a Kind of Refugee / 13.10.2023

There are events that you cannot wrap your head around: they reverberate through your whole body. It takes time for them to settle, for the turbulence in your mind to clear.

My heart is heavy thinking of the people of Israel—those murdered and those who are now responsible for responding to Hamas's horrific atrocities. And of the Palestinian civilians that Hamas is sacrificing in a war of dehumanization and indignity. And of the children. Israel must defend its people and its statehood against this brutal attack. You have to take sides in war.

I meant to write to you on October 1, the day Ukraine celebrates its defenders. I was translating a Facebook post from a young woman—slight build, culture journalist, raver—who joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine this past summer and now works as a frontline combat medic. She compares Ukrainian military service with the most stringent of spiritual practices, fit to challenge the martial monks of Shaolin. I wanted to commemorate the hundred thousand or more soldiers, medics, volunteers who have been killed defending our right to live freely in Ukraine.

I think back to last week with a sense of nostalgia for a lost innocence.

***

We were driving through Poland, Anka at the wheel and Larisa in back, on the morning of October 7. Hamas had just attacked Israel with thousands of rockets. That much I could grasp from the Polish news broadcast.

Our Ukrainian friends—artists from Kyiv—had written in the morning from Israel that they were okay, that things were quiet in the kibbutz north of Tel Aviv, where they were staying with relatives. They had stayed in Kyiv when russia launched its full-scale invasion last year. They’d been energetically raising money and buying equipment for artist friends serving in the AFU. They’d organized a few significant contemporary art exhibitions in the capital. They’d just gotten married and wanted to get away for a bit and recuperate. So they went to visit family in Israel.

“No, we’re not leaving,” they wrote. “It’s calm here. Our family knows what to do.”

That I should be in the car with one of the friends with whom I fled Kyiv on February 24, 2022, on the day that Hamas attacked Israel, seemed fitting. Remarkable, even, given that we’d hardly seen each other in 2023. Yet here we were, again sharing a moment when the war reaches a whole new level of horrific that your imagination goes numb.

In 2022, danger was approaching from all sides, you had to make decisions, and you could not know for sure whether the route you choose will lead to safety or to the russians. Here, on a straight 3-hour stretch of Polish highway, chilly and overcast, the feeling in my stomach was dull and heavy: a sense that everything before this moment was easy and light, compared to what we’re facing now and what will follow.

“Today the people are regaining their revolution.” Larisa reads the words of the Hamas military leader and our minds instantly jump to the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917. Larisa, Anka and I are old friends, bound by our interest in Ukraine’s contemporary arts and its brutal, under-discussed Soviet past. The historic October Revolution was launched on the 25th, but transpose that date to today’s Gregorian calendar and it lands on November 7th. 7th — October — Revolution… we were coming from a literary festival with a decidedly post-modern aesthetic. Scrambling signs and warped truth have become so normal that we failed to see the simple fact that Hamas attacked Israel on Putin’s 71st birthday.

It’s evident that even if Hamas is following its own agenda, its timing is to russia’s advantage. Just like the debacle in the US House of Representatives and the US Congress passing an interim budget omitting aid to Ukraine illuminated a weak spot that both Hamas and the rf were ready to exploit. You cannot lose sight of your enemies, even when you’re tending to your own business.

***

On Thursday, October 5, I was in Wroclaw, reading a few dispatches from a Kind of Refugee at the International Storytelling Festival. I was invited to read in a program of Ukrainian Stories by powerhouse curator (and my dear friend) Anna Lazar, whose sharp translation made my story resound in Polish.

As I stood before the audience of locals and a number of displaced Ukrainians, reading a passage from April 2022—“Russia is the enemy. … Russia has declared its intentions to destroy Ukraine as a nation and obliterate the Ukrainian people, their language, history, and culture.”—I did not know that a russian missile had just obliterated a cafe and nearly 60 people in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. They were attending a wake.

I read the news the next morning. On October 5, residents of the village Hroza gathered to rebury and honor a member of their community who had died in battle last year. His 24-year-old son, a military serviceman himself, obtained permission to leave the front to attend the service. He was killed by the russians in his hometown, together with his 20-year-old wife. And 57 others.

“This is an unambiguous war crime. They will be punished for their atrocities!” Anka is angry as we walk through Wroclaw’s Old Market Square.

“Will be” sounds like a distant promise. How many more people will be killed before that long-awaited trial in the Hague? Will we live to see the day? Any of us?

russia is continuing to obliterate Ukrainian people, their communities, their culture. This shit keeps happening over and over and over again. Each time—in a different place—with different people killed—it is unique, new, and cumulative.

“What drives the russians to keep doing this again and again?”

“Impunity,” replies Larisa. It’s one of those moments when her eyes go clear, opening a channel to some deep and unbearable pain that stretches back through her history in the USSR. It’s one of those moments when a person shares a profound knowledge, borne of experience—and this time I know exactly what she means.

You—US citizen and taxpayer, cultured European from a NATO member state—you are responsible for russia’s impunity.

Every time you spend your breath and brains to argue why Ukraine can’t join NATO. Every time you express disappointment in Ukraine’s grueling and unspectacular counteroffensive and wonder whether all your precious military support is worth it. Every time you waffle instead of taking a decisive step to support Ukraine’s victory, lest it provoke russia. Every time you make excuses for why we can’t give Ukraine this or that weapons system instead of scrambling and making the effort to figure out HOW to do it.

To every person who has said “we don’t want World War III” to justify keeping Ukraine out of NATO or not supplying Ukraine with long-range missiles: What are you thinking now?

***

I used to feel solace and a certain agency in sending these letters to you. I believe in your intelligence and I believe that you care. That’s why I’ll take the liberty in sharing the thoughts I fell asleep with and that I awoke with this morning. Donald Trump must not be elected US president again.

Ukrainians—in the hundreds of thousands—are giving their lives so that Ukraine may continue to exist. My fellow Americans, do not give up our country voluntarily!

That is one disaster that hasn’t happened yet. It is still in your power to prevent it.

PS I’ve had the pleasure of seeing videos of the FPV drones built by my new friends in the 24th brigade with components bought through donations from some of you! The fund-raising continues with a goal of $1500 to build 6 more drones. Your contribution matters! Paypal: larissa.babij@gmail.com (Note: FPV)