There is a groundswell of comment these days saying people who are showing compassion, sympathy and sorrow for Ukrainians being killed or displaced by the Russian invasion have uttered not a squeak for those from Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq and Chechyna and more, so here is a link to support refugees worldwide. This is a link to a BBC story about how to help Ukraine and its people.
Late 2018 or early 2019
Him Indoors tells me in a rare moment of calm, when I'm not working, being covered in baby vomit, or my own vomit, depending on when this actually was: "We've been invited to Nick and Anna's wedding."
"Ah great," I say. "I notice, cynical as I may be, that you're not telling me where they're doing it."
"Kiev." (That's what we were all still calling it then).
"I see. Erm. Do we want to go to Kiev? Can we go to Kiev considering we'll have a five-month-old baby then?"
You'll notice a clever diversionary tactic here by Him Indoors: "It's meant to be absolutely beautiful, full of amazing buildings, incredible history, and it's not that expensive once you're there because, you know, former Soviet Union, so it wouldn't cost us that much."
"OK then," I say vaguely, "Er, isn't there some kind of fighting there at the moment, something about Crimea?"
"Oh that's calmed down now.. And it's down South anyway, we would be in the North, and it's a massive country, it's absolutely miles away."
"Um, OK. Well as I'm either heavily pregnant or chronically sleep deprived, you have a look into it and let me know, eh? It sounds like the kind of place budget airlines probably fly to anyway, so perhaps it wouldn't be too bad in terms of costs, considering, you know, that I'm either unemployed or about to be unemployed."
June 2019
Him Indoors, our two kids, aged then four years and five-months old, board an Air Arabia flight from Sharjah (for the uninitiated, the slightly less prosperous but slightly more conservative emirate to the north of Dubai) to Kiev to attend the wedding and spend a week there.
We land in Kyiv, as we now know to call it, on a warm day and take a taxi to stay in a decent sized two bedroom flat in a smart street in the centre of the city which Him Indoors found on air bnb. A week there costs us about as much as a night and a half in a nice Dubai hotel. On the way from the airport, I see the soviet-era blocks of flats on the edge of the city, I see the billboards of Mayor Klitschko inviting us in English to invest in Kyiv, although I don't know his name then. There are billboards, also in English, with pictures of scantily clad young women in provocative poses, clearly aimed at the stag weekend market. I cover DB1's eyes, because after a five-hour flight with her, plus a fractious five month-old, I don't feel like explaining what men do at stag parties in Eastern European cities.
Spotting severe faces on political posters that are still hanging around from the previous month's election, I mutter: "Didn't they have a revolution here not long ago?"
Him Indoors smiling patiently, he's used to my ways, says: "The Orange Revolution, it was in 2005. They've just elected a new guy, actually, he's a comedian."
"O for f***'s sake," I grumble. "Have they not learned what a terrible idea it is electing people who have no idea about politics from watching the rest of us, Reagan, Trump, and all those porn stars in the Italian parliament?"
"I believe he's actually doing OK," Him Indoors says, as I mutter quietly to myself about people wasting votes on celebrities.
We arrive at the flat, which is behind a heavy wooden double door and up a wide flight of stairs which is dark enough for vampires, and dump our belongings. After an early start, grim airport and airline food, we are hungry, so we bundle the tired children back out into the streets again to find somewhere to eat.
A restaurant called Chicken Kyiv catches our eye, and like the green as grass tourists we are, we walk in. It has an extensive wine selection, which Him Indoors is of course pleased as punch about, and sets about selecting the most esoteric local one he can find. I can't quite bring myself to order the chicken kyiv, as I've read in the Lonely Planet that it's not something that Ukrainians actually eat, but Him Indoors does, and it's delicious - perfectly cooked with fresh melted butter, and not surprisingly, nothing like the frozen brick supermarket-bought things, most likely produced in a Saudi factory, that time poor working parents cook for a quick week night dinner.
We chat to the waiter, who's also a student. He speaks perfect English, and is curious about where we are from. He would like to go to the UK, he says, but the plane fare and a night or two in a hotel are just beyond his reach financially. It's just not possible. Like many of the Ukrainians we meet, he's friendly but reserved with a dry sense of humour. His style of service is entirely suited to uptight British types, not once asking us if we're "ok guys?" He is just pleasant and helpful and appears at the right time to clear dishes and bring drinks, but otherwise leaves us alone.
The the next day we dress in our wedding finery before catching a taxi to the fittingly named Perfect Place, a stretch of land on an island in the River Dnieper, which some enterprising sort has turned into a wedding venue, with gazebos and plentiful shady trees.
