On the last day of February, I moved to a different apartment in Kyiv, right around the corner from the place I’d lived for over a year. The new place is smaller than the other, and the monthly rent is $300 cheaper. It was built when Ukraine was still ruled by the Russian tsar, and it has soaring ceilings, a rickety Soviet-era gas stove, and a hot water tank so small that when I shower, I don’t have time to shave my legs and wash my hair in the same go.
The apartment also has a perilous-looking concrete balcony jutting out from its flank, from which you can see some of the rambled brick rooftops of old Kyiv, the golden tip of the monument on the historic Independence Square and, a little further to the east, the gleaming white lines of the presidential office; and somewhere above the balcony, a little brown bird lives in the eaves. Every morning, he begins his day with a burst of song, a distinctive light melody that skips through my window and reaches me in bed.
Wheet-wheewheet-WHEE-wheet. Wheet-wheewheet-WHEE-wheet.
It’s beautiful on most days, but especially incongruous after explosions, after the walls shake and the car alarms howl, triggered by the shock waves of the missiles that, three days recently, shrieked toward Kyiv. Two of those massive attacks struck at the crack of dawn. I awoke around 5 a.m. to the same surreal scene: a first blast shaking the sky; a few more; a silence; and then a song.
Wheet-wheewheet-WHEE-wheet. Wheet-wheewheet-WHEE-wheet.
Spring has come now, in Kyiv. Last Saturday, the sun was bright and the temperature hit 22 C. The previous afternoon, the new season’s arrival was heralded by a storm, a cacophony of thunder and battering hail; as soon as the thunder calmed and the hail stopped assailing my windows, I waited, and waited, and then came a familiar song.
Wheet-wheewheet-WHEE-wheet. Wheet-wheewheet-WHEE-wheet.
Little brown birds don’t live very long. It occurs to me that this fellow probably knows no other life than one where the sky explodes. It occurs to me he may consider it quite normal. It also occurs to me that, for a little brown bird, there may not be a distinction between the sky exploding, and thunder. Still, I like to think he sings to bring comfort to those human neighbours huddled in their apartments, who can’t fly away when the world outside carries fear.
Everyone thought it might continue, that we might spend more of the next mornings huddled in the subways or our hallways or our bathtubs. But since those three strikes in Kyiv, the skies have been quiet. It won’t last, of course, and you wonder when you can let out the part of your breath that you are always withholding.
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I am really sorry, again, I’ve been so long delayed. I’m trying my best, but there’s been a lot going on in my head lately that needed to be sorted before I could pull any words out of it. I’ll keep trying. I wonder, often, if I’ll ever be truly okay, or if the ghosts that haunt me are too settled into the places they keep. Maybe I should just make friends with them.
I do have something fun for the next one. It will even have a recipe!
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I was shocked to learn that I’m a finalist for another National Newspaper Award, this time for explanatory work for my January 2023 piece where we just asked people who had been involved in the criminal justice system what they think would help curb the crime rates in Winnipeg.
I had no idea the Free Press had even submitted me, having been away. But that piece is close to my heart. Given that I had very little to do with the finished product — the voices of the folks I interviewed were left almost entirely untouched — I think of it as their honour, and one for the importance of hearing their experiences with a minimal editorial filter. We need to listen to each other, to understand each other.
As for that piece: I still vividly remember the moment my editor and I came up with that idea. It was during one of those times where there was a lot of chatter about the crime rate in Winnipeg, with all sorts of experts opining on how to stop it. And I just thought: isn’t it weird that we never ask the people who’ve actually done it?
I think the biggest mistake we make, as a society, is throwing anyone and their ideas away. Yes, even when they’ve done harm. Maybe especially if they’ve done harm — if you don’t give people who have done harm an opportunity to give back of their skills and knowledge in a healthy way, then isn’t that just compounding the damage?
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Last week, my old friend Jeremy Regan — owner of the Hunter & Gunn barbershop — came to Kyiv to film a documentary; it was invigorating to spend time with someone who’s known me since before 2022. I’m lucky to have wonderful friends here, but it’s a different sort of bond when you don’t share vivid memories from your youth.
One day, I tagged along as they visited some of the de-occupied cities on the outskirts of the capital. Two years after the liberation of the Kyiv region, much has been rebuilt: in Irpin, the wrecked apartment blocks I visited in 2022 are newly restored; the bridge, blown by the Ukrainian army to stop the Russian advance, and the route of a famously desperate civilian flight to safety, was swiftly rebuilt; but the destroyed section stayed, left — a hand-written sign nearby notes — as a memorial to those killed. It’s safe now, though. Children scamper over the broken concrete, casting magnets on fishing lines into the water, dredging up old cans and bits of twisted metal.
And in Borodyanka, which I had visited with a colleague last year, Regan and his film crew’s translator escorted them through a cluster of destroyed apartment blocks, still left as they were the day they were destroyed. Many journalists come here and, lately, a sprinkling of aid workers, volunteers and even tourists; some enterprising Ukrainian tour operators offer paid excursions to these spots. The idea, understandably, makes some uncomfortable: war tourist is a harsh label.
Yet the reason some ruins have been left for two years is, in part, to invite people to bear witness to what was done; I understand this impulse too, and there’s value in it, especially in a time where truth is constantly under assault on social media. If you’ve never seen an eight-story apartment block smashed down to its gut by an aerial bomb, seeing it with your own eyes delivers a visceral impression about what war means that pictures alone don’t. There’s a terrible surreality about destruction; it’s the stillness, I realize. The destroyed parts of Ukraine are often eerily quiet, rubble become a frozen tableau of lives interrupted, and the stillness itself cutting a contrast to the evidence of what had been an incredible violence.
As we were getting ready to leave, an old woman with a frail, thin frame and a mouth hollowed by missing teeth approached us. In quick Surzhyk — a blend of Russian and Ukrainian that is spoken by many older people in Ukraine — she told us about things she’d seen during the occupation, and what had happened since, and how, at long last, the city government was getting ready to tear down the last of Borodyanka’s destroyed buildings and rebuild. After she finished telling the story, after accepting tender hugs, she asked us one parting question.
“She would like to know if you have some money to give her,” the translator explained. “She is a pensioner.”
We rifle through our wallets for a few bills. I realize that she has done this before, that she probably keeps an eye out for foreign visitors gawking at the rubble, and that she’s told this story many times. I admire her industrious approach. People with notebooks and cameras have taken enough from Ukraine; careers have been made in its ravaged places, but mostly not for the people who have to eke out a living in what remains. So it feels right, that she should claim the price of a story.