{"id":4094,"date":"2022-03-03T07:00:28","date_gmt":"2022-03-03T07:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writersrebel.com\/?p=4094"},"modified":"2022-03-07T17:28:08","modified_gmt":"2022-03-07T17:28:08","slug":"an-orison-for-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writersrebel.com\/an-orison-for-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"An orison for Ukraine<\/span>Alex Lockwood<\/span>"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

We don\u2019t wake up at 5:14am and check the news to see if we\u2019re at nuclear war. We don\u2019t go back to sleep. We don\u2019t read Putin-expert Fiona Hill\u2019s article \u2018Yes, He Would<\/a>\u2019. We don\u2019t blame friends for dropping out of WhatsApp groups (we can\u2019t, they\u2019ve left). We don\u2019t spend an hour leaving Google reviews for Moscow restaurants asking normal Muscovites to know, just to know, and we don\u2019t link to independent media showing children from oncology wards sheltering in hospital basements. We don\u2019t see an old friend reporting from Kyiv for Sky News and wonder why she is brave enough to be a war reporter when we aren\u2019t and why we\u2019re not in the midst of it even though we\u2019re afraid of being in the midst of it. We don\u2019t agree with Yuval Noah Harari that Putin has somehow already lost<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We don\u2019t check J\u2019s Twitter feed again (still no update). We don\u2019t remember that the last time we spoke to him (finishing up a PhD in Kyiv, on the stray dogs of Chornobyl\u2014we don\u2019t need to say that\u2019s the Ukrainian spelling) was to ask him to help translate some Ukrainian into English for a friend\u2019s novel. We don\u2019t read the early proofs of that novel and then Google the Egg of Life, a sculpture that sits in a field in Ivankiv, Kyiv Oblast, which the novelist writes about, having done her fieldwork. We don’t doubt that it is also called Ovum II and doubles as a time capsule that was donated by a German artist to symbolise the rebirth of life from the soil after the Chornobyl disaster at 1:23:58am local time. We don\u2019t like to recall that the amount of nuclear radiation that escaped from Reactor Number 4 on April 26th<\/sup> 1986 was less than four percent\u2014four percent<\/em>\u2014of what could have been released in that cloud that crossed Europe. We don’t dwell upon the knowledge that if the wind had been blowing towards Kyiv, in the direction that Putin\u2019s 50-mile long military convoy now snakes, that perhaps a million more people would have died (estimates put deaths at around a quarter of a million, although the official Chornobyl death toll remains only 31). We don\u2019t look again at the spikes in radiation from the Exclusion Zone since the Russians captured the abandoned power station (reassured by experts it was only stirrings from heavy vehicles over contaminated ground). We don\u2019t celebrate the fact that it was ordinary citizens who in 1986 bought radiation detectors as part of their campaign to stop a nuclear power station being built at Druridge Bay who first picked up the cloud moving across Britain and forced the government to admit there was a danger. We don\u2019t remember the fields being sprayed blue to stop the sheep grazing on Caesium.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We don\u2019t hear the words The accident wasn\u2019t in the plan!<\/em> even though they were spoken without irony by a Soviet commander by way of excuse for what happened at Chornobyl. (He actually said that: The accident wasn\u2019t in the plan!<\/em>) We don\u2019t waste any more time trolling Liz Truss online asking her to waive visas, not flags (she doesn\u2019t wave a flag either, only pose in front of one). We don\u2019t cry at Germany\u2019s $100bn investment in a new militarism, or Roman Abramovich selling off Chelsea FC. We don\u2019t pick Svetlana Alexievich\u2019s Chernobyl Prayer<\/em><\/a> from the bookshelf and reread the first chapter which details the first person account of the wife of a fireman (liquidator, biorobot, hero) as she watches his body flake, then melt, then crumble, even though she\u2019s not allowed to be there but the doctors allow it, even though they do not know her story will become the chapter that all humanity should read (the book<\/em> that all humanity should read) if we really want to know hubris, know tragedy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But we<\/em> don\u2019t want to know hubris or tragedy. With war, with the climate crisis, there is no \u2018unit of we\u2019 in which we know how to respond effectively. So we<\/em> offer statements, sanctions, Swift bans. That\u2019s enough? That\u2019s solidarity!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I, then. I.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t forget it was Alexievich\u2019s book that, a few months before the 30th<\/sup> anniversary of the disaster, led me to write my novel on Chornobyl, compelled to develop a plot linking that disaster to the stupidity of nuclear weapons and disaster still to come. Yes, those weapons we still have in Faslane, Scotland, yes, hiding on their submarines, yes, the ones he\u2019s thinking of using (\u2018Yes, He Would\u2019; I don\u2019t read Fiona Hill again).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t second-guess now why, in fiction at least, I took in my Ukrainian child refugee (you see, Priti! We can<\/em> do it! No visas!) and brought him up in England and naturalised him and turned him into a nuclear physicist because the plot, the plot, Priti, was about trauma, trauma, Priti, of the refugees fleeing their homes in Ukraine, then as now due to human stupidity and denial; then the nuclear power station blowing apart, now Europe and the world order. I don\u2019t shout about the revolving door between civilian and military nuclear, or about nuclear energy\u2019s lobbying job done on Tony Blair, persuading him that we\u2019d lose our deterrence capability (not much of a deterrence is it, Tony?) if we lost our nuclear power stations, Windscale and Wylfa and Hinkley and Oldbury, setting investment in renewables back a generation. I don\u2019t think of the Soviet General Pitrov telling his soldiers, overheard by locals: Do your accounts boys. Better bury one thousand than one million.<\/em> I don\u2019t seek refuge in Anna Tsing\u2019s Feral Atlas<\/a> because even there I know that the story continues. I don’t eat the radioactive blueberries from the region that are now mixed in with blueberries from other orchards so they meet regulations for safe radiation levels and can be sold across the European Union and USA. I don\u2019t complain that if only my young fictional Ukrainian refugee could<\/em> be a seasonal fruit picker, dear Home Office minister, but the fruit then as now was all contaminated.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t pick the mushrooms!<\/em><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t pick the blueberries!<\/em><\/p>\n

