In Putin's Footsteps

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At dusk, a forty-seat propeller plane from the 1970s circles around the islands, pale masses in an indigo sea. One circle, two, and then three. A flight that should take forty minutes has now dragged on for an hour and a half. We can’t land.

The pilot announces over the speakerphone: “It’s the wind. The Solovetsky Islands’ landing strip is too short. With such a wind, we’d be blown right into the White Sea.” He pauses, and then requests, in all seriousness, “Pray to the Solovetsky Islands that they accept you.”

It is a few nights before Christmas—the Russian Orthodox Christmas, that is, which falls in early January. The plane is filled with religious tourists and nuns in black habits, with their hair hidden beneath black kerchiefs, and shod in, surprisingly, posh black hiking boots. Nowadays it is cool to be Orthodox Christian in Russia.

Everyone lowers their eyes and prays.

Ten minutes later the plane, wobbling in the fierce erratic winds, manages to touch down.

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