“IT STARTED” This phrase sounds like a template from old movies filmed on Svema tape. When my husband woke me up crying “It started” from the bedroom doorway, and I found myself following him around the apartment and repeating like a windup doll, “it’s terrible, terrible, it can’t be, it’s madness,” my mind, still not fully awake, thought it was a scene from an old movie. A movie from the time when my grandma didn’t like to talk about the war, and we used to fall asleep with the thought that it is very close after watching something about tanks, comrades, and dogs, and obediently learned to put on gas masks at the lessons of basic military training. I was an A-student. And I got an A for gas-masks and wound bandaging. The sense of horror came back immediately. It stuck in my throat with the feeling of permanent sickness. The countdown went on for hours, and then for days. Well. It turned out to be very close. But now the aggressor is my own country. My mind is running in circles. My brain is pulsing, ”How can it be, it's the 21st century, how, how . . . .” It goes back to the basic tenets of the ideas of humanism. I’m looking at the photos of bombed cities, and my heart is with those whose world has been ruined in a matter of days. I’m trying to imagine what it’s like, to save your child, not to let him be frozen by horror, when it’s hell and uncertainty all around you. What’s left? Rage. We, creative people, are always demanded to be professional. Everyone is ready to discuss our level and skills. It’s normal, it’s our job. But you know . . . Why are we prohibited to call politicians, diplomats, and military men who’ve failed their professional mission a bunch of pompous showy bastards who are not able to fulfill their own duties, to preserve peace and people’s lives? Their mistakes are crimes. The war they’ve started is a crime. I can’t stop thinking about the people who have to hide in bomb shelters. About the mothers that live with the fear for their children who can die any day. I’m terrified of the fact that an organization with an unpronounceable name can prohibit us from calling a spade a spade and dictate to us how we can use our own language. I’ve opened Wikipedia and read the definition of the word “war.” War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, aggression, destruction, and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces. What’s going on in Ukraine can’t have another name. It's a real war. I understand that everything already happened before in this world, and the feelings we have were already described by others, and in a more precise manner. I don’t know when we will be able to formulate something except for these words about shame and horror. I want to believe that one day it will become possible, and someone will even need it. Pretentious statements have always made me feel awkward, but there’s no other way now. I want to believe that a county is more than a regime. Culture is more than a regime. Freedom is inside a human being.
March 26, 2022 Translated by Alena Sosnina