Ortigia, the Sea, and War
by Natalia A. Feduschak
Ortigia, Sicily—The wind hurls waves onto the rocks beneath me with its intoxicating rhythm, as the sea exhales bursts of salty mist.
The sun is tranquillo, as on most days. It is ever-present, like the blue, turquoise, coral green-with-hints-of-white sea. I have sat on this rock in different seasons, lost in the worlds of Archimedes and the Byzantines, who lived on these shores. Today, as it did on many other days over the last two months, the rhythmic shum, shum, shum of the sea reminds me of Russia’s rockets over Mariupol and Azovstal, over Kharkiv, over Kyiv...
Staring at the magnificent sea, I still find it hard to process the agony caused by one man, whose name I won’t say because my loathing for him and all those who support him are so great. The sea these days gives way to the constant dull pain I see and feel but cannot fully comprehend because the war oftentimes seems unreal. When the sun and the waves become too much, I take my lime-colored Italian-made-since-I-refuse-to-buy-Chinese-because-Beijing-supports-Moscow fisherman’s chair and head back to my apartment, gripped by the stories of war that I have read and shared sitting on the rock.
At home here in Ortigia, the 14-month-old is better now, calmed by Ukrainian and Russian songs and daily walks along the sea. When they first arrived, the immigration officer whispered, “The mother and child are stressed.” Of course, they were stressed. The blast of the first Russian bomb over Kyiv on February 24, 2022, changed their world. Within 30 minutes, the father, mother, and child left the Ukrainian capital. Days later, mother and child walked across the border into Poland (“Women openly breastfed children just to calm them,” the mother said, shocked), then spent weeks waiting for the rest of us to arrive.
The child’s grandmother and great-grandfather spent nearly three weeks in a Kyiv basement until they were finally convinced to leave the Ukrainian capital. I arrived in Krakow, Poland, several days after their hours-long bus journey, easy compared to what others endured. Meanwhile, they saw more of the city than they ever thought to see. “I always wanted to visit Krakow,” the grandmother, a chemical engineer, told me. “Now, it holds no interest.”
The day after we arrived in Ortigia, the 86-year-old great-grandfather, plagued with health issues, said, “If I die here, cremate me. One day, you’ll take my ashes home.”
Ortigia was not to have been the place of refuge from a cruel and unprovoked Russian war against Ukraine. My husband and I first visited this place many years ago at the recommendation of a friend, a well-known Ukrainian-Jewish journalist, when I was in search of “La Dolce Vita.” One glimpse of the blue sky and sea, sun-drenched houses, and my husband said, “Here, we can live.”
In the past, I would have thrilled walking along my street in Ortigia, ostensibly named for the olive mills that comprised a principal trade in the area. My home is in Giudecca, Ortigia’s ancient Jewish quarter, home, according to Italian researchers, to the oldest Jewish ritual baths of the Byzantine era in Europe. Apparently, in the 7th century, Ortigia’s first synagogue was located on my street.
Jews also live in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, my other home; the first indication of them residing there dates to the 10th century. A letter signed by Kyiv’s Jews in 930 was included in the historic Cairo Geniza. (A geniza is a temporary repository for worn-out or damaged sacred Hebrew-language books and manuscripts before their burial).
According to another book I read, there was once a thriving lemon trade between Sicily and the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, now home to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees. I’ve thought of that trade when I purchase lemons from my regular vendor here at the local bazaar, although learning more about it doesn’t hold the interest it once might have.
Some nights staring at the haze of lanterns that line the boardwalk on my tiny sliver of the Ionian Sea, I imagine I am in Lviv. The lanterns here resemble those at Lviv’s Ivan Franko Park, named after the great Ukrainian writer, located across the street from the city’s famed university. Since its founding in 1661, the university has produced many brilliant European and Ukrainian minds, including Raphael Lemkin, father of the term ‘genocide,’ and Hersch Lauterpacht, who first wrote about ‘crimes against humanity.’
While Ukraine lives through its own tragedy, Ortigia is preparing for a blockbuster summer after two terrible years of Covid. Wiped-down chairs have been brought onto the street from inside stale restaurants. Buildings are getting new coats of paint. Tourists are turning red under the sun.
The people in this corner of Sicily deserve good fortune. Many lost livelihoods during the pandemic. Yet, when Russia’s aggression started, Italy, which is still learning from its 20th-century dance with fascism, has, for now, landed on the right side of history and opened its doors to Ukrainian refugees. Religious people, Ukrainian Greek Catholics, and Roman Catholics alike, and communities of people from around the country, have activated networks to collect clothing, find housing, doctors, and all else to make this temporary stay bearable. This I can attest to; my home has been filled with the goodwill from strangers to people they will never meet.
My husband arrived from the United States recently. “This may be the last time we will be together,” the grandmother, who is his sister, said one night. “We will look back at this moment together one day and remember.”
In the horror of war, she found a bright light.
The child’s mother has found a job at a local café, thanks to Sicilian friends who have taken the family under their wings. It is a chance to make money to invest in a future in Ukraine, no matter how uncertain that future may be.
Ukraine is with us every day. It is in the scrolling of news on smartphones. It is in the videos viewed on Telegram. It is present during the discussions about culture and language. They are mostly Russian speakers, and I, Ukrainian. It is in the recognition of the heroism of Ukrainian soldiers and everyday citizens, thrust into war, and of President Volodymyr Zelensky,the consequential leader of our times.
It is there in the talk about Lend-Lease and the right weapons finally being sent to Ukraine, but unhappiness—anger really—that it has taken such a long time. Thousands of Ukrainian lives have needlessly been lost.
Almost daily, there is a discussion about when it is safe to return home.
“When will they know it’s safe,” a new lawyer-friend asked recently after he interrupted a busy workday to take the great-grandfather to a doctor’s visit.
“We returned to Kyiv six weeks ago,” my husband’s best friend says on speaker as the two make plans for the day of peace. “Kyiv is slowly coming back to life.”
Another friend says she will return home for a short visit but worries about the effects of regular air raids on her child’s psyche in their hometown.
When will they know it is ‘safe’ to return home?
I don’t know. Eight million Ukrainians are displaced because of a war they did not begin, five million internally. It is an astounding number. My family comprises four people of the eight million trying to navigate criminally disrupted lives. Here in Ortigia, they recognize they are among the lucky ones.
There are days when I walk along the sea and fear the evil man and his cohorts will gain strength despite them getting bogged-down by the Ukrainian army. I fear the couple sitting next to me in a local café, like many other of their compatriots living in liberal democracies, will tire of the war. They are already showing signs of it. Some still believe a deal can be made with the devil, even though he has shown his true face again, again and again. For the gentlemen in Paris, in Berlin, and in Rome who are foolishly keen on territorial compromises to end the war, I say, ‘Give the tyrant Corsica, Bavaria, and Sardinia. Leave Donbas and Crimea alone.’
Too many Westerners refuse to learn the lesson of this war: If you want democracy and your way of life to succeed, a price must be paid. Otherwise, your latte culture will end. Today that means ensuring Ukraine fully wins the war territorially intact and prospers. Because if it does not, tomorrow Ukraine will be you. This, most Eastern and Central Europeans understand. And the Finns. And the Swedes.
I sit on the rock. The sun sets on another glorious Ortigia day.
Tranquillo, the sea whispers. Tranquillo.
And then it exhales its salty mist.
Natalia A. Feduschak is a writer and journalist with homes in Kyiv, Ukraine and Ortigia, Italy. She is also Director of Communications for Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, a Canadian non-profit charitable organization. All views are her own.