Egyptian writer Mohamed al-Makhzangi’s “Lahazat gharaq jazirat al-hut” (1997, “Memories of a Meltdown: An Egyptian between Moscow and Chernobyl,” 2006) brings together two autobiographical works that record the author’s impressions of the Soviet Union during the late 1980s and 1990. The first, “The Four Seasons of Chernobyl,” reflects on the psychological and ecological impact of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster on the city of Kiev, located 85 kilometers from the nuclear power plant. The beauty of Kiev and the surrounding countryside is juxtaposed with descriptions of the effects of the accident at the nuclear reactor on the human and natural environment. Although the landscape maintains its splendor, it is poisoned, and this poison reaches as far as Egypt when contaminated baby formula is discovered in the author’s home country, pointing to the failure of national borders to contain major crises. The second text, “Moscow Queues,” captures al-Makhzangi’s musings during a 1990 visit to the titular city, utilizing his encounters with anti-Jewish sentiment, both in Moscow and within himself, to explore the contemporary crisis of Palestine. This paper expamines al-Makhzangi’s record of the border crossings he engages in as an Egyptian student studying in the Soviet Union. For al-Makhzangi, these movements are both physical and psychological, as the discrete sites of Palestine and the Soviet Union are collapsed into each other in his mind and writing. This paper argues that al-Makhzangi’s encounters with the geography and people of a place that for him is a space of transit facilitate a linkage between Chernobyl and Palestine, creating a transnational sense of horror at both disasters. The switch from a third person narrator in “The Four Seasons of Chernobyl” to a second person narrator in “Moscow Queues” implicates the reader, further expanding the text’s reach. By linking the environmental crisis of Chernobyl to the political calamity of Palestine, ecological responsibility is connected to social justice, and both are expanded beyond the national borders within which they occurred, demanding recognition.