by Susan Viets
“I don’t have visas for any of those countries,” she said.
“Well, let’s just see what happens,” I replied.
I bought Charlotte a ticket to Uzbekistan with no request from the agent to see a visa. Booking into Central Asian hotels was just as easy. Woohooo! That’s what I felt as we journeyed thousands of miles across several time zones for mere dollars and with no trouble. I had never felt so free. When we arrived back in Kiev, Charlotte did not want to leave but had to return home for university exams. She would travel to Bucharest (via Chisinau), where she would catch her flight for London. We discussed her travel plans in my kitchen.
“I’ll accompany you as far as Chisinau,” I told her.
“Really,” she shouted from the top of a stepladder. “That would be lovely.” She wore a brightly coloured stripy silk nightgown and draped reams of the same material over curtain rods mounted over the balcony door. The material was a souvenir from our Central Asia trip.
“Much better,” she said as she climbed down the ladder and eyed her makeshift drapes. I no longer thought of Charlotte as competition from Romania. She was one of us and I wanted to help her get home to England.
“When’s your flight?” I asked.
“I’ll double-check, but I think it’s next Wednesday,” she said.
“It might be easiest to take the train to Odessa and catch a taxi from there for Chisinau. Will you be all right the rest of the way to Bucharest on your own?” She said yes and we agreed on this plan.
Over the next few days, I checked the wires for news from Moldova and saw nothing of note. We planned our trip with time for interviews in Chisinau. A few days before Charlotte’s flight from Bucharest, we boarded the overnight Kiev-Odessa express. We arrived in Odessa on schedule the next morning. We slid our cabin door open, walked along the narrow train corridor and climbed down a short set of metal steps to the platform.
I found a taxi driver near the station entrance.
“Odessa-Chisinau, how much?” I asked.
“Fifty dollars,” the driver replied.
“What!” I thought a normal rate might be ten. I interrogated him but obtained no specific information that could justify such a big jump in price. The next driver I approached refused to take us to Moldova. Several others also said no. I suspected they did not want the hassle of crossing a border. I negotiated with the first driver. We eventually agreed on a forty-dollar fare.
Our taciturn driver ignored our attempts to start a conversation with him. Charlotte and I sat and chatted in the back seat. We watched countryside fly by as we sped along the road, over the border into Trans-Dniester. We reached Tiraspol quickly. The driver stopped at a local Intourist hotel.
“Why have we stopped here?” I asked.
“This is as far as I’ll go.”
“But we negotiated a fare to Chisinau.”
“You can catch another taxi from here.” I felt my jaw tighten and my pulse rate quicken. I translated for Charlotte.
“Whaat! It’s not that much farther on. He’s only got to get us across the bridge and go on for a bit.” I argued with the driver. He would not budge and demanded the fare. He had already put our bags on the sidewalk near the hotel entrance.
“It’s no use,” I told Charlotte. “Let’s just get another car.” We reluctantly paid the driver. He sped off. We looked for a taxi, but the streets by the hotel seemed deserted.
“Shall we check in here tonight and leave for Chisinau tomorrow?” Charlotte suggested. I agreed.
“I wonder if they have a decent restaurant,” Charlotte mumbled. I asked the woman at the reception desk for a room.
“Impossible,” she replied. “It’s not safe here. You might be shot.”
“Shot?”
“The front line is just over there,” she said and pointed at the Dniester River.
“There’s actual fighting now?”
“Yes, snipers fire across the river.”
“It seems perfectly safe to me,” Charlotte said. We both suspected the receptionist was exaggerating but she insisted that we sleep at a different hotel a few blocks back from the river. We picked up our bags and walked to the next hotel.
“Cossacks,” Charlotte said, as we stood by the check-in desk. I turned and saw mismatched uniforms.
“Just our luck,” Charlotte added. “Trapped in a hotel with fifty drunk Cossacks.” After dark, we went down to the restaurant for dinner, but the door was locked. A sign said Closed for Curfew. We banged on the door. When a waiter arrived, he agreed to sell us bread and cheese for dollars. We ate this small picnic on our saggy hotel beds, then went to sleep.
