Kyiv, Ukraine, June 20, 2017

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My flight to Kyiv was late. Bad weather and then mechanical failures forced me to spend a night in Atlanta and a night in Boston. It was such a terrible series of delays that they upgraded me to first class for the flight across the Atlantic. But the 19-hour trip took 72 hours to complete, and it ruined my itinerary. I missed a party at the US embassy in Kyiv and a training session at a mixed martial arts gym. Instead of talking about archaeology with diplomats and learning how the Ukrainians beat people up, I had 24 hours to see the city. That’s it. Then I would be on to Moldova. It was a whirlwind, and I was alone. The only real conversation I had was with the cab driver on the way into town.
 

I didn't talk with him for the first part of the ride from the Kyiv airport. He seemed grumpy in that Slavic, matter of fact, stone faced way. He looked a little like the mixed martial artist Fedor Emelianenko, a blonde man with a brow ridge and hairy arms. The cab ride from Kiev Airport is easy, they have meters and give you a printed receipt at the end, so there was no uncomfortable haggling.

 

We suffered through a couple of painfully congested stretches of road, and I didn’t say anything. It had been a long trip, and I just looked out the window at the buildings. This city was European, while at the same time not. We drove on a multi-lane road, past big Cyrillic billboards, a warm summer day, apartment blocks with small trees in front. One billboard had a soldier in a tank, flanked by patriotic slogans. You wouldn't know they were in a war from how it felt there in Kiev, but then it didn't feel like Burma was in a war when I went to Rangoon either. The war in eastern Ukraine was ongoing, but the full Russian invasion was years away.

 

We crossed a wide river, and the lay of the land had the same feel as a documentary on World War II, on the eastern front. Wide and expansive. I couldn’t help but to make comparisons to other former Soviet places. Like Armenia, like Georgia, Kyiv had the same central life, the same Soviet apartment blocks, the same underground tunnels in the main square, and the same metro openings. I saw the same type of street general layout as Tbilisi, the same use of greenery as Yerevan, the same countdowns at the stoplights, the same trees, the same use of space.

 

At some point the driver and I started talking.

 

“My English,” he said in a heavy accent, “Not so good anymore. But a long time ago, I had a great teacher. She was the best.”

 

“‘Idiots, you should learn English,’ this is how she started every class, and she was right," the cab driver said, "I wasted so much time, with drinking, with girls, all that time I could be learning language, more languages, getting better, maybe by now I be translator. At time, of course, I thought I was having fun.”

 

I laughed. I’ve been there.

 

"Now I learn from practicing driving cab, I get to talk with people, use my English," he said, "It had been years. I was agricultural engineer, and did not speak any English. All gone! Then it came back.”

 

I remembered that happening to me with French. Years after my classes I saw a French magazine on a coffee table. I picked it up and paged through it. At first it was like I had never learned a word, but slowly I started to comprehend, to understand, to remember. It was like the words shuffled themselves back into order.

 

“When I learned,” he said, “there were two groups in my English class. In one group, people who sleep, who don't care. Second group, my group, always talking, difficult questions, like exercise. ‘Idiots, you should learn English,’ my teacher said. Ha. Hard work, but we learned. They didn't. And then it was gone, but came back. You know, when you know it once, you can remember it, but when you never learned it, you never have it."

 

I remembered a teacher I had in college, a professor from Switzerland who taught me French. If I could have taken all my classes with her, I would have been a French major, she was that good. A real teacher makes a real difference.

 

"I know I am using excuses,” he said “I am married, have a family, all day I work, then help kids with homework, sex wife, sleep. But I know if I want it, I get it. When I was 16 and I want girl, really want girl, I find way. So, I guess I don't want it. If I want it, I get it."

 

His phone rang. He looked at it for a second, pondered the decision, answered, talked for a few minutes and hung up.

 

"Phones are bad,” he said, “If I leave house with no shirt, okay, but with no phone, even ten kilometers away I turn around, who might call? Who might text? Wife and I further apart. Before at end of day, ‘How was your day? What did you do?’ Instead, now, we already know what we did so we don't talk, we are not as close. Nokia: Connecting People. But no, Nokia: Not Connecting people."

 

"I remember the waiting, that was a good part," I said, “You would send a girl letter, wait five days, and get one back. The waiting was good for you."

 

In college I fell for a girl named Ingrid. She and I sent letters to each other one summer. The anticipation of waiting for the next letter, of knowing she had made something tangible for me, and that it was on its way, was beautiful. And when they came, pages full of her handwriting, writing that looked like no one else’s in the world, reading them was an emotion all its own.

"My wife and I had this too," he said, "We write, we wait, and the letters had the person's soul in them, now, no."

 

He was right. Their soul was in the writing, in the paper, in the ink, in the loop of the letters, in between the ruled lines on the white page. Digital messages feel like an afterthought.

 

“And today, Wi-Fi," he said, holding up his phone again, "This is hell. Can even communicate on toilet. Can look up anything, anywhere. Too much."

 

At the Iris Hotel, when he got out of the cab, he was both giant and a little clumsy, intimidating and goofy. But this was a sincere man. I tipped him big and he shook my hand and welcomed me to Ukraine.

 

*

 

In the hotel room I took a moment to rest. I thought to myself about stamps and letters, the magic of a woman’s handwriting. I thought of that summer in college and could still feel the paper on the outside of the envelopes. When I had read the letters, she was in the room, I could feel her hair against my face, taste the last time we kissed, see the electricity of her eyes. But I had to wait. Things we earn have higher value. The waiting, the not getting it right away, that earning of something, I missed it. I wondered if that is one of the reasons I like training in mixed martial arts, or anything else that requires time and patience to master, like learning a skill, a musical instrument or a language, or getting a degree. You have to wait to get there. It takes time and patience to get any good at all at something, but with time patience improvement comes. Knowledge comes with time and patience. Commitment comes with time and patience. Love comes with time and patience.