The Moth Retreat for artists and writers, which sits snugly next to our home in rural Co Cavan, closed its doors in March 2020 when Covid hit. Those first months of lockdown had a dreamlike quality, as if we were living our brightest days as a family, not knowing what dystopic future lay ahead. Everything that Will and I have – our family and friends, our house, our proximity to nature, and most of all our happy and healthy children – we appreciated with magnitude.
There were dreary months that I can hardly remember now, when it rained and rained. We tried to remain positive, and pushed on with movie nights and DIY and endless weeding – and work, of course. We were working towards publishing our first children's book – Claire Mulligan's The Hunt for David Berman, a second World War adventure set in the wilds of Scotland, about Robert, a young evacuee from London and his friend David, a Jewish refugee who had come over on the Kindertransport from Germany. It's a beautiful heartrending story of friendship that made Will and I cry every time we read it.
Will’s grandmother Maria was a Jewish refugee. She fled from Kyiv in 1942, when she returned home one day to find her mother had disappeared.
The US military withdrawal from Afghanistan compelled us to get in touch with the Refugee Council last year, to offer the retreat as just that – a retreat – to anyone who might consider living out here in the sticks, a writer or a journalist maybe.
We got a positive response, but Christmas came and went. The trouble is we are miles from anywhere. The nearest bus link and post office is in Belturbet, 5km away. The nearest bank is 14km away in Cavan. The local village of Milltown has the ubiquitous church, pub and shop. Job opportunities are pretty limited, if you're not in a position to work from home as we do.
Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and on March 4th, Europe's largest nuclear power plant was attacked, in a place called Zaporizhzhia.
We pledged the retreat to the Red Cross, though we weren't sure we were eligible because of our situation. I read about a website, ukraineshelter.com, that two young students at Harvard had set up to connect displaced Ukrainians with hosts around the world. I posted explaining that we were in a rural place, with chickens and dogs and space to grow vegetables. It's a one-bedroom house, but we could put a few sofa beds downstairs. Within hours I received a message from a young woman desperate to help her Ukrainian family.
Elza had been living in the US for a couple of years, since attending university there on a swimming scholarship, and was now married with a small baby. She hadn't been able to visit her family recently because of Covid, but she speaks to them every day on Zoom. Her mother and father and younger brother and sister were on holidays in the west of Ukraine when the nuclear plant in their hometown of Zaporizhzhia was targeted, and so they never returned – as much afraid of the nuclear fallout as they were of the military invasion. They had been moving from place to place in Poland ever since.
We spoke to Elza that night and agreed that her family should come and stay with us. They booked flights to Dublin for March 30th. We were amazed at the trust she placed in us after just one conversation. Will and I set about making the retreat habitable for a family of four.
A few days later Elza sent a text: “I’m so sorry to ask but I’m looking for somewhere for my uncle as well . . . He and his wife and four daughters also needed to get out of Poland.”
We had heard that if they went through the Red Cross they risked being separated as a family. So we posted a message on Facebook looking for accommodation for a family of six, and a local family offered their house in a nearby town. Another family offered to sponsor them, covering the cost of heating and electricity. We set up a WhatsApp group with all the friends who had offered a helping hand, and within a day we had everything we needed – duvets, a kettle, blankets, cutlery and so on . . . it was a long list.
The two families were due to arrive on a Ryanair flight from Warsaw at 7.50pm. Ten people in all. Will and I drove up to meet them with our Ukrainian friend and interpreter Mischa, a student from the institute in Cavan who had been doing work experience at The Moth. We were all incredibly nervous as we stood there with our Welcome sign in the arrivals hall. Will and I were shaking. I couldn't stop eating sweets.
It took hours for the two families to get through passport control, but when they finally did we felt like we were being reunited with dear long-lost friends, despite knowing very little about them.
We were led by someone from the Red Cross to the north terminal, where Mischa and I frantically filled out forms while Will watched their luggage. We had no time to process how desperately sad and surreal the whole scene was, with drained-looking mothers with their small children, elderly people in wheelchairs, teenagers trying to make sense of where they were, with no idea where they might end up.
Both Viktoriia and Yuliia's parents are still in Zaporizhzhia. They refuse to leave <br/>
The last bus to Cavan was after midnight, and we had to get our two families on it or we would all be sleeping at the airport. Will went ahead to explain the situation to the bus driver, and we were escorted to the bus by a lovely man from the Red Cross. Our friend in Cavan was awaiting our call. He met us at the bus station in town after 1am, with a car big enough to bring the family of six to their new home.
Since then, five of the children have started school (the youngest is only two), the families have been able to access welfare payments and a friend is giving the adults English lessons in her home twice a week.
Mamuka and Viktoriia and their 12-year-old son Vakhtanh and two-year-old daughter Krystyna are our new neighbours, while Mamuka’s brother Koba and his wife Yuliia and their four girls live 15 minutes away by car.
Both Viktoriia and Yuliia’s parents are still in Zaporizhzhia. They refuse to leave. Mamuka and Koba’s brother is there too. His son is fighting.
Mamuka and Viktoriia’s business, a beautiful resort on the Azov Sea that they built from scratch, is not yet in the hands of the Russians but is less than two hours away from Mauripol. Mamuka had his friend remove vital components from a new digger he had just invested in, so that the Russians won’t be able to steal it.
The other day, Yullia, who worked at a university back in Zaporizhzhia, was laughing at the thought that lockdown – those endless days of working from home and washing, washing, washing, cooking, cooking, cooking for four growing girls – now seems like a very distant idyll, when their family was together, and safe, in their beautiful home.
This war feels very close. These people already feel like family.
Rebecca O’Connor is co-founder and director of The Moth magazine. The Hunt for David Berman by Claire Mulligan, published by The Moth, will be launched at the Townhall in Cavan on May 11th.
