Abdul smiled when he remembered Moscow.
He had been complaining that the area where he was driving was too expensive to live in. Like any resident of London, he knew his house prices, and Blackheath is not a cheap place to live, even if it is in south London. Still, he did say rather proudly that he had a three-bedroom place in neighboring Greenwich, not exactly slum territory either, and a very long way from Luzhniki market, and even further from Afghanistan.
"Is it still there?" asked Abdul, with a look of genuine nostalgia on his face, when he heard that his passenger lived in Moscow.
He was asking about Luzhniki market, the flea market that takes up much of the area outside the stadium grounds today. In the 1990s, it was larger and even more chaotic, a law unto itself that swarmed all the way to the Lenin statue.
"I miss Luzhniki," he said. "We made a lot of money."
As the car drove through the night streets, Abdul talked of the heady days from 1992 to 1994 when he and his brother lived in Moscow and worked nearly all hours at the stadium. They weren't good years for many, but for Abdul, a Persian-speaking Afghan with trade in his blood, they were very good indeed.
Every month or so, Abdul used to go back and forth with goods from China, mainly clothes. For the trip, they and some other traders would rent a trailer and pay off custom guards on the border about $10,000 between them. Back in Moscow, they would see the goods stripped from their stalls in lightning-fast time.
People would come from outside Moscow and buy boxes full of stuff to resell out in the provinces, and then the trip to China would begin again.
There were the odd problems. Of course, you had to pay a cut to the local mafia for your stall. The Armenian and the Chechen mafias were the worst. Once, his family was sitting at home when the door rang. They opened the door and in walked a young, inoffensive-looking girl. She was quickly followed by four of the finest large-bull types who proceeded to take everything out of his apartment without any explanation.
Still, it didn't damper his enthusiasm for his successful youth. His brother is still there, and Abdul said he'd go visit him. But it sounded more like the wish of a middle-aged man with a mortgage and a family, a desire to remember those wild days.
"We made a lot of money," he said again.
He had been complaining that the area where he was driving was too expensive to live in. Like any resident of London, he knew his house prices, and Blackheath is not a cheap place to live, even if it is in south London. Still, he did say rather proudly that he had a three-bedroom place in neighboring Greenwich, not exactly slum territory either, and a very long way from Luzhniki market, and even further from Afghanistan.
"Is it still there?" asked Abdul, with a look of genuine nostalgia on his face, when he heard that his passenger lived in Moscow.
He was asking about Luzhniki market, the flea market that takes up much of the area outside the stadium grounds today. In the 1990s, it was larger and even more chaotic, a law unto itself that swarmed all the way to the Lenin statue.
"I miss Luzhniki," he said. "We made a lot of money."
As the car drove through the night streets, Abdul talked of the heady days from 1992 to 1994 when he and his brother lived in Moscow and worked nearly all hours at the stadium. They weren't good years for many, but for Abdul, a Persian-speaking Afghan with trade in his blood, they were very good indeed.
Every month or so, Abdul used to go back and forth with goods from China, mainly clothes. For the trip, they and some other traders would rent a trailer and pay off custom guards on the border about $10,000 between them. Back in Moscow, they would see the goods stripped from their stalls in lightning-fast time.
People would come from outside Moscow and buy boxes full of stuff to resell out in the provinces, and then the trip to China would begin again.
There were the odd problems. Of course, you had to pay a cut to the local mafia for your stall. The Armenian and the Chechen mafias were the worst. Once, his family was sitting at home when the door rang. They opened the door and in walked a young, inoffensive-looking girl. She was quickly followed by four of the finest large-bull types who proceeded to take everything out of his apartment without any explanation.
Still, it didn't damper his enthusiasm for his successful youth. His brother is still there, and Abdul said he'd go visit him. But it sounded more like the wish of a middle-aged man with a mortgage and a family, a desire to remember those wild days.
"We made a lot of money," he said again.