“Wake up.” I felt Charlotte shake my shoulder. “Did you hear that?” I listened for a minute, then heard the pop of a gun, less distinctive than Grozny gunfire, but someone was shooting.
“We need to take cover,” Charlotte said. She slid under the bed. I felt no adrenaline rush.
“Come on,” Charlotte urged. I crawled under my bed.
“Snipers?” Charlotte asked.
“Who knows,” I said. “It might just be some Cossack celebration.”
“Those shots came from the direction of the river. They’re fighting,” Charlotte insisted. We waited until the gunfire stopped and then climbed back into our beds, Charlotte’s white nightgown now speckled with dust. The gunfire started again. We slid under the beds. Once it was quiet again, we got back into them. After an hour of this, we both gave up and stayed in bed.
Charlotte woke first in the morning.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here,” she said. We packed our bags, paid the bill and stood outside the hotel. We flagged down cars.
“Chisinau?” the first driver snorted. “I’d never make it there alive.” We stood on the street for nearly an hour but could not find a driver who would take us.
“You don’t think we’re stuck here do you?” Charlotte asked. We returned to the hotel reception desk and asked to check back in.
“Why, you just checked out?” the receptionist said. When she heard our story, she said “Of course. No one will go to Moldova. It’s dangerous.” Go to Moldova? We are in Moldova, I thought, but kept quiet. I still wanted a room. Pointing out that no government recognized Transdniestrian independence might mean eviction.
“But you don’t understand,” Charlotte said. “I have to cross for a London flight. I’ll lose my ticket and I can’t afford another. I’ll miss my exams. This is academic D-day. These are my final exams. My degree’s at stake.” The receptionist shrugged her shoulders and handed us a key.
After we had checked back in, we heard about funeral services in the main square for Cossacks who had been killed and decided to attend. We left the hotel and walked toward the square.
“Bizarre,” Charlotte said as a military vehicle – an armoured car, I guessed – passed by. It looked like a fortified garden shed on wheels.
“That must be home made,” I said. I felt worried by this escalation. We had only seen guns before.
“I think they’re gearing up for a fight. Why don’t you come back to Kiev and catch a flight from there?” I suggested to Charlotte.
“I can’t.” Like a homing pigeon, Charlotte remained determined to find a way over the river, through Moldova and back to Romania.
In the square, people stood by open coffins. We saw two. The bodies of young men lay inside. Men with megaphones chanted anti-Moldovan slogans. One shouted that changes in the alphabet from Cyrillic to Roman letters would be the first step by the Moldovan government to merge Moldova with Romania. An elderly woman came up to Charlotte and me. She said, “How can I learn a new alphabet at my age?” I sympathized but thought there must be a better way to resolve such conflict than with guns.
The next day passed slowly. We went to see the general in charge of Russian forces based in Trans-Dniester. General Lebed was a giant of a man. I shook his hand and guessed it must be three times the size of mine. We tried to extract information on how Russian forces
planned to respond to the escalating conflict. Charlotte also explained her predicament of not being able find a way over to the Chisinau side. General Lebed joked that he planned to attack the next day and that we could have a lift over in his tank.
With so much time on our hands, we’d even become friendly with the Cossacks in our hotel. We spent the evening with them. They played their guitars and sang songs for us. Their words became increasingly slurred as they tanked up on moonshine.
The next morning, we visited government offices, hopeful there might now be an open route across the Dniester River so that we could reach Chisinau. As we approached one building, a bus pulled up alongside it. A Cossack who stood near us said the bus would travel to Dubasari. We knew that a bridge there crossed the Dniester, but no one knew if this bridge remained open. The Cossack boarded the bus. We followed.
Women sat in some of the front seats. We moved down the aisle to empty seats near the back. Once we had settled in and looked around, we realized that all the other passengers were Cossacks.
