a Kind of Refugee / 19.08.2023

There are Polish flags everywhere when I arrive on August 15. It’s Armed Forces Day—a Polish national holiday.

A small party has gathered at Anka’s, including a couple Ukrainian literary figures. Our usual toast “За Нас, Перемогу, Смерть Російській Федерації! (To Us, Victory, and death to the RF!)”* throws extra sparks as we celebrate Poland’s 1920 defeat of Bolshevik Russia in the Battle of Warsaw.

Our conversation soon turns to the dead. Vasyl Doroshenko, who worked at the Ye Bookstore in Lviv and would consult customers in various languages, was killed recently outside Bakhmut. Yevhen Hulevych died in combat last December, leaving a lasting wound in the cultural community centered in Ukraine’s west.

We talk about the numbers that nobody will tell us and that nobody knows for sure. Counting military and civilians, Ukraine must have lost 250,000 by now. At least 100,000 in Mariupol alone.

***

My friend just returned from a trip east to deliver a car to the front. “Oh, the guys there!” she nearly giggles. One of them was called Monk. “We were up half the night talking. He even cooked me a vegetarian dinner!”

Men in uniform are sexy. And you feel things more intensely and see things more quickly when death is nearby.

“We kept chatting after I returned. And then my friend wrote that he was killed.”

Like a stone thrown into a dark pool, her story keeps rippling through me.

***

Watch The Deer Hunter for a visceral reminder of how war changes people irreversibly. This 1978 masterpiece follows a few young men from a small working-class immigrant community in western Pennsylvania who sign up to serve in Vietnam.

It’s true that the Eastern European immigrant community in Clairton, PA, from which the heroes hail, is a strange composite of Russian and Ukrainian (with a hint of Polish) that has no analogue in real life (just like the action in the town was shot in several different places, none of which was actually Clairton). Critics have pointed out that there’s no evidence that the Viet Cong made POWs play Russian roulette.

What matters is the sense of how these guys relate to one another and to their community and to their own understanding of their life’s duties before, during, and after their time in Vietnam. Can you love after enduring war?

There is a scene in a military hospital in Vietnam where one of the young men is recovering. He’s sitting outside when a doctor with a clipboard comes up. The young man is slow to respond, he can barely remember his mother’s name. His last name is a long mess of syllables ending in -ich. “Russian?” asks the doctor. “American,” the soldier spits back.

This film is NOT ideological. It is not anti-war. It doesn’t criticize or valorize America’s involvement in Vietnam. It reveals (in the way that I believe only art can do) what participating in America’s war in Vietnam did to those participants.

Every war—like every person who fights in it or is otherwise transformed by it—is concrete. Ukrainians today are not fighting and giving their lives for a dream. The freedom to live on your own land as a free person together with your fellow citizens is very concrete.

*This powerful toast is the brainchild of Anna Lazar & Lada Nakonechna

PS Anka bought a stellar pair of binoculars for friends serving in an area of the Kharkiv region that sees regular skirmishes with enemy troops. Unfortunately the equipment they got officially (from our European partners) is not adequate to the task of spotting advancing enemy tanks and sabotage groups at long range. If you are able to help defray the $1200 cost, please send a donation to me via Paypal (larissa.babij@gmail.com) with the note ANKA. I’ll send you a photo!

PPS Thank you to Peter and David for their contributions toward FPV drones for the 24th mechanized brigade! That drive is ongoing.

PPPS I can only imagine how ridiculous it looks that I should be asking for money for this friend here and that unit every time I write. In truth, at any given moment there are at least 3-5 fundraising drives my friends are running (that I’m aware of) that I’m NOT even sharing with you!

If it matters to you that Ukraine remain intact and sovereign and alive, SAY something about it. Talk to your friends. Write letters to the editor. Brainstorm in your communities. Your attention and voice and political power matter. Bring them out and make something happen to bring Ukraine’s victory closer!