Going Is Scary - Not Going, Shameful

(original link: http://lenta-ua.livejournal.com/607281.html)

I’m rushing to add two lines to my resume:

Ability to build snow barricades (as a helper)

Providing ranks with food in battle conditions.

There is a LOT of people on Maidan. Not a “march of the millions”, but a lot.

No matter the grind of dread - at 4PM, schools in the center of the city were evacuated; stores, cafes, restaurants are closed. A crackdown is predicted - terrible, inhuman, in the style of 22.01.13. (1) Office workers are going home in the middle of the day. There are rumors that the metro is going to be closed. My mom calls me and says: I heard on the radio that Maidan will be destroyed today, after 4PM. Don’t go.

In a forest strip under Boryspol, the bodies of two people were found, people who, wounded in the hospital, were taken straight from the doctor’s office and tortured to death. It’s been confirmed that the people that were killed this morning were killed by sniper bullets (Google the rifle and bullet types yourself, I don’t care to).

Kiev was speechless. Kiev was frightened. Kiev said, and what now? who will go there, knowing that people are being killed. So much for that.

...Kiev gave it some thought, smoked a cigarette and drank some coffee.

And then it shrugged: yes, going is scary, but not going is shameful.

And in the afternoon, it started in the social networks - are we going? We are going! And if they try to scatter us? We’ll go through yards. Around the corner. Carefully. We’ll just deliver the medicines and go back right away.

As a result, never had we gone to Maidan in a crowd as big as last evening. We phoned, picked each other up at the metro, planning to meet “at the unions”.

We delivered the bought medications. Kievans delivered so many medications to the Unions that at some point, there was no place to put them. And so many willing doctors came that those who were not surgeons (or similar specialists) were told to come back later. Another problem presented itself: no place for conducting “field” operations.

The injured are not sent to hospitals either out of fear - because the police takes people from the hospitals directly to a detention center (often without any medical assistance) - or because many operations can be done right on the spot. In corridors, yeah.

Our group has accumulated eight people. How many had gathered on Maidan as a whole, it’s hard to say, but the square was filled with people and it was hard to get through. And this is without those who stayed home, who were afraid that Berkut (2) would be sicced on them in the dark.

“Yeah, the Kievans have...they have gotten enraged,” I said thoughtfully, studying the people that showed up.

People really were wound up - not aggressive, but clearly ready for action. At first, they stood and waited for Klitchko-Tyagnibok-Yatsenok (back from an audience with the President) to get onto the stage and wondered what they would tell us.

Well... In general, a few minutes minutes later, we, turning our backs to the stage, made our way through the crowds toward the barricades. Marko, incensed, was talking about how they’re making the same mistake they made on Sunday, recapping the situation, and not suggesting anything besides the usual “all power to the people, we’ll show them!”

I commented with a spiteful “impotents!”. People in the crowd booed at me.

At some point, a column of “freedom fighters” formed. Large men in helmets, strengthened by protection walked in rows. The crowd parted, forming a live corridor and started clapping and chanting “Way to go!” Even though in half an hour it became familiar because there are simply hundreds and thousands of those fighters.

Our companions squirmed and hinted that they wanted to go to Grushevsky, because there’s a war near the barricade and they’re not in the loop. We got to the barricade on the side of European Street. That’s when they stopped us women. “Tourist” women were simply not let in, only men. Why? Well, read my post (that many didn’t like). (3)

Since I’m not prone to arguing with large men in camouflage, with guns, bats, gas masks and helmets, and arguing that “I am just as useful on the front lines of hand-to-hand combat as you”, we calmly stepped aside and also started fishing out ladies and women, explaining why they shouldn’t argue with a person with a megaphone and try to get through so they can “just look”.

Then Anna split off from us, and Marko and I, waiting for the rest of our group, hung around and volunteered - we carried hot tea for the people on lookout duty at the barricades. We found the closest distribution point, wound our way forward and brightly said:

“It’s not for us, it’s for the people on the barricade, so we’ll go ahead of the line!”

And we started going back and forth with the cups, brightening the mood for tired warriors with light coquettishness and heavy flirting:

-Sweatheart, thank you for the tea! Do you want to bite my Snickers? (in his defense, he was really offering a Snickers bar, and not what you perverts thought).

-No can do! War will excuse everything - except for sweets after 6PM. (4)

Well, then our companions came back from Grushevskiy Prospect, amazed, and saying “holy shit”.

I urged that we get, as doctors suggest, hot, calorically dense food, and our group (reduced to three people) started looking for a fast food place that was still open.

I barely walked in when I laughed:

“Something gave Shtirlitz away as a Soviet spy: maybe the red stars on his epaulettes (5), maybe the parachute trailing behind. Somehow I know who these people are!”

All the rooms were filled with serious men in camo, helmets and ski pants, concentrating on stuffing their bodies with calories.

