The tires rustled softly on the pavement, the engine purred softly.. High class car, nice to drive. Sonya looked out the window, noting the smallest details of the landscape, those that were new to her and those that were similar to those familiar from childhood - the neighborhood of Mariupol, the road to the dacha, to the village, where in the summer they rented a hut from a familiar villager.
For more than a month she lived in hospitable Bulgaria, where she got after passing through Romania, which lies between Bulgaria and Ukraine, now she was returning to Romania. There was only one reason, she wanted to be closer to home.. With her mind, Sonya understood that this was complete nonsense, there was no difference between Bulgaria and Romania, she was not at home anyway, she was a refugee, in a foreign land, living out of mercy, but still she wanted to be closer to home. Suddenly the war will end tomorrow, they will announce it on TV, on the Internet, they will shout in chat rooms, and it will rush to Ukraine, to Mariupol. Closer from Romania, only one border, so it will be faster. Half a day faster, it means so much now.
I want to go home, sounded like a leitmotif in my head from the very moment she crossed the border. Where is home? Instead of a five-story building in Mariupol, where she was born and raised, there is a black smoky frame. Box at home, but inside everything burned out. The bomb hit a neighboring residential building, a pile of ruins remained from it, the entire facade flew out in Sonya's house, the second floor caught fire, where a fragment of the bomb hit, after about ten minutes everything flared up.
There was no one in the house, all the tenants had been sitting in the basement for two weeks already, leaving only to run to the toilet in their apartment or collect snow on the street in order to get water, or to take something. And then the front wall flew out along with the door, people began to run out in a panic, those who did not have time were covered with the remains of the wall.
Sonya managed to escape. Grandma no. After the end of the alarm, the tenants dug up who they could, the grandmother was dead. The neighbors helped Sonya wrap her in a blanket and bury her in the street, under the poplars.. Sonya counted the poplar from the corner of the house, so as not to confuse it later and rebury it, because the neighbors were still buried on this lawn. And little Vanechka.
The car turned smoothly to the right, following the road around the bend of the river.. A flock of huge gulls with large beaks flew low over the water, they were cormorants, Sonya guessed..
The decision to move closer to Ukraine came suddenly, suddenly, when Sonya was walking through the wonderful little town of Kavarna. It was a sunny day, Sonya was walking along the main street, pedestrian, paved with patterned tiles, there were benches on the sides, and Bulgarian grandparents were sitting on them, smiling, contented. They enjoyed doing nothing, socializing and the beautiful hot sun.. Spring. The trees blossomed, filling the passages between the houses with fresh fragrance, the children rode scooters, squealing merrily and calling to each other..
Sonya felt suddenly, sharply, that it was not her, she was left there, in the Mariupol basement, dirty and stinking, because when the bombing was going on it was impossible to bear the dead, and the bombing was sometimes continuous, and those who died from injuries who did not receive medical care during. And two more buckets in the back street, where they went out of need when it was impossible to get out. And the water. either out of the snow, or running with a can through two streets to the column, but this is such a risk. deadly risk, but you need to drink.
But even this was her homeland, and now she is cut off from her. Can't go back, there are enemies. Enemies who want to kill her. They are the masters there now, not her.. Not her people. Someone else's evil will tore her away from home, from her homeland and threw her abroad, without asking, mocking, angrily. Sonya felt that not only was she cut off from her native land, but the umbilical cord that connected her with her homeland was severed..
Previously, she often flew on business trips to other countries and always flew with a sense of her need, pride in her country.. She was met at the airport as an important person, they asked what day of the conference her report was, they took her to the hotel. And the Motherland was always behind her shoulder, behind her back, holding her by the elbow, waiting for her. She could always go back there. The motherland gave her a feeling of strength, confidence, security.. I'm from Ukraine! Now, too, volunteers met, took to the place of residence, provided with toothpaste, shampoo, women's pads, apples. Sonya sincerely thanked, but the oppressive, bitter feeling of humiliation from the fact that she was a refugee, not a participant in the symposium, but a person deprived of her homeland, a person who could not return home, did not leave her. This strange feeling, which she experienced for the first time, pressed on her shoulders, wiped the smile from her face even when she tried to smile.. Someone out there, who came from nowhere, manages her land, walks like a master, kills anyone who doesn’t like it with impunity. this thought drove her to despair. I wanted to howl, to tear to shreds everything that came to hand, my cheekbones cramped from impotence.
