a Kind of Refugee / 13.05.2022
i woke up thinking about my passport. not about how it would be a great liability if i were to fall into russian hands. now everyone knows it’s enough to be a living human being to invite their cruelty.
here it was tied to my attitude toward the war, to the repeating question: what can i personally do for the war effort right now? where my doing is central.
it is a privileged position. the patriotic love i feel for Ukraine that compels me to stay involved in the war is purely voluntary. it stands on the fact that i don’t have to be here.
even in war, i’m privileged. i’m far from the front. i’m working at my computer and in my phone. i’m sending letters. i’m collecting money. i’ve had a paypal account for years longer than any of my ukrainian colleagues.
one afternoon i was talking to my grandmother at her kitchen table. i had already been living in ukraine for quite some time. again i was asking her to tell me about how the nazis came to her western ukrainian village to take the able-bodied young people to be forced laborers in germany. i wanted to know how it happened.
did they come to the school while the children were in class? did they demand that each family contribute one young person? did they “ask” for volunteers? i wanted the details of how she parted with her mother (whom she would not see again for thirty years).
it was the first time my grandmother mentioned that they were sure the germans were going to win the war. it was 1943.
my grandmother was born in a house with a dirt floor. her recollections of that life always focused on poverty. even in 2005 and the years that followed she could never understand my decision to go back to living in ukraine.
suddenly—a thought. it was nothing she said, but a feeling: did my grandmother’s mother, watching her bright, vivacious daughter leave with the soldiers, think this might be a chance at a better life?
ultimately, it was.
and it’s that privilege of being born and educated in the united states that i carry with me everywhere i go in ukraine. it’s also what makes me responsible for… maybe not all of ukraine or every ukrainian person, but certainly everything i hit up against that leaves me feeling that the person i am dealing with is shirking their own responsibility for being themselves in the situation they are in.
i remember practicing dips in early february with my dance teacher: when your partner stops and bends you backward over his knee in one continuous swoop. it happens quickly, it’s a change of orientation, and viscerally it is scary. what is the natural response? to shy away, tense your muscles, protect yourself. what must the dancer do?
be big, larissa, says my teacher. so that i (your partner) know where you are at each and every moment.
it is counterintuitive, but it is fundamental for dancing together, for partnership, for politics.
my privilege allows me to run to the land of my citizenship to escape from the war.
my stake on Ukraine’s democracy on its own sovereign territory demands i use my privilege toward that aim.
tomorrow in kyiv people from the lindy hop community, which for years was a space of great personal warmth and joy, are gathering to remember our friend roma who was killed last week forcing the russians out of the kharkiv region.
i could join them. but i can’t find that warmth in me, nor a desire to meet those people in whose company i once delighted. it has transformed into a different kind of energy: cold, glittering, knifelike.
PS Decorated veteran Oleksandr Tereshchenko is organizing the purchase of a vehicle for evacuating injured soldiers from the battlefield for his brothers-in-arms in the 79th air assault brigade. They are still 2000 euros short. Funds may be sent directly to him via paypal: Nixtommi@gmail.com with the note: Ford.