“Mih
vernym. Mih vernym,” my parents would say. We will return. We will return.
When the communist soldiers leave, when Ukraine is free, they would say, we
will return. Growing up in an expatriate community in New York City, after my
parents had been uprooted by the 2nd World War, that is the refrain
I will always remember, spoken in the musical voices of the Ukrainians who
surrounded me in my youth.
Yet this was something that was to never happen during their lifetimes.
Yet this was something that was to never happen during their lifetimes.
And now I am here, in their native land, which has been independent for almost seven years.
What I see is strangely familiar, somehow linked with memories of my childhood. As I walk from the airport steps and enter the city of Lviv, the capital of Western Ukraine, I see the familiar blue and yellow flags wave. The country’s national emblem, the tryzyb -- which looks somewhat like two R’s facing each other and intertwined with a fleur de lis -- is displayed just about everywhere. The Red flags are gone. Russian signs have been changed to Ukrainian ones. The airport van and old Ladas rattle over old cobblestone roads. The city’s fading splendor is reminiscent of its more prosperous days; much of the architecture here dates back to the days of the Austria-Hungary Empire, when this part of the country was under its rule. An old opera theatre with worn plush red velvet seats and gilt booths reminds me of the intrigues of 18th century novels.
Though I have never been here, I feel like I live here. Indeed, many of the persons I meet could have been any of the people living in the expatriate community I lived in as a child.
When I go visit some relatives, my mother’s youngest sister’s entire family gathers to greet me. Though I have never met them, I feel as though I’ve always known them. Their ways are so familiar. As their old ’72 Lada rumbles though the countryside, I think of my mother, of her going to boarding school in this very town, of being driven home for the winter break in a sleigh pulled by horses rushing though the silent snow-covered roads, with sleigh bells jingling.
Clearly,
the times and my family’s circumstances have changed. Warm, hospitable, my
newly found relatives offer us a meal. The food is the labor-intensive,
familiar food of my childhood, a savory broth, handmade pirohy, and as a
special treat, a torte, filled with layers of jam and almond paste. The
cucumbers and fresh tomatoes, grown in the country’s rich black soil, are
delicious, unlike any I’ve even tasted. Oddly, though, unlike the traditional
veal dishes and goulashes I remember being served during my childhood, they
have no meat. Like the majority of the
country’s population, they find themselves in the crunch of the country’s
current economic crisis. A family of teachers, they each earn about 140 hrivny
a month, the equivalent of 70 US
Dollars, say they are just getting by from day to day, say they worry about the
futures of their children. I want to take their teenage daughter, Maya, home
with me, imagine sending her to an American college.
The
next day, I go with them to visit my mother’s childhood home. But the house my
mother lived in has been razed.. The flowers she talked about, the orchard,
gone. Still standing is the church where her father was a priest. Recently
rebuilt and reopened, it now has a pastor.
An elderly woman who lives nearby and who used to work at the house
walks up. “Irina’s daughter,” she exclaims. “I remember Ira (a village version
of Irina),” she says. She talks to me about my mother as a lively, derring-do
child who used to offer to take her on rides on her bike. She calls the village
priest.
I
realize I am on a quest. What happened to my family? I need to know. In
Ukraine, what was merely whispered about or not spoken about at all during the
days of communism is now being said aloud. Nothing is certain, I find. My
grandfather, was murdered, his remains never found. The priest talks of what he
has heard, stories of torture that are indeed unspeakable, and my newly found
family and I are silent. About the fate of an uncle, a judge, nothing is known.
He just disappeared. And then there is
the story of the aunt who was captured while crossing the border. To this day,
she has said nothing about what she experienced.
The
next day, I go to a cemetery that is also a museum. It is a beautiful place; sculptures abound, and
people linger, bring flowers. Some monuments are centuries-old. and elaborate.
Others are newly built, remembering victims of the Soviets. Particularly
striking is a figure of a young man, a composer, with a draped piano in the
background. I am told he was hanged.
My family
history here dates back to the 17th Century. The family, I find, has
two crests. I see my great-grandfather’s gravesite. I also see the gravesite of
my grandmother who was exiled to Siberia and died soon after. Among the more
recently buried is another uncle who taught at the university. “The truth will
always live on,” it says on his grave. Rumors abound about the circumstances of
his death. Some say he was poisoned. And I see a mohyla, a hilllike mound
that contains the remains of
those who died during the communist occupation of Western Ukraine in
1944. My aunt guesses that my
grandfather’s bones may be buried there, together with those of others found by
a river..
America
is a lucky country, it occurs to me. Its people fortunate and optimistic. For
the last 200 years they have been spared the horrors of a war fought on their
land.
The
next day, I go to the bazaar, but like in Joyce’s Araby, I find many trinkets, but
little to buy. At a refreshment stand with outside tables and chairs, I see an
advertisement for cigarettes: ”Pall Mall” in American letters is inter-spaced
with the nation’s symbol, the tryzyb.
Chess players, all men, gather at tables at Lviv’s central square, competing in
playoffs. A young boy seems to be winning. I think of my father, a celebrated
chess champion, who used to play at the tables of Tompkins Square Park.
As
I move on to Kiev, the nation’s capital, a hotel clerk tells me my accent is from
Lviv, not recognizing me as an American. As I walk around the city, I see an
old man sitting on a bench under the trees, strumming a bandura, the national instrument, and singing with a beautiful,
haunting voice. It’s a song I remember
my mother singing, about the pain of a mother sending her son off to war.
In an
ancient church that was turned into a museum and is now being rebuilt, another
aunt gives me a tall thin candle to light. “In memory of your parents,” she
says. Amid the smell of incense, the familiar icons, I am suddenly a child
again, standing at a sung church service in my rabbit coat and a warm fur
muff. As we go out, we see one shining
gold-leaf dome being placed on top of the church. In that very plaza, I have my
photo taken under a familiar statue of Queen Olha, whom I learned about in my
childhood history classes. My namesake, she brought Christianity into Ukraine.
II near
the end of my tour, on the eve of the country’s Independence Day
celebration, I hear the National Anthem
sung, Che Ne Vmerla Ukraina, (Ukraine
has not died yet, neither has its fame and glory), something my parents would
never have imagined hearing in this land. The Head of Parliament gives a speech
in Ukrainian. Then comes an amazing display of choral singing, music, and the
balletic folkdances I performed as a child.
I fall in love with the voice of a baritone soloist who sings with a
band, a voice the reminds me of the
formal dance parties my parents attended, of a tenor singing, of my father
bowing and asking me for a dance as a child. I would hold onto his arms tight
and we would spin in swirling circles.
And so, at
the end of my visit, I find myself standing with one foot in each country. If not for the war, it occurs to me, I would
have lived here, the family line not disrupted.
Cut off from my past, like many Americans, I find my
roots in one land and myself in another.
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