Her usual umbilical cord was torn, not even cut with scissors, as midwives do, but roughly torn by the wrong hands, and the rest of it, bleeding, dragged along the street after Sonya, leaving bright ruby \u200b\u200b\u200b\u200bdrops on the paving slabs..
They passed some small village built up with tall narrow houses.
It looks like a suburb of Istanbul, Sonya thought.. Well, yes, because Bulgaria was under the rule of Turkey for 500 years, apparently then this architecture arose. The Bulgarians should understand us, although on the contrary, they consider the Russians liberators from the Turkish yoke, but those Russians and these modern ones are just two different peoples, she thought..
Sonya wanted for a small need and asked the driver to stop by the gas station, supposedly she wants to drink coffee. He replied that okay, there is coffee and a toilet at the gas station, so he directly said.
Pregnant women often want to do small things, it’s harmful to hold on, Sonya knew this, she went to courses for expectant mothers at the very beginning. I would like the war to end before the baby is born, so that her husband would meet her from the hospital. Is he alive? Last contacted by phone a month ago. He fights in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, volunteered, on that first day when they woke up at night from the sounds of bombing, at five in the morning, according to the classics of the genre, just like Nazi Germany once attacked the USSR. Treacherously, at five in the morning, when the whole country is sleeping, after having previously intoxicated with false melodious speeches about "
May God keep him alive. God forbid, I pray You, keep alive, save the father of my unborn child, let him take him in his arms, realize himself as a father. I beg you.
no parents. They lived with Jerry the Airedale Terrier on the other side of town.. The bomb hit right in the middle of the house. He left a deep crater. And all. There were no parents. There was nothing. just dust. There was nothing to bury. Grandmother howled, swaying with her whole body, pulling herself by her sparse gray hair. Sonya stood petrified, without tears. Looked down into the funnel. And there is dust. No corpses, no remnants of at least something that would remind that people lived here.. Just nothing. Then they went to their home.
And she was lucky with her grandmother, the neighbors got her whole from under the rubble, Sonya was able to put her hand on her forehead, say goodbye, bury her in a blanket in front of the house on the lawn. Where little Vanechka.
The car entered the gas station. Sonya went to the toilet, drank coffee from a cardboard cup. There was a haberdashery display case next to the coffee machine.. Sonya chose a hair clip, in the car her long hair fluttered from the wind, climbed into her eyes. She asked if it was possible to pay with a Ukrainian bank card, she ran out of cash.
- You can, - the elderly salesman answered with a strong accent, - we accept Ukrainian. You are from eastern Ukraine? There you are heavily bombed, it seems. I feel so sorry for you, simple people, so sorry.
- Yes. Thanks.
- Who is bombing Ukrainian army or Russian? I heard that things are not so clear. Ukrainian nationalists are bombing Azovstal because ordinary people have taken refuge there, yes? After all, the Russian army does not fight with the people, they only shoot at military facilities.
He attached a light, walnut-colored plastic hairpin to Sonya's black hair..
“Beautiful,” he said, “yellow on black.
Sonya silently took the hairpin from him, put it on the counter and went into the car..
Again moved on the highway to the east.
He watches Russian television, she thought.. So even in our country, 20 percent of the population still does not understand anything, they cannot refuse the narrative absorbed from the school bench about Great Russia, which has never attacked anyone, about the best Russian people in the world, who brings peace and happiness to everyone on the planet.
