Punkt
Today I helped out at the Railroad Punkt in Kyiv, the place where soldiers meet to catch the military train that takes them to the front. They were surprised that they had to pay for the tickets themselves.
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We gave them sandwiches, coffee or tea, sweets and fruits, and little talismans to wear or keep in their pockets – thumb-sized rag dolls with big boobs, braided blue-and-gold bracelets, or wooden crosses on a string that we tied around their necks.
A lot of soldiers wanted to talk with me when they learned that I was an American. They considered it a blessing of some kind, a good luck charm.
Kolya is an artillery gunner, father of two, from Chernihiv. Tonight he is very drunk and sweaty. His cheekbones look toasted, eyes hollowed, bloodshot, his face blackened and blotched red.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this tour,” he told me. “I’ve already done 14 months and they’re mobilizing me again.”
The anxiety in that waiting area gelled with intensity. It was mobbed with 60 or more soldiers, some of them looking surprised as if they were just punched in the face, pacing the floor, watching Rambo or some other war movie, getting psyched, I supposed.
It would take at least eight hours to get to the war zone. Plenty of time to have your life pass in front of you over and over.
I had to say something that would reassure these soldiers that they will come out of the war alive. That’s what they wanted to hear, needed to hear, so that’s what I gave them.
Popcorn and Rape
Very quickly, a line started to form in front of me:
“Tie the bracelet on me, it will keep me alive.”
“Put your arms around me, it will help me survive.”
“Kiss me before I go, it will save my life.”
Avdiivka
There’s no leftover food in Avdiivka. Scraps are put out on the curb for animals that cower and look at you sideways, bones sticking out.
They sag and press to the ground with each tired step just like the people who still live here.
The apartment where I’m staying is across the street from fields that are littered with mines. As soon as I arrived I was told not to walk there.
The missionaries took me in, there was nowhere else to stay. They don’t lock their door – this more than anything surprised me.
One night, when there was no shelling, we watched Sound of Music together, dubbed in Russian, four ladies eating popcorn stretched out on a queen-sized bed. They borrowed the apartment from a family who had run away during the onslaught.
Liuba is always thinking ahead. Chased and displaced people will do that.
“Today they may kill us,” she told me matter-of-factly. “I must be dressed well.” Her cascading mane of bleach-blonde hair bounced around her shoulders.
Liuba and the other missionary ladies make a point of dressing nicely every day, so that the separatists can’t call them bums when they’re killed.
The Lake
The missionaries and I went on foot to the lake, a manmade lake, to unwind. It was a long walk from city center, across the railroad tracks into the rural area with single-family homes, small like cottages.
There were crowds of people at the lake, women in bikinis, men in skimpy spandex, fat and slim, eating sprats in oil, drinking homemade vodka, Ukrainian pop music blaring from the snack bar, colorful umbrellas all along the sandy beach.
Nice place to go to in the middle of a war – if it wasn’t for all the missiles flying from the east, landing behind the bulge at the edge of the lake.
Big sign says NO SWIMMING ALLOWED. Of course, people are swimming. They paid 10 hryvnia at the gate, you can bet they’re going to swim.
Suddenly: Loud sounds of BOOM BOOM and missiles whistling. No one flinched or even turned their head.
After a few minutes more whistles then BOOM, maybe one or two kilometers away. Then black smoke rising from right behind the bulge.
Something was hit just beyond the lake, behind a little bump in the terrain.
I saw a woman I met earlier, at the high-school graduation I was invited to when I arrived. She sang so beautifully from her belly, serenaded me with a soulful song, welcoming me to Avdiivka.
She and two girlfriends and her husband are sprawled on beach blankets laughing, eating sprats out of a can, sausage, bread, and drinking wine. I come over to say hello to them.
“Did you tell Trump hello from me?” She’s a bit tipsy. She’s been asking me that ever since we met.
Suddenly [WHISTLING] then BOOM BOOM, black smoke. No big deal again – no one reacted. This missile, too, falls right behind the swell of land on the edge of the small lake.
Why do they keep shelling that same spot again and again? It occurred to me that Ukrainian troops must be entrenched there.
The separatists have been bombing this old section of Avdiivka a lot, home of ordinary people, many old people, civilians. I think they want to take over this recreational area is why.
Everyone knows that plenty of separatists live in Avdiivka. They go back and forth to the front from here, it’s walking distance.
They come home on the weekend then return to the front on Monday, or whenever they rotate, like a job. That’s why they’re not really shelling the center anymore –they’re aiming for this rural area.
The shooting gets worse at the lake.
