Ukrainian War Diary (103): Improvising in the Dark with Daniel

I saw him for the first time in August 2020 at Potsdamer Platz, he also took part in the demonstrations organized by my Belarusian acquaintances. Although my trips to Belarus up to now have been limited to the Berlin-Kyiv train journey in the 1990s and the 15-minute stop in Minsk, I felt the need to be a part of these protests.

In recent weeks, news of the often violent events in Minsk was strongly reminiscent of Ukraine’s Maidan revolution, although Belarusians claimed their protests, unlike those in the neighboring country, were peaceful and should have remained so.

I didn’t speak to Daniel at the time and I can’t remember exactly who of us added whom on Facebook. For a long time I was sure that he would belong to the Belarusian diaspora living in Berlin and was surprised when I saw his posts in Ukrainian last year. You could tell that Ukrainian is not his everyday language, but he still made a conscious decision to use it.

That sounded familiar to me – a few years ago I made it my goal to reply in Ukrainian to everyone who writes to me in Ukrainian, although I haven’t actually spoken it since moving to Germany. The language was still there, just hiding somewhere in my head and felt a bit rusty at first.

It turned out that Daniel, like me, is from Kharkiv. In 1989, when he was 14, his family left Ukraine and emigrated to Israel, 20 years later he moved to Berlin. In May 2022 he wrote to me. He is an actor, he said and asked if I could recommend projects with Ukrainian theater makers. “I have to do something in this direction, I can’t think of anything else right now,” his message ended.

I put Daniel through to someone and then didn’t hear from him again until he got back in touch at the end of October – this time with the idea of ​​holding theater improvisation workshops in Kharkiv. That sounded crazy, but also nice, but I hardly knew any theater people who would have stayed in their hometown.

I heard from him again in early January. He read about my trip to Kharkiv and wanted to know if I went via Przemysl or if there was a better connection. His workshops will be held in Kyiv and Kharkiv at the end of January, I found out from Daniel, and he still has space in his luggage – if I want to send something to Ukraine, he’s happy to take it with him. I was actually grateful to him for this offer. Because on my trip to Ukraine in December I didn’t manage to fit everything I got from friends and acquaintances into my suitcase.

Earlier in the week Daniel came to see me and was given a bag of power banks, flashlights and batteries. We chatted briefly and it turned out that during his time in Kharkiv he lived in Saltivka, the district that was shelled harder than any other last year. I showed him pictures I took there a month ago on my cell phone.

We chatted this morning. In the meantime he has arrived in Kyiv, his workshops are well attended, he reported, but sometimes the electricity was switched off and the participants had to improvise in the dark, which was funny. In addition, there is no warm water in the apartment where he stays, ice-cold showers in winter are pretty bad. On the 26th we continue to Kharkiv. He has not been there since 1989. I wish him the best of luck and that many people come to his workshops in his hometown too.

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