What use is humanism now? It perishes inside me when I see the photographs of corpses of Kharkiv’s citizens, buried under the rubble of their ruined homes, or out on the street. There’s one who went to fetch water, the bottle lying by his side; there’s another—she was queuing at the shop. Or when I see the centre of Kharkiv, bombed to bits, the centre of town where World War II left little standing, where what was left undone is now being finished off by people who call us “fascists” or “Nazis”. My mother, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian, says: “They’re worse than the fascists.” For her, humanism got left behind in our pre-war past. “They should put them in front of a firing squad,” Mother says about the prisoners of war, the ones who shot Kharkiv to bits before surrendering to our army. Of course, we’re not allowed to execute the prisoners, but Mother has every right to talk like that. Every day, for three weeks now, she, we, Kharkiv, have been living from siren to siren, and whenever it wails, it means someone else is dead, someone else is being bombed. At the end of each day we say “goodnight”, but the words sound different now: they’re full of fear. The same goes for “good morning”.
My father, a Russian-speaking Russian who was born in Russia, who the Russians have come to liberate with their airplanes, tanks and bombs, says the same: the more of them they execute, the more they’ll have second thoughts about coming. My father’s heart is sick, ravaged by heart attacks. There’s no room left in it for humanism. I’m worried for their hearts, my father’s and my mother’s. He’s eighty-one, my father. He remembers World War II, the Germans who occupied their Russian village. He tells us all about it, as we sit in our shelter, during the air raids. He’s been engulfed in childhood memories; now two wars frame his life, and they’re merging into one.
Our shelter is a windowless hallway deep inside the flat. Father can’t go down to the cellar, the lift has been disconnected since the first day of the war, and we’re up on the seventh floor. He might get down there, but with his heart condition he might not get back up.
Father’s got a certificate which says “war child”. My daughter will probably get something similar. She and my wife are at her grandmother’s, hiding in the cellar from the bombs. Father remembers the cellar where they were forced to live when the Germans took over their house.
My daughter wants to go out. It’s been snowing and she wants to build a snowman. But we can’t go out there, so she draws snowmen doing battle with Russian saboteurs. Above them, an aircraft marked with a Z drops a bomb. Before she would draw animals, the sun, the sky, our family. She drew a river and the forest at Figurovka, the university’s leisure centre near Chuguev, where we spend our summers. Now everything’s been destroyed near Chuguev.
Everything’s been destroyed near our home. The house we lived in, the place we left when we moved in with our parents. The university sports complex, the student hostels, shops, residential blocks.
My daughter is yet to see that. To draw it.
Or to draw her school. If it’s still intact: that district’s been heavily bombed—they attacked it with missiles.
To draw the Shevchenko Gardens, the dolphinarium, where we celebrated her tenth birthday on 19 February. Just five days before the war. The centre of town, where the Shevchenko Gardens stand, is in ruins now.
After the war, my daughter will draw Kharkiv, what’s left of it. That’s how she’ll remember Kharkiv. She’ll ask, when they start to clear up the ruins: “What did that use to be?” or “What was there before the war?”
“A building from the century before last, neo-baroque”. “Jugendstil”, “Ukrainian Moderne”, “constructivism”. I’ll show her the photographs.
Looking at the old photos, I imagined what Kharkiv was like before the Second World War. The buildings which stood where now there are gaps and squares, the masterpieces of architecture.
The Kharkiv I grew up in will now be my daughter’s pre-war Kharkiv. The Kharkiv which I photographed will be her photographs of old Kharkiv.
Kharkiv no longer exists. And nor do we. Our old pre-war selves were left behind, underground. In the metro, where many went on 24 February, from where they are yet to surface. In the cellars, basements. Joseph Campbell called it the “belly of the whale”. He described it as an initiation, rebirth. Our past, our normal, human lives died there when they bombed Kharkiv. I’ve already seen some of the reborn souls, out on the streets. They make way for people coming in the other direction, and they’re polite, not overly formal, but polite to one another. Before the war, I’d never experienced such considerateness, such sincere warm feelings for strangers, in ordinary, mercantile Kharkiv, where everyone lived their own lives, with their own problems. Now we share this life and its problems; everyone knows how everyone else feels. Could you call that humanism, or something else? What exactly is humanism?
