Exercise 1

We are back together for the first time after we dispersed to different countries: Mum, N.¹I intended this text to be about one of the places or events in Mariupol that was dearest to me. While I was thinking about what to write, my attention kept returning to N. This summer I was lucky enough to attend a workshop led by Darya Tsymbalyuk, where she asked participants to draw their home. Thanks to this assignment, I realised that the act of bearing witness to my home is now in itself important to me. I know that N. bears witness to all the places in Mariupol where different generations of our family lived, all the rooms in guesthouses where we stayed, and now – even this new temporary house in a European country. Writing about N. means writing about a place, and vice versa. and I. I think the last time we lived this way was when we went to a guesthouse in Nova Yalta. It’s so hot outside that we just have to have an afternoon nap. Snippets of conversation wake me up: N. is asking L. what medicine he wants her to bring him. There’s a big suitcase lying nearby, carefully packed with belongings: we have to utilise every centimetre of space because we don’t know whether N. will be able to find everything she needs for life in the place she’s going back to. Mum and I are looking around in silence. Nobody wants to be the first to break the illusion of going on holiday to a guesthouse. In the meantime, we can hear N. and L. having a lively argument about how to heat the building when there’s no gas and there may be electricity outages. “You know there’s not a single tree left in the park next to the house,” says L. “Everyone’s collecting firewood for the winter.” N. scolds him for not doing that himself and at the same time tries to call up a map of the village in her head, and work out where there might be some trees left standing. I close my eyes and try to do that same mental exercise along with her.

Exercise 2

The telephone in L’s hands is shaking a little, so it’s hard to tell exactly what he’s trying to show us. L. goes into a greenhouse and points the phone camera at each plant in turn, telling us what condition they’re now in. We ask him to point the camera in the opposite direction to the greenhouse: N. wants to prepare herself in advance for how their half-wrecked home now looks. The connection drops, so we call again and repeat the request. We notice that L. hesitates a little, but then decides to pretend he didn’t hear us.

Exercise 3

It’s been two weeks since N. left. Meanwhile, Mum has moved house to right opposite the place where she and N. spent the whole summer and part of the spring. The building they lived in is about to be demolished: a local developer has allowed them to stay there for a few months before he knocks it down and builds two more in its place. We go round one day and sit for a while at the outside table where we used to have dinner with N. Mum remarks that the developer will have to cut down all the trees around the table in order to build the second housing block. We are silent for a few minutes, trying to commit this place to memory before nothing is left of it that can remind us of N. and our life with her.

Exercise 4

On one occasion, while N. is still here, she admits  to us that having me around makes her feel like we are just about to arrive home – that we just have to wait for the bus. When I first visited Mum and N., I noticed how the journey back from the central station to the place where they are living now takes about the same time as the journey home from the central station in Mariupol used to. In the evening, I go to hang out with a friend and at around 10pm I realise that I can’t get home and I have to stay the night with her because this late at night there’s hardly any public transport to my area. I’m secretly glad – this reminds me of the timetable in Mariupol, where buses to our village stop running after 9 pm.

While we stand at the stop with N. and wait for the bus, we feel closer to Mariupol than we do anywhere else.

Exercise 5

We are trying to spend as much time as possible with N. before she leaves. A typical evening goes like this: we sit out on the street together, I scroll through the feeds of some groups related to Mariupol, and N. and Mum watch me from nearby. Photographs of wrecked buildings alternate with short videos in which you can see the sea. These videos hardly ever feature people and all you can see all around is water.

Mum and I have an unspoken agreement – after long and fruitless pleading with N. not to return, we have decided we won’t talk to her anymore about the future. Without us noticing, this ban on the future has also spread to the past, and begun to manifest itself in our conversations with each other.

When familiar views of the sea appear on a feed, we first start talking about the past, and we keep it up for several minutes. After a while it happens again – something reminds us of the time we spent by the sea, and gets us talking again.

Mum complains that Facebook keeps showing her “memories” of where she was last autumn. By the sea, of course.

Is it possible for invaders to occupy a space without occupying time? I’ve noticed that after the occupation of the city, time has split into by the sea and on land. I don’t feel that these two exist in opposition to one another: on the contrary, our ability to think through time by the sea can influence how time on land flows – no matter how far from the sea a place is. Only through time by the sea can we cautiously venture into the territory of the future without stumbling over the discrepancies between our memories and the way the city itself looks now. 

We call N. and I realise that, since her departure, in addition to our separation in space, we are now also separated in time, which is just as painful. But we still have one time we can share – although it is different from the time in which she lived every day present in Mariupol. Despite the proximity of the sea itself, time by the sea for her is now just as far away as it is for us here.