Woe To the Ones Who Leave And Never Return
As we stroll through the streets of Naples, the city's black buildings create a darkness that blurs the line between day and night. The air is filled with the aroma of cooking oil and pizza fritta, and the orange reflections of Aperol Spritz on outdoor tables add a splash of color. Even in the off-season, the city bustles with a mix of tourists and locals, the sound of their voices and footsteps filling the air.
Two young women are walking in front of us, holding the hands of a girl and a boy. The women's hair is long and thick. Their colored skirts reach the ground. My mother called them "gypsies" in her childhood, without thinking about the racist undertones. Its influence on everyday culture and phraseology is so acute that only careful attention to language usage in adulthood can prevent one from sounding like an idiot. All these stupid phrases like "let's eat like white people" (meaning in a civilized manner), "you’re getting ready like a Jew going off to war" (meaning being extremely slow and unwilling) or "you’re turning it like a gypsy turning the sun" (meaning someone is being manipulative) became a part of the space and must be consciously discarded. The first one I almost blurted out to a Black friend, thinking about having dinner at the table with a fork and knife instead of a picnic on the embankment... And only the need to translate my thoughts from Ukrainian into English gave me this second delay and saved me from a major blunder!
At some point, the group in front of us splits up. The woman with the boy heads towards a restaurant terrace filled with cheerful visitors, only to be met with a rude reception from the waiter. "Oh, go away! Get out of here!" he exclaims, not bothering to give them offensive labels or nicknames. The message is clear: You are not welcome here. You don't belong. Mother and son, unfazed, continue on their way, blended now into the illuminated buildings. They might even try to enter another restaurant and demand the right to use the bathroom. Personally, I don't have the courage to do something like that. I usually have to buy an espresso at least, to avoid being rejected or humiliated, the unspoken message being that the toilets are only for paying customers.
The other woman, the one with the daughter, also walks ahead of us on the street. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened in their world. It's just a normal routine, another evening on the streets of Naples. I'm not surprised by the waiter's behavior; he's just doing his job, protecting the customers’ peace of mind. What surprises me is how the women with the long skirts react to him. They seem completely unruffled, as if this kind of thing happens all the time. For their kids, hearing "Get out of here, you don't belong here!" from those who live alongside them must seem normal.
According to my sister, a psychologist, when children are young, they perceive everything through the lens of their parents. "If you don't stress, they won't either," she says. I am struck by her own acquired composure, especially when I think back to the beginning of the Russian invasion. At that time, she tried everything to shield her three-year-old daughter from disturbing news. "Can you imagine? In the kindergarten, the children are playing in a bomb shelter!" she exclaimed, horrified, as she was packing her things to leave Kyiv. "The children play with Legos and are told to have a good time."
After nine months of war, my sister and her family are sitting in a candlelit apartment in Kyiv, not for the ambience but because of the chaotic power outages caused by Russian attacks on our infrastructure. My sister tells me that they are no longer stressed like they were at the beginning. They are used to it now. It's just routine. And their child is calm because the parents are calm. They are fine at home. My sister doesn't want to go to western Ukraine, to the safety of our parents' home. "It's better to sit under the bombs than in the same house with our mother!" she proclaims.
The phrase “Woe to The Ones Who Leave and Never Return” is written over the entrance to Krasnogruda, a legendary artists' haven in Poland where I was fortunate enough to spend four days this winter with amazing people from all over the world. Oskar Miłosz, the uncle of the famous Czesław Miłosz, greets returning visitors with this phrase. The trouble is over, you are safe. Leaving and never returning to oneself is to deny the myth of eternal return, the fundamental cycle of transformation of the human soul. In French, "chez soi" means "at home," or rather, "at oneself." In English, it translates to "at my place." Home is something you have to carry in your heart. Otherwise, you will be "out of place," forever doomed to homelessness, no matter what grand houses you live in.
In Ukrainian, the word "dim" means both "house" and "home." We say "I'm home" and "I'm in the house," and when children meet someone new, they ask "Where is your house?" This is because in Ukrainian, and indeed all Slavic languages, the concept of home includes not just the physical structure, but also the sense of belonging and being at ease that comes with it.