Poklasty yikh vnyz!<\/em><\/p>\n

Put them down!<\/em><\/p>\n

So as he grew I turned him into a nuclear physicist, because he has to process the trauma of being a refugee fleeing from someone else\u2019s stupidity, somehow, doesn\u2019t he? So I wrote a book because I was not brave enough to be a war reporter. So I blast the mighty and powerful with my words, oh powerful words!, what a relief, so I can hide the fear that I have no lichnost\u2019<\/em> \u2014a Russian word that has no direct translation but means something like integrity, honesty, a commitment to one\u2019s labour\u2014so I could at least show commitment as a writer, to give birth, somehow, to something, not much, a book, my egg.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So I do not think of the myth in the tradition of the Ukrainian people\u2014and they are a community, a land, a place, a people, separate from Russia, a thousand years of independent history\u2014that you see at Easter, mostly. I don\u2019t visualise the pysanky<\/em>, Ukrainian Easter eggs, that are famous for their colours and which serve a purpose beyond decoration. (Pysanky<\/em>, from pysaty<\/em>\u00a0(\u043f\u0438\u0441\u0430\u0442\u0438), which means \u2018to write\u2019.) I don\u2019t imagine, drawing lines on my skin with my fingernail, their intricate designs that are mazes and traps for, as the myth has it, a great snake chained to a cliff. I don\u2019t tell people that as long as the egg writing continues, the world will exist. Legend has it that if the writing is abandoned then evil, the serpent, will escape and overrun and devour not only Ukraine, but also the world. So the serpent sends out his minions to see how many pysanky<\/em> have been written. (Snake Island soldiers to Russia: \u2018go fuck yourselves\u2019.) If the number of pysanky<\/em> has increased, the chains are tightened and good triumphs over evil. So people keep vigil and write on those eggs, fresh every year. I do not want to say that I put the words into the mouth of my Ukrainian refugee narrator: no one painted enough eggs the year of Chornobyl<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t ask: today? Who is painting the eggs today?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Alex Lockwood <\/strong>teaches on the creative writing programme at the University of Sunderland. His novel The Chernobyl Privileges<\/em> was published in 2019.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

CALL TO ACTION:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alex asks you support the Ukrainian Charity CCF\/Dogs of Chernobyl<\/a> looking after the stray dogs who made the disaster area their home. He would also ask you to support the author Philippa Holloway\u2019s debut novel The Half Life of Snails<\/em><\/a> (out 12th<\/sup> May, Parthian Books) that explores nuclear\u2019s impact, which is set both on the edge of Wylfa nuclear power station in Anglesey, and at Chornobyl during the Ukrainian Maidan Revolution (the \u2018Revolution of Dignity\u2019) of 2014.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  We don\u2019t wake up at 5:14am and check the news to see if we\u2019re at nuclear war. We don\u2019t go back to sleep. We don\u2019t read Putin-expert Fiona Hill\u2019s article \u2018Yes, He Would\u2019. We don\u2019t blame friends for dropping out of WhatsApp groups (we can\u2019t, they\u2019ve left). We don\u2019t spend an hour leaving Google […]<\/p>\n

Read More… from An orison for Ukraine<\/span>Alex Lockwood<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":4119,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,1],"tags":[105,625,626,629,628,630,631,624,623,627],"yoast_head":"\nAn orison for Ukraine - Writers Rebel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/writersrebel.com\/an-orison-for-ukraine\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An orison for Ukraine - Writers Rebel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"  We don\u2019t wake up at 5:14am and check the news to see if we\u2019re at nuclear war. We don\u2019t go back to sleep. 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