"My grandmothers did not live to see the war": a new book about terrible events

The Nika-Center publishing house in Kyiv has published a novel by Yevhenia Genova, an author from Odesa and editor of the Intent publication, My Grandmothers Didn't Live to See the War.

This is Yevhenia's second book. The first one, Crimean Tatar Families, tells the story of how 14 Crimean Tatar families went through numerous trials at different times. Each time, they suffered from the same enemy, no matter what new name it invented for itself: the Russian Empire, the USSR, or the Russian Federation.

In the Library section, we are adding a new book by Yevhenia Henova to the books OvertheBlackSea by Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky, Crimean Tatar Families by Yevhenia Henova, Nonfictional Stories of the Odesa Tram by Dmytro Zhdanov, , Without Wings by Natalia Kondratenko, Something by Andriy Hayetsky, and 10 Conversations about the Ancient History of Ukraine by Andriy Krasnozhon and Oleksandr Krasovytsky .

Presentation of the novel in Odesa. PHOTO: Intent / Natalia Dovbysh

Times of different wars are equally terrible

As the author noted in the preface to the novel My Grandmothers Did Not Live to See the War, "This book was born in 2023-partly as a memory of 2022, partly as an attempt to capture my feelings. Probably like many people nowadays, I have been thinking a lot lately about my ancestors-those whom I have managed to remember and those whom I have not been able to meet. The generation of our grandparents and their parents. They all survived the war-some of them more than once. Some of them, on the contrary, did not survive, becoming only a memory for their children. They went through terrible times, but they had the amazing courage not to lose themselves, their dignity, and their love... ...They were different and lived in different times, but all of our times are equally terrible. And in the end, the only thing that matters is whether you will be ashamed in front of your grandmother when you finally meet or not. Even if you never meet, and she was right when she told me that there is no God and that we should rely only on ourselves. My grandmothers did not live to see the war. They lived through it with dignity."

The book "My Grandmothers Did Not Live to See the War" was presented to Odesa residents at the Hrushevsky Library on November 19. Yevhenia Henova's story consists of family memories and is dedicated to the formation of national identity in the families of residents of the Ukrainian South. A characteristic feature of the book is the parallels with the heroine's own experiences during the current Russian aggression and the comparison of them with the events that her relatives experienced in the past.

Indeed, times of war are equally terrible. This is evidenced by this excerpt from the novel:

"In the fall of 2022, I buy some canned food, a couple of packets of cereal, and some mivina. I am 39 years old, but this is the first time in my life that I am stockpiling, even though it is so modest. I joke with myself when I put buckwheat and rice in jars - look, a bag of bags is not yet adulthood, but a jar of buckwheat is. In early October, we finally realized that in the fall and winter we would face serious problems with electricity and heating due to Russian shelling, so we should stock up at least a little. A few lifetimes ago - how long ago it was - I always made fun of the habit of stockpiling: I never bought anything in advance, ignoring the statements of politicians, panicked TV newscasts and the next "sugar" or "meat" crisis, and even the covid panic. But this time, everything looks and feels different.

The panic of the first days of the great war, the queues at gas stations and shops that were there at the beginning, have already been forgotten, but the stories of people who survived the famine during the occupation make a hole in my heart.

- My mother exchanged a small supply of cereals for potatoes and planned to sell some of her clothes to buy some lard. However, we finally managed to leave Kherson and now we are trying to forget it all like a bad dream. Especially me. My mom seemed to take these food lines and the naturalistic exchange of food at street markets somehow easier. "I was just shocked that I had to exchange one food for another in the center of a European city in the twenty-first century," says a resident of Kherson who escaped the occupation with his mother in the summer of 2022. "They were almost lucky and only experienced a shortage of certain products, but in the villages that were closed by the Russian occupiers, people were starving.