The day is blastingly hot, but not as hot as Dubai is at this time of year, of course, because nowhere is. We sit under the trees, chat to the other guests, read kids' books to keep DB1 happy, and wait for the bride. She arrives looking entirely perfect for this light-filled setting, and we sit by the river watching the wedding, and afterwards, as we eat dinner under a gazebo, the sun starts to set and a hazy pink glow envelops the scene.
My rubbish iPhone pic, taken while holding DB2, does not begin to do it justice.
Even for one who is used to desert sunsets, and trust me, we get some absolute belters here, the light by the river is angelic. The shining, still but flowing body of water gives way to the river bank, which rises up steeply, covered in darkening trees, with the golden dome of one of Kyiv's orthodox churches appearing near the top.
As I carry the sleepy, but not sleeping, obviously, as previously explained, DB2 down by the river, I can't take my eyes off it. The lights from the wedding reflected on the water, the small beach nearby where the last day-time visitors are watching the incredible sunset before heading home. I can hear the music starting for the dancing and the voices of the Ukrainian and British guests, many meeting today for the first time. If I close my eyes now, I am there.
I have a habit, possibly inspired by my expat status, of imagining setting up home in the cities I visit, what the cost would be, what I would do? Where would the kids go to school? Kyiv is no different. In my head I am already walking through this elegant city on the way to work, or catching the Metro, trying to understand my kids as they speak to me in Ukrainian or Russian, bringing them swimming to this heavenly place at the weekends in summer and taking them ice skating during Kyiv's cold winters.
It's the wine, conviviality and happy vibrations from the wedding of course that is bringing this idyllic existence to life in my imagination, but even allowing for my natural cynicism, it's been such a perfect day that I convince myself it could be real.
Over the next few days, we pack in seeing as many of the golden roofed orthodox churches that having two small children in tow will allow, including the most famous of all, the Catacombs, a monastery which contains the preserved remains of Eastern Orthodox saints. Each church we see is different, but they're all in pristine condition, not a minuscule crack or fade to any of the paint, nor any damp, or age-related decay.
We see the Kyiv Academic Puppet Theatre, although we are not quite together enough to actually manage to see a show. We see the Motherland Monument, the Heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad, Independence Square, and we visit Kyiv's slightly eccentric Museum of Water, where a young woman shows us around, pointing out things and tapping them with a wooden stick, making sure we have seen everything there is to see, which we later read is typical of Ukrainian museum employees.
We walk for miles, pushing the buggy or carrying DB2 in a sling, DB1 on our shoulders, until sleep defeats her on the longest days, and for the first time in her life she actually gives in without a fight and droops over and curls up clinging to her dad's head. We gape at building after opulent building, each with more ornate detail than the last, interspersed with stops at shady green parks when the kids get historied out.
We stop in cafes and restaurants for Ukrainian food, Armenian food, Georgian food. We catch buses and Metros which cost almost nothing. At one point, we stumble upon Arsenalna, Kyiv's deepest and therefore the world's deepest Metro station, built into the bank of the River Dnieper, 105m below ground level, where it feels like the descent is going on forever and that the temperature drops by 5C.
Among all the incredible beauty, the delicious food, the kind, courteous but reserved people, are glimpses of a dark underside of the city - fly posters that accuse men pictured of "money laundry" and corruption.
I'm now far from naïve about the challenges Ukraine has faced since it became independent from the collapsing Soviet Union - the Russian interference, allegations of corruption, Oligarchs, the fighting and the annexing of Crimea, but I feel annoyed with myself for knowing so little about it until this point, so I read as much as I can about the history of the country.
Before this trip, Ukraine for me, as it is for many British children of the 1980s, is the Chernobyl disaster on John Craven's Newsround, and the Ukrainian folk dancers who visited my home town on a tour of the continent as part of a cultural exchange with former Soviet countries.
And of Kyiv, I know only the Great Gate of Kiev, the bombastic finale of Russian composer Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, inspired by a painting of the gate, which is actually known as the Golden Gate in real life. The music suggests magnificence and splendour, but nothing could have prepared me for what the city is actually like. Again, my hastily snapped phone pics do not even scratch the surface of the beauty of the place.
We buy souvenirs including Matryoshka dolls, the real name for Russian dolls, and toilet paper printed with pictures of Putin's face. And then finally we leave again, chatting about potential future trips to Odessa, Kharkiv and Lviv, to see more of this magnificent country, none of which come to fruition of course, because early the next year, borders close due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, and, when we can travel again, the world seems harder to navigate. Fast forward to the present, and I now know the names of other places, Kherson, Sumy, Irpin, Vinnytsia and Mariupol, all for the worst possible reasons.
