An elderly singer in the finance district. Sound Postcard.

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The World Trade Center in Moscow is still there, and this is what it’s called: World Trade Center, in English. It consists of a few concrete-and-glass skyscrapers, filled with offices and expensive boutiques, connected by a shopping mall in the basement. At six pm the employees of banks and corporations, who occupy the said offices, pour outside. They form a river of dressed-up people, flowing to the nearest metro station. There, on the way out of an underground passage and into the station, this gentleman awaits them:

Strange instrument on Kurskaya. Sound postcard.

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Kurskaya is a very big metro station, where three metro lines cross with a major suburb trains hub. I was rushing through one of its multiple halls, pushed between endless chains of escalators when I heard the concert which you can now hear below. For a second the very centre of Moscow turned to be a market in a land far, far away, I could almost hear the hum of sellers and buyers, feel the smell of spices and see the desert surrounding that imaginary, middle-eastern town. Call me naive, but this is what that music made me think of. If anyone reading those words happens to know what instrument it actually is and where it comes from, I shall be eternally grateful if they share that information with me. For now, though, join me on a small excursion to that fairytale land, which I left as fast as I entered it, descending into the mundane abyss of yet another metro station.