The Pulse of Terror
Eight years ago Yana and her family built their own house outside of Mariupol, and when the first explosions of the war began they didn’t pay much attention or “think about it in a serious way.” She commuted every day to work at a plant in the city, routinely passing military checkpoints that had been set up since the Russian invasions of 2014, so a military presence didn’t seem alarming.
Then one day the plant manager assembled the workers and told them the plant would close indefinitely, and she knew it was serious. But they still didn’t want to leave the house they had built together, so they tried to stay. Soon the electricity went out and it got very cold, so they wrapped foam insulation all around the children’s bunk beds for warmth.
Meanwhile the bombings started, and every time she heard a plane overhead, Yana learned there would be four explosions. So she counted the blasts…1, 2, 3, 4, as the veins in her neck pulsed with terror. If the fourth bomb fell and they were still alive, she knew they were safe until they heard the next plane.
They were only allowed outside during the day, and at their own risk. After the bombs detonated dead bodies would remain in the streets. Burned corpses still sat upright in the seats of exploded cars.
They knew they had no choice but to leave. Because they were already outside of town their immediate departure was less harrowing than those trapped inside the city, but nevertheless the Ukrainian soldiers they encountered warned them not to venture off the road for anything, that there were mines and risks of Russian ambushes, and that if there were bodies blocking the road, they had to drive over them.
Slowly a caravan of 36 cars assembled as different vehicles merged together from separate arteries onto a single road. They had run out of food and water and were low on gas when they passed through a small village with only two streets. The villagers fed them and let them sleep in their homes, and a farmer filled up their cars with gas.
Once they made it to a relatively safe region, Yana’s husband returned to take care of his parents, to make sure they and their elderly neighbors were fed and taken care of. Yana and her children made their way to us, where they stayed close to a week as she made a plan for herself and her children to go to the U.S., where her husband has a cousin.
Yana didn’t want to go, but her children did. She can’t imagine life without her husband and didn’t want to move so far away even though the border she already crossed might as well be an ocean now. There is no cell service or internet anywhere in the vicinity of Mariupol, but every 5-6 days her husband drives far enough away that he can pick up a signal and call her to let her know he’s alive.
They’ve since left for Mexico where they hope to cross into the U.S., but the voyage, the journey they’ve been on since the day of those first explosions which just seemed like background noise, remains fraught with the ambiguity of a destiny where she may never see the father of her children or the home they built together ever again.
As for her own mother who has no working phone or other method of contact, Yana last saw her alive in the background of a random internet video on April 4.
