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Quote: --------------------------------------------------------Sepetember 22, 2009 Moscow Journal Seeking Purification at Russia’s Melon Stands By CLIFFORD J. LEVY MOSCOW — A security guard named Vladimir Speransky was driving home along Bolshaya Gruzinskaya Street when he spotted a vending stand and screeched to a halt. There before him was a pile of melons so enormous that it was being kept in a tall wire pen, as if it were a display at some whimsical zoo drawn by Dr. Seuss. Mr. Speransky approached, smiling and reaching for his wallet. Let the bingeing begin: Moscow melon mania has arrived. Roam this city these days and melons are being hawked everywhere: out of the trunks of battered Volga sedans in front of the Kazan railroad station, under hastily erected tents on street corners, and in most supermarkets. Who knew that in this most northern of locales, where the cold sometimes barges in before summer has had a chance to tiptoe out, that September could bring such sweet and juicy rewards? Watermelons are the main object of affection, trucked in from sunny regions of Russia as far as 1,000 miles away and selling here for 30 cents a pound or less. Also prized, though more costly, are sizable elongated melons from Central Asia that are known as torpedoes, with flesh like a honeydew’s, only better. Russians like to eat watermelon as a snack or light meal, often accompanied by white bread, but they have also concocted all sorts of recipes for it (don’t miss the pickled watermelon, guaranteed to last you through the winter). This is about more than sustenance, though. People here ascribe to melons an almost mystical power to purify the body after the summer’s overindulgences. Come melon season, it seems, a great national cleansing occurs in Russia. “It gets rid of all the junk that is in your organism — all the junk that accumulates over the months,” said Mr. Speransky, 51, who bought a hefty watermelon at the stand on Bolshaya Gruzinskaya for $7. The next customer was Anna Pechenkina. “The torpedo melons clean out the bowels, and the watermelons clean out the urinary and genital systems,” she explained. Ms. Pechenkina, 38, happened to be a yoga instructor, so such talk might have been expected. But every other person questioned at the stand offered similar opinions, even if there was a bit of discord over which body part benefited most. “This is the time for washing out the system,” said an executive, Viktor Mosiyevich, 58, who advised that it was the kidneys that were helped. In Russia, children discover watermelons’ fame early on. When they are taught to read, the word for watermelon — “arbuz” — signifies the first letter in the Russian alphabet. In Soviet films, watermelon slices on a dining room table were used to suggest how the Soviet people were prospering under Communist rule. The most illustrious watermelons are grown in the Astrakhan region of southern Russia, at the mouth of the Volga River near the Caspian Sea. The area has a watermelon museum and annual festival, not to mention the Institute for Irrigated Vegetable and Melon and Pumpkin Cultivation.Sergey D. Sokolov, a senior researcher there, said melons not only aided the digestive and excretory systems, but also lessened troubles with joints. “We have several sanatoriums in our country where they treat people — I’m not afraid of saying it — with a watermelon diet,” Mr. Sokolov said. “And the people do no worse than when they are treated with regular medicine.” (Whether melons provide an assist in sexual matters, as folklore holds, he did not say.) During melon season, the news media highlight the best way to choose one — whether by smell or by how it sounds when gently thumped — and every so often a hullabaloo erupts over whether some melons contain high levels of nitrates from fertilizer. Mr. Sokolov said the threat was not serious if the melons were ripe. The flourishing melon trade in Moscow speaks to the variety of fresh fruits and vegetables available here at harvest time, a far cry from the shortages of the Soviet era, when even canned goods were sporadically hard to find. The city draws food from across the former Soviet Union, reflecting centuries-old trade routes: plums from Moldova; eggplant from Azerbaijan; grapes from Crimea; tomatoes from Uzbekistan; and much more, from all over Russia. Muscovites themselves, especially the elderly trying to survive on shriveled pensions, set up small outposts outside subway stations to sell cucumbers, apples and other crops that they raise in garden plots. In Moscow, as in St. Petersburg and other large Russian cities, officials distribute temporary licenses for melon stands. The municipal government in Moscow has in recent years tried to remove kiosks and vending stands from the landscape, particularly in the city’s center. While hundreds of licenses were granted this year for melon stands, there seem fewer than in previous years, with more melons sold instead in supermarkets and big-box stores. The stand on Bolshaya Gruzinskaya Street was run by an immigrant from Azerbaijan, Dzhalal Suleymanov, and his nephew, Ibragim Suleymanov. The elder Mr. Suleymanov, 46, said he typically sold more than 50 watermelons and 15 torpedo melons a day, working from early morning to late at night. Mr. Suleymanov said he had many repeat customers. “There are people who eat only melons for days,” he said. “They are trying to treat all their ailments.” But does melon therapy really work? Mr. Suleymanov indicated that only a fool would venture such a question. Perhaps someone with more of a scientific background could offer insight. A call was made to Dr. Viktor A. Tutelyan, director of the Institute of Nutrition in Moscow. Dr. Tutelyan said he, too, was a melon lover — “If I see a piece in the refrigerator, I will inevitably eat it” — but he acknowledged that the truth about the restorative qualities of melon was more nuanced. “It is not medicine,” he said. “It is not like cleaning out a pipe. But it is a very pleasant way to stimulate the kidneys.”