No Means No

Same as it did four years ago

Mine, ©2022 William L. Brown, produced for Valentine’s Day, 2022, ten days before Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The drawing is still relevant. Russia still yearns to take Ukraine, Ukraine still says “NO!”

Four years ago I left Kyiv on Valentine’s Day for Lviv. I didn’t know it, but it was the my displacement’s gentle start. It was a privileged displacement compared to most Ukrainians—the apartment I rented, not owned, the apartment I abandoned, Ukraine is not my childhood home, I had more personal means and resources than almost all of the refugees around me. Still my life and the lives of those dear to me were irrecoverably overturned. My community of friends and students was disbursed and traumatized.

Ukrainians didn’t believe Russia would attack. Everybody knew they only maintained the frozen conflict in the eastern Donbas region to keep Ukraine out of NATO and the EU. The troop buildups on the border were a performance to encourage Western concessions, easing sanctions and pariah-hood.

But, my friends and family back in the US begged me to be prudent, just in case. I compromised. Instead of leaving the country, I relocated to the far west, near the border. I booked an apartment for a month in Lviv. I hoped to be able to return to Kyiv then, but I prepared and packed for evacuation. I shipped a box of possessions to Lviv and I carried so much weight in my backpack I had to lean at a 60° angle. Getting up and down stairs felt life-threatening.

I handed my keys over to friends, one of whom would become a refugee in ten days, and I took photos to remember.

I ran into my friend and fellow English-teacher Jim at the metro stop, he was also making arrangements to leave. At Kyiv’s train station, Vokzalna*, I saw many soldiers, traveling, I suppose, to deployment. I wonder how many are still alive.

The next two photos are from a January, 2019 trip to Lviv, same train route, same time, same Lviv station.

The apartment was in the heart of Lviv, a half-block from the Opera House plaza on a picturesque, narrow street. The apartment building was ancient, though the decor was Ukrainian-contemporary. The back-less kitchen chairs are typical Ukrainian rental apartment money-and-space-saving. The filtered water was a nice feature. It saves renters from having to buy and haul drinking/cooking water from the supermarket to the flat.

There was a guest bed, and I’d invited friends to come visit me during the month I planned to be there. It promised to be a nice trip.

Thanks for reading! To be continued….

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*Vokzalna means “main train station.” There are theories why train stations seem to be named after one particular train station in London. One of the more plausible is that in 1838 a music and entertainment pavilion called Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens was built at a train terminus near St. Petersburg, Russia, named in imitation of London’s Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. It became the word for “main train station.” Every city has a vokzalna, minor stations are called “stanzia.” Kyiv’s Vokzalna has a name, Kyiv Passenger, but I almost always heard it called Vokzalna. When rail infrastructure was first built, Ukraine was a Russian province, and Russia was the official language. “Vokzalna” was adopted into Russian.