Then, when I was about seven, I made the first great discovery of European culture: the first time in my life I saw a car. I remember my grandmother took me to the car, put me down, and said, "When you were little, I taught you that you don't stand behind a horse, because it can kick; Now remember: you don't stand in front of the car, because it can go." Back then, cars were only on the brakes, so you never know whether it will go or not.

     Did you have any tutors?

     In Persia there was a Russian nanny at first; then there was a period, approximately from 1918 to 1920, when there was no one – grandmother, mother; There were various Persians who taught how to ride a donkey and things like that. I can't say anything about cultural life, because I don't remember, in general, anything. It was a blissful time – I didn't go to school, they didn't teach me anything, they "developed", as my grandmother used to say. My grandmother was wonderful; she read an awful lot aloud to me, so that I "read" a lot in the first years: Brehm's "The Life of Animals", three or four volumes, all the children's books - you can imagine. Grandma could read for hours and hours, and I could listen for hours and hours. I would lie on my stomach, draw, or just sit and listen. And she could read; firstly, she read beautifully and well, secondly, she knew how to pause in those moments when it was necessary to give time to react somehow; From time to time she stopped reading, we went for a walk, and she started conversations about what we read about: moral assessments, so that it reached me not as entertainment, but as a contribution, and this was very valuable, I think.

     In 1920 we began to move out of Persia: a change of government, the transfer of the embassy, etc. My father stayed, and my mother, grandmother and I, we set off on a road somewhere in the West. We had a diplomatic passport for England, where we never arrived; Or rather, they arrived, but much later, in 1949. And so, partly on horseback, partly in a carriage, they rode through the north of Persia in the dead of winter, under the escort of robbers, because this was the most certain thing to do. In Persia at that time it was possible to travel under two escorts: either robbers or Persian soldiers. And the most unfaithful thing was the convoy of Persian soldiers, because they will certainly rob you, but you cannot complain about them: how is that? We didn't even think of robbing them! We defended them! Someone attacked them, but we don't know, probably in disguise.. If robbers appeared, the convoy immediately disappeared: why would the soldiers fight, risk their lives to be robbed themselves?! And with the robbers it was much more certain: they either guarded you or simply robbed you.

     Well, under the escort of robbers, we drove through the entire north of Persia, crossed Kurdistan, boarded a barge, drove past the earthly paradise: even before the Second World War, they showed the earthly paradise and the tree of Good and Evil – where the Tigris and the Euphrates join. This is a wonderful picture: the Euphrates is wide, blue, and the Tigris is fast, and its waters are red, and it cuts into the Euphrates, and a few hundred meters can still be seen in the blue waters of the Euphrates a stream of red waters of the Tigris... And there is a rather large clearing in the forest and in the middle of the clearing a small withered tree fenced with a lattice: you understand that it has dried up since then, of course... It is all hung with small rags: in the East at that time (I don't know how it is now), when you passed by some holy place, you tore off a piece of clothing and hung it from a tree or a bush, or, if it was impossible to do this, you put a stone, and you got such heaps. And there this tree stood; it almost crashed, because during the Second World War, American soldiers dug it up, loaded it into a jeep and were about to take it to America: the Tree of Good and Evil is much more interesting than transporting some Gothic cathedral, after all, it is much older. And the local population surrounded them and did not allow the jeep to move until the command was warned and they were forced to dig back into the tree of Good and Evil. So it's probably still there...

     During this period, I smoked for the first and last time. On the way it was surprisingly hungry and even more, perhaps, boring, and I kept whining to be given something to eat to pass the time. And there was nothing to eat, and my mother tried to distract my attention with a cigarette. For a week I tried smoking, sucked on one cigarette, sucked on another, sucked on a third, but I realized that the cigarette was a pure deception, that it was not food or entertainment, and that was the end of my career as a smoker. Then he also did not smoke, but not at all for virtuous reasons. I was told: you will smoke like everyone else, but I did not want to be like everyone else. After that, they said that you would smoke when you got to the anatomical theater, because otherwise no one could stand it, and I decided that I would die, but I would not smoke; they said that when I got into the army, I would smoke; But he never lit a cigarette.

