“My friend’s grandmother loves that braid. It reminds her of villages in the Carpathians,” Nadezhda said. Neither of us could decide if the long blonde plait that Yulia wrapped around her head was real or a hairpiece. Near the top of the hill, we forgot about the braid, faced again with a massive crowd. As we penetrated farther into it, I saw no other women.
We pushed and jostled our way to the front of the crowd and reached a human blockade. It stretched one very long block deep, from the main intersection, down Bankova Street, past the Writer’s Union to the presidential administration. Young guys stood, arms linked, stretched across the street, tens, if not hundreds of rows deep, illuminated by the yellow glow of streetlights.
“Let us through, we want to see what’s happening,” Nadezhda shouted at one of the guys.
He shook his head, “No one’s allowed past.”
“We’re accredited journalists,” Nadezhda insisted. She pulled out her press card.
The young man shook his head again, “It’s too dangerous.”
“What’s going on?”
“The order’s been given to send troops in,” he said. I saw no troops, but this militant atmosphere and mood of grim determination signalled major change.
“Nadezhda!” someone shouted. We turned and saw six young guys, one a distant relative of hers, all from out of town and camped in her living room.
“Tell your friends to let us through,” she fumed. They apologized but refused. The well-organized blockade held firm. Nadezhda relented.
We walked in the other direction, toward the Council of Ministers building, a few blocks away. I checked my watch under a streetlight — 1:25 a.m.
We heard drummers before we reached the building. They lined a leafy park embankment across the street. Their beat sounded like a celebration.
“Why is everyone so happy?” I asked a group of smiling young women outside the Council of Ministers building.
“They’ve pulled back the troops,” one of them yelled over the sound of the drums. It was tense back there but a party here. I wondered whose information was correct.
One thin line of students guarded the building. I bumped into an American acquaintance who was still working in Kiev. Well-connected and a trustworthy source, she confirmed that troops had been pulled back.
In the morning, Marta and I woke late and rushed half a block down the road to the tent city. One of Marta’s colleagues from the National University of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy planned to let us in. Guards who surrounded the camp perimeter stopped us. They stood on slabs of Styrofoam, which insulated their feet from the cold. They dispatched a student to find Marta’s colleague. She arrived and vouched for us. The guards stamped our hands and let us through.
The tent city was long and stretched down several blocks of Khreshchatyk. We entered the Kyiv-Mohyla section, near Independence Square. Students operated in shifts that lasted from three to ten hours. A donation of large tents had just arrived. Everyone discussed how best to pitch them and looked forward to better conditions.
“We’ll be able to stand,” one of the students enthused as we hunched close together under the low roof of a pup tent. “Heaters should fit inside.” Already damp and a little chilled at minus 3 degrees Celsius, I became nearly as excited as him. As we left, a student who passed by us thrust squares of Styrofoam into our hands.
“Stand on them,” he ordered Marta and me, “or else you’ll come down with the flu.” We moved on, handed our Styrofoam to a cold-looking nineteen-year-old, and then bumped into the cough drop and vitamin brigade.
“Please, save them for others, we’re just visiting,” I insisted. The two young women — more determined than us — shovelled cough drops and vitamins into our pockets and waited until we swallowed some.
“Illness is a big problem for us,” Marta’s colleague explained. “They’re taking every precaution to keep people healthy.”
“Only a dozen people showed up today,” one of the students said. “Some of us have been out here for ten days. We’re getting tired and sick. We need a break.”
Others worried about falling behind in their studies. I thought of Senad in Sarajevo and how he had said the siege had cheated him of time. Corrupt as the election here might have been, I felt thankful these students would not face war.
As we spoke, I heard the clang of metal hitting pavement. I turned and saw a crew that shovelled garbage. Marta and I said goodbye and walked a short distance away from Independence Square, down Khreshchatyk and farther into the camp, in the direction of the Bessarabskyi Market. We met some young women outside a tent, who offered us tea and orange candies.
Refreshed, we continued our walk. We passed by a huge orange-coloured Christmas tree and a prayer tent that also contained sacks of food and then reached a building identified as command headquarters. A sign that said Do Not Enter was posted on it. We could go no farther, so we turned back and moved toward Independence Square. Soon we reached a Styrofoam wall.
“What’s beyond this?” I asked one of the students.
“Headquarters for another section of the camp,” he said. We had reached the end of Kyiv-Mohyla territory. It was well organized, with a military-like structure.
Marta and I were in her apartment when we heard the good news. She monitored TV broadcasts while I worked on Toronto assignments in the kitchen. She shouted, “Susan, they’ve done it. The Supreme Court ruled in favour of a repeat election.”
“The square!” I yelled back. I had already pulled on my coat and boots.
“Go ahead without me,” Marta said, scribbling furiously in her notebook, “I want to hear the rest of this newscast, then I’ll join you.”
I emerged from her courtyard into a street packed with people. One man beamed and then shouted “There is a God!” People streamed into the square. I joined them, buoyed by all the energy and excitement.
Somehow, Marta found me a short while later. We stood shoulder to shoulder as we were nearly the same height. We squeezed closer each minute as more people poured into the square. Soon no space remained and the adjacent streets were just as crammed. Yushchenko came on stage. He called the judges who issued the ruling “heroes.”
“From today Ukraine is a democratic country,” he said. People in the square roared. Everyone looked so proud. More people spoke. When darkness fell, fireworks illuminated the night sky, with bursts of colours that trailed down to the ground. Some reflected on faces turned toward the sky.
The next day I went for a walk to test the mood in the city. The square, so full this past week, was now nearly empty. I crossed through it to the post office on the other side of Khreshchatyk and entered a café inside the building. As I waited for coffee, I overheard a conversation between women about the outgoing president:
“He’s sly,” one of them said.
“He’ll find a way of cheating Yushchenko again,” her friend replied.
I left the café and walked down Khreshchatyk. The tent city still stretched down the street. It looked more entrenched than before. Young guys wove pieces of wood between wire to create a fence around the camp perimeter. I walked up the hill toward the presidential administration and found the atmosphere there more militant than on Khreshchatyk. Protesters blockaded the street with a checkpoint. Flags fluttered in the breeze. They raised a rickety homemade barrier so some cars could pass but blocked others. Tents multiplied, the air even smokier now from more fires in metal drums. Even though the court had ruled in favour of Yushchenko, these protesters still expected they might be tricked. They said they would not go home until new elections had been held.
They would not relax, but I did now. I took a day off to visit Mary’s riding club. We passed near a wealthy enclave as we drove out to the club. “That’s where the presidential administration is holed up,” Mary said.