H: Henry, I: Iryna, O: Olha
H: Does she remember my fish? [Iryna and the fish]
I: [in Ukrainian to Respondent] Do you remember that fish we brought you? It was a huge fish. That was back in ’22.
O: Honestly, I don’t remember that any more. So many people have passed through, so many things happened.
I: Oh, see, you’ve got plenty to tell then. [in English to Interviewer] You can go ahead.
V: Are there any famous local heroes that people talk about?
I: [Interpreting to Ukrainian].
O: Well, they’re all heroes to us. Every day there’s more and more of them at the Alley of Glory, at the cemetery. So… any specific stories, well, I don’t know, I just don’t know what to tell you.
I: We’ll give some examples then. [Interpreting to English]
V: Is there any that are personally important to her?
I: [Interpreting to Ukrainian].
O: Speaking of those who I personally knew – my friend’s nephew. He was working in Poland even before the war, then the war started, he came back, and in 2022 he died.
I: [Interpreting to English].
O: Even though he could’ve stayed there and this wouldn’t have happened, but… that’s how it turned out. Just a minute, can I? [Steps away to the counter to help customers].
[The Respondent returns to the table].
I: [in Ukrainian] Tell me, have you heard any stories about women here in Balakliia putting something in the Russian soldiers’ food?
O: I ain’t heard nothing like that.
I: You haven’t?
O: I ain’t heard of it, so I can’t say, ‘cause I didn’t hear it. Maybe there were cases like that, but I ain’t heard of it.
I: And did you work during the occupation here?
O: We didn’t work during the occupation. Not as a café. We rented the place somewhere around the 20th of August [2022]. We were making semi-finished products, freezing ‘em. But the power went out, so we stopped. We delivered to shops ‘cause they had refrigerators, they still had power. But as a café, we didn’t work. Well, and then literally two weeks later, it was liberation. And that’s it. After the liberation – yeah, we were the first ones to start working. As a café already, ‘cause the boys wanted something hot to eat. So, we started working as a café.
I: Great. [Interpreting to English].
V: Did she get to meet Patron the dog when he visited town?
I: [Interpreting to Ukrainian].
O: No, personally I didn’t – he was here on the square, lots of kids went there. Personally, no, we worked without no days off. So I only know Pes Patron from photos.
I: Did they tell you anything interesting about him?
O: Interesting? Well, the kids were happy, taking photos.
I: Great! [Interpreting to English].
V: Does she hear people still telling stories about Patron the dog in town? Or was it more interesting when he was actually here?
I: [Interpreting into Ukrainian].
O: I reckon the topic is quieting down a bit now. Well, at least maybe among the kids he’s still popular, ‘cause he’s that kind of character for them. There was a time when Patron was real big, but then it kind of all died down.
I: And what do people talk about? Maybe there’s some kind of semi-mystical character. Maybe someone did something that’s hard to believe?
O: I don’t know. [laughs].
I: Someone, I don’t know, stole a tank from the russians, something like that?
O: Well, they wrote about the gypsies back then.
I: About the gypsies, right.
O: Just a minute. [Steps away to the customers].
*** ***
I: The gypsy story?
V: Yes, yes, please.
I: [in Ukrainian] Can you tell us the story in your own words about the gypsies who stole the tank?
O: I only read about it in the papers, on the news.
I: We’re just curious to know how folks in different regions and oblasts of Ukraine see this story.
O: I don’t even remember which city it was, or maybe it was some settlement. A tank was sitting there, fuel ran out or something, and they went off to buy or get some more. And while they were away getting the fuel, the gypsies stole the tank. That’s what I heard, I don’t know anything else. That’s what was written, so… I don’t even remember, maybe it was near Kyiv, I don’t even know.
I: [Interpreting to English]. [in Ukrainian to Respondent] And did you hear that story – someone told me, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but maybe you heard – about how Ukrainians saw two russian tanks at a gas station somewhere near Kyiv? And then a whole column of russian tanks was following behind them, and these two were out on reconnaissance or something. And then, while they were at the station, the Ukrainians put a Ukrainian flag on those tanks. The column thought they were Ukrainian tanks and they started shooting at each other. Heard anythin’ like that?
