Even when I find out that tomorrow is the end of the world…
Planes last flew here in February, and Ukrainian fighter jets now occasionally appear in the sky over the Kyiv region. I always wonder when we’ll finally stop being terrified of this sound. Or the sound of thunder. Or a motorcycle. Or a distant night train. I wrote about this to my friend in New York: „Even when I am sure that it is our plane, I still freeze. As in that joke: „And I know it’s my Sirko, not a wolf, but it still gives me the creeps.“ My friend laughs, sends emojis, and writes that she understands it well. I know she doesn’t understand it, but I’m laughing too.
I’ve been fortunate. Well, at least up until now. The outskirts of Kyiv, where February 24 caught me, were in the eye of the storm. The Russians circled us 15 kilometers away, and we heard the fighting. Rockets flew above us, and we heard the hail of artillery, but nothing hit our house.
Before the full-scale war erupted, I would sleep with my smartwatch on my wrist. It measured hours of deep and light sleep, my pulse, and my breathing. The last time I wore the tracker was on the night of February 24, so it saved my sleep indicators for that night: I fell asleep at midnight. At 4:30 a.m. I woke up from the sound of explosions. „Pulse: 122. Duration of sleep 4 hours. 30 min. You slept better than 10% of users.“ I have not worn the tracker since, but I do not have the strength to delete those stats. We were confident it would happen; my whole family knew it. But when I left the bedroom at five in the morning, I could barely say those words. It was unbearable to tell my son, „Get up. The war has begun.“
February and March of 2022 merged into one terrible, dark day for me, as I suspect it did for many others. I didn’t keep a diary. I didn’t have the energy, so I couldn’t divide up the days. There’s simply a black hole, an ongoing catastrophe.
I keep trying to remember this experience–the total destruction of your world. It feels like the spring of 1986. I remember how, at the end of April 1986, I spent a long time tuning the receiver to find the broadcast from the censored Radio Liberty about the actual scale of the accident at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, to hear about the threat and consequences for people. I was shocked by what I heard. I stood in the open balcony door; the draft sucked the cold north wind into the room, and the curtains embraced me. A record of Joe Dassen’s „Et si tu n’existais pas“ was playing. And at that moment, everything changed for me. I realized there is no power in the world, no Adult, no Almighty, who would protect me from this disaster, radiation, illness, and death. I stood there, imagined that this curtain was a cover in my coffin, and sobbed with horror. It was the first teenage upheaval. And so, in this heavy darkness of the February days of 2022, I felt something similar.
There is a blackout every evening in our district. Not a single window, not a single lamp is lit. I never imagined that it could be so dark in the Kyiv region. We move around the house in the dark, illuminating our way with iPhones. Shelling begins around midnight. We learned to distinguish the sound of anti-aircraft fire from explosions on the ground. If we hear the artillery working, but there is no air alarm, I understand it is our guys retaliating against the Russians, so I rejoice.
If there is an air raid siren, and Russian missiles or our air defense missiles are flying above our house, I go to the dressing room, the only room without windows. Rockets hit nearby at night: a neighboring village, a railway junction, or a military airfield, and flashes of light can be seen on our bedroom curtains, pillars of fire lighting up the sky. Our house vibrates, exterior tiles fly off, and the concrete floors vibrate. You can hear it incredibly well lying on a yoga mat on the dressing room floor.
I go to bed only in nice, clean pajamas–just in case. My husband, friends, and I don’t talk about it. On the contrary, we speak ironically and make jokes on death-related topics. But each of us sends a warm message to our children every night, realizing that anything can happen.
I often recall the texts of Miljenko Jergović, Zvonko Karanović, and Slavenka Drakulićabout the war in the Balkans. And I think that no matter how powerful the text is, you can hardly feel the idea of a war you have not personally experienced. There is no equivalent to „the state of war“ for those who live in peace. You will never feel the horror of a Kalibr cruise missile until you see it, black and winged, flying rapidly towards Kyiv in the rectangle of your window, 100 meters above your house. You will always be a little uncomfortable with the banality of the phrase „a peaceful sky overhead“ until you have heard the diabolical whistle with which a rocket rips open space–especially when this whistle sounds at night. During such moments, I always jump out of bed, groping my way to the dressing room in the dark. But in the end, I always stop and stand frozen in the middle of the bedroom. I understand that there is no chance to hide from this terrible force.
