Kherson War-time Flashes

(essay)

The present day, war-time Kherson looks like the city of surrealistic paradoxes, inspiring hope and, at the same time, cutting the hearts in bleeding halves of the local people and those who spent their childhood years on the sunny streets and sandy riverbanks of this cheerful agro-shipbuilding-resort hub in the Southern part of Ukraine.

On the one hand, you see the half-ruined historic building of the Alma mater of Kherson education –the secondary school #20 named after Borys Lavrenev, with its solid and solemn XIXth century faзade dating back to 1815 and its first director V.E.Yakubovsky…I didn`t study there, however, my school #6 was behind the fence of it. At that time, our Labor Teachers were close friends drinking and singing songs together, either in the workshop of our school or school #20…We listened to them and thought about the dangers of binge drinking…From time to time, being school kids, we sneaked on the territory of the most well-known Kherson school to beat some urchin or to be beaten…Now it is covered with brick and stone debris…

On the other hand, the Teacher`s House on Suvorova street 6, even with its plywood instead of glass in its windows, strikes your tired imagination with charismatic pictures painted by Svitlana Yurieva. The amazing aquarelle exhibition, devoted to the brave Ukrainian defenders, is called “50 shadows of Green.” It looks cheerfully life-affirming, amusingly love-inspiring, and green-pixel-victory-approaching.

Not far from it, on a bench, a senior 80-year-old woman sits motionlessly staring at a picture with a zappy soldier hugging his girlfriend hilariously…The husband of this granny was liberated from his life just only two weeks ago by Russian artillery shell. Besides, she was freed from her small house with all her clothes, cookery and memories of her lively youth, chirpy children and perky grandkids…

From 9 a.m. till 4 p.m. the traffic gets alive, however, there is an impression that drivers ignore all road regulations. Nobody fastens seat belts, because in case of artillery shelling you should be ready to jump out of your car as fast as possible…

Suddenly, you notice a playground sandbox for toddlers with planted field flowers…Now the sandboxes are turned into the realm of grannies – almost all kids left the wounded Kherson, shivering under the flying mortar and artillery ‘Big Brother surprises.’

Some of my Kherson classmates are full of anger and indignation, “Kyiv, dont forget about us! We dont want to live like moles in holes! We need working places! We need the status of the ‘city where hostilities are taking place’! We need additional protection! Day and night, the enemy snipers shoot at us from the left bank! Not speaking about tanks. mortars, and self-propelled artillery systems!”

The others sound like sunshine symphony, “You ask me what the secret of our optimism is? That`s simple, we are from KHERSON!”

In any case, Kherson is alive and kicking, but desperately needs Ukrainian government and International aid and assistance…