Yesterday, the neighborhood and the apartment building (and possibly the very exact apartment – I’m still investigating) in Kyiv I stayed for a month during the filming of “My Summer in Ukraine,” was hit by a Shahid drone from ruzzia, injuring 11 and damaging the mall across the street at the very entrance I used.
The Obolon district has a special place in my heart. It’s where I felt most a part of Ukrainian daily life as the locals got used to seeing and “talking” to me via Google Translate, and I truly felt sad to leave. I felt like the only American in the entire neighborhood, and the old soviet buildings, where I was afraid of getting stuck in the elevator at first, became a comfort to me. Did anyone get stuck in the elevator during the attack?
Obolonskyi’s little businesses and people are endearing. I worked out at a well-equipped gym nearby, where I’m still occasionally in touch with one person who worked there. I had a rip in my pants repaired by a local tailor ($3, as I recall), bought some needed workout clothes at the small but extensive wholesale market (shorts I still wear to the gym to this day), bought nuts from a nut vendor, had meals, bought groceries, water, filmed this singer (pictured), donated clothes, and generally had a live-in experience.
The modern “Dream Mall” across the street was so much fun, with its various themes as you walked along it (Amazon Jungle, Ancient Greece, Imperial Asia, etc.). Families with children loved it, and teens gathered there with friends as they do worldwide, as did this foreigner when he wanted something nice to remind him of the normalcy of Ukraine.
That was all shattered yesterday when a bomb from a drone fell near the kindergarten I walked by and possibly hit my very apartment. I can’t tell for sure, and of course, I hope not. I will email the owner to see if she’s okay.
This was not a close call for me, not even close. It’s almost two years removed. That’s not why I’m posting this. I’m posting this so folks can understand how tangible war becomes when you visit a place under attack, see the devastation amid normalcy, hear the bombs and later thunder from storms, and try to distinguish between the noises. Every loud noise is a trigger, every flash of light is a pulse-pounding adventure, and every air raid siren is a constant rush of cortisol. When places you’ve visited get bombed, you don’t dismiss the headlines so easily.
I will NEVER be embarrassed, bullied, or shamed into silence for speaking for the voiceless and the vulnerable. Empathy is not a crime, character flaw, or some liberal democratic weakness. Empathy should have no political affiliation or single religious belief. Empathy is a strength in a way that the warmongering, powerful, narcissistic, weak-kneed politicians and ultra-greedy oligarchs can never, will likely never, understand. But that doesn’t not make it so.