“They’re armed!” Charlotte said. “Should we get off?” I hesitated. A broad woman, who was at least six feet tall, came on to the bus. She stood by the driver in her fur coat, the fibres long and matted in spots. The engine idled, the door remained open. This woman held a large gold crucifix. She raised her arms and blessed the bus.
“The Don Cossack mother,” a Cossack who sat nearby told us. Mother left the bus. The door slammed shut and we rumbled down the road.
“Susan, should we ask to get off?” Charlotte said, more insistent now. I hesitated again and then walked to the front of the bus.
“Please stop and let us off,” I said to the driver.
“It’s dangerous. I can’t,” he replied. “Get back, stay out of sight.” As I turned to walk back, I saw that a Cossack was now sitting in my seat. He flirted with Charlotte. He leaned forward and showed her something that I could not yet see. He moved when I came back.
“Bloody hell,” Charlotte said. “They have grenades.” I looked and saw the Cossack holding one in his hand, a small green metal pineapple with a pin on top. He rolled it across his palm. Then he threw the grenade, like a baseball, over our heads. His friends joined in this game of catch. Charlotte and I watched in terror. How long could it possibly be before a Cossack missed, the grenade crashed to the floor, the pin dislodged and then, kaboom.
Mikhail came back and told the men to put the grenade away and pull the bus curtains shut. Most had done so long ago.
“Moldovan snipers fire along these banks,” Mikhail said. “You girls will be much safer if you sit down there.” Charlotte and I slid off our seats onto the floor, where he pointed. Someone gave us rolls of white bandages and said, “In case you’re hit.” We sat eye level with Cossack knees and held our bandages. Common sense now returned to me. I felt ashamed at the lack of it earlier and that I willingly remained on this bus ride for crazy people.
“They can’t shoot at journalists,” Charlotte said. “We should make signs.” With a plan, no matter how unrealistic, we felt in control again. We dug into our bags for pens and paper and made signs that said Press in English, French and Russian.
Charlotte stood up to affix the signs on the bus windows with bandage tape. The Cossacks ordered her down. I felt the bus lurch sharply right, away from the river. The Cossacks parted the curtains a few inches and peered out. Then they pulled the curtains wide open. I saw treetops and blue sky. We had pulled back from the river front line.
Mikhail came back for a visit. “We’ll be at the headquarters in five minutes,” he said.
When we arrived, we went inside and learned that the bridge was closed. There was no route to cross over here. Discouraged, we asked about transport back to Tiraspol. Mikhail volunteered to help us find a ride. We followed him out of the headquarters and onto a nearby road. He stood in the middle of it, with a Kalashnikov hanging from his shoulder. Cars stopped, but not for long.
“He looks threatening with his Kalashnikov, but he’s far too polite to use it,” Charlotte said. “Just look at that. He’s asking all those drivers if they’ll give us a lift. They say no and then he just says okay then!” Eventually we gave up and went back to the headquarters. As we approached, we saw a taxi parked outside. We asked the driver if he knew a safe road to Tiraspol.
“The back highway is open,” he said
“There’s an interior road that doesn’t face the river?” I asked. He shrugged and said, “Of course.” I was angry at the Cossacks and now realized that ride had been a test. The Cossacks wanted to show they could drive along the front line, that they still controlled this side. We had taken an unnecessary risk. I still felt ashamed that I did not get us off the bus as Charlotte suggested. We negotiated a fare with the taxi driver for Tiraspol and drove back in silence.
When we reached the hotel, we bumped into a Japanese camera crew. The cameraman knew a route over the river. The crew had a Jeep and offered Charlotte a lift. We parted company. I headed back to my side in Kiev. Charlotte would soon leave for hers. The Cossacks stayed in Trans-Dniester, defending what they considered was Slav land from the Moldovans.
Such turf battles extended to business, and this is what now occupied me in Ukraine. State companies were being privatized. I spent most of May investigating deals and trying to understand the complicated transactions occurring over who would control key infrastructure like pipelines that carried gas from Russia through Ukraine to Europe. I had no time to track anything else, so I was caught off guard by a battle in the Transdniestrian town Bendery in June. I decided to take a break from investigating business deals so that I could go to Bendery.
