A TERRITORY IN BETWEEN

When I saw off my mother at the train station in Moscow, she told me: "You know, I never really felt at home here".

She grew up in Uzhgorod, a city in the very west of Ukraine, in Zakarpattia region. It is separated from the rest of the country by the Carpathian Mountains, and therefore has always existed almost autonomously. The entire population hardly associates itself with Ukraine. Before World War II, at different times, this territory was part of 4 different states, they had no choice but to be themselves. Until now, they live in their own way, speaking a mixture of Ukrainian, Hungarian and Slovak languages, with scattered here and there medieval castles, with their love for objects woven from vines, light fabrics, decorated with patterns, growing the tastiest tomatoes, watermelons, peaches, cherries, grapes and everything you can imagine.

To get to the region, you need to travel by train through long tunnels in the mountains. One of the brightest and most exciting feelings from my childhood: after a day on the train, leaving Moscow, driving all over Ukraine through Kiev, Ternopil, Lviv, early in the morning you find yourself in these tunnels. Most of the passengers taking off the train much earlier and there are not many people left in the train. The rest clung to the windows and await the onset of absolute darkness.

Entering the tunnel, you stop seeing anything. You hear sounds behind the glass and inside the train car. The tunnel ends in a few minutes. And you feel something new in a landscape - as if you are entering some distant, mysterious country separate from the rest of the world. Another tunnel, darkness again. And then another one. And now the light hits your eyes again.

When your eyes get used to the light, you immediately see these small white houses with thatched roofs, haystacks, grazing cows. As if there is absolutely its own dimension of time. In this moment, you find yourself in Zakarpattia. This is not a fictional name for some Eastern European country - this is the real place where my mother grew up.

My mother moved to Moscow at the age of 17 when she entered the art school. There she met my father. As you know, artists are quite self-sufficient and existing in their own world. Probably, this is why communication in our family is not entirely common. We do not have family gatherings in the usual sense, no one in our family is physically attached to each other. We can exist in different cities and countries - so in general it is - and not so often communicate with each other. Each of us has our own world and our own reality. It seems that we have a rather fragmented family. But at the same time, in the absence of the common features of the institution of the family, I believe that we have always felt the non-verbal connection between us more strongly. And everyone in my family silently appreciated this connection. Sometimes it is difficult to talk about something, sometimes it is difficult to be open - because you just not used to it. Therefore, the moments of revelation were always colossally significant - and the moment in autumn of 2012, when my mother said that she did not feel at home in Moscow, after almost 30 years of living here, will forever remain with me. But I didn't know what to answer her then and how to support her.

Months after that very trip to her homeland, mother asked me if it was possible to save the photos from her phone somehow. She had a simple push-button phone from the pre-smartphone era with a tiny screen and small, low-quality camera. It was surprising for me - I did not know that my mother uses anything other than SMS and calls, she always avoided any technology.

All my life I've seen my mother draw, sculpt and sew - she never stops to work. I think I knew how she felt the world, but I never saw the world through her eyes. And so I sat alone in front of my computer and looked at the photos that she took for herself during that trip to Uzhgorod, on her little phone, being alone on a journey to her homeland. In these photos I saw these white houses of Zakarpattia with thatched roofs, familiar streets, wicker baskets with fruits. And then I saw this photograph taken from the train window: early morning, the singing of the rails, mountain fog runs past. I unmistakably recognized this feeling - the moment when the train left the tunnel and you found yourself in this unknown, magical part of the world. You are not at home yet, but you are no longer in foreign lands. You are somewhere in between.

I am the first one who sees it, even my mother never watched it. This forgotten, digitally distorted image from an old phone, as if through a prism of nostalgia, conveys what can never be seen: the ghosts and spirits of my childhood. Looking at her native places with her eyes, that for the first time I realized how much this is my homeland too. How much I feel connected to these places. I felt how much my mother and I are alike. And how difficult it is for me, like her, to express the fullness of my feelings.

All that she felt and could not say I saw in this photo. Filled with love for these places and the deepest longing for the fact that it is impossible to truly return to them. There is so much loneliness in this photo, but at the same time it has a feeling of peace with which you simply will never be alone. It's You and The World. What else is needed?

I didn't know what to say to her when I saw her off from Moscow. But describing this photo now, I seem to be conducting the most frank and sincere dialogue with her. Feeling so strongly this captured moment in the photo, I understand that I am the same lost traveler here. Now I know the answer to my mother: there are two of us here - in this foreign country.

Moscow, 21.06.2020