.

6. http://projects.publicintegrity.org/report.aspx?aid=332&sid=100

Details of Saudis spending millions in this report from the center for public integrity.

R.