This column first appeared here Dec. 17, 1997. We reprint it by request.

If you are young, alone and in a strange country, Christmas can be a hard time of year. Sonia Alvarez, a petite, four-foot-six judo expert from a small fishing village near the Straits of Gibraltar was finding it particularly difficult in Moscow.
Sonia had come to Moscow to study Russian as a language student just after the collapse of the Russian super state. At age 23 she had lived away from her family for several years but still found it melancholy to be alone at Christmas.
Sonia had lived in Moscow for just over eight months. She had a small scholarship to study the Russian language, about $4 a month American, but enough then in Moscow to pay for a room in student housing and lunch with a cup of tea. Sonia got by. She had always gotten by. She had pursued her studies in some tough places.
The judo made her confident and she carried no air of a victim about her. She was left alone. She had trained hard, she was disciplined and tough, she had won several major competitions. She carried the discipline into her studies.
Part of getting by meant she tightly rationed her food. Lunch was usually bread and tea, some vegetable soup if it was available, clear broth if it was not. Fruit was a once a week treat, but often was not available anyway. Fish was also a rarely affordable luxury for Sonia. Meat was out of the question. Sonia was often hungry and just as often glad she was no bigger than she was.
Sonia, like most regular people in Moscow and all save the most elite students, walked everywhere she went. Sonia liked to walk. She liked the motion. It quieted the hunger and gave her a destination to focus on.
Now, just before Christmas, Sonia was walking to class. It had begun to snow again. Although she was not even halfway to school she didnt think about the snow. She had worn the huge, puffy coat that dwarfed her small frame. She could never find clothes that fit her well.
She was not thinking of clothes or the snow but of Christmas and her family. She also found herself thinking of how long it had been since she had any meat to eat. She wasnt that fond of meat or even used to it, but she also found that without it in her diet she sometimes developed a craving for it. She had vegetarian friends who told her that was nonsense but for Sonia it was not nonsense. She knew what she felt.
Normally Sonia did not allow herself to think about food and was mildly shocked by letting this sudden craving for meat intrude. But she could not drive it from her mind and finally, frustrated by losing control, she stopped walking.
As she stood trying to rein in this sudden silly appetite she saw something move near the building she had been passing. She looked closer but did not comprehend. Then she understood but did not believe.
It was a chicken.
Sonia realized she had been seeing it for some time but in her self-imposed trance had purposely been blocking out her surroundings. The chicken had been moving along the building with her, darting in and out of the piles of garbage and street detritus that cluttered the post-communist Moscow streets. It must have gotten out of its pen. Surely someone would be looking for it.
Sonia changed course and moved quickly along a side street. The chicken kept up, never walking too close to her, never appearing to follow her directly. Yet every time she stopped, the chicken showed up nearby. She knew this chicken must belong to someone. A family, probably, saving it for a holiday feast. She realized that she was thinking it was perhaps providential that it was following her. Maybe the chicken could be her holiday feast. She smelled the aroma of frying chicken with chili peppers and potatoes that her mother often cooked at home but struggled to push it away.
She knew she was a foreign student with no rights of citizenship. Foreigners who steal were treated harshly in Moscow. She must lose this troublesome chicken quickly lest someone think the worst. Since the chicken seemed to be moving toward the school, Sonia turned back toward her apartment.
But this chicken would not be shaken. Within a block of her flat, Sonias fear turned to wonder. Why was this chicken following her? She stopped. The chicken trotted tamely to her side. Finally overcome by an impulse, Sonia reached down and scooped the chicken into the folds of her coat. She shut her eyes waiting for the accusing screams and pointing fingers. Nothing happened. She opened her eyes and looked up into the windows of the apartments above the street. There appeared to be no one watching. No one had seen her chicken theft.
She walked quickly to her apartment house, trying not to run. She was giddy with hunger, fear and excitement. Instead of going into her own flat she climbed one more flight of stairs and banged on the door of a fellow foreign student who seemed startled to see her when he opened it.
Let me in! Shut the door, shut the door! Sonia whispered loudly. The boy stared at the small Spanish woman who was now giggling and gasping and whose stomach writhed beneath her outsized coat.
Are you well?
I have a chicken! I brought a chicken. We must be quiet! We have meat!
Sonia brought the squirming chicken out from the folds of her coat. The boys eyes went very wide. Before he could say anything the chicken escaped Sonias grasp and began hopping around the small room. Sonia looked at her friend.
We have a chicken to eat. Do you know how to prepare a chicken?
No, said the boy. I come from a city. I dont know about chickens.
We must keep it quiet, said Sonia. The boy understood that.
The two chased the chicken around his small flat, shushing each other and stifling their mad giggling. By the time they caught it again they were panting madly and still shushing but most of the little furniture in the room was overturned or askew.
The boy held the chicken with both hands, one around its legs, the other around its neck and head. Sonia and he looked at each other. They had no idea how to kill it.
They tried drowning it. Sonia prepared a large pot with water but they could not keep the chickens head under water. The boy tried to wring the chickens neck but his efforts only resulted in a very mad chicken with a slight bend to its head. They next tried batting it against the side of the small sink cabinet but the cramped quarters meant they could not swing the chicken with enough force to dispatch it.
Finally the boy found a knife, not much sharper than a butter knife. The two gripped the chicken tightly and the boy proceeded to saw the poor creatures head off. There was a moment of horror when, after they released their grip, the chicken, now without a head, fluttered and resumed leaping around the flat, but it finally ceased its motion. They cleaned and plucked it, then boiled it with bouillon cubes. They were afraid to fry it least the smell attract too much attention.
My son-in-law, who was a fellow student of Sonia after she left Russia, at the University of Tampere-Finland, said Sonia told him that boiled chicken was the best Christmas feast Sonia had ever had.
How did Sonia Alvarez explain the strange behavior of the Moscow chicken, I asked.
She didnt, my son-in-law said, but he can.
I wait.
It was the magic of Christmas.
Hes right, of course.

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