The war began on Thursday 24 February. In Poland there were long lines of people in front of the pastry shops. It was the last Thursday before Lent, when donuts and angel wings are eaten, a traditional Polish dessert: there’s a reason why it’s called Shrove Thursday. As I walked the streets I was looking for signs. I stared at the faces of passersby and asked myself: “Do they know? Are you interested in anything? “. It was difficult to understand. Most of them looked like ordinary people: tired, distracted, bored. Some of those in the queue controlled the smartphone. So at least the donut eaters knew what was going on.
“Don’t feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another has already been born. The words, the actions, the date have been recorded ”, wrote the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz in 1950, during his exile.
I couldn’t take it. Living so normal, so pleasant, on the day the war began. The problem with historic days is that they are like any other. But some details of an otherwise ordinary day will be remembered for years. What was Stalin wearing during the Yalta conference? With what words did Chamberlain entertain the cheering crowd when he landed in London from Munich? In which city was Archduke Francesco Ferdinando in the late morning of June 28, 1914? By the way, it was a Sunday.
Not to forget
On that historic day I walked the streets of my city and felt horrible. Václav Havel, playwright, political dissident and first president of the Czech Republic, wrote an essay on “the power of the powerless”. I didn’t understand it. I was sick with impotence. I was glued to my iPhone and I hated myself for it. Suddenly, the revelation. Flowers. I can buy some flowers. And deposit them in front of the Ukrainian consulate. Coincidentally it was a block away. Fortune favors the bold. I had a goal again. “Maybe I could get some yellow and blue flowers, it would be even more beautiful”, I thought.
The Ukrainian consulate is located on the main road in the center of the city. To my surprise, I saw no protesters or asylum seekers or flags. There were two reporters with a camera, but they left immediately, having nothing to film or to tell. When I returned with the flowers, there was not a soul in front of the consulate. It was a relief. I felt partly embarrassed and partly determined to do something.
Finding yellow flowers wasn’t a problem, but the florist didn’t have blue ones, not even fake ones. Obviously they weren’t in season. Not in February. So she gave me a little blue bird for decoration. They were beautiful to look at, and staring at those first flowers leaning against the wall next to the brass plaque with the word “Ukrainian” written on it already made me feel better.
It didn’t last long. After two long days and a night, at three in the morning I started writing to my Ukrainian friends and friends in Kiev. The earliest conversations of that chat probably dated back to when Facebook was becoming fashionable outside the United States. I read what we were writing to each other at the time, things long gone, urgent matters forgotten. Those young people I barely recognized them, as ancestors with whom we have a remote resemblance. The last twelve years had disappeared, replaced by the reality of the present.
Overwhelmed by the news
On the internet I saw red arrows surrounding the Ukrainian capital and I just wanted my friends to escape, before it was too late and the Russians attacked them like in Aleppo, during the Syrian civil war. That city resembled Warsaw in 1944, burned and razed to the ground.
“How are you doing and when will you leave town?”: That was all I wanted to know. The girls – grown-up women with children, who remained girls in my chat – were adamant. “I’m not going anywhere. We will fight and win. The city will resist. “They will have filled them with propaganda”, I thought to myself. I knew all too well how the Polish government had brainwashed its citizens before 1939. The war will be over in two weeks, they boasted. And so it was.
You shouldn’t be too honest with someone living under siege. At least, I thought so. It’s rude. And it’s not good for morale. When you decide to leave, we will get you out of there. How, exactly, I didn’t have the faintest idea. I tried to remain optimistic, despite the circumstances. Sooner or later they would come to their senses. It was the best I could hope for.
With the Russian I studied in high school, I forced myself to watch the Kremlin propaganda programs and tried to read the Ukrainian news. On Twitter I followed all the accounts with the hashtags “intel”, “war” or “strategy”, and I felt almost like a professional who found most of the news before the live updates of the Guardian or the Financial Times.
Long queues have formed in front of the passport issuing offices since five in the morning. Queues of Poles, not Ukrainians. Four months into the summer, young and old suddenly decided they needed a passport. “Our aunt insists that we renew it,” someone said. “So if something happens we can go to the United States.”
“I know of a bridge over the Oder, towards Germany. It is a railway bridge, so you can cross the river without problems ”. I heard this by chance in a cafe. “Until recently in Alicante, Spain, there were hundreds of apartments for sale. The Poles of the upper class bought them. Now they are all gone, ”a friend explained to me. “My uncle bought a house in Spain, just to be safe,” another friend told me recently. “That way, if something happens here, he won’t have to pay a rent.”
Acquaintances abroad whom I had not heard from in years contacted me to find out how we were. We were fine. But not quite. My son’s passport would expire in less than a month. Refugees often arrived undocumented, but that was little consolation. Waiting for hours in line to get it was humiliating. I didn’t want to give the attackers an easy victory. If he wants to scare us, Mr. Putin, he will have to try harder.
Within days, the first refugees were already crossing the border. For the first time since the war began, I got on a train. I saw them arrive at the station. One, two bags at most. All they could carry. Only women and children. Some of them were waiting for someone to come and get them. The Poles were visibly stressed, but welcoming. How to talk to people who have left everything, including their loved ones? The broken Russian seemed suitable for the occasion. The broken language of a broken country. A new language was being born: that of solidarity, of the parallel destiny that was imposed on these people.
As always, the tracks are changed at the last minute. A large group of four women and several children are trying to find a train to Zgorzelec, in the westernmost part of Poland, on the border with Germany. They have to change tracks. I bring him the bags, so I miss my train. I have no cash, their train leaves in two minutes, I rush to the station shop to buy them some food or a drink. Too late.
The women hug each other, they can’t hold back the tears. They feel anxiety and relief at the same time. “Where exactly do you come from?” I ask. “From a small town near Kiev, he is now always under fire. It’s called Buča ”. Buča, I’ll remember this name.
(Translation by Davide Musso)