Home can either give us freedom or restrict us. "Where you were born, you are useful there," says the mother of a university friend, criticizing her decision to move from Kyiv to Bratislava and justifying her own reluctance to come and stay with her grandchildren, even for a few weeks. "Don't scare me by my home!" says my colleague at the embassy in Paris when our superiors hint at an early rotation to Kyiv. "You are so stupid!" my sister tells me every time I bring back carved doors from Nepalese wardrobes or non-liftable tables made from Indian mango trees to my rented apartment in Kyiv. "You don't have a home here, and you're dragging all this junk to it. What are you going to do with it?" she says.
We often say, "my home is my fortress," and "being a guest is good, but being at home is better." When a home is a place of strength, it doesn't necessarily have to be located in some remote, idyllic spot like an oceanfront property or a mountain retreat with a 360-degree view. A home is either real or not, and we often don't appreciate what we have until we risk losing it. I've been living in France for the past seven years, but before that, I lived in Ukraine as well as Indonesia, Nepal, India, Spain, and Germany. I used to pride myself on being a committed cosmopolitan, thinking that my home was wherever my things were. But over time, I've come to realize that a home is more than just a collection of possessions. It's a feeling of belonging and being at ease, no matter where you are.
February 24 changed everything. Hearing the phrase "Kyiv is being bombed!" at five in the morning during a phone call from a crying friend meant that my house, my home, could be taken away from me. Suddenly, all these years of living in a comfortable bubble, flying in for the weekends to drink wine on my balcony overlooking a quiet square, took on a new significance. My fortress, my protection against rootlessness, was at risk. The well-fed cats in the courtyard and the cheeky crows became my family. HOME IS A PLACE ONE CAN RETURN TO, and I realized that I was at risk of losing that.
"My home is your home!" I told my friends in Ukraine as my husband constructed additional beds in our Paris apartment. "Come stay with us!" But basically, everyone refused. One didn't want to leave her husband behind; another had a dog that was too big, and others had elderly parents to care for. Only Olya, the drummer from my band, agreed. She came with her 13-year-old daughter, and our family grew by two people from March to October. I remember how we frantically cooked borsch, officially recognized by UNESCO as an intangible part of Ukrainian heritage, and our comfort food from a carefree childhood, in those first weeks. It was our element of home.
Interestingly, it is cuisine (and swear words) that are most easily preserved and passed on to new generations. My ex-husband, an American with a Ukrainian great-grandmother, told me that it was forbidden to swear in English at home, but was permitted as much as one wanted in Ukrainian. Migrants’ children born in a new country will equally love their dear grandmother's cuisine whether it's Korean kimchi, Ukrainian borsch, Italian pasta, or Syrian hummus. Children of migrants will be friends with each other, regardless of skin color and continent of origin. I have living proof of this with my Ukrainian-American daughters. Their best friends since childhood have been girls from Japan, Vietnam, China, and Cameroon. They search for commonality based on the principle of otherness. My daughter's African beignets are very tasty (unlike her foie gras) because she learned how to make them from her best friend's mother. My other daughter started learning Korean on her own because K-pop stars sing in it and her friend swears at her mother in Korean...
The principle of finding each other in a foreign country is similar for adults as well. My best friends in Paris are Thai architect Natasha and African-American producer Erica. We are all married to French people who are cosmopolitan and open-minded, otherwise we wouldn't have chosen them as spouses. But if you ask my girlfriends what they like and dislike about Paris, their answers will be very similar. They love the food, the art de vivre, the cultural scene, and everything visual, but they don't like the superiority, clannishness, and closedness to foreigners disguised as politeness of the old world. Paris is not a melting pot like New York. Here, the foreigners are always clearly separated from the natives. "I heard my husband's friends whispering behind my back that they couldn't understand why he married me, couldn't he find someone of his own?" one of my friends told me. "And these people, who lived in New York before that, considered themselves cosmopolitans, open to other cultures. And they themselves preferred to marry the ex-wife of their best friend, because it is clear what to expect..."
"Have you noticed that we expats are never called on television to discuss the domestic matters of the country in which we live, but only to explain something about the one we come from?" my Polish friend laughed.