O: No, we ain’t heard that. Though, it could be.
I: Could be?
O: Yeah, I reckon it could be.
I: Someone told me about that, probably back in ’22, one of the soldiers. I don’t know how true it is, ‘cause I didn’t hear anything like that after.
O: I ain’t heard it.
I: And here during the occupation, did anything like that happen? Did people do anything creative?
O: Well, as for creative, folks would call and tip off where they [russians] were living. And then they [the Ukrainian Army] would “creatively” strike there. Other than that, what? Everyone was in fear. They had guns, and the people didn’t, so anything could happen. But folks would tip off where they lived, where they set up their headquarters, where their tech was parked. They passed that to our boys.
I: Did they use radios, or by phone, or how did they do it?
O: By phone, and they had their own passwords.
I: Interesting.
O: Yeah, all that stuff happened.
I: Were there any Ukrainian soldiers undercover here, maybe with some russian–
O: I don’t know about that. Probably not. If there were… Just a minute. [Steps away to the customers]
[The Respondent returns].
V: Does she use social media? I feel like a lot of these come from social media.
I: [Interpreting to Ukrainian].
O: Facebook, Instagram, Telegram.
I: [Interpreting to English].
V: Does she still see memes about things like Patron the dog, or the Ghost of Kyiv?
I: [Interpreting to Ukrainian]
O: Can’t really remember off the top of my head.
I: Maybe there’s already something new? About the grandma with the sunflowers.
O: [laughing] I don’t know. No, nothing like that, no more. I don’t know. You get so buried in work here that… you just scroll through the news to see what’s happened in the world and the country. I got no time. We’re working practically without no days off. And there’s so many people now. The boys… they’re already moving them here from [Redacted] and [Redacted].
I: Because it’s gettin’ hit hard over there?
O: Yeah, yeah. So we got a lot of military folks now. Even if they’re sitting here in the hall not in uniform, they’re soldiers.
I: And what percentage of people here are military now?
O: Of the population?
I: Yes. Of the population.
O: I don’t know what percentage, but if you’re driving, it’s one civilian car for every five military ones in town.
I: Seriously? Wow, that’s a lot. We noticed that too, but we thought maybe it was just some event…
O: You just came late. If you’d come at [Redacted], there’d be six or seven soldiers sittin’ at every table.
I: [Interpreting to English].
V: That’s interesting.
*** ***
I: I thought they were just teenagers.
O: They’re military.
I: These are all military? [Translating to English].
O: They got orders now to not walk around in uniform. ‘Cause anyway, there’s all sorts of people among us. They gotta blend in.
I: [Translating to English].
V: I’ve seen a lot of people in camouflage today.
I: [in Ukrainian to Respondent] There were many people in uniform today, we saw. Are they just passing through? Or do they stay here?
O: They come in, if they’re passing through, they stop here to eat. Many boys from the villages come into town for the post office, to the shops. To buy some clothes, groceries – lots of them come to eat.
I: Do they tell anything interesting from the front?
O: Well, we don’t ask much about that, ‘cause they got their own orders. Not to tell. Where they are, who they listen to, what and how. So yeah. But like, joking around, then yeah. They flirt with the girls. [laughs]
I: [laughs] There must be queues for the girls then.
V: [in English to Interpreter] Can you ask her why she decided to stay here and open the café after occupation?
I: [in Ukrainian] Why did you decide to stay in Balakliya and didn’t leave? How did it happen that you opened the café?
O: We didn’t leave ‘cause the kids live in Kharkiv, in Saltivka – if you know it, that’s where it all started. Both of the kids have apartments here. I figured at least some housing might remain here, but over there in Saltivka, so much of it’s destroyed. My brother’s nine-story building got hit – five direct hits, they tore the whole building down. A nine-story building, just leveled.
So we stayed to maybe save at least some housing. ‘Cause they [the russians] would move in, carry everything out of the house, and stuff like that. Second, we didn’t have no, how to say, manuals on how to act or what’d happen next. And nobody thought in ’22 that this’d be for long and end like this. And later they closed the city, then no one could leave. And besides, I had an aunt here who couldn’t walk, I had to bring her groceries. Then my daughter’s classmate’s grandma and grandpa – also in their 80s – I brought them food too. Then here, by the building, there was a 90-year-old grandma – I’d go and feed her too.
