The Way to the West
Sometimes you're tempted to liken yourself to a bird to survey from the height of flight what's happening on earth. You dreamily imagine how your spirit soars when you take wing! The higher toward the white clouds, the fuller the picture of life below becomes clear. Everything visible on earth now spreads beneath you like a solid carpet. There's the steppe, carved from edge to edge with small ravines. The Dnieper spread its arms. Mosaic squares of houses and gardens. Road ribbons snake, along which cars bustle hurrying somewhere...
When a column of cars can barely move down the highway in three lanes, even straying into the opposite lane, it would help to rise above the ground and look around. To see what's creating the traffic jam on the road: checkpoints ahead, possible accidents—in a hurry anything can happen—or perhaps vehicles abandoned by their owners, which everyone is forced to go around, or the flow of cars is so dense that speed is limited? And I wished I could also look back at where everyone is forced to flee today. Kherson! How are you, dear? How close has the front come to you? Are all these hundreds of thousands of cars managing to reach a safe place?
Our cars tried to stay together. We drove so that no one could wedge in and break our organized column. We had two electric cars. Their batteries were enough for only a hundred kilometers. Further we had to pull on tow ropes to recharge.
When we left Kherson, our "Ford" didn't have even half a tank of gasoline. By this time, gas stations were only dispensing gasoline in limited amounts—just ten to twenty liters. Outside the city I saw an inconspicuous old gas station and filled up a full tank. This became another miracle and answer to prayer. After all, setting out on a long journey without gasoline was extremely risky.
The trip, of course, was forced. Many people in our part of the country led basically sedentary lives. My work took me abroad frequently—five or six trips a year. But my family rarely left home. Only in the last eight or nine years had we started traveling together at least once a year. Now our overloaded car crawled down the highway toward a part of Ukraine we'd never visited before. The travel conditions weren't the most comfortable, especially for passengers in the back seat with a dog and cat to boot. And if Sheri could behave calmly, the cat had to be given a sedative so he wouldn't get too upset in his cage. From time to time we'd let him out to stretch. He'd bounce around the cabin plenty and settle down to sleep on the front panel. His cozy pose reminded us of the home left far behind.
So our column moved west across the country. We intended to reach Uman by nightfall, but by evening it became clear—we wouldn't make it. It was beginning to get dark. Despite the fact that we constantly called each other (there was a person responsible for communication next to the driver), at some point I got separated from our group. The navigator led me on the road to Kropyvnytskyi, while the entire car column headed further down the Nikolayev region highway. We discovered this when it made no sense to return. We agreed to spend the night in different places.
I made several calls; friends recommended a large family in the suburbs of Kropyvnytskyi. Soon the feeling of anxiety when wandering blindly toward the unknown was replaced by a sense of temporary happiness—we were received very warmly for the night. We discovered the full extent of human hospitality, so welcome in conditions of relocation. They gave us two rooms on the second floor of a large house—excellent for our family, dog, and cat.
The owners of the house where we stayed not only raised their four children, but also adopted two orphaned children (their mother died from COVID). Large families always amaze me. They're capable of such accepting gestures.
The night promised us the long-awaited rest after nearly nine hours on the road. The hostess simply laid the table. Simple food—noodle soup, spaghetti and sausages—looked like a royal feast. And near the plates lay place settings! For me, the day began with an early breakfast—I still remembered the forks and knives lovingly laid out on the table by my wife. Now our night meal, hundreds of kilometers from home, was carefully complemented by a similar element. You couldn't help but notice such a sign. That's how our first day of nomadic life ended.
On February 25, we left early in the morning. When saying goodbye, the house owners thoughtfully offered us some cookies and tea for the road. I admit, we were touched by their hospitality, but didn't decide on the offered treats, took very little. Our souls were in a state of stupor, and we weren't able to rationally evaluate the strength we'd have to spend in the new day.
On the road we heard from the news that the Russians had shelled Kropyvnytskyi that morning. The owners of the house where we stayed were soon also forced to evacuate. War crept after us on our heels. Mercilessly put its dirty boots on new territories. Delaying was dangerous.
We met up with our team around noon near Uman. They'd spent the night in Yuzhnoukrayinsk in Nikolayev region at one kind and pious woman's house. I knew her personally from conferences I'd attended in southern Ukraine. I knew the woman had a business: a small stable. She raised horses and provided them for rehabilitation of children with locomotor problems. There's such an effective type of therapy when a sick child spends time with an animal. He begins to reach out to pet and care for the horse, and horseback riding, a kind of massage, helps coordination and strengthens his body's muscles. It was pleasant to hear feedback about the woman's hospitality. A parallel suggested itself that by receiving refugees in her home, whose reality was paralyzed by war, the woman served each guest with a kind of healing.
And now the road led us to Chernivtsi. How much time it could take—hard to say. A road in wartime is not always a predictable quantity. A six-and-a-half-hour drive could turn into a twelve-hour exhausting journey. We still needed to fill up the vehicles. By this time a problem with fuel had arisen throughout Ukraine. We heard that particularly wealthy people could afford to buy gasoline for a hundred dollars a canister, unwilling to wait hours at gas stations. We were careful with our resources. The fact that we managed to leave Kherson with full tanks pleased us. But we still had to replenish supplies. It wouldn't hurt to feed ourselves too.
We stopped in Uman. We were hungry. Hot dogs are common food at gas stations. I remembered that the owners of the house where we'd stayed offered us a snack for the road. Only now did we appreciate their gesture of kindness, when hunger was fiercely gnawing at us from within. So we discovered a new component of war, capable of taking from a person what's customary and vital—food. In exchange, to thrust hunger, wear you out, take strength, and even the most valuable—human life.
We were lucky to have arranged our night lodging in advance in the suburbs of Chernivtsi. A church community in the small village of Vetryanka was already preparing to receive us. But the journey proved difficult. The bought minibus broke down several times on the highway. We stood for long periods in the cold. The weather became frosty, unusual for us southerners. The "Mercedes" allowed itself to be towed along, but by midnight near Chernivtsi it broke down completely. There was nothing we could do about it. Our planned section of