Quartered Girl
Kharkiv, Ukraine — At the end of an endless muddy mush that very optimistically I still want to call ‘road,’ Ivan awaits me. I can meet him by exploiting a special permit he obtained after having served in the army as a shooter chosen for more than a year to allow him to look after his seriously sick father-in-law. The tessellated tires of my press car bite the last stretch of the climb, then stop smoking next to his “Lada Samara.”
Two pieces of white adhesive tape form a well-visible cross on the hood, a distinctive sign of civil cars used for military purposes in the Kharkiv region. The emblem on the dashboard with two machine guns on the sides of a sword and the writing “Украінська ДоброволЬча Армія” (Ukrainian voluntary army) underlines his patriotic and courageous choice.
The interiors are torn off, the roof is torn, the bullet holes on the sides, and the two newly replaced glass reveal the consequences. Ivan joined the great first counter-offensive by which, at the end of last summer, Ukraine resumed control of Kharkiv’s entire oblast’: first as an instructor, then as Sniper.
I asked him about which was his worst memory:
«When we freed Balaklija. Entering an elementary…
