Letters from the Republic

My phone screams at me. It’s around 3am and I’m getting a perfectly timed reminder that I need to tune my air raid warning system correctly. I grumble about it into my pillow for about two hours before I pass out again.

Tuning assistance in the morning comes with a reminder to be glad this was a false alarm. Sure am.

Part of my day is dedicated to getting everything I need for my planned extended stay in Ukraine: mainly a new sim card and anything I didn’t want to jam into a carry on. The latter is basically just bath and grooming supplies, but honestly those aren’t as easy to procure as expected.

English speakers in Kharkiv are pretty rare, which is fairly understandable given the distance from English speaking nations and the sudden American abdication from global aid efforts. My refined four-step skincare process is lost in translation app as the 19-year-old beauty consultant selects a face wash for me with Ukrainian labeling. Sure, that works. A similar challenge faces me at the barber. I am looking forward to cleaning myself up a bit after not shaving for a few days, but I soon realize the imperial measurements of barber tools in the US do not convert easily. I show her a rare portrait that I like and have my phone say “make me look pretty” in Ukrainian.

I walk around the city center in the evening, set for an early night. While Kharkiv is certainly more European in attitude – and bears the architectural hallmarks of a former Soviet city – I am struck by all of the buildings and scenes that bear a striking similarity to home. Pedestrians pass buskers without acknowledgement in front of 19th century buildings; 20-somethings rave on a strip not unlike the Bowery; artists hang out in cafes and gather in the park. As my guides told me of the retaking of the city after Russian occupation in 2022, I wondered how quickly life returned to this.

Earlier, I walked up to the Church of the Holy Myrrh-Bearing Women – a 17th century church with its largest domes missing some of their gold foil.

There were bullet holes in it.