Living in a country at war
It’s now been 3 weeks since we’ve lived in Kyiv, and we’re starting to build a home.
We have bought a mattress and a duvet, which we have installed in our high-ceilinged apartment just off Maidan square. We’ve got candles to make it feel like home and have even bought a slightly pre-emptive Christmas gnome.
Our free time is also shaping up. We have found a Crossfit gym and even beach volleyball stadium, warmed to a balmy 20° – almost enough to make you forget that winter is definitely on the way. Running in Kyiv is also a special joy. The city is built on a collection of hills, meaning you can turn a corner and be rewarded by an expansive view of the Dnipro river and the jewel-coloured parks and woods that highlight the landscape, or you can crest a hill and marvel at the joyfully coloured homes on Andriivs’kyi Descent.
We have found our favourite coffee place that doubles as a bookstore near the office which sells excellent coffee and buckwheat tea, a typically Ukrainian drink. The bookstore has an extensive collection of books in Ukrainian and English – I’m eying a Ukrainian version of Harry Potter to supplement the Ukrainian lessons we’re following.
We now know where our local supermarket is, where I’ve become completely addicted to to plastic tubes of pickled vegetables: gherkins, incredible; pickled tomatoes, absolutely spectacular.
So far, then, so normal. We’re adjusting to living in a new place, figuring out life in a new country, language, and culture. Of course, the big difference is the war.
The war never lets you forget that it’s there. It is there when, on the drive from Chernihiv to Kyiv, you stop seeing babusyas selling mushrooms and handmade jams on the side of the highway. In their place, you start seeing unassuming small red signs featuring a white skull and crossbones. The warning signal that tells potential nature lovers that the areas has been mined is framed by exquisite autumn colours, the tracks that used to meander through the trees all but invisible through disususe.
It’s also at breakfast in Cherhihiv, when, over the clatter of cutlery and familial murmering, an explosion suddly disrupts the soft morning fog. We froze – did we have to do something? Shelter? Run and panic? Not a single Ukrainian even looked up from their plate. “Another coffee my love?” – life went on.
The war is also checking Telegram at 3 o’clock in the morning to see how to respond to the air raids. Is it shaheds, meaning we should put our mattress in the corridor again in case the windows are blown out, or is it ballistics, which means venturing outside to the metro in the dead of the cold night?
The war is acutely present when walking past Maidan square, where a spontaneous tribute to the fallen soldiers of Ukraine has sprung up. A dense forest of blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags barely make it above the thick undergrowth of flowers that surround pictures of smiling men, some just a picture in a frame, others a banner that mention their name, their role in the army, their age.. One boy whose banner is on the square was one month younger than my brother – he died last summer. Another was nearly the same age as my parents. Every single one of these pictures on banners have left people behind that loved them as fiercely I love my family and friends. The shock of seeing it is like plunging in ice-cold water. It takes your breath away.
When people ask, then, how life is in a country at war for two newcomers, the answer is a paradox. The banality and common joy of exploring normal life in a new place is paired with absurdity, fear, and a deep sadness that normal life has been so deeply and terribly disturbed.