Russian-speaking
In Ireland, they stopped the car carrying the Russian ambassador. They tried to drag him out. They backed a lorry into the gates of the Russian Embassy. An Irish MP said: “Speaking English in Ireland won’t make Englishmen of the Irish.”
Mayor Dobkin once yelled: “We will defend the Russian language!” I wanted to reply: “What good’s that Russian of yours? What do you plan to do with it?” Best keep on reading from those imbecilic scripts they write for you. And now I’d like to tell Putin: “I hope you choke on your Russian language!” And then I’ll switch to Ukrainian, for good.
But I know that I won’t. Because I know Russian better than Putin. I’ve been thinking in it, writing it, honing my style, for half a century now. So sit Putin down next to me, with that dim-witted, backstreet, gangster’s cant of his, and give us a test in dictation or composition. Then you’ll see who comes out on top.
But Putin doesn’t want to take me on. Instead he’s bombing me, raining down his Grad rockets on me, and all because I know Russian better than him. Better than his soldiers. And his ministers. Better than all the Tsar’s courtiers.
And so I’ll carry on fighting, with this non-Russian Russian of mine. Against him and his army. Because I can say—Я смогу победить (I can win). While he’s thinking to himself: “Я победю” (I will win)—he can’t even conjugate the verb properly.
Putin hasn’t driven me out of Kharkiv nor will he drive me out of my language. Neither of them belong to him: not Kharkiv, not Russian.
Life in a town which no longer exists
Thud. The rubbish lorry arrives, collects the rubbish.
Thud. The concierge looks up at the sky, but not in the direction of the thunder. He stands there, smoking.
Thud. People walk down the street, without picking up their pace.
Shelling. I want to hide in the very depths of our flat. A pensioner does his daily jog on the sports ground, shuffling forwards with small steps. He stops by the parallel bars, props himself up and bends forwards performing his exercise.
Thud. A sturdy maintenance lady in red communal-services overalls empties the rubbish from the bin.
The thundering is so powerful that the whole building shudders. A man walks his dog, it jumps up to grab the stick from his hand, he throws the stick, the dog bounds after it.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. The thuds come thick and fast, and very loud. Outside the kiosk, the queue for cigarettes doesn’t disperse or regroup. It stands its ground.
Thunder nearby. The windowpanes shake. In the playground, a woman calls her child, fastens the ribbon on his hat.
Kharkiv, day twenty-one of the war.
As bombs fall
Air-raid sirens from early morning. There were several during the night. Food supplies running out. Got to go to the shop. I wait for a lull before going. Reaching the ground floor, I realise that I’ve forgotten my gloves, but I won’t go back for them now. The siren sounds again, but I’m not going back now. We agreed that my parents would wait in the shelter while I’m gone.
Out on the street, no one is running, and neither am I. I walk.
At the supermarket, the shelves are half-empty, but they’ve got the essentials. Bread, sausage, loose pasta, even chicken. I take two of everything.
There are fewer people here than in pre-war days. None of the old bustle and commotion.
A trolley of eggs appears, a queue forms, the eggs are all gone. I took two trays.
A woman asks the checkout lady if she’s not frightened spending the whole day here. She answers: “The thudding sounds the same, whether at home or at work.” The thudding sounds all across Kharkiv.
The prices are twice what they used to be. I spent three thousand hryvnia. I head back, loaded down, slower now. More thuds.
A second sortie—to meet my wife. Halfway between our two flats. We worked out a route on the map and agreed on the meeting point.
I forgot my gloves again. My hands are freezing cold. The thuds get closer, then further away. I don’t run. I walk briskly—I’ve got a meeting to get to, after all.
I see her in the distance. I wave with the bags in my hands. We kiss, we hug, it’s two weeks since we’ve seen each other. I’m reminded how beautiful she is.
No time to talk: more thuds, we’ll talk on the phone. Another loud thud.
I unpack the things I bought her from my rucksack. I load up with potatoes and vegetables from hers. But now we have to part. “Like Stierlitz the spy and his wife on a date,” my wife says. Thud.
I don’t care how we celebrate victory, as long as it’s not with cannons.
