By VIJAI
MAHESHWARI
Ukraine borders four EU countries but an iron curtain
still separates it from the West.
When I
embarked on a road trip from Ukraine’s capital Kiev to Romania’s Transylvania
in early May, I was blissfully unaware of the fear and paranoia that lurks in
the border zones between East and West.
I had bought a Peugeot convertible in
Estonia the previous year, and needed to drive it out of Ukraine to avoid
paying expensive import duties. I was also itching to check out Transylvania,
famous for its wild mountains, Teutonic castles and Dracula vibes.
What I found
in this twilight zone between East and West was a sense of deep distrust,
especially in the wake of Ukraine’s war with Russia, and the heightened fear of
terror attacks. I was accused of being a cigarette smuggler and
labeled a dangerous ISIL operative at the tense Moldova-Ukraine border crossing.
* * *
Ukraine’s 2014 revolution was as much about opening the
country’s borders to Europe as it was about fighting a corrupt oligopoly.
Visa-free travel to Europe would have been the holy grail of a successful
uprising. But more than two years since Russia invaded part of the country, Ukraine’s
citizens are still locked out of Europe. Though the country has fulfilled the
conditions for visa-free travel, the proposal to allow Ukrainian citizens
to enter the Schengen zone without a visa has yet to be approved by
national governments and the European Parliament.
Ukraine borders four EU countries —
Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania — but an iron curtain still separates it
from its neighbors to the West.
As we approach the Ukrainian city of
Chernivtsi close to the border, our mobiles switch to Vodafone Romania. “The
people here are already in Europe,” says my companion, mistaking proximity to
Europe with prosperity. “They’re much better off than the rest of Ukraine.”
But the streets of this stately, former
Austro-Hungarian city — once dubbed “Little Vienna” — are littered
with potholes and its neo-classical buildings bear testament to the ravages of
time. The city appears to be falling apart.
“Cigarettes?”
asks the Romanian border guard as we hand over our passports. I show him two
recently-purchased cartons of cigarettes — 20 packs — and he cackles with
displeasure.
“Only two packs per person,” he
reprimands, confiscating the rest.
The Western borders of Ukraine, it turns out, are
major hubs for black market cigarettes and alcohol. A pack of Marlboro’s costs
just $1.1 in Ukraine compared to its $4 price tag in neighboring Romania.
Smugglers have been known to fly cigarettes over the border in hang gliders. An
estimated 10 billion cigarettes are smuggled out of Ukraine every year. In
2012, Slovak authorities uncovered a 700-meter long underground tunnel on the
Ukraine-Slovak border used for cigarette smuggling. Go figure.
Transylvania
is magical after the hurly-burly of Ukraine: The roads are smooth, and the
picturesque villages snuggled against the lush Carpathian mountains are
well-tended and clean. It’s clear that more money has flowed into the region
since European accession.
We spend a few nights near the awe-inspiring
Bicaz gorge, with its vertiginous cliffs and serpentine roads, before heading
to Dracula’s castle in Bran. Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Dracula, passed
through this medieval castle numerous times, and it’s now a major tourist site.
We escape the crowds of jostling Chinese tourists for a picnic, overlooking the
snow-capped peaks.
Ukraine’s struggles seem a world away.
We eventually exit Romania via Iași, a
regional capital in eastern Romania. The atmosphere gets seedier as we approach
the Moldovan border — gypsy kids surround the car whenever we stop at a traffic
light. The border crossing itself is packed with Romanians heading to the wine
region of Moldova for Victory Day weekend.
“Moldova was once a part of Romania,”
declares a Romanian man waiting in line beside us. (Moldova was indeed seized
during the war by the Soviet Union.) “We would get it back if it weren’t
for Putin.”
The man helps me through the complicated
paperwork on the Moldovan side. The Moldovan border guards are rude and
inefficient, and we wait in various lines to collect the requisite stamps. It
becomes obvious we’re back in hardcore Eastern Europe.
* * *
We travel eastwards, along
the northern tip of Moldova. The roads here are even worse than in Ukraine. We
drive in second gear for a couple of hours, navigating endless potholes until
suddenly, as though in a dream, a fantastic two lane highway appears. We
accelerate into cruising speed and spot a signboard besides the road: “This
road was built with help from the American Government.”
The super highway is supposed to connect
Moldova’s capital Chișinău with the Ukrainian border, but is far from
finished. It’s now just a rump road in the middle of Moldova’s wine country.
The super highway ends 20 kilometers from
the Ukrainian border, and we’re back to war with the potholes. We stop for
directions several times before we find the remote Ukrainian border point at
the end of bright yellow cornfields.
The Moldovan side of the border
crossing is a breeze, but we are kept waiting on the Ukrainian border. I
pass the time chatting to an elderly Ukrainian man who claims he crosses the
border twice a day.
“I live in
Ukraine and work in Moldova,” he says, speaking Russian. He sighs
nostalgically. “During Soviet times, there was no border. That’s why this
village on the Moldovan side is mostly Ukrainian.”
When an hour passes and our documents
still haven’t been returned, I walk over to the passport cubicle. A
boyish-looking border guard frowns while flipping through my U.S. passport.
“We’re just calling Interpol to check
whether you’re on their list.”
His heavyset, bearded partner shakes his
head solemnly.
“We had a Moldovan man pass through a few
months ago who was responsible for killing 42 people in Paris a few years back
in a terror attack,” he tells me. Paranoia, it seems, has got the better
of them.
We wait
another hour while they attempt to call Interpol on their Nokia phones. I
assume they are bluffing, biding their time until they can make up their minds
about whether or not the Arab-looking man in front of them might be dangerous.
Their nervousness is understandable:
Ukraine fears incursions from the Moldova’s Russian-controlled breakaway region
of Transnistria, and has tightened security on the borders. It’s also clear
they consider my appearance suspicious. I try to lighten the mood.
I talk about New York, and Donald Trump,
and black neighborhoods in the inner cities that, I tell them, are in many ways
more dangerous than Ukraine.
They begin to relax.
“I’d be fine in any neighborhood in
America,” boasts the toughest-looking guard. “I just came back from fighting
the bastard Russians in the East.”
The conversation slowly deflates the
tension, and the guards finally relent.
“We’ll let you enter Ukraine,” says the
boyish one. “But I hope we made the right decision.”
It’s almost midnight when we finally enter
into Ukraine. As we drive along the eerie, dark roads, I think: It’s been a
long time since I was so relieved to be crossing back into the East. I have
called Ukraine home for the past six years, and the possibility of being barred
from entering my adopted country was devastating. It was a fraction of the keen
awareness, I realized, that many Ukrainians must have of being locked
out of Europe for so long.
Vijai
Maheshwari is a writer and journalist. His novel “White God Factor,” about
Moscow in the 1990s, was published by London’s Coptic Press. He also publishes
a magazine, B.East, about trends in the East and was editor-in-chief of Playboy
Russia.
Vijai
Maheshwari is a writer and journalist. His novel “White God Factor,” about
Moscow in the 1990s, was published by London’s Coptic Press. He also publishes
a magazine, B.East, about trends in the East and was editor-in-chief of Playboy
Russia.
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