Dreaming of Crimea

Whenever my mother started dreaming about Crimea, it meant that the cold days of winter were soon over and spring was on its way. And every single year, since I was born and until I moved away, we would go to the Crimean seaside, even if only for a couple of days.

I grew up respecting the roar of the Black Sea’s waves as they crashed into rocks and Yalta’s seaside promenade. And as they shone on calm sunny days, I marvelled at their embrace, diving with my eyes open, not knowing yet that other seas are not as gracious. In my fantasy world, I followed the legend of Bear Mountain, befriending the giant bear and mourning his turning to stone. I wondered which stories could be told by the walls of the Khan’s palace and those of the old monastery mountain caves. I grew up knowing: where there are mountains, there, of course, must be the sea! 

We would take a cableway up the Ai-Petri and stare in awe at the view below, where the mountain walks into the water, and the sea feels endless, continuing into the blue of the sky. And we squinted every time the cable car wobbled, even though we’d done it countless times, and it always did that. We would climb up trails, and when I was still too small to walk all the way, I’d sleep on my mum’s back. There’s a photo in a family album where my older sister is fearlessly hanging from a tree above a green abyss of a forest. I think it’s an optical trick, but I’m not entirely sure. She is the brave one, always was. Another memory: chuckling with my dad at a sign reading “cows crossing the road” when the road to both sides was framed by steep cliffs. We imagined cows in climbing gear, and nothing could have been funnier in that moment. But also, I vividly remember the unsettling feeling from that one time the fog was so thick, we couldn’t even see where the cliff was. Oh, and the never-ending turns of Crimean mountain roads echoing in my upset stomach! Regardless of my state, everything was forgotten with heartfelt, delicious Crimean Tatar Lagman soup. So thick, your lips stick together as you eat it. 

My mum loved the Crimean Botanical Garden, with its shade, its aristocratically elegant paths, its lilies on terraced ponds. I loved its cactus and succulent corner because of their spikes and alien-like shapes. 

When we were there in summer, you must imagine the flaming sun and every bit of existence soaked in it. The red onions so sweet, you could take a bite of them; the peaches, their juice running down your elbow; the honey figs, the hot salty air, and even hotter big dark rounded stones at the beach, the dry dusty cliffs, the smell of pine trees sweating their oil, of seaweed, of the herbs … I cannot even begin describing to you the aroma of Crimean herbs!

Ever since I left Ukraine, whenever I would see some semi-deserted cliffs of the Mediterranean or maybe an occasional pine tree, I would exclaim, “It’s just like Crimea!” It would make me laugh self-ironically: everything is like that significant something we know from childhood. Still, I returned to the original Crimea on occasion and would silently add: “Well, no place is really just like you,” lovingly. And I would inhale the air, walk along Yalta’s seaside promenade, eat a fig in the shade of a pine tree. 

I haven’t been to Crimea since 2014. And I go to the seaside of France, Croatia, Greece … and exhale: “It’s just like Crimea!” and add: “but it isn’t.” And cry. It’s been over eleven years.

For Crimean Tatars, who have been forced out of their homes due to the Russian annexation of Crimea, it is the second time in history. The repetition of trauma that should never have been. Due to the Russian occupation and terror, so many people had to flee and live now with uprooted hearts, scattered all over Ukraine and beyond it, longing to go home. People in Ukraine, who want nothing but to live free and with dignity, are losing their lives to Russia’s war every single day. Forests and wide plains, rivers, the Azov and the Black Seas are all suffering an ecological disaster that we cannot even begin to properly estimate due to the deadly presence of Russia’s war machine. 

But there is hope. That Russia’s forces will finally leave. Ukraine and her sunny Crimea will be free again. Survivors will rebuild, and those displaced will be able to return. We will restore nature and clean up the seas. The trauma will not be forgotten, but we will grow around it, like a pine tree grows around a rock.

I hope. And I dream every spring of Crimea.