Of course I had noticed. I'd also noticed the way the French editor condescendingly spoke about my text, not knowing that it had been read and corrected by two native speakers: "The text is good, although, of course, there are many mistakes. It's clear that it's not your native language..." It's hard for them to admit that a foreigner can speak their language well.
"Now, when we're invited to a party, I ask my husband if there will be any non-French people," says Erica. If the answer is no, she stays home.
There's a Syrian restaurant on my boulevard called La Rose de Damas. I used to just go there for the vegetarian plate, the rose jam, and coffee with cardamom to support the refugee business, but now we're having conversations about war. The Syrians don't need to be told what Russia is. They know. Nothing unites people like a common enemy. Isn't that why the people of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, or Poland understand us better than the people of France? Those who haven't experienced a Soviet soldier's boot or tank on their land have a little less historical reason for empathy.
I remember the destroyed houses of my friends in Irpin in March. What they regretted the most was the library they had been collecting for many years, which was destroyed by the Russians. (Krasnogruda has its own equivalent to this story: the Soviet soldiers who stayed in the spacious house there at the time burned the piano as soon as they arrived.)
It's especially painful because many of those who fled from the occupied Crimea and Donbas to the peaceful Kyiv Oblast in 2014 built their homes in Bucha and Irpin. Like the journalist I know who left her family home with impressive columns above the sea, running away pretty much in a dressing gown and slippers, taking with her her most valuable things, including a cat and a dog she found in a garbage dump the day before. (After all, you become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed…) All these people who spent eight years building a new peace and a new home, only to lose it again.
Will they have the strength to return? What is it like to live in a house that is yours, but has been inhabited by Russian soldiers? Is it possible to erase the memories of torture, rape, and abuse that happened there by simply cleaning out the garbage left behind?
For those who fled the bombs at the beginning of the war and went abroad, it's not easy to return to Ukraine. Their house remained in their memory as a place under the threat of bombs. They were evacuated by train, with silent, crying women, children, dogs, the elderly, and pregnant women, all trying to escape.
Home is a bright window in the dark. By destroying Ukrainian power plants, Russia hopes to take away this light. But they don't take into account one thing: in addition to candles, we have a fire in our hearts. And this fire has experienced a lot of darkness in our history, including Stalin’s man-made famine of 1932-33 otherwise known as the Holodomor. There’s also what is known as “the Executed Renaissance,” an entire generation of Ukrainian writers imprisoned and killed by the NKVD during the Stalinist purges, not to mention deportations to Siberia, along with arrests and persecutions that affected almost every Ukrainian family.
Czesław Miłosz says, "He who appeals to history is rarely contradicted, because the dead won't rise to object." I'm not much of a historian. Rather, I look at historical events via my own family history, as told by my grandmother, aunt, and father. I've lived through two revolutions and a war myself–enough for one lifetime. I've written articles and books based on those experiences, but I'm too lazy to keep a diary. Sometimes people try to deny the reality of my experiences before I've even finished speaking. Some international "experts" on French TV who were in Ukraine while it still was a part of the USSR but just before the latter’s collapse think they know my country better than I do, and it drives me crazy. These armchair experts who have never left their offices talk confidently about the Ukrainian army on the air, but they're always wrong in their analyses and predictions.
This year, I was hesitant to go to my French husband's family for Christmas. I just didn't have the energy to hear all the well-meaning but superficial "How is your family?" from people who never reached out during the war to see how we were doing or offered help. It was strangers, random viewers who saw me on the news or the cashier at the supermarket who asked, not those who supposedly are my family. I've come to realize that I don't really belong here… which can be amusing at times (I'm a satirist, after all). An elderly uncle grabbed my face as we left the church, loudly asking, "Do Slavic women really have such high cheekbones, like they say?" A younger uncle (who should have been more mindful of feminist principles) looked at my car with Ukrainian diplomatic license plates and, ignoring my presence, asked my husband, "YOU bought yourself a new car, right?" as if it were impossible that I could have done so. An aunt sitting across the table emphasized the singular form tu when she asked, "What are YOUR plans next?," speaking only to my husband and ignoring my presence. All of these people are educated, good Catholics, and respected members of the bourgeoisie. But for some reason, it's normal to say out of earshot, "Cousin Nicholas is coming with his Korean wife." As if his wife's name is not Marie, she has not lived here in France since she was two, and as if she hasn’t been managing the family business so skillfully that cousin Nicholas is left to humbly watch Netflix on the sofa…
I decided to go to their French village for Christmas, even though it's not my home. It was still nice to experience someone else's home, and to travel. As an observer, I carry my home within me.