When I reached Bendery, the fighting was over. About three hundred people, including civilians, had been killed. The sun shone brightly. Russian troops had secured a buffer zone. People who lived in no man’s land wandered around. They looked for bottled water, lined up to buy bread and gossiped about the latest events. Tanks were scattered around their neighbourhood with hatches opened. Soldiers squatted or sat on the ground nearby. Everyone looked relaxed. I spoke to many people who had been present during the battle. None was hurt or lost family members or friends.
As I chatted with one man, soldiers in the distance threw sacks onto an open-back truck. The sacks looked odd but so did the entire neighbourhood. The man said, “Such a pity,” and pointed at the truck. I looked and focused my attention. Then I realized the soldiers loaded dead bodies onto the truck. The bodies lay stacked in neat rows. I could not believe this conflict between “us” and “them” had become so lethal. I stared at a truck full of bagged corpses and felt nothing. I saw tanks and guns and soldiers; spent cartridges littered the ground. These empty shells may have housed bullets that killed some of those people. I picked up one of the brass cartridges and put it in my pocket. Maybe if I looked at it later I would respond properly to these horrifying events. For now, none of this seemed real.
9
SHOPPING AND A CIVIL WAR
“This doesn’t look good,” I warned Charlotte. We stood at the Aeroflot desk in Boryspil airport.
“Your flight’s delayed,” the attendant said.
“For how long?” I asked.
“Who knows?” she replied. “Yesterday no flights took off – no fuel.” Charlotte and I shuffled back to our seats in the departure lounge.
“How can she not know when the plane will take off?” Charlotte asked. She had arrived back in Kiev in September, a month earlier, and decided to join me on this trip. It would be my last before leaving Kiev to begin a new job in London at the BBC. The Financial Times had commissioned Charlotte to write a piece about shopping in Central Asia. I was on holiday, but planned to use the trip to build contacts that would be useful for my London job.
“It’s been bad since independence but never quite this bad. Russia’s selling Ukraine a lot less fuel now. Corruption doesn’t help. One official here sold a shipment for Ukraine’s air force on the black market.”
> “And pocketed the proceeds?” Charlotte guessed. I nodded. “The pilots didn’t have any fuel to fly, so they spent their time playing soccer on the runways.” We chatted about what we would do when we landed in Tashkent and reminisced about our last Central Asian shopping spree.
“I turned all that silk into seat covers,” Charlotte said. I envied her domestic skills. I had copied her and staggered out with bag loads of silk from that musty Tashkent market store, but most of the silk sat untouched in my cupboard.
“I don’t usually like shopping, but I’ve become an addict. I think it’s all those years living under Communism with nothing but bare shop shelves,” I told her. I was worried about the ongoing delay, so I went back to the counter to check on our flight status.
The woman at the information desk suggested that we fly to the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, instead of Tashkent.
“How far is Bishkek from Tashkent?”
“Nearly six hundred kilometres.”
“The road conditions?”
“Girl, I work for an airline, how should I know?” She had a point. After so many journeys on potholed roads that disappeared into ruts I felt skeptical about the possibility of a decent connection between these capitals. Still, Bishkek, the site of a political meeting, did eventually feature on our itinerary and the Aeroflot woman seemed confident that the Bishkek flight, scheduled to take off at 1:15 p.m., would fly. The tickets cost the equivalent of a few dollars each so that even on our limited budgets we could afford to buy tickets for that flight and for every other flight leaving for any Central Asian destination over the next few days.
Someone’s information was not very good. At check-in that afternoon, the Aeroflot woman said, with no hint of an apology, “that flight is cancelled. The only one leaving before 8 p.m. is the flight to Leningrad.” Defeated, we gave up and went home. A pizza delivery service had recently opened in Kiev. I thought that fresh pizza would be some consolation for a wasted day with no food at the airport.
