Love as special need

He turned up holding a copy of Vesti whose front page carried his photo and a sensational headline, “Poroshenko’s Friend High and Dry.” “What a disgusting manipulation,” says Roman Kysliak. “Why would anyone want to do something like that? Am I Poroshenko’s friend? Or am I a tramp? You aren’t going to do anything of this kind, will you? I am being used for scoops. Why?” I promise to Kysliak that I will do my best to render his story without manipulating the facts, and will expound what worries him.

Many have heard of Roman Kysliak. When the war broke out, he evacuated 75 persons from the parts of Donetsk where hostilities were raging. Soon he, too, was forced to leave. But he got a name in the media not due to the people he had rescued. What made him famous was a nasty incident in Lviv, where a waiter turned him away because he did not realize that this particular visitor had cerebral palsy. He just thought the guest looked “suspicious.” To draw public attention to people with special needs, First Lady Maryna Poroshenko invited Kysliak for a cup of coffee in Kyiv, which triggered a flashmob #coffeewithfriend. When news spread that Kysliak is now in Kyiv instead of Lviv, and that he no longer has a car which used to be his means to earn a living, many fumed at the first lady for abandoning Kysliak. “I do not want to criticize Maryna, she has nothing to do with it,” says Kysliak. “She only invited me over for coffee.” He has been looking for a job since last summer, and so far to no avail.

“I would like to bring the national idea into focus. I want Ukraine to be a country where no one starves or is homeless, everyone must have food and home. This is my special feature,” shares Kysliak. “Personally I cannot get any help. The current labor code will not allow to employ me, it has to be revised. Not only me, we all suffer.” He tears off the tip of a sugar stick and spills the sugar on the table. I help him put some sugar into his tea. “It took me a long while to find my calling. I have two university diplomas. I looked at myself soberly and gauged my chances. In particular, I was aware I would never be able to become a journalist or psychologist although this is what I studied to be. And I found my calling as a driver. Back in Donetsk, I took a loan from a bank to buy a car, and step by step I paid it back.

“When the war began, I went to the Euromaidan in Donetsk. Later Euromaidan was dubbed Prayer Maidan. It remained actually the same Euromaidan but the new name was supposed to keep us out of trouble. Gradually, when war made things nastier, it turned into a volunteer movement. Most of us chose to do something concrete. Serhii was the mastermind behind the Prayer Maidan.” Kysliak is referring to a Protestant pastor who, in February 2014 together with the Council of Churches, organized a street marathon Prayer for Ukraine. They set up a tent on Constitution Square and held services there. “So, Serhii asked me what I could do. And I said I could drive a car, so he suggested I evacuate people, and I got down to it.

“It was 2014, and the bridges were already torn down. We could use side roads running across fields. This was quite a challenge. I evacuated 75 persons. After I had left, my father kept getting people out for another year. I was forced to leave, because I had a gun pointed at my head in July. It was in Shakhtarsk. Some Russian aimed the gun at me. I guess he was Russian because he spoke with an accent you never hear in Ukraine.

“I came to Shakhtarsk to pick up an old man who needed to be evacuated to a safer place. I drove across fields and saw gas stations burn along the road. It was very hot and the smoke was stifling. Shakhtarsk looked like a site from a Fellini movie. Trenches, soldiers running, war, the steppe in black and white. I drove to the local hospital. They asked me in Russian: ‘What are you doing here? Who are you?’ ‘I came to pick an old gentleman.’ ‘Which old gentlemen?’ They searched me and found a leaflet with the text of Our Father. They said, ‘You are a saboteur! Are you afraid?’ And then they put a pistol against the side of my head. To which I said as goofy as I could: ‘I don’t know, God took my fear away!’ I was not afraid, I was terrified. The guy shoots upwards into the sky and asks, ‘What about this?’ Then I realized that if I said something wrong, he would shoot me. Then he commanded the soldiers, ‘Throw him into the car.’ They pushed me onto the back seat and sat in front. Windows down, guns poking out of the windows, and off we went. We were followed by a bus carrying old people to Donetsk. These armed guys were a sort of convoy, and I was sitting at the back. I heard them talking: ‘Don’t you find we made a better mess of Shakhtarsk than of Chechnya?’ ‘See that hill? I dumped corpses there. Man, does it stink!’ They kept showing off. These guys were my age. They asked me: ‘What does that sign say?’ ‘Thank you for keeping the roadside clean,’ translated I. Our people from Luhansk or Donetsk understand Ukrainian, but those two were not local, they were from Russia. They even said pointing at our spoil tips: ‘Look what funny hills they have here.’