Accidentally (or intentionally?), I walked around the house wearing a hoodie with the words "Fight for Ukraine" and the image of a rifle emblazoned on my chest. It was a gift from my army friends. Everyone was very cautious around me and only said, "I was thinking of you all the time and didn't dare say anything because I was worried I wouldn't say something right." (It's a shame that I'm not as brave as my friend, who told her German friends, "Don't worry, here are volunteer accounts where you can help. Would you rather pay for homeless children, animals whose owners were killed by Russians, or just the army? Oh, yes, medicine is still in good supply, but tourniquets and hemostats run out so quickly..." No, I'm not that brave. I can never ask for anything for free. I asked this large French family to at least help me buy something that was difficult to find at the beginning of the invasion, even with money. I asked one cousin, a surgeon, for help finding drugs and materials on a list of requests. I asked another cousin, a firefighter, to help purchase discounted tourniquets. Everyone was very worried, but no one helped. It's just that my country isn't their home. In turn, they are just an illusion of my family. This Christmas, I took it as calmly as if God's grace had descended on my weary heart. Maybe that is what the spirit of Christmas shown in the movies is.
The same uncle who used to ask me "What are you doing here?" now says "You must be very tired after all you've been doing!" Another uncle has the temerity to ask me about the difference in calendars: "Is your Christmas later?" I start to explain about the Julian and Gregorian calendars, the influence of the Russian Empire and the desire of Ukrainians to separate from Russians in everything, including the calendar, and trail off when I notice that he tries to escape from me and my explanation of "Finally, the Russian Patriarchate will leave the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, one of our oldest monuments, because it is not a church institution, but simply a terrorist organization under the wing of the FSB…" by reaching for the life-saving foie gras and smiling stupidly, hoping I'll stop talking. And I once again remember that when a French person asks "Ça va?," God forbid you answer truthfully instead of just saying "Things are very good."
For my Christmas, I'll do anything to be home. I'll celebrate it from January 6 to 7, make traditional Ukrainian dishes like kutya and varenyky, and sing traditional folk carols. My family and I will celebrate the holiday together, and welcome anyone who is without a home. It doesn't matter if they are Ukrainian or not. I wish I could invite those women with children from the streets of Naples and teach them how to make varenyky. Food and music are universal languages that bring people together and don't require translation. But what about those who have lost their home? What about refugees fleeing criminal regimes, dictatorships, or the effects of climate change? Who will open their doors to Syrians, Iranians, and Indians from arid areas with salty soils that can't sustain life?
"I will never be able to return to Donetsk," says the Ukrainian writer Volodymyr Rafeyenko. He lost everything in 2014, including his job as a university professor, his apartment, and the peaceful streets and flower beds he used to know. He lost one home and found another, including a new home within himself. Rafayenko used to write in Russian and was even published in Russia, but now writes only in Ukrainian. He is just one of many talented internally displaced Ukrainians who have fled to the capital or the West because of the war. There are journalists, human rights defenders, IT experts, curators, and countless others. How many of them will return to their homes in the Crimea and Donbas when we–yes, I believe it will happen– finally liberate those lands? How many of them will continue to say "This is no longer my home”?
At the start of the invasion, I was overwhelmed with guilt. Translated into words, it would spell "I'm not there." Not at the front, not able to help those who needed it. I couldn't even steady my trembling fingers enough to fold the paper of the presentation I was giving when I called my psychologist in the middle of a conference. I was in a state of panic, feeling like I had a fever. She told me, “The survival of the species is more important than the survival of the individual. You see yourself as part of the ‘Ukrainian’ species and feel that your home and way of life are being threatened with destruction. It’s that simple.” The Ukrainian in me was panicking, not knowing how to save my home, because I was a thousand kilometers away from it.
