a Kind of Refugee / 05.04.2022
I woke up with a song in my head. The 1980s euro-pop gem that we would warm up to in our lindy hop aerials class. “One two three four five six seven eight” typed into youtube search was it. As it played full volume on my phone in the kitchen I almost cried.
Yesterday I met Olya (not her real name) who recently arrived in Lviv after a harrowing escape from Mariupol. Some of her words and images are stuck in my memory.
“You’re all crying over Bucha now. I’m not crying over Bucha. I’ve seen much worse. If or when, no, when Mariupol is Ukrainian again, you will see things that you will be crying over for days.”
She spoke of the night in late March when the Russians’ shelled her neighborhood non-stop. When she emerged from the bomb shelter in the morning, the buildings, the hospital where she worked, were flattened.
She had kept working, looting nearby pharmacies for water and medicine when supplies ran out. These things had kept her patients alive.
That morning she and her friends got into a car and drove, dodging mines and shelling, to leave. When they fell under fire from Grad [Russian for hail] rockets, they leapt out of the car and fell flat on the ground, covering their heads. This is what you do if you’re under fire without protective cover. People from Donbas (after 8 years of constant shelling) know this.
It’s something I’ve never done before. But I am a dancer. I know what it feels like to go from standing to lying on the ground, I’ve studied countless ways of going from vertical to horizontal over the years. I imagine this action while simultaneously feeling the absence of this particular experience in my body.
Olya knows this movement pattern. She knows the sensation of uninterrupted bombing. She said, stone-faced, there are many things I am not telling you. We were sitting in the basement of a well-endowed university in Lviv, outfitted with a modern lecture hall and ample tables and chairs for studying in between air raid sirens.
Every time there is an air raid siren in Lviv, most people go to the bomb shelter out of respect for the rules. It’s a civic agreement that has no connection to the visceral instinct to protect your body from imminent destruction.
Olya says, we know now how to tell by the sound of fire whether it’s far away, close but not a threat, really closeby, or right overhead. When they realized it was not that close they got back in the car and kept driving.
She told us the city had been investing in its roads lately. Why did we put all this money into our roads instead of defensive weapons? Here I am looking at this disgusting Russian soldier with dirty pants and a bulky Soviet belt, this scum, standing on a nice, newly paved road. What am I supposed to do with this? Throw chunks of asphalt at him? Or into the sky at the bombers?
“I don’t have the vocabulary to describe what they are—not who, but WHAT.”
PS My artist friends from the Tu Art Space in Mariupol (now evacuated) are helping individuals from the besieged city survive and share their stories.
You can support them via paypal: tu.mariupol@gmail.com