Famine. All my ancestors were afraid of it. They were so afraid that they did not throw even a crumb of bread into the washbucket: they would brush it off the table with a clean cloth and send it to their mouths or, in extreme cases, to their cats. Bread was not allowed to be thrown away by any generation, and no matter how much I laughed at these strange habits of my grandmothers, I tried never to throw away bread, just in case. Now it's even more so.

- "Liosha, take something for the children. Some grains, some flour. You don't feel sorry for yourself, you don't feel sorry for me, look at the girls - one arm and leg, like dried sticks," I hear the exhausted voice of 28-year-old Yevhenia coming from the dried out oven.

She is peeling wrinkled small potatoes, trying to peel the skin as thinly as possible with a small knife. The dark ribbons of potato peel curl into rings and slowly sink to the floor. I see a few tears sneaking down on the small, green potatoes.

- "Lyosha, can you hear me? Why aren't you talking? At least once you could bring a couple of handfuls of flour, I would bake some bread, let the girls eat to their hearts' content. We don't see any bread. They still don't believe you don't take it!

- And you don't have to believe it either. But I won't take it," I can hear the voice of Oleksii, my great-grandfather. He died when I was a couple of months old, so I can only imagine that his eyes in the black-and-white photos are actually bright blue, and his voice is gentle, but sometimes so firm that you can't interrupt or object.

My future great-grandfather continues the conversation:

- "Today, on my way home, I met Vasyl. He was carrying a bag of grain. I sat down so he wouldn't notice me. And so that no one would notice. You know what will happen if someone sees me.

Yevheniia looks him in the eye, frightened. Lesha reassures her: there was definitely no one outside, it was just a blizzard. They both understand without words: Vasyl has three small children, and they finished the last rotten potatoes back in December 1932.

Oleksii is the head of the kolhosp, but his wife, mother, and two daughters-my future grandmother Zoia and her older sister Olya-are starving just like everyone else in the village. Luckily, they will survive, but they will remember the taste of quinoa soup for the rest of their lives.

Another memory my grandmother told me is from the same time. One day a scary, black man appeared in their house. Little Zoya didn't remember where he came from, but for some reason she was afraid to look at him. I can see through her eyes the thin figure of that man, whose name is no longer in my memory - he was her grandmother's brother. He was so thin that little Zoya thought his bones were clicking against each other as he turned gingerly from side to side on the stove, moaning. Or maybe they really were clicking. His skin was either frostbitten or dried out from starvation, which is why it looked so dark, like black.

In the mornings, the house is very cold: there is not enough firewood, we have to save, and during the night a thick layer of frost appears on the walls from the inside, which you could scrape off with your finger and lick. Zoia's grandmother Motria, Oleksii's mother, would cry quietly by her brother's side and pray fervently to the silent icons by her bed. Sometimes little Zoya would ask her grandmother who she was talking to.

- "This is our merciful God. He gives us health and bread, and everything, but we have to pray.

- Why does He give us so little bread?" the little girl asked.

- Answer me! A little is not a lot - as much as we have is enough. Everyone has become smart, godless, and they teach their children that," the old woman spat on her apron in anger and began to do housework.

The parents told the girls that the old woman was old and couldn't read, so she was not very smart and was making up fairy tales about some God who didn't really exist.

- "So he won't give this old man health, the old woman is talking in vain?" Zoya clarified.

- "Oh, child, I don't know what to do with that grandfather," her mother stroked her head.

"My grandfather, who was probably not an old man at all, suffered until the spring and died. Much later, my grandmother would learn that he and his entire family were sent to Siberia by the Soviet authorities because he had one more cow than was allowed, which was exactly one. His wife and children did not survive the exile, and the man somehow managed to return home after serving his time. However, maybe he did not serve his time, but escaped-no one knew for sure. Time has erased the names of his family and himself, and now, when I light a candle on the window in November to commemorate all those who were tortured by hunger, I think of this family too. I have a little bit of their blood in my veins."

PHOTO: https://www.nika-centre.kiev.ua/

Володимир Шкаєв