[WHISTLING], BOOM BOOM, more whistles then BOOM, again whistles, BOOM, BOOM. But we don’t see them. We just hear them and see the black smoke behind the bulge. You could swim there, it’s that close.
Now the people begin to panic, start collecting their things, blankets, they don’t even bother dressing.
The missionaries were not in a hurry, though, said they still want to stay. Ukrainian pop music in the food pavilion was playing loudly. The missionaries took it all in stride, confident no bomb was going to fall on the lake’s disco.
I pile into a car with my acquaintances – three women (big ladies) and one husband. I sit on someone’s lap.
Missiles flying. [WHISTLING], BOOM, black smoke. Everyone is talking at once, telling others what to do, what should be done, what not to do.
We’re all squished and the husband starts the car and drives it straight into deep sand. The car sinks, stuck deep. More than half the wheel is buried in sand.
We all spill out of the car. We try to dig it out with our hands, doesn’t work.
I call Semen. He is head of the Simiky here, civilian/military affairs, but frankly I don’t think he does much of anything other than patrol the streets and beat up drunkards. I’ve taken strolls with him in the evening.
I tell him the situation. People are in a panic, the driver drove his car into deep sand, can’t get out and they’re shooting pretty heavily.
[WHISTLING], BOOM, black smoke. Perhaps you can come and help dig us out, help evacuate people out of here. This is your job, is it not?
He sighed loudly, a give-me-a-break kind of sigh, and didn’t offer to help.
What was I thinking? The Simiky are made up of former militia that was fired throughout Ukraine because of corruption among them and the ranks, this after then-president Yanukovych was kicked out. They just redeployed many of them to the war zone.
The missionaries walk over, perfectly calm, hook up the car with rope and pull us out of the sand.
I come home to the missionaries’ apartment and as usual the door is not locked. I was glad to see equanimous Liuba whom everybody admires. She is the oldest of the missionaries here, but still much younger than me. I told her about the drama at the lake.
Next Day
I’ve got the stiffest neck.
The fly in my room bothers me more than the sound of bombs.
There was supposed to be a ceasefire to collect crops.
BOO-BOOM
Pheeewwwww [WHISTLING]
Plaafff
Phaatt Phoedt Huhmphd
Thump pump pump pump pump
I’m sitting on my bed, listening
on a pivot of my whole anatomy
compelled to give form to sound,
to each round of fire
What for? Why this obsession with sound as if I could snuff out the bombs if only I could fit them into my mouth.
The building shook – incoming.
Damn fly.
Day After
Bombs are falling as I hang the laundry out on the balcony three stories up.
I feel the floor shake. Incoming again.
When I flap the shirt I’m about to hang, I’m startled by the sound it creates,
a kind of thump that’s similar to the sound of a bomb hitting packed turf
a couple kilometers away.
But here it’s right inside my palm.
I jolted from the sound of a bomb in my palm.
Returning from the Front
I’m riding back to Pokrovsk in a military ambulance, up front sits a tight-lipped commander. In back I’m next to a handsome medic who is wounded but not badly, so he told me.
I can’t see the wound and he’s not eager to talk about it, so I let it go. He has a nice full ruddy beard and glassy blue eyes. His call name is Vovk, Wolf. He may not even be a medic for all I know.
This time I want to sit on the stretcher in case they smoke and open the windows again, because the last time when I sat on the bench in the back the wind blew straight in my face.
I caught a bad cold that way, on the way over to Avdiivka. And now an earache, I didn’t want to make worse. It’s hard to stay healthy in Ukraine, especially in the war zone and the industrial wasteland of the Donbas, where I’ve been spending a lot of time.
The stretcher was threadbare with metal parts protruding into my butt. Wouldn’t you know it, on the way back no one smoked, so the window remained closed.
I could’ve sat on a nice, padded bench. Didn’t help that the road to/from the front is all chewed up. I had to hold on tight or fall off my seat.
I looked down at my feet and see that I’m not wearing any socks. SHIT. I looked over at Vovk and said “I forgot my socks!” I was tempted to say let’s turn back.
Full of lament, I locked eyes with Vovk, and suddenly we both burst out laughing. The absurdity of the regret, of leaving my socks at the front, as if socks even mattered. We both laughed so hard – who the hell cares about socks!
How perfect it really was to return from war with only your socks missing.
I wanted to kiss him and keep laughing, embrace him and kiss him and laugh – it would keep us alive.
# # #
In 2016-17, Avdiivka was devastated by missiles fired by Russian troops that had occupied nearby Donetsk City. This piece was written in 2017, when I was there, and was excerpted from the war journals I kept on my repeated visits to the combat zones. To this day many people don’t realize that Russia’s war on Ukraine began in 2014.
–LD
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