I’m an alien (I’m a legal alien), I’m a Norwegian in Kyiv
War is machine versus people, metal versus skin. It is very practical, concrete and matter-of-factly. Coordinates in, death out, no problem. Job done big missile or little bullet, onto next objective to be eliminated. It is inhuman in a machinelike manner, it rolls right over humanity both in the attacker and the attacked, and feels nothing. It doesn’t say hi, it doesn’t say bye, it doesn’t ask you how you feel. It is precisely this; life-less, not dead, it never was alive in the first place. It is the ultimate failure of human relations. It calculates coldly, it has no soul. And when faced with the icy calculating coldness of industrial warfare comes the sense of someone else living your life, that you are passenger on a runaway train. If it doesn’t kill you straight up it will get you in the end, this is the second death. We all run the risk of becoming passengers on this train.
Things almost always look different close to the subject than through the telescopic distance of the news. I felt I had to come back to Kyiv and meet my friends and see for myself. I lived in Kyiv from September 2021 to January 2022 and visited places like Mariupol, Kherson and Kharkiv. Now I felt it was time to go back.
Leaving Poland on the train bound for Kyiv was like entering a fog of the unknown. What would it look and feel like when inside, would I meet a total mess there? Would it be darkness, chaos, despair? No internet on the train that went through the night almost made it more surreal. Dark, unknown, maybe a cruise missile could sneak through the anti-missile defence system? Sitting ducks on a train where someone somewhere with a complete lack of empathy in a bad mood just might feel like pushing that button.
The journey to Kyiv is pretty taxing, not because it’s long but because it’s uncertain. Even for me, with no real risk and stakes, this was not a normal journey. I could only imagine how it might have been for people on packed trains leaving the war with a complete unknown future, not knowing whether their house and belongings would be there when or if they would return. It must have been a sense of being reduced to numbers, to cattle, to statistics, to a single bag and a passport.
The first thing that struck me when I came to Kyiv was how soft and friendly it felt. Also in Bucha, Irpin and Borodyanka, oddly enough. There are fewer people than before the war in these places now but there is also something like an unspeakable brotherhood that has appeared between people. “We were here, we saw it, we felt it, it didn’t devour us, we experienced that which can’t be talked about. Together.” Bonds like these are deep and it felt like a holy place that I as a foreigner could not enter.
The second was how normal it felt. Walking on the streets felt warm and cosy, except for the trenches, sandbags, checkpoints and remnants of burned-out tanks. It truly was normal, too normal. It almost felt wrong. The sirens came and went, people had grown tired of reacting by taking shelter and life felt more powerful than death. Next to the absolutely bombed out buildings in Borodyanka was a market. We all need tomatoes and cucumbers and life does not stop. It has a tendency of finding a way. Underneath this resilience are deep wounds and tiredness from the constant alertness that will take time to heal. But for now, it’s important to hold on the normal things not to go mad. It is also tangible how short the time horizons for planning have become. Today is today and tomorrow we will see. Live for the moment, we don’t know who will be around tomorrow. This normal is not an escape but an act of defiance in my view.
And it struck me how easy it is to tear things apart, to destroy. Creativity is much harder than destruction. Breaking things doesn’t take much but making something beautiful is a totally different story. I felt how easy it is to give in to this downwards force of entropy. Faced with the heart-numbing coldness of the war this is the deeper battle in Ukrainian hearts, and maybe all across the world: is it still worth building something good? Or are we just fools making elaborate and wonderful sandcastles on the beach only to see the tide come in and take them away? I saw some seeds that can become flowers that break through the concrete of hopelessness in Ukraine at least, for what it’s worth.
I felt like a mix of a clown and a complete foreigner in Kyiv. I had no right of being there, this is not my war. Taking pictures of people like they are animals in a zoo, wow a real Ukrainian from Bucha, can I touch you, a real specimen wow wow. Alongside all the other fame-seeking politicians and actors on a perverse pilgrimage. Exoticism and sensationalism with an appropriate mix of sorrow and horror on our faces. Parasites and tourists should not be welcomed in to this holy place, myself included. But then I realised there is a need for forging connections with Europe, a need for normality beyond the madness. To receive human postcards from a possible future, to be equals. And that this is indeed my war. Our war. And that they were glad I came, stupid as it might have been from my side. “Yes, you are a tourist and it’s ok.” “Now you know more than before you came at least.”
Fortunately, evil is often self-destructive, stupid and blind and does not care about nor understand love and sacrifice. Corruption eats itself, at least this is my hope, it has a finite life-span. The practical machine-like side of the war will be over but the battle for humanity, freedom, new narratives and hope will still be on in our hearts. Entropy is strong but life is stronger.
The song “Englishman in New York” by Sting oddly enough came on the radio several time when I was in Kyiv driving around in these war-torn places. It reminded me that yes even though we might feel like strangers and aliens when faced with horrors like these, and that we are wondering whether we can say something meaningful at all, that we still can get involved and be present in the manner we are able to. The distance of only watching from afar like via the media is still worse I believe. We can’t change where we come from but we can change where we are heading.
The war is still ongoing, it is still very much real even though it is not as spectacular and news-worthy any more. Getting involved and applying yourself is invaluable. This is the core of democracy and this is freedom, currently facing artillery fire in Ukraine.
From Kyiv with love.
