As we drove through the night, 90 year old Iryna had left her beloved Kharkiv region for the first time, and was hoping to find her way accross Europe with a small light blue hold-all, to meet up with her daughter and 2 small grand-daughters who'd fled before her and had been calling her helplessly from the family in western Germany where they'd been received.
Khrystyna must have been in her late 20's and is an accountant for a business in Chernihiv... that is, until everything changed the day her home village was occupied and her city surrounded. She rushed to make it out and to head, she too, to the Polish border and massive refugee centre. A few nights on a camp bed in the never-sleeping hangars where tired looking refugees are lovingly and diligently provided with everything they need but left heart-broken by what no-one can give them... their beloved homes and families. Hats off to the Poles for whipping such a competant service together at no notice, and to all the international volunteers, most of whom just jumped into a car or onto a train or plane and showed up. Too many nationalities to count. Khrystyna was cheerful and, like all her compatriots (in my short experience), funny, strong-willed and very polite... But as I munched a chocolate bar she'd insisted on buying me at a petrol station near Krakow, I asked her how it was to have to leave behind everything. The bubbly character suddenly died to a still, the smiley face closed to an anguished sorrow and the desperation welled up from deep inside... as the tears began to fall she simply stuttered... "...it's my home". But if there's one thing I've seen in the Ukrainians I've met it's an indestructible certainty that they will win. The harder they are crushed the more this sap seeps out of them, a smile for the victory they still see clearly through tear filled eyes.
Ganna was a dignified lady in her 50's. She cut a contrast with the people around her, mostly visibly poor and lost. Ganna was well dressed though with no signs of particular wealth. She smoked a cigarette from a little smoke and ash absorbing device. She smiled politely and always offered me coffee at the petrol stations, an offer I usually gladly accepted since we were driving though the night. At 5am we dropped her at a railway station in Eastern Germany where she planned to meet a relative and travel onwards. It struck me that her dignity wasn't linked to wealth, a wealth that might have a afforded her her own car or a first class train ticket. It was the deep dignity of someone who had learned to love life and enjoy things of quality. A good woollen cardigan, an espresso coffee, a little amusement with a friend, and perhaps the preference to stay with family in one of Germany's older cities. She too was trying to rise above the confounding, demeaning, humiliating circumstances of being violently uprooted and harrassed out of her country, out of her thoughtfully woven environment of culture and friendships. I sensed strongly that buying coffee for me was a dignity she owned and needed; that to stand and smoke a cigarette beside the petrol station forecourt, chatting to Khrystyna as she would have done to a neighbour, was a leisure she needed to maintain her sense of self; that stepping away at 5am with her wheely suitcase towards a grand a prestigious railway station to meet someone who was coming to meet her was no pride or pretense but another indefatigable Ukrainian will to win.
As Iryna had carefully moved her fragile limbs into the front-seat and smilingly resisted all efforts to get her to lie back and sleep, she let out a deep sigh, and clasped her hands together, uttering something in Ukrainian or Russian... Khrystyna translated it, pointing to the Rosary which was dangling from the rear-view mirror just infront of Iryna... "God goes with me!", she had breathed.
13 hours later, as she climbed just as carefully out of the car parked by a large river in the city of destination, her beaming smile once again took over her elderly frame... the little girls running ahead of their mother towards her were screaming with joy "babushka, babushka!"*
(*many elderly Ukrainians speak mostly Russian, I learned today)
(names changed for privacy)
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