In Transition
A Ukrainian pianist starts over in Warsaw.
He woke in the early hours of the morning to a flurry of activity on his phone: it was war. “I remember the first few hours like they were yesterday — a flashbulb memory. I looked out the window and thought, I’m fucked.”
Mykhailo was living in a small town near one of the largest military bases in Ukraine; commuting an hour to school in Lviv. It was the kind of place where you could shout a friend’s name from the street and they would come down.
His father, a taxi driver, was away on the job. The rates spiked fifty-fold the day of the attack, earning him more than a month’s salary. He later picked up Mykhailo and told him they were going to his grandfather’s village, about twelve kilometers from the Polish border, to wait out the danger.
“When we got there, he told me I wasn’t staying. He had packed my suitcase. I was going to Poland.”
Mykhailo didn’t want to leave; he worried for his girlfriend. His bag was filled with ill-fitting clothes and lacked essentials. He negotiated for one more day.
He arrived at the Polish border better prepared, but alone — she had stayed behind. He was greeted by bitter cold and a line of thousands seeking refuge. “Women and children went first, but at sixteen I didn’t really count. I stood for nineteen hours, and by the end I was shaking uncontrollably. Then I waited another five hours on the Polish side for a bus.”