In the middle of our supper, Sovik, who was let onto Grushevskiy, called and excitedly said:

“Imagine, I’m walking, it’s hell there, everything’s burning, I’m baffled. And then suddenly, a shovel appears in my hands and I’m shoveling snow! Grenades are exploding all around, bloodied people are being carried, and I’m fucking building barricades in all this clusterfuck!“

A bit later, we met on the Maidan, and Marko complained that she didn’t want to deliver tea because all these men couldn’t just drink it silently - they wanted to socialize. She doesn’t want to socialize, she wants to dig snow (if you forgot, barricades are being built around Maidan using sand bags stuffed with snow, and then poured with water to make a mass of ice).

I tried to get a shovel from one of the men, yelling that I am a trained archaeologist, and that I learned to dig, that I’m a sheer excavator (that’s true by the way. the Pirogoshi church was restored with these two hands).

But those were chauvinists :) They said that my task was filling the bags with snow, and shoveling was a man’s work.

Then we ran out of bags, and we had to remember which ones of us are female and where our place was. In the kitchen, where else. Therefore, after some time, we, armed with cups and canisters with hot tea with lemon, using them as a pass, diffused through the KPP on the barricade on Grushevskiy. They even let us go ahead the whole crowd, yelling “let through the warriors with the load!” :)

You know, the fear really goes away for a bit when you are busy with some kind of work.

A group of young men, who were making Molotov cocktails nonstop near the first cordon, utilized us (man, I am really writing this and not believing that this is real). We gave them tea and then found the sandwich deliverer in the crowd him and told him to give them food.

Then Marko and I lost each other in the crowd for some time. I approached the men standing watch, or the medics standing ready to help the injured, and chattered businesslike while unscrewing the lid on the cannister:

“Come on, drink something hot, ok? What do you mean you won’t? And who will? There, already better. Look, you got a bit of lemon, see? Am I with any organization? None! I’m just Oksana. By the way, I’m temporarily unmarried. What am I doing? Looking for a husband, of course! All the best men in Ukraine are gathered here, are they not? Such a group, I’m just in heaven around you. Hey, hero, take that hand back from where you put it! I’m carrying out my duties! And you can’t do it, there’s a war around us, and you’ll be tired! Well, are you feeling alive, warmed up from the tea? Stay healthy, good luck to you!” (6)

At some point, I realized that at the second barricade, past which there was a huge fire, there was smoke and exploding grenades. When you’re doing something useful, at least giving food and drink to those who can’t step away, you stop giving stock to where you are.

You walk, and even clown around, like on an Odessan beach:

“Pirozhki...belyashii...hot corn!” (7)

And step aside just in time, when someone yells “move!” and medics carry an unconscious person on a blanket.

There is A LOT of people.

Kiev is enraged. Kiev listened to the politicians, talking from the stage, said whatever, and found its own work: here there are thousands of people that are maintaining the snow barricades (also cleaning the sidewalks), forming defense divisions, operating on office tables, trucking over firewood and supplies, carrying old tires nonstop (the tires from which the huge fire on Grushevskiy was made to make a smoke curtain to make it harder to aim and shoot the protestors). Tea is served, food is cooked, people stand guard. It’s an anthill.

I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. And I can’t say if our actions have some overarching meaning.

I’m aware, yes, that the opposition can not suggest something concrete, based on what Maidan has been openly demanding for a while. (8)

No clue what will come later. I just know that the mind can acclimate to anything. But I don’t want us to acclimate to a democratically (hm) elected government being able to approach us with the attitude of “and what can you do to us”?

What - is this acceptable? - beating, kidnapping, torturing, killing people? We’ll come to terms? Because this is always not happening to us, or our loved ones - but those others. Are they guilty, did they bring it on themselves? For instance, no one killed me, because I sit on my couch and do nothing. And you do nothing.

The president did not sit at a round table with the opposition, claiming that “what happened isn’t reason enough for the President himself to participate in this meeting.” (sic)

The explosions on Grushevski are heard in many faraway regions of the city. The presidential administration is a block and a half away.

Are we scared? Yes. Very.

After this morning, we’re especially scared. Even though it seemed that it could not possibly get scarier than that distant morning two months ago on November 30. (9)

So much has happened in that time that is only startling in how everyday it is.

And almost every day something happens that the first thought is - that’s it, this can happen without me, for crying out loud, what about the instinct of self-preservation?

And then you understand that there’s something bigger than that.

That going is scary, but not going is shameful.

So you go.

Notes:

1. A Russian protest, I think.

2. Berkut: riot police.

3. The post: http://zabavakrasava.livejournal.com/685672.html The gist of it is that women (more likely to not be good at fighting) should keep to support positions (getting supplies, cooking, etc) and not get underfoot.

4. A common belief in Russian/Ukrainian culture - that eating (especially eating sweets) past a certain time is more likely to lead to weight gain. Irrelevant, but interesting.

5. The shoulder pads that officers and other ranked members of the army wear.

6. Flirting to distract him and make him feel better, basically.

7. Odessa is in the south, next to the Black Sea, and many people go there on vacations. Pirozhki and belyahii are both pastries with filling (sweet or savory). Basically, filling food.

8. This line might be incorrectly translated.