Peace Corps gave us several safety and security sessions. I paid attention. It’s a shame I didn’t listen.
The first rule I broke was not to stay out late. We emerged from the nightclub, David, Amy, Alexandra and I, at three in the morning.
We stood there breaking another rule: don’t speak English loudly and call attention to yourselves. We were debating, perhaps too loudly, on how to get everyone home. There were four men in their early twenties standing on the corner, and one turned at the sound of our voices. He called to Dave, asked him if he spoke Russian. Dave said he did. The question wasn’t directed at me, but I answered that I spoke Ukrainian. The man asked nothing more, but continued to glance at us. I noticed this, but was used to being looked at. In Obhiev, even when I shaved my face clean, shined my shoes, wore my leather jacket and carried a Babushka bag, people still watched me walk down the street. Something in my stance or my walk or my aura pegged me as a foreigner. All Americans have it, because I can recognize one in Ukraine from two blocks away, have done so in a crowded mall in Kiev.
We got Amy into a cab. We got Dave into a cab.
Alexandra wanted to take a cab, but not from the club. They were cheaper to take, she said, from nearer to my house. Maybe she wanted to spend more time talking to me. That was a nice thought.
We walked towards my house, maybe a mile from the club. I wasn’t following a third rule: look behind you, be aware of your surroundings. My attention was on Alexandra, concentrating on yanking Ukrainian words from my brain to keep the conversation going and have it be deeper than "what’s your hobby?"
On the outskirts of town, we found a cab and she got in. My house was only a ten minute walk from there, and it never even occurred to me to take a cab, because I walk home every day. That was rule four that could have prevented it: if you do stay out late, take a cab home.
Walking home from there, the buildings disappeared and trees crowded in on either side of the road. On my right, the landscape dropped off into a valley. My house sat in the bottom of that valley. Trees grew up and out of it, their tops level with me as I walked along the sidewalk. I heard footsteps behind me. I looked back and saw two men walking in my direction, walking quickly. My first instinct was that they were going to jump me, mug me, but I always have that feeling when someone walks up quickly from behind, and it’s proved false a hundred times.
They got closer. The thought occurred to hurry up, maybe to run, but I was at the side road that led down to my house, a muddy track that plunged downward at a steep angle, one that was now covered in ice and had to be walked down carefully.
The men got closer. One of them called to me. I thought I should head this off, and turned towards both of them.
“You speak English?” asked one of them in English. It was the last English I would hear from either of them. It was the guy who had spoken to me outside the club. He and his friend had followed me. Shit.
“Yes,” I said.
The one who had spoken was a little shorter than me, wearing black as most Ukrainian men do, with a few days of blonde growth on his face. He took two steps forward while his friend stayed still. With nothing but the tops of trees and the drop off into the valley behind me, they had me penned in.
The shorter one, who did all the talking, asked me in Russian for my phone. I told him I did not understand. I had been told, by another volunteer, that if you’re in trouble, don’t let them know how much of the language you speak. He tried to get it into my head that he wanted my phone, saying it in a dozen different ways in Russian. He couldn’t have known I had a mobile; I hadn’t taken it out all night.
How do I get out of this? Sadly, my only plan was that they would get frustrated and leave.
He demanded a couple more times for me to give him my phone. I shrugged in incomprehension. He looked down the steep path that led to the houses on the valley floor, then stuck his hand in his jacket, as if he was gripping a gun.
There was no pretense now. I was being mugged.
I looked to his friend. His friend stood close, taller than me, at least six feet tall, with a dark beard. The facial hair is what struck me the most. Ukrainian men are usually clean shaven, fastidiously so. I told myself to remember their faces.
The friend unzipped his black jacket halfway, stuck his hand in to indicate he had a gun. Something about the way he did it made me realize that neither had guns, that they were winging this.
I can get out of this.
Give us your phone.
“You need a phone?” I asked in English, mimicking with thumb and finger the universal sign for phone. I don’t know why, but it was obvious I couldn’t keep playing dumb when telephone was the same word in Russian and in English.
“Da. Telephon. Telephon yest?” The shorter one, hand still in his jacket, reached forward and grabbed my sweater with his other, bunching it in his hand, threatening. I can get out of this, I thought. These guys don’t know what they’re doing. I knew that. I knew that if they were serious, they would have shown me a gun or a knife or just kicked the shit out of me and taken everything they wanted off my bleeding body.
Do I say I have no phone? What if they try to pat me down? What if they feel my documents in my jacket pocket? My passport is in there. I don’t want them to get my passport.
I shrugged my shoulders to show I didn’t understand.
Then my neck exploded in pain and I staggered a step. The other guy had punched me. Maybe he meant for my head, but it had connected with my neck. I had my hands out, heard myself saying “chill!”
Everything changed then. I was on automatic. I just took out my mobile phone and gave it to them. The shorter one put it in his pocket. Maybe it was because I knew they were serious enough to hurt me, that I was honest enough with myself to know that I couldn’t fight both of them that I gave in. The taller one rubbed his fingers together in a sign for money.
Fine. Fuck it. I took out my wallet, pulled out the bills in the front slot to give to them. The taller one took the money and then snatched the wallet out of my hand. There was another hundred hrivna in the second slot and he took that out as well. Then, for whatever reason, he put my wallet in his pocket.
“I want my wallet,” I said in Ukrainian. They looked a little surprised to hear me speak the language. I was pissed. I had just handed over my cell phone and money without even a fight.
“What?” the taller one asked.
“You have my money, give me my wallet.”
He took it back out of his pocket. There was nothing of value in it. Originally it had been a dummy wallet, with nothing more than a few hrivna in it in case I was mugged. When I first came to Ukraine, I kept my money in one pocket, my wallet in another. But then I got comfortable, felt safe, went back to putting money in the wallet. In it, though, were pictures of my great-grandmother, of Robynne, and of my students from Oklahoma City. I didn’t want them to have them. More the the point, I wanted to regain some kind of control of the situation.
The taller one looked through it, unzipped an inner pouch, found 60 more hrivna in there, my emergency stash. I used to keep it in my boot, until I found out what being in a boot does to money, until I felt comfortable in Ukraine, felt safe, and had put it in my wallet.
The taller one seemed delighted in the find, and gave me my wallet back. They were jovial then. And why shouldn’t they be? They were fucking amateurs. If they were pro, they would never have given me back my wallet, would not have let me stalled them for ten minutes on the street with my pretended confusion. They had just discovered that punching and American once would get them 750 hrivnas worth of loot and they were happy.
Grinning, they put out their hands for me to shake. I was beyond thought then. I shook their hands. I was being punked and I knew it.
“You’re a good man,” the shorter one said in Russian, touching his head to mine. “We love you. You’re our Ukrainian.” It was condescending. I wanted to beat the shit out of them.
As they left, walking uphill back towards the city, they shorter one called back to me: “learn Russian.”
I walked down the icy path, not really thinking at all. I slipped, not paying attention, and landed on my butt. I picked myself off the ice, angrier than ever, crossed the bridge and arrived at my house. I used my key, but for the first time since I arrived in Zhytomyr, the chain was on the door. The night could not get any worse.
I pounded on the door until my host father opened it in his underwear. He was half awake, and heading back towards his room as soon as he had the chain off the door. I had to yell down the hall to him, at his retreating back: “I just got robbed.”
He seemed not to hear. So I sat in the kitchen for a long time. And then I called Peace Corps.