‘The Dots Were All There. We Just Couldn’t Connect Them.’

I was the only foreigner in the van. We nodded and asked questions that seemed intrusive. There were three rows of seats in the van. One person sat up front with the driver, a mother and daughter had the first row, a woman with her five-year-old granddaughter and two French bulldogs had the second row, and my dog and I got the last seat. I realized that it was a bad row, with a narrow seat, no leg room, and no heat. The luggage was piled up under the seats. One of the bulldogs lunged at my dog, who was shaking. The little girl kept up a non-stop monologue when we set off, asking if she could pet the dog. What is her name? Our other dog is very sweet and not very nice. If you want, you can pet her. Is your coat cold? Do you know how to make faces? I pretended to fall asleep as Frosya continued to moan and tug at her leash to get at my dog. The girl poked me.

I burst out laughing. It was going to be a long trip.

The little girl fell asleep after an hour or two. I don't know why no one spoke out of fatigue or tension. We passed long-haul trucks and rickety local cars as signs for villages and little towns disappeared in flashes of headlights along the pot-holed roads of Russia's provinces. I was worried about what I had packed and what I had left behind.

I must have fallen asleep. I woke up about seven hours after we left Moscow, when the van stopped and the border guard shone a flashlight at us. I passed it up, he looked at it and passed it back to the American.

I now think of The Zone as the border zone with Russian facilities on one side and the buildings on the other. It was a large fenced off area with roads for trucks and cars, booths for guards, and many other things. Several long commercial trucks parked off to the side, as if they were left there by the drivers. Everything was lit up by streetlights.

We got out of the van. It was bitterly cold and the asphalt was covered with dirty ice. I didn't take that into account in my suitcase-hauling practice. We took our bags and dogs to the booth. I handed over my passport and entry card when the window opened, but the guard told me to go to customs. I dragged everything over another expanse of ice to a small building, hauled it inside, piled it all on the x-ray conveyer belt, and answered questions. I didn't have anything forbidden. I had two computers. I had no plants or drugs. The Russian guards were nice. I took my passport and went to the next booth.

The Important Booth was the booth that I realized was there. You handed your documents to the guards and waited. A middle-aged woman in a thin wool coat stood outside with me. The French bulldog family was behind us. We were standing in the cold for about an hour. They would call one of us over when the booth window opened. The woman told me that they asked her if she was in Kyiv. What did you do there? Who did you see?

I walked back and forth with my dog and waited. My van-mate got her passport when the window opened. I was handed mine after another 10 minutes. I could go for relief. I draped the two bags with clothes and dog food over my shoulders and hung my purse around my neck after putting the computer bag on top of the suitcase. I dragged the suitcase with one hand and held my dog's leash with the other. The guards said that the end of the road was 800 meters. That's Estonia.

It is difficult to drag 150 lbs. of luggage across a half mile of ice in the middle of the night with a dog on a leash.

I stopped every 100 meters and switched hands to get to the other side. The border guards were kind. They asked why I was leaving. Did I have been threatened? Did something happen? I told them that most of the foreign journalists were leaving. They shook their heads sympathetically, stamped my passport and said, "Welcome to Estonia." No one looked at any of my carefully prepared documents proving my dog was healthy and vaccine free, that I didn't have Covid but did.

While the driver contemplated how he would fit in all the luggage, my fellow traveler and I climbed in the new van to warm up. The mother and daughter arrived. I assumed they were fleeing the country because they had been pulled aside by the guards. The mother told us that they had been questioned for more than an hour. They had close relatives in Kyiv, and the guards had questioned them about their family, what they did, and where they were going. It seemed like anyone with Ukrainian connections was suspicious. The guards asked to see their cell phones, but I told them not to. The guards decided to release them because it was my private property.

The French bulldog family made it to the van. My dog and I sat in front. The entire trip would take 14 hours after we had spent more than two hours in The Zone.

There was a bright blue and yellow billboard that said "Glory to Ukraine!" as we drove off.

We were no longer in Russia.

When I arrived in Riga, my friends met me at the van and whisked me into an apartment in a large housing complex surrounded by lawns, trees and children's playground. In Moscow, my large apartment was on the top floor of a 90-year-old building filled with antiques and art. My apartment is on the first floor of a 40-year-old building. It turns out that the contrast is perfect.

Most of the Russians in my neighborhood are in the capital of Latvia. Communication isn't a problem for older and young Latvians, they both speak Russian and English.

Work is not a problem. We all got back to work after the staff of The Moscow Times landed. Russian correspondents have been helping with reporting. A lot of good journalists are looking for jobs. It's important for us to keep operating so that people who rely on us can still find us.

We're making the transition because of the technological problems of the modern home office: too many devices, new cell phone numbers and a lack of confirmation text messages, with everything stopping when automatic payments from my Moscow bank are no longer accepted or confirmation text messages are sent.

Between the start of the war and my departure from Russia, I cried a lot. I cried when I walked my dog in the park across the street, where I knew every bush and tree and patch of grass, and when I sat at my desk and looked out at my beloved Moscow courtyard. I didn't think it would be the last time I'd see places that were so important to me in my life, where there were so many people and so much that I loved.

The novelty of a new city, the daily battle with phones and computers keep me tense. I don't think about the future beyond next week. Even if I can go back to Russia, it won't be the same as I remember.

It is said that once you shut the door, walk away and not look back.