Lament for the people of Ukraine

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/03/2022 (920 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It is the dazed and distant look in their eyes that haunts me, especially now as the massive exodus from Ukraine occupies my thoughts.

My first experience with people fleeing war was in 2013 in Lebanon, as a writer with Mennonite Central Committee Canada. I visited a settlement for Syrian refugees south of Beirut where MCC provided humanitarian support.

I saw Syrian families crowded into abandoned buildings, living in tarp tents, storing their belongings in buckets and boxes and cooking on camp stoves. I watched beautiful children laughing and playing, while not far away people lined up for the few toilets that served hundreds of people.

But the image that dominates my memory of that time is not captured in any photograph, notebook or story that I wrote. It lives in my heart, and it is awakened every time I hear or read about people uprooted by war or disaster.

A few days after arriving at the settlement, I was sitting with Syrians who had been there for weeks, talking about the many challenges they faced as newcomers to Lebanon.

Unexpectedly, a small group of men, women and children came toward us. They had just made the perilous journey from Syria to the safety of the settlement.

I had already heard about the horrendous experiences of people fleeing the bombing and brutality; rushing to grab whatever essentials they needed, traveling by night for safety, seeking out transportation, finding shelter in ditches or under bridges.

But on this day, it was the look in the eyes of the newly arrived Syrians that seized my heart. As the adage goes – the eyes are the window to the soul. Through that portal, I saw fear and shock, devastating loss, and the trauma of flight from their homeland.

In that moment, it was as if their minds hadn’t yet adjusted to the reassurance of a safe place. They were suspended in an other-world of fatigue, disbelief and mourning.

Now, as I watch Russian bombs and tanks roll through Ukraine, I grieve again for people who are on the run.

I have been to Ukraine twice, both times to visit MCC projects. On my first visit, in the fall of 2013, I spoke to people who had HIV/AIDS, or were struggling with addictions and poverty.

On my second trip, in 2016, I met many people who were, even then, fleeing from Russian incursion. Russia had already annexed Crimea, and the conflict had spread eastward to the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, bordering Russia.

I recall some of the names of the people I met in Ukraine, but not all. I do remember their faces. These are some of the people who welcomed me to their homes, told me their stories and proudly shared the culture and history of their country:

Ira, who I traveled with on both visits. She was only a child when Ukraine gained independence, but she grew up with her parents’ memories of life under Russian rule, and a lingering anxiety that the Russians would some day try to reclaim her country.

Sixty-seven-year-old Alla, who fled from her home in Donetsk in 2014 because of the fighting in her area. We spoke as she was sitting on a bed in a Soviet era dormitory in Zaporizhzia. She had been there for two years, and told me the war had taken precious years from her life. She wanted so badly to go home.

Lena, who talked about the day the air-raid sirens sounded in Lugansk and the warning to take food, water and documents into the basement of her home. She and her two sons fled to Nikopol, while her husband stayed behind to care for elderly parents in a building with no running water. She told me she tried not to think about the shells destroying her home.

I remember a pastor wearing a Ukrainian military uniform. It was my first encounter with the complexity and dissonance of being a person of faith in a time of war. He was ministering to Ukrainian soldiers battling the Russian forces in eastern Ukraine.

His own son was one of those soldiers. We talked about the challenges of preaching peace and reconciliation as a Christian, while watching Russians and Russian sympathizers claim your home territory.

Natalia, who described her life as an addict and prisoner in a Ukrainian prison. When she was released, she began a new drug-free life, reunited with her son and helped found an organization to support people living with HIV/AIDS. I met Natalia in 2013. When I returned to Ukraine in 2016 and saw her again, it was like greeting an old friend.

I remember the man who helped release an MCC shipment of canned meat from Canada and the United States that was caught up in red tape. I am not sure how he did it, but the much-needed food arrived and was quickly distributed to people displaced by war.

And I recall the prescient words of Vadym in 2016. He worked at a humanitarian organization in Zaporizhzhia, about 200 kilometres from the conflict zone. He told me the armed groups kept firing back and forth, and families kept fleeing the region. It is a war, he said, and the rest of the world seems to have forgotten what is happening in my country.

Today, as I obsessively scan news reports about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I am remembering the pain and trauma I saw in the eyes of Syrian refugees in Lebanon several years ago.

I pray my friends in Ukraine, and all Ukrainians who are under attack and on the run, will find refuge. I know their eyes will tell their stories of despair and loss, long after their feet have carried them to safety.

Julie Bell is a Winnipeg-based writer, former senior writer/editor at Mennonite Central Committee Canada and former CBC journalist.