Generally, a dressing room with mirrored walls is a whimsical place to hide. It could be more reliable, just comfortable. One is compelled to hide upon hearing shelling. I curl up „between two walls,“ under a blanket, or just in the room’s darkness, and imagine myself protected.
I remembered again where I knew this state from. Fifteen years ago, my mother broke her spine and ended up in the intensive care unit of one Kyiv hospital. Day and night, I sat next to my mother; I couldn’t eat or sleep from shock and stupefaction, and on the third day, I was utterly exhausted. I could not move or think; everything happened as if behind a blurry glass. It became clear that I would not be able to continue like this for a long time. That day, one of my friends brought me a deck chair and a large beach towel with the sea and palm trees on it. It was the first night I fell asleep, covering myself with that towel and putting my legs on the deck chair. There were eight beds in the intensive care unit. New patients were brought to the ward on gurneys at night, sheets soaked in the blood due to car accidents, suicide attempts, and stab wounds. I heard their moans and cries in my sleep, but the towel protected me; it created my hiding place where I could catch my breath.
I recall watching CNN news studio on the third day of full-scale war. When my beloved Christian Amanpour pointedly asked an American senator, „What if Ukraine falls?“ it was a painful blow. There was something unbearable, unacceptable in the fact that someone suggested the very possibility of our destruction.
At the beginning of March, there was a feeling that, despite all the emotional ricochets between hope-despair-hope-despair, overgrew into reasonably stable confidence: we were winning. The Russian army was retreating from the Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy regions, followed by spring warmth. Everything merged: the sun, the first flowers in bloom, the euphoria of liberation, meetings with friends, a wounded but revived Kyiv. I started feeling some crazy buzz about life.
One day it occurred to me that I must buy and plant red rhododendron bushes in the yard. My car had almost no fuel; people were desperately searching for it all across the city due to its shortage. On the way to the garden center, I suddenly got fortunate: a truck pulled into the petrol station right in front of me. I was the first in line and secured 20 liters!
I happily ordered a large cappuccino at the gas station and drove to the heavenly thickets of the garden center. Everything bloomed and flourished there: tulips, rhododendrons, early roses, cherries, peaches. Bright sun, incense, and whole bunches of exotic white flowers hanging from the scaffolding. The illusion of peace. The saleswoman said to someone: „The veitchii grape leaves froze a little. It has been wintering here alone and unwrapped since February. But it did survive.“ I looked at the pots with grape leaves and imagined how they had stood here while the Kalyniv oil depot was burning nearby. I caught myself thinking that I hadn’t felt such overwhelming happiness in years, from the fact that I had half a tank of gasoline, four rhododendron bushes in the trunk, veitchii grapes that had survived, and this pale sun after dark.
The darkness will manifest again: in mass burials in Bucha and Izyum, at funerals of dead friends, children of friends, and colleagues. It will manifest in reports from the front and strikes on Vinnytsia, Odesa, and Kremenchuk. It will manifest in war-torn Kharkiv, Mykolayiv, Kryvyi Rih, and Zaporizhzhia. But there was a significant change during the summer. We all felt it during the massive missile attacks on October 10, 2022. In February, we were afraid of rockets because they seemed to be a manifestation of the enemy’s power. These rockets today, like all the war crimes of the Russians, are a manifestation of powerlessness, defeat, and agony. And this is an important realization. It changes everything.
I have been thinking more and more lately: can the madness of destruction kill the sense of meaning in my life? Even when they are under clear, genuine threat? A nuclear threat. Where should I find the strength? What to rely on? How to plan for the future when it is so uncertain? I spoke about it recently with the author Yuriy Prokhasko. He reminded me of Martin Luther’s beautiful words, which unexpectedly struck me this time: „Even when I learn that the end of the world will come tomorrow, I will still plant an apple tree today.“ Well. I hold on to this apple tree with all my might. I plant one every day
Translated by Yulia Lyubka and Kate Tsurkan.
