To my friend, Andriy Fish Rybakov

“Well I’ve been sitting here for hours, baby, just chasing these words across the page“*

We always say of someone who has died that they were special. Of course they were, we are all unique. But today I struggle to write those words as they are for someone truly incredible. I struggle to write those words because when someone is bigger than life, surely the world must stop with them when they disappear.

Yet when I found out about what happened, Andriy – I can’t write it, I don’t want it to be real – the world around me kept going. Here in Kyiv, your city, I stared at the black and white post that popped up suddenly on social media  – I stopped walking in the park – and the last autumn leaves continued to swirl and fall around me, it was yellow and beautiful, the sun shone its rosy light on the Dnipro river, all was quiet, and all this beauty around was so absurd and insulting and obscene while the post on my phone said you were gone and I wanted everything to stand still. I looked at my phone to see if you would be calling to tell me it wasn’t true – but we hadn’t spoken in months so there would be no reason for you to call now. You would hate it if I were sad – you would say “that’s bullshit, you’re alive, you should be so grateful for it!”. I know it because you said it before, but forgive me if no matter how much I tried to be prepared in case that dreadful day ever happened, it hurts so much.

I know that you would have hated leaving nothing behind, and your legacy is bigger than you can imagine, because you meant so much for so many, in the many lives you have lived. Words will never suffice to describe you, you’re an Encyclopaedia not a summary, but I want to share those.

Andriy Fish Rybakov.

We met at work, so to speak. You were in a trench hideout somewhere East and you video-called me for an interview. You had written a beautiful text about your war experience and it was getting published in one of the media I work for. I was very intimidated, because you were so well-spoken and so knowledgeable.

The article was published, with your text and interview, alongside a picture of you in the trench. You were very pleased.

A few weeks later, you started sending me pictures from “your workplace”, the frontline. I always feel honored when soldiers trust me enough to share snipets of their lives with me, and then you started the calls. At all times, but especially at night. You called many people, I wasn’t anyone special, but you definitely were. You would call when bored, as can happen during the long hours of wait on the frontline. You never asked if it was a good time to call. Fish (your callsign) calling meant I had to drop everything to talk, no, to listen to you. And why did I, like others, do it? Because I don’t think I have ever met someone who had more interesting things to say than you. Because listening to you felt like growing wings of knowledge while riding on a high-speed train. You never stopped, you never slept, and you always had a song to share.

You would call for hours. Everyday, when possible, and because of war, we immediately bonded. We were. Were, I hate that so much. We are the same age, we love the same books, listen to the same music, speak the same languages. Except you Andriy knew more of everything, in every field. We never really talked about your career as an immunologist, as if that had been merely a past time for you, while you excelled at it before you chose to excel at war. You are mind-blowingly clever, in every field you chose to give your attention to. You called, and I mostly listened, and often I wondered if you cared at all that someone was on the other side of the line, but you did, because you’d suddenly stop to stare at me right through the screen, narrowing your piercing blue eyes as if to scan me and enquiring: “but how are YOU, Emmanuelle?”. The only correct answer was “fine” because you couldn’t consider anything that didn’t involve the zero line a real problem. And rightly so. After all, what else still matters? I was totally fine just listening, as I was both enjoying your conversation and learning so much. You were always humming, too, and sending me links to songs after pointedly rolling your eyes in disbelief when asking if I knew such and such band and I didn’t. You would say: “listen to this and call me back”, and hang up on me. So I did, every time, and we picked up the conversation with more songs, more books, more random facts to share. At some point I had asked you to turn on the video and I think you loved it because you could cook, clean your weapon and of course not sit still for one second except after you started drawing.

I don’t think people who do not live a war from the inside can understand just how every second stolen to death near the frontline becomes the most precious for those who experience it. For months, I looked forward to those calls every day, and when you were fighting, I hated the silence as I knew it could turn into an eternal one. Sometimes our conversation would die down so we would just draw together with the video on. Or you would introduce me to your brothers in arms. Or you would teach me some tactical medicine and you would ask to see my flack jacket to check if it was a good one. We talked about the war, but we mostly talked about everything else that makes this world bearable and for you it was mostly art. One day you said “you can’t imagine just how good it feels to speak English again and to talk about those things”. Because of the war, or maybe because I used to work a lot in archives, I felt like I had to save as many of those moments as possible, so I often screenshot our calls when I felt we needed to keep a moment for eternity. Today I am so glad I did that, even if it doesn’t alleviate the pain.