How to debunk this myth? Even if it was hard for her, smart and educated, at first to part with such a familiar and such a cozy myth. Separate it from yourself, from your thinking. Peel yourself out like peas out of a pod. It's nice to feel like a little brother, knowing that you will always be protected by an older brother.. To return to reality, you just need to turn on the logic. What can be a civil war in the Donbass? This is that, ordinary miners bought beeches and hailstones in Voentorg, in one night, according to the attached instructions, they learned how to control and shoot at the Armed Forces of Ukraine? To shoot from the hail you have to study at the military academy. Where does it come from to the miners? One such shot costs 500 thousand dollars.. The war has been going on for 8 years. How much money is this? From where, from under the mattress, from the capsule? You have to be a complete idiot not to understand this, the one who pays is fighting! Russia pays its mercenaries and marginalized Donbass to protect Donbass from the Armed Forces of Ukraine while it plunders it. Why, a professional Ukrainian army would have cleared it of militants in one day, if not for Russian troops and their professional mercenaries. Eight years, well, it's just funny. She read from one of the authors she respected that only a clinical idiot or a bastard can believe in a civil war in the Donbass. The way it is. But she knows, in general, not bad people who believe. So idiots.
What a blessing that she managed to escape from Mariupol. She doubted, she was afraid that they would kill on the way. Then I learned the story of a 37-year-old woman who had been treated for infertility for 15 years, really wanted a child, and finally became pregnant.. Few days left before birth. She lay in storage in the Mariupol maternity hospital. The maternity hospital was bombed by Russian aircraft, aiming. A fragment of a rocket entered her stomach and stuck in the fetus. The child died, she survived. In the basement, illuminating the operating field with flashlights from telephones, the doctors performed a caesarean section on her and took out the dead child. She held him in her arms for five hours, did not give. Fingered his little fingers with her fingers. Looking into the tiny face.
Sonya was afraid that this might happen to her.. What she doesn't convey. And I decided to run. For the sake of the child, she must risk. Anyway, she no longer had anyone left in Mariupol. Left in a volunteer car under a white flag, lying on the back of the floor, pelted with food packages. Both the volunteer and she were afraid. At every roadblock, both were sweating with fear. Russian troops did not give a green corridor to the residents of Mariupol. Then they gave, but only towards the Russian Federation. Nothing more was heard about the people and children taken there without parents..
And Sonya had a little Vanechka in her heart. It hurt, it hurt.
Stopped at the border between Bulgaria and Romania. Sonya showed her passport to the border guards. Went to a nearby cafe for lunch.. Moved on.
A week before the death of my grandmother, a neighbor rushed to the next jog for water, zigzagging along the street, through two adjacent ones, to the column. And then it crashed, the house swayed, again the bombing. And his son, little Vanechka, tore his hand from his mother's hand and rushed after his father, to call back. He fell 20 meters from the house, his legs were covered with a piece of concrete slab. It was impossible to approach him, the shells flew in heavy fire. Father ran to him, mother jumped out after him and Sonya ran out. Vanya was unconscious, but alive, breathing hoarsely, heavily.. Thick white eyelashes fluttered, it was visible through the gap under the eyelids how the eyeballs move. His parents, terrified, began to pull the piece of the slab off his feet..
Sonya screamed: - no! It is forbidden! Don't touch, wait for the doctor!
Father and mother sat side by side on the ground, holding his hands, mother huddled into a ball and moaned incessantly from grief.. Pieces flew around. Grandma hysterically shouted to Sonya, leaning out the door, Sonya ran to her. Closed the iron door of the basement.
Sonya could not forgive herself for this, why she ran into the basement, did not insist on her own, and she was right, right, it was impossible to pull off the stove without first applying a tourniquet. Why did she run to her grandmother, she had to stay, follow. She was scared, scared, she is to blame, how it hurts, it hurts. Burns.
The distraught father and mother, having strained, together managed to lift the stove. Blood immediately gushed out, previously held back by the stove, Vanechka twitched, stretched out and calmed down.. When Sonya saw him, wide-open blue eyes looked stunned up to the clouds, this bewildered look entered her memory forever..
That's where she will return, to that lawn on the street, where six-year-old Vanechka lies under the poplars and her grandmother is nearby.. There is her homeland.
In Varna, they did an ultrasound for her. She has a boy.
- We are approaching Constanta, there is a reception point for refugees from Ukraine, - the driver said, - to bring you to Constanta?
- If there is a city even closer to Ukraine, it’s better to go there, - Sonya answered, - I need it, so that I can return quickly.
Her baby is due in September.
He will be born in September.
He will be born.
Ukrainian.
May 30, 2022.