February 2022
I can't pinpoint the exact point that I fell in love with Kyiv in the few short days I was there. Perhaps it was the first full day in the city, at the wedding by the river or the mystical Catacombs. As a Brit who spent nearly 10 years in London, I know a capital city does not give a full picture of a country, but if it weren't for that other massive, world changing thing, you know, the pandemic? Remember that? I think we would have had further adventures there. My love for the place endures to the degree that in the days prior to February 24, I'm filled with a horror, even more than I would have thought possible, at the reports of Russian troops gathering at the Ukrainian border and of what is about to be unleashed on a country which seemed so full of hope, ambition and confidence during our brief visit.
Then after the invasion begins, as I silently scroll through the horrific news emerging from Ukraine, hour by hour, my brain is numb but nauseous with grief. It's a misery that means nothing in comparison with the cataclysmic suffering of Ukrainians, of course, the indiscriminate killing of civilians of all ages, some as young or younger than my own kids, horrendous injuries, the cities under siege with no power or running water, people running out of food and being forced to drink water from puddles, the flattening of a country, homes, schools, hospitals, infrastructure, landmarks, the endless footage of Ukrainians carrying what they can and leaving.
And, I keep remembering all the people we met while there, the family and friends of the bride, the kind waiter who chatted to us on the first day, the young woman who showed us around the museum, the drivers, restaurant and shop staff, and realising they will be now be picking up machine guns, filling molotov cocktails, or hiding in basements, bomb shelters and that deep, cold Metro station, fleeing their homes for increasingly hazardous journeys across the country to try to reach safety, not knowing if they will survive, or when or if they will return.
I also keep thinking about the lovingly preserved landmarks and churches of Kyiv, which, having stood for centuries or been painstakingly rebuilt or restored during Ukraine's sometimes tumultuous history, could be obliterated in seconds by Russian bombs. Tributes to the human impulse to honour the glory of God, their country, or just straightforward human endeavour, crushed.
I read that the city and its wonders are so important to the scheme of Russian history and nationalism that it will be spared the bombs, but other accounts are not so certain. And as the deaths and destruction continue across the country, it seems inevitable that they will fall, even as the Ukrainians continue to stand unflinchingly in front of armoured vehicles and tanks, but I am hoping with every part of me that that is not the case. The woman who told the Russian soldier to fill his pockets with sunflower seeds on the first day of the war seems like a century ago because of all we have seen since then.
Then there's the comedian, now President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who I scoffed at back in 2019, who has now become a rallying figure. I don't think I'll ever forget seeing the video he recorded after stepping out of a bunker into the streets of Kyiv with senior aides to deny Russian lies that he had already fled, and as I write this, I'm listening to his speech to the UK House of Commons, the first time I have ever seen a foreign leader address it, and he's being referred to by commentators as Churchill with a social media account.
You only need to read a tiny fraction of Ukrainian history, the journey to independence from the Soviet Union after Chernobyl, and before that the Holodomor - the 1930s famine, also under Soviet rule, to realise that this is not a people likely to return quietly to having their destiny decided by Russia. That will is as plain as ever when you see them preparing to fight, facing down guns while unarmed or carrying their children for miles to safety.
Even now, after everything that has happened during these 14 terrible days, seeing a murderous invasion play out on the internet and TV in all its gruesome detail, my head is still filled with the memories of our little family. We are still pacing the city of Kyiv, criss-crossing from monument to church to park to art gallery and onwards during those long sunshine-bathed days, and I cannot reconcile that to what the city must be now, fear - trenches, barriers, armed soldiers and volunteers, checkpoints and snipers.
So far, at least 1.7 million people have been displaced by the invasion and war, and there are estimates that as many as four million could be displaced in total, with thousands of lives lost. It just does not seem real, but I know experts are saying it is fatuous to be disbelieving that something like this could happen in the 21st century, as it has happened recently in other countries this side of the Millennium, and that this conflict has been a long time in the making.
I am hoping against hope that the conflict does not spread further than it already has, and that Ukrainians will be able to go home and start the process of rebuilding their lives soon, although that hope seems to get fainter with each day. I wish peace, safety and the right to choose their own destiny for Ukrainians, and for everyone displaced or suffering due to conflict, as it is the very least we as human beings deserve.
No comments:
Post a Comment