D I M A

This is Dima. A husband and father, he has spent the last year fighting in the Donbas. He has not seen his daughter since the war began. His wife took her to Poland to live with in-laws in February 2022 and she has remained there ever since. He has seen his wife once since the war began, during three days of leave he received to go home and visit his hometown Mykolaiv, where his mother, father, and younger brother remain.

He insists often he is not a professional soldier. Before the war, Dima worked as a product manager at a tomato paste manufacturing plant in Mykolaiv. Unprompted, he proudly took me on a virtual tour of his former company on my first night here. Showing me a promotional video of the entire manufacturing process, from planting the tomato seeds to the final product, pointing out his former employees when they pop up. The company he worked for had three plants, two in Mykolaiv and one in the Kherson region. 

His factory, where he had worked for 13 years, was destroyed by a Russian missile. The other plant in Mykolaiv was also hit but is still operating. The one near Kherson is also still operating. But it has been occupied by the Russians and now produces products sold by the Russians. 

Despite everything, Dima is warm, kind, and loud. He towers over the rest of us at 6”4 and is constantly chastising me. Many mornings I have woken up to the sound of his booming voice: “Marishka!” he yells before going off into a tirade in Ukrainian, telling me not to do something or reprimanding me about something I did a manner only a protective older brother can get away with.

“Marishka! Where are your shoes?!” I was greeted my first morning before I could even muster a “dobre ranok [good morning].” I was on my way to change out of my pajamas in the storage room and hadn’t bothered with lacing up my boots. I had yet to acquire the ubiquitous house slippers Ukrainians wear at all times inside the house. They do not go barefoot, seemingly ever. This has perhaps been the most difficult cultural rule for me to follow. 

“Marishka!” he yelled my second morning here. He rattled away for at least a minute. I do not speak Ukrainian fully awake and certainly had no idea what was going on seconds after opening my eyes. “Tell me later,” I responded. “Viktoria is still asleep.”

“He says not to leave your things outside because somebody will come in the night and take them,” Vika mumbled beside me, clearly also woken up by this gentle giant’s well-meaning, but nevertheless non-urgent wake-up call. I then noticed the handle of my camera’s tripod in his hand. A very non-essential piece of gear I am positive would have survived outside in this all-but-deserted village, but I thanked him anyway and went back to bed. 

Dima and Rebekah in Pokrovsk.

“Marishka! You don’t wear pants!” He boomed later that evening. We had just returned from an evening swim in a nearby pond- our attempt at cleaning ourselves without running water after a long hot day. And I was, in fact, wearing pants, albeit a very short pair of shorts under a long sweatshirt.
“Marishka!” He exclaimed an hour later after I walked into the kitchen following a phone call. My charging cord wasn’t long enough to extend to my cot so I had been sitting on the floor.

He told Viktoria to translate for me what he was about to say. This meant he really wanted me to understand. Normally he just rattles away to me in Ukrainian which I then promptly have to ask him to translate- “Chto?[What?]”

Viktoria explained not to take what he was about to do the wrong way. He then began very politely, but also very determinedly, wiping away the dust that had collected on my backside during my call, the debris clearly visible on my black leggings. 

“Do not sit on the floor,” he explained, wagging a finger at me. “It is very dirty, we walk through there with our shoes from outside and from the bathroom.”

An American soldier I had met here had complained numerous times about what he perceived as a lack of basic hygiene by Ukrainians. They don’t cover their mouth when sneezing or coughing, they do not use sterile gloves when treating patients, etc.

During my first week with these men, I found the opposite and was constantly chided for not abiding by their cultural standards of cleanliness. So, I have stopped sitting on the floor (at least when Dima is around),  I boil water to clean my dishes rather than using the well water (tactical water, as they call it) and I now have my very own pair of house slippers. 

I have spent a lot of time traveling and living in foreign countries and have always worked very hard to try and understand and assimilate into the local culture. I understand Americans and Ukrainians have a very different set of norms and peculiarities, but as I live here under their roof the least I can do is try and blend as much as possible. They have been fighting this war for a year, separated from their families and forced to make a home away from their own. They have taken us under their wings with so much warmth despite everything they have going on, the last thing I want to do is be a burden. 

I don’t always bother to translate what Dima yells at me anymore, simply replying “Tak, tak [Yes, yes].” Most of the time he is in on the secret, responding with a cheeky smile, knowing I don’t understand but also not having the energy to translate. More often than not, we can get by in a mix of broken English and Ukrainian. If it’s something important or more complicated, we use our phones to translate our phrases back to the other. We’ve had lengthy conversations this way, going back and forth through Google Translate. 

I think often of how difficult it must be for his family. It is obviously always heartbreaking to be separated from family due to war, but I often think of how much more difficult it is for his wife and daughter to be separated from a husband and father like him: fun, protective, devoted. Generously and exceedingly loving.