How Little We know About You, Ukraine

 

We know more about Ukraine now than we did a few months ago, what with daily broadcasts and news reports about the Russian invasion and unjustified war.  We empathize and cringe as we hear of the death and suffering of both soldiers and civilians.

I was in Ukraine only once, probably fifteen years ago.  A vivid memory is from Lviv, the biggest city in Western Ukraine, which has recently been the target of Russian rocket attacks.  Then, as I took a walk on a wide promenade, I enjoyed hearing groups of Ukrainians belting out folk songs - a peaceful scene in that post Soviet era.  I have been trying to imagine what life is like now for those people, and especially for the population in Eastern Ukraine, the Donbas region.

Andrey Kukow, the most famous and supposedly the best living Ukrainian writer, helps my imagination.  His book, Grey Bees, is set in pre-invasion Ukraine, the time after 2014 when Russia began supporting pro-Russian “separatists”, and a prolonged stalemate developed along a 450-kilometer front with Ukraine’s military.  Kukow takes us to a tiny village in the "grey zone" between the opposing factions, as we follow the life of Sergey Sergeyich, one of only two residents who remain, in the middle of distant bombardment that sometimes comes too close to home, snipers, and only the very rudimentary essentials of life.  No electricity for the last three years, and thus no communication, no shops and shortages of all kinds.  His only neighbor is Pashka, who is his nemesis since school days, but with whom he now has to develop friendship.  Sergey’s only pleasure is his bees, an apiary of six hives. 

 One reviewer wrote, “Sergey is at once a war-weary adventurer and a fairy-tale innocent.  His naïve gaze allows Kukov to get to the heart of a country bewildered by crisis and war, but where kindness can still be found.”    

He takes his bees to Crimea for the summer to get away from the noise of war so they can produce honey in a peaceful setting.  People he meets along the way, his interaction with Russian authorities, a Tartar family, a woman who befriends and helps him, and ex-soldier suffering from PTSD who attacks him and others, all help us imagine a life in the midst of a war that he didn’t ask for but survives. 

I like this quote at the burial of Akhtam, a Crimean beekeeper who he had met years ago at a convention. “… all sense of lightness arose in his head, as if it were empty, not just thoughts, but everything that weighs on one’s life, of memories and experiences that pile up over the years and bring a pain that threatens to squeeze tears from one’s eyes”. 

This book helps us know just a bit more about Ukraine and Crimea.  It is a story with many layers of truth about survival, compassion, simple living, history and everything grey.  Indeed, there are many shades of grey in life, both here and there.  I recommend this book.