We were each other’s windows into our worlds, and we started sending each other little things. I first got you “The little prince”, which I must have gifted to all my friends, a notebook and a pencil to write. I wanted you to journal, as you wrote beautifully. The pencil was my favorite, with the quote “errare humanum est, perseverare autem diabolicum”. “To err is human, to persist is evil”.

When you opened that parcel, on video call, you were so happy. Not because of the sweets, not because of the book, but the pencil and notebook made your day. Your eyes were glowing with excitement. Obviously, you already had pens and paper before but you loved that those had been chosen for you specifically. From that moment, you started drawing any time you had a chance. You brought the notebook everywhere. You were always scribbling, you got yourself more pens and charcoals. It was so dark and tortured, but you had found a way to exteriorize some of the things you were going through.

Some days you were so angry, and also at me. Because nobody could understand your pain, because I’m a foreigner, because I wasn’t on the zero line. You could be really mean during those outbursts, and you hated the whole world, and I told you so, and you did apologize, and we would move on.

Of course we met, and it was like in a movie, and most of it belongs only to us. But some of it I can share, because I know you would love for others to smile when reading it. I was reporting near your positions, so one day you drove straight from the zero line after a mission to where I was. It was summertime, you came with your dusty frontline jeep, and from the open window you shot your best smile at me and said “well hello my dear, get in here” with your best British accent and your smirk. It was as if we had known each other forever. You had the notebook and the pencil in your jacket. You started to empty your pockets to show me everything you had carried with you while on the frontline. You wanted to give everything you could, to show everything you could from your world, and you were pouring war onto my hands.

That’s how we met. At first you didn’t want to hug me because you were ashamed – after a week on position, no shower, no water, the heat. You smelled like the frontline – stress, death and sweat – and I told you to shut up about it because you were alive and it was all that mattered – so we hugged for the first time of many. And you loved crushing your friends into your arms.

You managed to get a small leave so you showed me parts of your life in Donetsk region. We did many pictures and you loved it, you loved knowing that someone would see and read your story. You loved that it was not all for nothing. And I’m so glad that you loved those pictures and sent them to your loved ones – something I’ve only discovered over the last couple of days as many are sharing them in their tributes. The pictures are yours and theirs, but I have the privilege of knowing that the moments when we took them were ours only. I have the privilege of having lived them with you.

That time, we spent an entire night drawing, singing and dancing. You asked why I wasn’t asking you more about the zero line. I said I didn’t want to trigger any trauma or memory and that the first aid in ptsd treatment was to listen, not to offer unsolicited advice or bring up upsetting facts unless the person who lived through those wants to. You liked that very much, so you started to talk about all the horrors. And after that you sang again…it was “You’re my Waterloo” and I filmed you to have it with me forever. Oh, you liked how often I filmed you. We both knew why: it was all for today, when all we would have left of you would be the memories. I must have watched this video a hundred times since that black and white post. You really loved this song.

We met again, and again, always last minute and always a surprise, very late at night or very early in the morning. Maybe that’s a story for when I’ll have the strength to put into more words just how extraordinary and special you were. Not just to me: seeing the tributes that so many are writing about you, it is already clear that not just your friends, not just your colleagues, not just Ukraine, your beloved home, but also the world has lost one of its brightest. I want to believe that all the light you brought to us is not lost: it will live within us forever. You have changed so many lives, just by existing and by being you, and not everyone has that ability. You truly are one of a kind, you touched the heart of each and every one of us who were blessed to know you. I know that I am changed forever for having met you, and I will carry that in my heart for eternity. Heroes never die, and they’ve been gifted the brightest with you.

“….You’re my Waterloo

I’ll be your Calvary

I’m so glad we know just what to do

And everyone’s gonna be happy

But of course.”*

* Lyrics from ‘You’re my Waterloo’, The Libertines.