Eventually, I realized that I could contribute to the war effort by sharing stories and raising funds. Each of us should do what we do best. If you know how to pray, pray. If you know how to teach physics to refugee children, do it. If you can donate, donate. If you can treat injuries, treat them.
After surviving the difficult spring in Ukraine–Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol! –I returned home in June 2022, the first time since the war began. For long-term expats like me, these trips are a great way to cope with survivor’s guilt. Since then, I’ve returned to Kyiv, Odesa, and other cities four times. Next, I’ll be visiting Kharkiv and Kyiv again. As a writer, I feel it’s my responsibility to bear witness to the most painful events of my people. As an artist, I feel the need to talk to my readers and hug acquaintances and attendees of my performances. As a citizen, I want to breathe the air of Kyiv, the city of my youth, where I experienced my first loves, disappointments, and my growth as a person. It’s still my home. On those quiet summer days, Kyiv’s empty streets, lonely dog owners, the best sidewalk coffee in the world, the falling chestnuts—all gave me strength. And I passed that strength on to other cities and people.
During a book presentation in Ivano-Frankivsk, a woman approached me in tears, dressed in all black“ "Did you lose someone”?" I asked, feeling like Captain Obvious. All I could think to say was, “Write... write him a letter." That's what the students in my therapeutic writing course do. One way to cope with grief is to express the thoughts and feelings that have been left unsaid.“
"My letters to him were returned to me after his death," she replied. "And his cup, the cup he used to drink coffee from at home, has returned too. Can you imagine? He's gone! But there's still a cup! How did it survive, and he didn’t?"
A favorite cup. A normal, familiar part of home that he took with him to the front, and which was attracted back home, as if a satellite. Isn't the role of creativity to console those in trouble, to provide comfort for both the author and the reader, to mend the cracks in the soul…? Critical acclaim? Book sales? Literary awards? Come on.
One of my students told me that my latest book was in her emergency bag, which made me feel like I’ve received the highest literary award this year. Writing is about creating something that can provide comfort and familiarity during difficult times, like when people turn to your book as a source of solace in a bomb shelter or when they take it with them across the border for something to read in Ukrainian after their city has been occupied and books in their native language have been burned. It's also about bringing joy and levity to tough situations, like when you make people laugh with funny readings at public events in Odesa, Kyiv, or Kharkiv. Language itself can be a source of home and belonging.
Carrying home within oneself is key. I always admired nomadic people, like those two women with children I saw in Naples. I never found out where they were from. Why didn’t I go up and speak to them? Were they Syrian, Roma, or perhaps just reckless Italian hippies who rejected the idea of settling down? Our oftentimes frigid and narrow-minded society has the tendency to view nomadic people as a threat, yet they carry their homes within themselves, and I often wonder if that is what equips one with the tools they need to handle whatever challenges and hardships come their way. These people always represented freedom to me, with their ability to adapt to even the most difficult circumstances while still maintaining their identity.
Interestingly enough, I recently learned that I wouldn't be here today if it weren't for the Roma. During the Holodomor of 1932, my great-grandmother Halya entrusted my 2-year-old grandfather to a Roma family with many children, believing they would find a way to survive. And they did, somehow. Later on, my great-grandmother, who was a teacher, worried about their frequent absences from school, and found out that the family had only one pair of shoes to share for them all. So she “wrote to proper people in the city” and made sure that all the Roma children had warm shoes to wear to school in the winter. The Roma remained close friends with my great-grandmother until the end, and when she passed away, Roma elders who were her former students attended her funeral, along with my grandfather's brothers.
But that's a story for another time.
Translated from the Ukrainian by Kate Tsurkan
Irena KARPA is a Paris-based Ukrainian writer, journalist, and lead singer of the band QARPA. Her latest novel Тільки нікому про це не кажи [Just Don’t Tell Anyone About It] (2022) follows a Ukrainian photographer living in Paris and addresses topics of harassment, domestic violence and rape. Karpa often appears in French media advocating for Ukraine from abroad. Her work has been translated into English and French.