(4/4) “I called the number immediately. I didn’t speak any...

(4/4)  “I called the number immediately.  I didn’t speak any Italian.  But I kept repeating the names of the Italian couple, and I gave him my phone number.  The couple called me back the next day with an interpreter.  They told me they missed me.  They said they’d been worried about me.  I told them I was finally ready to change my life, and they said: ‘Enough with Russia.  Come live with us.’  So I came to Florence.  And when I arrived, they introduced me to everyone as their son.  It was a whole new world.  A whole new life.  That first night my father sat me down, and he said: ‘I understand you’re afraid.  But you’re part of the family now.’  I have a Mom and Dad now.  I have a brother and sister.  I have aunts.  I have uncles.  We celebrate things together.  I’d never celebrated Christmas before.  I was twenty-three and I’d never even had a birthday cake.  But now we celebrate all of these things.  And we share sad things too.  We go through things together.  These last few years something deep down inside me has changed.  I’m more open.  I’m more caring.  I don’t really believe in God but there’s got to be something.  I don’t know how any of this was possible.  There is no one in the world like my mother and father.  Now I want to enlarge our family.  I want to have children of my own.  And I want to tell them everything that happened to me.”
(Florence, Italy)