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.