A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

It is 1996, and Sonja is living in London, where she was offered a fellowship four years prior. Sonja breaks up with her Scottish fiancé, Brendan, and returns to her hometown of Volchansk to reconnect with her sister Natasha. Sonja travels by “connecting flights from London to Warsaw to Moscow to Vladikavkaz” and now must travel by bus to Volchansk (27). The bus driver warns the passengers of the dangerous drive ahead. They stop at several checkpoints where soldiers search their luggage. As they open their bags at a checkpoint, Sonja complains to an old woman about Brendan, grateful that the woman is such a good listener, until the woman passes Sonja a note confessing that she is deaf. When they finally arrive in Volchansk, the woman hails a cab but insists that Sonja take it, passing her another note that reads, “Curfew will begin soon and you are younger and prettier than me” (30).

Sonja finally arrives at the apartment she once shared with Natasha. However, Natasha is no longer living at the apartment. Sonja observes “there was no sign of forced entry and the made bed in Natasha’s room suggested a deliberate departure” (33). Most of the apartments in the building are now empty, and most of the city has been destroyed by bombs, but Sonja runs into a neighbor she knows named Laina. However, Laina doesn’t know what happened to Natasha either.

Deshi immediately hires Sonja as a surgeon at the hospital, where she cares for trauma patients. Several days pass. Finally, one evening, Natasha shows up at the apartment door.

After leaving Havaa at the hospital with Sonja, Akhmed returns home to Eldár. Akhmed remembers when he was admitted to medical school in 1986, the first from his village to be accepted. However, even though Akhmed told Sonja he graduated in the top 10 percent of his class, he actually graduated in the bottom tenth. Akhmed couldn’t get a job at a hospital and ended up opening a clinic in an abandoned house on the outskirts of his village.

As Akhmed travels through the village toward his house, he passes the home of a man named Ramzan, who lives with his father Khassan. Ramzan is an informer to the Feds, and as a result, “Khassan hadn’t spoken to his son in the two years since Ramzan had begun informing, and though Akhmed never blamed the old man for his son’s crimes, the electric bulbs bathed both in the same light” (39).

At home, Ula asks Akhmed where he was all day, and Akhmed tells her he was helping Dokka shear sheep. Ula accepts this answer even though the sheep had been “sold, slaughtered, and consumed long ago” (41-42). As Akhmed cooks rice for Ula and then climbs into bed next to her, he thinks he is the best caretaker for Ula, despite Sonja’s doubts about his abilities.

At the hospital, Havaa staples latex gloves to her clothing in order to dress up as a sea anemone. Sonja scolds her for wasting supplies and insists that she change into the clothing she brought in the blue suitcase. Havaa refuses to open the suitcase, calling it her “just-in-case suitcase” (44) even though Havaa claims it is only full of “clothes and souvenirs” (45). Finally, as they go to bed, Sonja remembers how her sister Natasha once again mysteriously disappeared the previous winter, in December 2003.