     Thus we came to Basra, and as there were mines in the ocean at that time, the shortest way to the west was from Basra to India, and we went east to India; We lived there for a month, and the only thing I remember is the red color of the Bombay buildings; the high towers where the Parsees put their dead to be eaten by birds of prey, and flocks of eagles and other birds of prey circled around these towers; It's the only memory I have left, except for the barely unbearable heat.

     And then we were sent to England, and here I was full of hopes, which, unfortunately, did not come true. We were put on board a ship, warned that it was so dilapidated that if there was a storm, it would certainly be wrecked. And I read Robinson Crusoe and all sorts of interesting things, and, of course, I dreamed of a storm. In addition, the captain was full of imagination, if not reason, and decided that all the members of the family should not die at once, and so he assigned my mother to one rescue boat, my grandmother to another, and me to a third, so that at least one of us would survive if we died. My mother was very unsympathetic to the idea of a shipwreck, and I couldn't understand how she could be so unromantic.

     For twenty-three days we sailed from Bombay to Gibraltar, and in Gibraltar we remained so: the ship had decided never to move again. And we were disembarked, and we received most of the luggage, but one big wooden box floated away, that is, it was transported to England, and we received it very many years later; The British found us somewhere and forced us to pay a pound sterling for storage. It was a huge event because it was one of those boxes where you dump everything at the last minute that you can't leave at the last minute. At first we wisely packed what we needed, then what we could, and left what could no longer be taken, and at the last minute the heart is not a stone, and in this drawer there were, of course, the most precious things, that is, those that later interested me as a boy a thousand times more than warm underwear or useful shoes. But this happened later.

     And so we traveled through Spain, and my only memory of Spain is Cordoba and the mosque. I don't remember her with my eyes, but I remember the impression of some breathtaking beauty and silence. Then the north of Spain: wild, dry, rocky and which explains the Spanish character so well.

     Then we got to Paris, and there I made two more discoveries. One thing: for the first time in my life, I discovered electricity – that it exists at all. We drove somewhere, it was dark, and I stopped and said: we need to light the lamp. Mom said: no, you can turn on the electricity. I did not understand what it was at all, and suddenly I heard: chik - and it became light. It was a big deal; You know, in later generations you can't understand this, because they are born with it; But then it was such an incomprehensible phenomenon that the light could suddenly appear, suddenly go out, that there was no need to fill the kerosene lamp, that it did not smoke, that there was no need to clean the glass – the whole world of things had disappeared...

     And the second discovery is that there are people who cannot be crushed on the street. Because in Persia it was like this: a horseman or a carriage rushes down the street, and every pedestrian saves his life by throwing himself against the wall; If you don't rush fast enough, you'll be whipped, and if you don't, you'll be overturned: it's your own fault for getting under the horse's feet! And so we were driving, I think, on the first day from the station by taxi along the Champs-Elysées, that is, along a huge street – there were almost no cars then, everything was very open, there were no shops along the street, it was very beautiful – and suddenly I saw: a man was standing in the middle of the street and was not rushing anywhere, he was just standing as if rooted to the ground, and strollers, Cars pass like this. I grabbed my mother by the hand and said: Mom! He must be saved.. After all, we were also in a car, we could stop and say: hurry, hurry up, we'll save you.. And my mother told me: No, it's a policeman. "Well, what is it, that he is a policeman?!" Mom says: You can't put pressure on the policeman... I thought: this is a miracle! If you become a policeman, you can save yourself from all troubles and misfortunes for life.. Over time, I changed my views somewhat, but at that moment I really experienced it as diplomatic immunity: you stand there and they can't crush you! Do you understand what this means?!. This was the second big event in my European life.

     That's all I found in Paris then. Then we went to Austria, all looking for some work for my mother, and my grandmother's older sister, who was married to an Austrian, was still alive in Austria. Then we went to northern Yugoslavia, to the region of Zagreb and Maribor. There we lived for some time on a farm, I was then seven years old, and I worked part-time, doing some work that probably no one needed. Then we returned to Austria again, because there was nothing to do in Yugoslavia, and we spent a year and a half in Vienna.

     And there I had to go through my first encounters with culture: they began to teach me to read and write, and I was very reluctant to give in to this. I could not understand why I needed this, when I could sit quietly and listen to my grandmother read aloud – so smoothly, so well – why else would I need anything else? One of my relatives tried to reason with me, saying: you see, I studied well, now I have a good job, good earnings, I can support my family... I only asked him: could you do it for two?