Life, death and faded memories among the ruins of the "hostile hotel" in Pokrovsk

The worst of an attack is the death of people, because nothing can compare in the price of human life. The sad count of the bombing of Pokrovsk is 9 dead and 82 wounded. a huge tragedy. But living beings are not the only victims, so are the places that gave a sense of safety and the memories related to them.. Some symbolic sites that the Russians, at some point, considered to be military targets.

Despite the fact that its name hinted at it, that Hotel Druzhba (friendship, in Ukrainian) for “friendly” had very little. There one could return to the Soviet past just by entering the door, not so much for the reform or for its furniture, but for the treatment of customers. That has at least been the stereotype that the people of the generation born after Ukraine escaped from that “prison of nations” called the USSR have always had.. Only the absence of private property can explain this utter indifference to the welfare of the paying customer.

The woman, behind a high table, did not bother to smile.. With his attitude he showed you that making you feel at home (or at least welcome) was not on the list of his job duties. “They always reproached you for something,” comments Sergiy, one of the most famous photographers of this war, on his Facebook, who admits that his colleagues called him “the hostile hotel.”

It's not an exaggeration. That a lock breaks and you cannot rescue your things from a warehouse was the client's fault. They would tell you off for asking for the shampoo that they had forgotten to leave in a luxury room where, by the way, none of the plugs worked and at four in the morning you could hear the pipes hissing. After a few nights in Avdiivka, you hid in the bathroom and only after a few minutes realized that you were already in Pokrovsk, a city at a relatively safe distance, about 45 kilometers from the front.

At night, the chatter and sighs of other customers kept you from sleeping through walls that looked like cardboard. Asking for a towel in the standard room was a crime, since according to “internal instruction” only two towels were given for two people (one small and one large).. Even asking for a glass of water at breakfast became a challenge.. It seemed like a bad joke. – Could I ask for a glass of water? – In the water dispenser. – It is empty. – So there is no water, a woman who worked in the kitchen answered you. Meanwhile, despite any logic, this hotel was almost always full of people.

Upon hearing the name of this site, journalists would laugh, make jokes or, on occasions, make worrying comments. “We no longer sleep there, one day the Russians are going to bomb it, you'll see”, said the Radio Liberty journalists while we celebrated their last exclusive report from the Bakhmut trenches, mixing whiskey with beer, in one of the city's apartments from Pokrovsk.

Psychologists say that people look for their tribe in moments of danger out of pure instinct.. We always get together with people who chose in this life a profession related to war: doctors, volunteers, journalists.. We did it in places like Buena Vista, a bar in the center of kyiv with a poetic name that was located underground while the Russians did not stop trying to conquer the capital.. There, despite the dry law, we drank mojitos. “Volunteers? no way. They are Mossad agents”, a renowned journalist commented to his professional colleagues, who remembered the liberation of the Kiev region and that song that Olga, a famous girl in the Ukrainian salsa community, sang live.. That song was “Lágrimas negras”.

In the Donetsk region, these meeting places were, for example, the Ria pizzeria in Kramatorsk, bombed on June 27.. A rocket that fell in the kitchen killed the workers of this restaurant and claimed the life of the writer Victoria Amelina. In Pokrovsk, it was “the hostile hotel” and a restaurant in the style of the Corleone mafia…

“Mushroom soup, pancakes with banana and chocolate and a cappuccino”. A guy in his early twenties was always coming up to my table.. The Corleone service was in stark contrast to “the hostile hotel”, but they were joined by the people who congregated there. “We need to pick up the ambulance for the trenches… Here is the list of all the things that are needed: the turnstiles, especially”, medic Rebecca instructed other volunteers before they left for the trenches, while sharing a huge pizza with them. At the next table, the journalists were interviewing a unit that apparently had dressed in their best recently bought clothes to recount battles that, in that place, seemed very far away.. Another boy would make a scene at his girlfriend, explaining that he wanted to leave Pokrovsk and had no desire to participate in the war.

“I hated this hotel, I don't understand why I suddenly feel so affected. As if they had tried to take something important away from me”, comments another journalist after the attack on the Druzhba hotel and the Corleone pizzeria.

There was something good in this hotel: the hidden hugs between the soldiers and their wives, the chocolates in the hall that saved you from hunger after curfew and the new friends made in the shared bathrooms. In one of the cheaper rooms, a woman could be heard all night talking to someone and walking around for hours.

In the end I went out into the hallway angry.

– Lady, what's wrong with you? I'm sleeping, can you speak quieter?

– Sorry, I didn't know someone was there.

I noticed that the woman in her 75s didn't have a phone.. I saw her alone in the room with almost no things, she was pacing there and talking to herself.

– I am from Avdiivka, I escaped from there a few days ago and they told me that I could stay here. I can't stand this silence. You can sit down for a while and talk to me.

I shared with her my food and water. She told me about the pain of losing her home, and how the hostile hotel became her refuge.

When I was leaving the hotel I heard the voice of the receptionist who was always angry and never smiled: “Everything alright, my Olguita?”. Maybe the hotel wasn't so hostile.