03 Sasha & Dima

We didn’t sleep much. I slept a bit more than Rita, but it’s not like it made much of a difference. Explosions were heard every 2-3 hours. In what I can only guess was early morning, I woke up from a nightmare and my head was racing.

For some reason I thought about the backyard of our old apartment in Dnipro. A cobblestone space, hidden from Gogalya Street, with a small garden that I was never sure if we shared, or if it belonged to the neighbors. I never stepped on the grass though, except to greet and pet Dima, Sasha’s cat.

Sasha was our neighbor the whole time we lived there. He lives in an apartment on the ground floor, with a window next to the building’s entrance door. Like in many buildings in Ukraine, the entrance is on the backyard side, not on the street. Sometimes Sasha sat next to his window to get some fresh air and we’d say hi. I am really sorry that I was never able to have a conversation with him, because of my poor Russian, but he assured Rita that it was ok, that his son or someone knew a foreigner, and that person couldn’t speak Russian either, but he liked this person anyway. Sasha invited us over before we moved to Kyiv, he gave us home-made wine and offered us cheese and bread. He is a really nice man in his late 50s, with what is to me a classic Ukrainian character. Stoic looking but kind, talkative but soft spoken, and an excellent host.

I also thought about Dima, a semi-outdoor cat who hangs out on the backyard, and who is Sasha’s adoration. She’s full of fluffy grey hair and her paws have the softest touch I’ve ever felt. She wears a safety collar with a blinking red light when she’s out. She would come greet us when we’d come out of the building, and will come literally running if Sasha calls her name from the window.

I realized suddenly that all of this might have changed, the peaceful backyard with garden and blue skies might not be a quiet place soon, or maybe it already wasn’t for all I knew. And us? We were hiding in a bathroom, hearing explosions outside, and not knowing what’s gonna happen in the next hour. In my head it felt as if the sky suddenly went black, I got overwhelmed by deep anguish, fear and sorrow. I felt like I was going to cry. All of this happened in just a few seconds.