Anything Can Happen! Even Miracles!

By Stephen Wilson, one of our reporters abroad

It never leaves you. The experience of becoming homeless inflicts an indelible wound on your soul. I sometimes wake up with astonishment to find I'm in a room now with a roof over my head. I even still wonder if this can continue! For I recall becoming homeless again and again.

Once you think you are out of the woods, and then you are thrown into the dark deep end again.

It's like you are a boomerang that's being thrown around by someone or something. The person who's throwing you around might be a landlord, employer, and even a relation. It could be a rent hike or sudden redundancy. You can lose your room for all kinds of odd reasons such as “the room needs to be repaired” or something different like "my daughter is returning from abroad."

Of course if this happens, some people presume there's something wrong with you. They ask, “How come other people manage to stay in a room but you don't?" But then you find out from more streetwise people that you are not alone. Other workers are having the same problems. They are just more discrete than you.

For instance, I recall 20 years ago in Moscow I was teaching a mother and son English. One day her small business went bust. During the lesson we were interrupted by an urgent phone call where one of her employees who had been just fired by her had complained -"How will I be able to pay the rent and keep my room?" She then told me "This is not my problem. It is his problem." And that sums up the attitude of a lot of people: they think it's every man for himself. Although those people tell me they like to read Russian literature, the words by Dostoyevsky that 'We are all responsible for each other' seem to elude them.

In the late 1970's due to family conflict, I found myself without a place to stay in Glasgow. I spent much time sofa-surfing. I quickly found how people treasure their privacy immensely. I eventually came across a charity run by the Church of Scotland that put me up in a room. It was a house run by a kind and thoughtful middle-aged woman. It might have been strange for her. Here was a Christian putting up an atheist and Marxist. When she told me how Christians were being persecuted and imprisoned in the Soviet Union, I scoffed at this claim as just western propaganda. She retorted, “I can show you all the evidence if you want. We are campaigning for their release." Well, I accepted what she said in good faith and told her there was no need to show any evidence.

It was strange to think that 16 years later I 'd be working for one of the prisoners she had been campaigning to free in Moscow. The man who worked with her was a good-natured guy who'd help anyone in trouble. He seemed to have been endowed with the second sight. In our discussion it was as if he was predicting this will happen and that also. "It is terrible how people can be cruel to each other in hospitals' and "It's your fate to spread the word of God." Well I never became a priest or preacher, but I suppose I did become a Christian. However, I have always been uneasy about what psychic people tell you. I'd rather not know their predictions.

My Scottish girlfriend once told me to be careful when I crossed the road on the way to college.' A car later ran me over. She later told me she had dreamt that she had witnessed this accident. After this stay in the church of Scotland 's refuge, I was allowed to move into my aunt's place.

This was not my final encounter with homelessness. When I came to Moscow in 1994, I was shocked to discover the rent for accommodation was exorbitant. It was incredibly high. I wondered how people survived here. I later learnt they did not all survive. They were dying prematurely in their 40's and 50's from hardship. You would end up paying over 50% of your salary to rent just a modest room. The best option was to rent a much cheaper room in the Moscow region. Now it occurred to me that coming to Moscow was a big mistake. Although I got some rooms, I also easily lost them. I ended up staying at soup kitchens, in a homeless nightshelter and at one stage on a bus. At least I never stayed at railway stations or on the streets. It could have been far far worse.

During this odd odyssey the worst problem was where to wash your clothes. Unlike in Dublin or Glasgow there are no cheap laundry facilities available. So you spend so much time trying to drop in to a friend who has a washing machine or try to. I think I even lost a lot of work because I became less presentable.

But once I landed a cushy job as an editor for a journal called 'The Big Game.' The pay was so good I could give up teaching which I never relished or had been in love with.

Then misfortune struck!

At Christmas, I and all the staff {translators} were fired. I recall a glum down-crested translator telling me, "I'm sorry to tell you the bad news but we have all been laid off because they found another agency to do the work which is cheaper." And that was the end of that! I ended up in student hostels again. I began to understand why so many African students who wanted to prolong their time in Moscow stayed in student rooms for years on end taking a long time to finish their degrees.

I then found a job as a copy editor for the Moscow News. But the pay was so low that I had practically paid all the money for a room leaving me hungry and without money even for transport. I had to borrow money from a kind Sports Editor next door to the office I worked in. That saved me. But the job was only temporary. The full-time editor returned from his holiday in England without warning and came into the office. So I had to leave that job .

I can recall two strange events. One method I used twice to get a room was to go into a church and ask the priest or minister to make a public appeal to anyone in the congregation to provide me with temporarily accommodation. I got the idea from a Thomas Hardy novel. To my surprise, someone in the Orthodox church offered me a room at a cheap rate in Istra, which is located in the Moscow region.

And again , during my last spell of being homeless I understood I could not go to the same church again and appeal. Instead, I went to a Protestant church and made the same kind of appeal. In this church people who had come to the church for the first time were asked to stand up and introduce themselves. When my turn came, I stood up and appealed to the congregation for someone to put me up. To my amazement, one kind Russian teacher of English told me she would take me in. I told her I needed that room the very night, so I moved in. I stayed for one month. While staying with the teacher I managed to obtain stable employment as a teacher at one school. {By some pure stroke of luck all the students liked me, so I was kept on.}

I then moved in with my Russian girlfriend whom I was able to support. Before this her friends warned her that I'd never be able to support her! They told her " If Stephen cannot support himself how can he support you?" It turned out I could. I still support her.

I later concluded that it does not always matter what church you ask for help, whether it is Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant, God can answer your prayers through any denomination. You just never know what to expect from life. The unanticipated can occur.

Miracles can even surface!