“As they held me at gunpoint, they took all of my papers, driver’s license, cell phone and said, ‘Take him captive.’ On the way, I tried to persuade them that their behavior did not agree with military code of conduct, and that I was no saboteur. We arrived in Donetsk, they gave me my belongings back and told me to get out of there. They gave me my money, papers, and car back. I had had two cell phones. One, a better model, but no balance, I got back. The other was worse but still a certain amount on the account, and that one they took.

“The next day some other guys from the so-called DNR came and looked for me at our Prayer Maidan. By that time I had already left and was on my way to Lviv.

“The railroad station in Donetsk was already closed down, so I had to travel via Mariupol, where I was invited by Olena Kulyhina. She told my story at a convent in Lviv, and that convent, Miles Jesu, accepted me. They are Greek Catholic. I had no idea which way to turn, and I was scared. When I arrived, they put me up in a nice room in a detached house in the monastery courtyard. They gave me a washing machine. It was a very comfortable place to live. Even my parents came to visit me, and the monks bought a bunk bed so they could stay over in my room.

“The convent was a temporary shelter, yet I stayed there for three years. Once I rode with a customer in my taxi, and he told about himself. He was in the development business and built residential villages around Kyiv. He said, ‘Roman, do you want me to build a house for you? Sell your car, persuade your parents to move here, and come over. The village is called Tarasivka.’ At that time there were hostilities and shooting at the place where my parents lived, and I thought that was a way to rescue them. And I agreed, although I had a job in Lviv. First as a taxi driver, and then as an employee for Global Development.

“Now I have a shell home in Tarasivka. We are waiting to sell the house in Makiivka, but no one will buy. I want to be with my Mom and Dad. I am hysterical: they are getting older. In these three years, I have learned to take care of myself. I have adapted, and now I am taking care of my parents. I want a miracle. My friend used to live in Pervomaisk near Luhansk, and he would not move out. Yet when a human head rolled into his backyard, he left within 24 hours. But to move my parents, we have to sell their house.

“I came to Kyiv in the summer intending to adapt before it gets cold and snowy. I dreamed of finding a job as a driver, but I cannot. Now I have a temporary place to live. When I looked for a room, I turned to monasteries but they took me for a junky everywhere. People want no problems. They are very scared and they do not trust others. Work or housing is not a problem in itself. They bring you no happiness. Love and trust do. There cannot be a relationship without trust.

“I come home at nine every evening. I take an underpass and see a family that sleeps outside. Where is our love? It scares me. Where are our controlling authorities? Why do they only control those who have debts for public utility services? They do make checks on me, a displaced person, to see if I have not left for Donetsk. If they do not find me in, they freeze my pension. Why don’t they check what I eat, how I live, where I shower, where I wash my clothes? Why is it no one’s concern?

In Ukraine, there is shortage of love. When we have love, we will have no problems. Only God can make it happen.

“I cannot cook, I have problem slicing vegetables, so normally I need to eat at a diner. Meals alone cost me three thousand a month. I am not picky, I just want to survive. People mistake me for a drug addict. I am not sick, I am just different. People with disabilities need a lot more than others. Their living costs are higher.

“I had lived comfortably with Mom and Dad for 35 years, they had taken care of me. And then the war broke out and I was forced to leave… No one defended Luhansk or Donetsk, but we get words like separatist hurled at us.”

This meeting leaves me somewhat puzzled, even though I heard nothing unexpected. The story of an IDP with special needs. There must be hundreds like him out there. Frankly, not all of them are that courageous, not all of them can think that clearly. After all, like all human beings. And if you were to ask me what kind of special needs these people have, my answer would be “love and trust.”