I was not looking for the path that would lead me into journalism. Journalism found me itself, filling my youth with a truly special meaning and unforgettable acquaintances, events and emotions. It all began in the senior years of school. Literature was my strong suit. The school traditionally sent me to every literary contest and olympiad, and as a rule I did not come back from them without a prize. I also loved working on wall newspapers and was really good at it. It got to the point where teachers of other classes would assign me to make a wall newspaper for their classes. I wrote the texts myself, found interesting photographs, drew everything myself… And one more thing… I wrote poetry. Or rather, I still do, but now I have my own pages on several poetry portals and about fifty thousand readers, publications in many almanacs and collections in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Krasnodar and other cities, while back then there was only the school audience, the teachers and my parents. Of course, I dreamed of the day when my poetry would find its readers, but I had absolutely no idea HOW to make it happen. I was only fourteen! Chance changed my life. Yet another regional literature olympiad brought me a silver medal and drew the attention of one of the jury members. His name was Viktor Borisovich Pakhomov. He was an Honored Teacher of Russia, a poet, and a member of the Union of Writers of Novorossiysk. In conversation with him I told him about my poems. Viktor Borisovich became very interested and asked me to give him a few poems. I gave them to him and… completely forgot about it. The ninth-grade exams loomed ahead, and I had no time for vague dreams of poetic fame. And three weeks later the deputy head teacher for extracurricular work called me in and showed me the local newspaper «Yunoye Tvorchestvo «Parus» with my poems on the front page. Shock! Two weeks after that I was invited to my first ever public reading. There, in the A. Ostrovsky Library, I performed in front of an audience for the first time, dying of fear and on the verge of fainting. And it was there that I was introduced to one of the outstanding writers of the region and the country: Mikhail Glinistov. It was he who became my «guru» in the world of journalism, about which I knew absolutely NOTHING! Mikhail Stepanovich was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper «Vecherniy Novorossiysk». Not having enough free time, he suggested we meet right at the newspaper’s editorial office. I remember as if it were yesterday that my first visit to the editorial office felt to me like an initiation into the Order of the Templars. Journalists hurried past me with badges, cameras and some papers in their hands. From the offices came talk of «pages», «layout», «print run»… Goodness! I am just a girl! This is no place for me… In Mikhail Stepanovich’s office I caught my breath and declared that nothing would work out and that I would not manage anything, even though, truth be told, no one had offered me anything! Glinistov grinned and asked whether I was familiar with the prose genre AT ALL. I knew it within the limits of school essays, reports and notes for wall newspapers. Well, there were also my personal diaries, of which I had almost more than Leo Tolstoy, but I did not count those. In short, my arsenal of knowledge was not wide, but for some reason this did not bother Mikhail Stepanovich at all. Apparently, from the height of his years and his vast professional experience, he saw something in me that I did not see and did not know in myself. My «spiritual mentor» asked whether it was true that my family and I had recently returned to Novorossiysk from Volgograd. That was true. My father served in the army, and frequent moves were an inseparable part of my family’s life. –Excellent! — Glinistov declared. — So we have found a topic for your first article. Novorossiysk and Volgograd. Whip up a sort of «comparative essay». Write about your impressions, about the city that is new to you. Compare it with your native Novorossiysk. Especially since the «Culture» page is completely free. I have long wanted to start placing something more interesting on it than posters for events at the local theater. If you manage it, your article will take up the whole page. If not, at least you will know that you tried. Go, write. «Ha! Easy for him to say! «Go, write!» He might just as well have sent me off to raise the dead!» — these, to put it mildly, gloomy thoughts spun in my head the whole way back. At home I sat in silence for a long time, recalling again and again the year I had spent in Volgograd, reviving in my memory the impression I had received from getting to know that city sprawled on the banks of the Volga… In my mind I wandered anew along the endlessly long embankment, the tangled streets. My memory obligingly spread before my eyes the boundless steppe and the majestic river. And then I would glance into the open window and see the mountains and the bay of the Black Sea, hear the drawn-out cries of the seagulls and feel the faint smell of fuel oil and iodine — the standard aromas of all seaside cities. Volgograd did not accept me, just as I was unable to let it into my heart. I was a child born between mountains and sea in the sunny republic of Transcaucasia and, having left my homeland (due to circumstances beyond my control), I ended up in a city that turned out to be like a smaller copy of my native Baku. Here, in Novorossiysk, there were also mountains and the sea, and seagulls, and a port, and ships that also tore the night silence with sharp horns… I could not imagine my existence anywhere except a place surrounded by sea and mountains, and so neither the steppe expanses nor the smooth surface of the river won me over. I do not know myself how it happened, but the article was written in a single night. To this day I marvel at the wisdom of my mentor Glinistov. How unerringly he chose for me the very topic that allowed me to open up with incredible ease! «Novorossiysk–Volgograd: two cities, two destinies». That was exactly the title of my very first article, which took up an entire page in the newspaper. My debut brought me luck. Then there were many other articles on other topics. But this one, the first and unique one, I still remember and carefully keep that memorable issue of the newspaper «Vecherniy Novorossiysk». Who knows, maybe someday I will show it to my grown-up children, and open the road into journalism anew, this time for them!
