Part I
At night I see nothing but blackness. All the lights have been sent away. In the day, I hear nothing of joy and laughter. All the children have been sent away. It is quiet until it’s not. Then air raid sirens and missiles scream in shattered synapses, crashing into the bombing, bombing, bombing, and the shaking, pounding, pounding, and the buildings falling, falling.
Then the cries, the blood, and the tears.
This is my 161st day in Kyiv since the war started four years ago this month. I always book the same Airbnb – The House of Swans, in a beautiful, Art Nouveau, apartment building, just off Khreshchatyk Street, Ukraine’s Champs Elysee – with wide boulevards, theatres, museums, boutiques and grand churches. This is Kyiv’s beloved historic district, surrounded by high value targets for Putin’s bombs.
My one-bedroom apartment is $42 a night and has 12-foot ceilings, elegant French doors that open onto an ornate balcony where I can bear witness. From this fifth-floor perch, I am above the tree lines, and I can see The Presidential Palace where on the second day of the war, Zelenskyy defiantly declared, “I am here. We are not putting down arms. We will be defending our country, because our weapon is truth, and our truth is that this is our land, our country, our children, and we will defend all of this.”
When I heard that speech from my comfortable Santa Barbara home, I wept. I searched for charities to donate to, and I felt hollow and impotent. Yes, I would send money, but I wanted to give more. I wanted to reach across continents, oceans, and time zones, and let at least one Ukrainian family know they were not alone.
When I heard that speech from my comfortable Santa Barbara home, I wept.
I found Leona. The House of Swans is her home, one of four modestly furnished apartments she rents on Airbnb. She lives there with her 28-year-old son, a law student, and their golden retriever, Goldie.
What led me to Leona was Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb. In the first days of the war, he suspended all business with Russia and Belarus, then he announced that Airbnb would waive all fees for people booking rooms in Ukraine that they had no intention of using. This was a way to get money directly to desperate families. Within two weeks of announcing the program, 400,000 nights were booked by people from 154 countries. Chesky said, “In a world of darkness, in a world of destruction, kindness still exists in this world.”
Unfortunately, fraudsters still exist as well. Two years ago, Airbnb discontinued the fee waivers because scammers were setting up fake Ukrainian listings, many of them originating in Russia. Instead, you can now go to Airbnb.org, their fundraising arm, to host a stay or make a donation. To date, Airbnb has provided over 1.6 million free nights to displaced families and first responders in 135 countries. However, if you want your money to go directly to a Ukrainian family of your choice, the best way is to diligently vet the listing, pay the standard platform fee – whether Airbnb or a similar service – and book rooms. You can help shine a light of hope for a war-battered family trapped in a real-life nightmare.
I just booked another two weeks this month at The House of Swans, where the weather is twenty below zero and the apartment has no reliable electricity, heat or water. After a pitiful, four-day ceasefire, due to one of the most brutal winters on record, Putin returned with a vengeance – bombing, shaking, pounding the city with an aerial assault of hundreds of drones and ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles. Leona writes on the Airbnb message board, “Kyiv is facing a severe humanitarian crisis.”
I have never been to Kyiv. All my 161 visits have been virtual, with a soundtrack composed of Leona’s voice and the scores of poetic, heartsore, defiant messages we write and send in the dark. There is a ten-hour time difference, so one of us is usually under a sun-less sky. We exchange photos too. I try to send her beautiful and joyous images. Once I sent her a picture of my husband, Richard, and I, looking at stars in the night sky. She wrote back, “Hello Dear Lynn and Richard, how great it is to watch the starry night sky and not be afraid of rocket attacks, and not to think that it is the souls of those who have left this world falling into another world.”
When the war is over, I promised Leona I would book an “in the flesh” trip to Kyiv so she could share her beloved, 1,500-year-old city with this stranger who became a friend. We speak of this visit often, something to hold onto – a future in a free and peaceful Ukraine, with nothing but stars in the night sky.
In commemoration of the blood-soaked anniversary of Putin’s slaughter, with as many as 600,000 Ukrainian casualties, and 1.2 million Russian soldiers and mercenaries dead, wounded or captured, I feel compelled to give voice to what I have seen through Leona’s eyes. When I asked her if I could share some of our four-year correspondence with the good people of Santa Barbara, where Ukrainian flags still fly in proud solidarity, she immediately wrote back, “What you write about the Ukrainian people – who are fighting for their independence and their very right to live – is true and deeply just. I am endlessly grateful to you for speaking about this. Thank you for seeing us, for understanding, and for helping others see the human side of what is happening.”
“Spodivayusya, skoro pobachymosya, podruho!”
(I hope I will see you soon, friend.)