I: They said about her that she poisoned russian soldiers.
O: I don’t know. I do not know. I can’t say that. So we stayed, it was already impossible to leave. At first, the kids from Kharkiv came here, they were with us until March 15th. Only on March 15th did they leave here. I promised them we’d leave too, but I knew… where would we go?
I: [Translating to English]. [in Ukrainian] And how did you open this place?
O: We started doing this from home: cabbage rolls, dumplings, pierogies – freezing them. At home we have refrigerators, obviously, but they don’t hold [unclear]. Delivered them to the shops, ‘cause there were lots of men who stayed in town. Lots of old folks stayed and they needed something to eat. And it was summer, it was super hot, and nobody brought semi-finished products like that here. Even though they went to Kupyansk for goods, it was so hot nobody brought that. So we started it at home. In literally a week, one-three shops started buying our stuff. We got to the point where seven shops were buying from us. We delivered food to all the ones that were still working in town. Well, and we started this [café] ‘cause I was going stir-crazy, sitting in the basement for six months. I had to distract myself somehow, ‘cause the “hatch was starting to leak” [Note: A local idiom meaning ‘to lose one’s mind’].
I: And then you opened [Redacted] and you made semi-finished products here and just delivered them.
O: Yeah, and sent them to the shops too. And when the liberation happened, we didn’t have power for a month after. Everything was destroyed, after all.
I: Yeah, I remember, there was a generator.
O: We were without a generator.
I: Yeah, I mean that huge one on the square.
O: Yeah, that one was there. But we were frying pies back then. Sunday, maybe the town was closed for two weeks – no one in, no one out. There was a filtration process. They didn’t bring anything in, no food. So with what we had, we fried pies with strawberry jam. [laughs] Probably nobody’s ever eaten that. Baked ones, sure, but fried! As soon as the power came back, the boys started to stop by, they were still going further to liberate Shevchenkove, Kupyansk. And that’s how it all started.
I: [Translating to English].
H: [in English] You know what I loved the most about the very beginning for your restaurant? You would have a menu, and it would be on cardboard. You would just write it out.
I: [Interpreting to Ukrainian]. [in Ukrainian] That was very convenient. We remember that. We arrived on the first day [after the de-occupation in 2022], hungry and cold. It was a very long drive. And we didn’t know what [Redacted] was at all. [Redacted] brought us here. And we saw those meat pies. I think we bought everything you had then. And they just disappeared in no time. There were four of us, we ate ‘em all at once, a whole bag. [laughs] It was so delicious!
O: Even though me and two friends started this, none of us did this before the war. Everyone worked in different fields, nobody did this.
I: And do the three of you still work together now?
O: No, one left, but out of the three of us who started, the two of us are still going.
I: [Translating to English].
V: Did they struggle with getting more materials, like flour, eggs, and things like that?
I: Recently?
V: No, at the start.
I: [Interpreting to Ukrainian].
O: By then they were already bringing stuff from Kupyansk. They were bringing us flour already. There were still people at the market back then, trading meat, so we’d get it and bring it here. They brought cheese, and we made crepes with cheese. As fore cabbage, in the summer there was cabbage for “Holubtsi” [the cabbage rolls]. So the flour was already being brought from Kupyansk then. They started bringing it from Kupyansk maybe in June. Maybe in May that year, I don’t remember. In March, in April [2022], there were real big problems. While at the beginning of March the bakeries still had some flour left and they were still baking, later the flour ran out. At home we didn’t have… we weren’t used to having big sacks of flour or sugar. A kilo of flour, a kilo of sugar in the house – that’s it. And when the kids arrived, and we ran out of bread, we posted in the local group that we’d trade 10 liters of diesel for 10 kilos of flour. We traded.
I: Seriously?
O: Yeah.
I: And who did you trade with like that?
O: Well, people had flour – them who were more of a hoarder than me. And we had diesel, ‘cause our car ran on diesel. Well, you had to feed the people somehow. [laughs].
I: [Translating to English].
[Interview ends as a large amount of customers enter]
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