“Up yours,” the driver called back. “Move!”

“Where do you want me to go?” Yuri yelled. “What’s the matter with you?”

Yuri settled back into his beaded seat. He ran an anxious hand through his thick brown, almost black hair. Reaching up, he turned his rearview mirror to look at himself. His eyes were red and his face was flushed. He knew he had to calm down, otherwise he’d have a coronary. What he needed was a shot of vodka.

“What a joke!” Yuri muttered angrily in Russian. He wasn’t referring to the current traffic situation but rather to his whole life. Metaphorically his life had a lot in common with the stalled traffic. It was dead in the water, and as a result, Yuri was completely disillusioned. By sad experience he now knew that the enticing American dream that had been his driving force was a sham, one foisted onto the world by the American Jewish-dominated media.

Ahead the cars began to move. Yuri lurched his car forward, hoping at least to get through the bottled-up intersection, but it was not to be. The car in front stopped short. Yuri was forced to do likewise. Then the taxi behind him hit him again. This second collision, like the first, was merely a bump, certainly not enough to do any damage, but for Yuri it added insult to injury.

Yuri stuck his head out the window again. “What the hell is the matter with you? Is this your first day driving?”

“Shut up, you goddamn foreigner,” the driver behind yelled back. “Why don’t you take your ass home to wherever the hell it was you came from.”

Yuri started to respond but changed his mind. He settled back into his seat and exhaled noisily like a punctured tire deflating. The driver’s comment had unwittingly awakened a sense of toska that descended over Yuri like a heavy wool blanket. Toska is a Russian word that connotes melancholy, depression, yearning, anguish, weariness, and nostalgia suffered all at once in the form of deep, psychic pain.

Yuri stared ahead with unseeing eyes. For the moment the disillusionment and anger about America was swept away by an evocative reminiscence. All at once an image popped into his mind of himself and his brother going to school on a crystalline, frosty morning in his home city of Sverdlovsk, USSR. In his mind’s eye he could see the communal kitchen with its conviviality, and in his heart he could remember the pride of being part of the mighty Soviet Empire.

Of course there had been some deprivations under the Communist regime, like occasionally having the women wait in line for milk and other staples. But it hadn’t been as bad as people had said or as bad as the fools here in America wanted to believe. In fact, the equality for everyone, excluding those high in the party, had been refreshing and conducive to friendship. There certainly had been less social conflict than here in America. At the time, Yuri didn’t realize how good it had been. But now he remembered, and he was going home. Yuri was going back to Rossiya-matoshka, or little mother Russia. He’d made that decision months earlier.