Member-only story
The Displaced
Being Forced from Our Homes by a Hostile Enemy (Russia)
The Muscovites have driven us from our homes. Some of us are Ukrainian, others are not. Ukraine is our home because our families have been here for their entire existence as early as Kyivan Rus: someone migrated from Greece, the Republic of Georgia or some other former Soviet State to make a new life in the past few generations: work brought us here: life’s journey for some reason led us to this fertile and ancient land. The reasons matter individually to us, and they are varied. Our truth is that now all of us have been displaced. We cross the border, and they call us refugees. We stay within the borders of Ukraine; they call us internally displaced. We don’t care what they call us, we just want to go home.
Home no longer physically exists for some of us, it’s just a pile of rubble, unlivable. Yet, many of us would rather set up a tent on our little pile of rubble and begin to rebuild what was once ours because that ground which may be soaked with blood, contaminated by spilled fuel from destroyed tanks, empty casings from machine guns or the debris from missiles, artillery shells or drones or worse, the decomposed corpses of dead Russians is still the place we call home. Many of our neighbors, friends and relatives are dead and we cannot mourn them in the places where we all used to live and to love, laugh, argue, get drunk and just do…
