25 Aug Un briceag, lame de ras și carnețele
Egor (“Ye-GOR”) is a “simple case”. He just needs a place to stay overnight in Bucharest on his way to his sister’s who lives in Sweden. A coach bus brings him to Militari at 5 a.m. and there are multiple flights to Sweden. Anastasia Staicu, the initiator of the SNK Association’s volunteer group, assists him. Only he’s asking about a ticket to Ireland. I listen in on their conversation.
“Why Ireland?”
“I read online that over there volunteers still help you find a job or pick up your studies. I want to start a Psychology degree program this year.”
“But your sister is in Sweden, you don’t know anyone in Ireland”
“I don’t know anyone in Sweden either. I’ve never met my sister and she has 4 kids, she apologized to my dad, I can’t barge into her life. So, Ireland, please. If at all possible.”
Egor is not a simple case. He’s a teenager determined to move forward, to not be a disappointment to his parents or an inconvenience to anyone else. He apologizes a lot and is ready to give a hand any time. He doesn’t stay still even for a moment. We quickly become friends and keep up our friendship for months after he left. I just didn’t know it yet. Back then, when he just showed up at my work place, I was busy and although I still read all the stories about Ukrainian refugees and wanted to help, that day I had my hands full and my empathy was being put to the test by the everyday stuff. Tasks. Deadlines. He gets a feel of it.
“I’ve been here two months now, no one calls me by my name, you know? It’s my name, but no one pronounces it the way I’ve known it to be all my life. It’s weird. Like it’s someone else’s.”
I’m listening to him and it dawns on me that when foreigners say my name in a funny way, it amuses me, but they are just passing through or I am on vacation. But what would it be like to suddenly end up in a place where everyone is calling me something else? I begin to get closer to Egor and make a point of pronouncing his name as it sounds right to him. We start talking.
“Where are you coming from, Egor? What city, I mean.”
“My city is near Kyiv, it’s called Chernihiv and I’ve lived there all my life. Until March, when I left there, maybe for good? “
I Google it and find and image of a beautiful church with turquoise domes. The rest of the images are grey. A city razed to the ground. With schools and hospitals destroyed by bombs, broken trees and fallen buildings. I realize I had a picture of this city saved to my phone. The one published in The New Yorker had impressed me and it was all around the world. For him it means Home.
Suddenly my job tasks don’t seem so pressing anymore and Anastasia, instead of rushing me, beckons me to take Egor away and we walk around until she sorts out all the Ireland and Sweden business, tough, serious decisions. That’s how I became a volunteer in his story.
“What did you take with you when you left Ukraine? What did you pack?”
“I found out I was leaving very suddenly. I didn’t have time to think or pack what I wanted. We were already in the basement. I packed the things I thought I would need. Several warm, winter clothes, I didn’t think I’d be someplace else in the spring. Some food, some razors, it’s important to look neat, I learned that from my parents. And it’s easier on the people trying to help you to see that you’re clean. Some sweets and a few pills for headache. I was just reading about somatization, when your body starts hurting if you feel uneasy inside. Now I can see it happening to me. I have severe headaches. Oh, and I packed a pocketknife. I didn’t know what it was like to travel to the border in a country at war.”
“What did you leave behind? What things did you have a hard time giving up?”
“Just some clothes. And my future in Ukraine.”
His answers are disarmingly honest and we often get teary eyes.
“Did you know you were going away for several months? Or did you think you’d be back soon? “
“I just know what I’m doing now. Everything has become the present, because the past is still hard to fathom and I’m afraid of the future. When I hear of an explosion in Chernihiv, I fear my mother is dead. Or my father is hurt. Whether I look at things optimistically or realistically, the future is difficult. The way I see it, I won’t have anything to go back to anytime soon. I want to get into a university this year. I want to study Psychology. To become a psychologist. It’s something I’ve wanted for a while, that was going to be my future when the war wiped everything out, now it’s very clear to me that I want to work with people facing hardships, maybe even become a social worker.”
I avoid asking him directly about his parents, but I gather from his stories that he has an older brother and his father, and it seems they were not allowed to leave the country and that their supplies were getting low. Mothers know how to make a stew out of anything. So his mother stayed there to look after those who couldn’t leave. But they asked Egor to go until he got some place safe and they would no longer have to worry for him. As far as possible. As safe as possible from the attacks and explosions. As close to his future as he imagined it back in February.
I met Egor shortly after we had spoken to the Museum of Abandonment team about putting down in writing the stories of people fleeing the war. At the point I had no idea how many of these I would be fully involved in, but I knew it would help to make them known.
When he was leaving Romania, Egor packed a different kind of luggage. It had lighter clothes, supplies, a few books from us – his accidental friends – and lots of notebooks to record what he felt, not the actual events. He let me translate a page. I’m still thinking about his clouds. And the thing he removed from his Ukrainian luggage, he sent to me. “I won’t need a pocketknife anymore, there is no war across the border in the country where I’m going.”
Story collected by Ștefania Oprina for the Museum of Abandonment, as part of the Suitcases of Abandonment campaign. Project funded by CARE through the Sera Foundation, Care France and FONPC.
No Comments