Nine years ago or so, I left home with a tiny hipster bag that I brought with me to work in the morning. There were no documents inside, apart from my Russian passport. Prior to that, I had made a lot of mistakes that, for all practical purposes, had deprived me of my right to speak, write, and have an opinion worthy of any respect. My friends helped me escape, and I ended up in Ukraine, in Kyiv. This city and this country have saved me for some reason, by giving me the gift of new people, new thoughts, and new possibilities. All these years I had been miserable; however, generous, free, joyous Ukraine usually doesn’t let its residents lose hope. I have found some unexpected favorite places: the Pet Market and the nearby Kirillovskaya Street, with Kurenivka Park (it was hit by a missile); Sukholuchchya Village with glorious forests, where I went every year to pick mushrooms like a fool (it’s been taken by the Russians, and no one knows what’s happening there); finally, my residential area, where, despite the long commute to the city center, one could find absolutely anything within half an hour, from Harp lager to Japanese fish feed. (Today, somebody asked me where I had bought rye bread, which they had detected through the plastic bag, and at 5am two especially loud explosions occurred; some pieces of a missile destroyed by the air defense hit several apartment buildings, a school, and a children’s hospital). I have found new friends in Kyiv. As of today, there are maybe two of them left here; they volunteer and couldn’t care less about me. I try not to contact anyone, so that busy people don’t have to tell me, a Russian, to get lost and go where all Russians should go. I can’t help them; I have a Russian ID, my Ukrainian is terrible, and I can’t afford all the accompanying trouble; my cat, who is, if I’m honest, the only creature I care about, will be left alone in the apartment. On February 24th, my life ended—it was destroyed for the second time. For sure, all that sounds pathetic and stupid next to all the deaths, tragedies, destroyed lives of millions who, unlike me, are not guilty at all. But all I can talk about now is pathetic and stupid. Because the disgusting habit of living for a day, and then for a night, which I mastered before I left home, has come back in a second, at the first explosion. All I can dream about are three things; let as many people as possible survive, be saved, and come back; let the fucking bunker rat die as soon as possible; and please, let there come a day when I can entrust my cat to a person I can trust.
March 16, 2022 Translated by Katia Szarek