The balloon factory: after a trip with Ukrainian refugees, Elaine Wood turned fact into fiction

‘It feels safe, like home used to feel.’

‘Wake up Giorgiy! Wake up!’

Not my Dad’s usual, gentle nudge but a serious shake. What’s going on?

‘It’s started,’ he barks, nervously.

‘What has started?

‘The war.’

Mum and Dad rush about the place, grabbing bags of stuff they’ve prepared, just in case: food, water, clothes, bedding. Lidiya is bawling her eyes out because of the frenzy. I clasp tight to the only thing that matters: my basketball. Next thing, we’re in the street.

Only the night before I’d gone to bed early, eager for the next day: basketball Thursday. It had taken me a whole year to edge my way on to the team. I placed my kit under my pillow, tucked my basketball under my arm, and drifted off to sleep.

But what a dream I had! The basketball pitch suddenly erupts; fire and smoke spew out all over the asphalt, and the team look on in horror and disbelief!

This morning though, dreaming becomes life.

We were told it would never happen. Just rumour and the posturing of politicians. Or another media stunt – get the newspapers flying off the shelves again now the covid story is history. It was common knowledge, though, that bomb shelters were being kitted out and every day one or two sirens did blast off.

‘Don’t worry,’ they said, ‘only testing…’

BOOM!

It has happened.

Dark for dark deeds. Big ones, smacked out before dawn.

In the street, alarms screech and people, neighbours, everyone, are running… somewhere. Bombs. Yes! Real bombs going off just a few blocks away! A gobsmacking inferno of fire and smoke kicking off near my school! Am I dreaming? No! It’s real, for sure.

Mad thoughts are: Why? Who’s doing this to us? Don’t soldiers fight soldiers, not kids?’

We dive into the subway and find hundreds of families scrambling to find a place to put down their lives in the stark, cold tunnels Everyone looks dazed and shocked. Some are kind of hysterical. Kids are protesting at being dragged out of bed so early. Even old people are on the move, shuffling and moaning. Dad finds us a cramped spot in a dank corner, and we dump our stuff.

Just then I see my friend Fedir, my hero, since he already made the basketball team. He looks at me and I look at him; he sees the ball under my arm and our eyes light up.

‘Let’s do basketball down here then,’ is our mutual, impossible, fleeting thought; later he’s gone; swept along in the tide of humanity, flowing deep into the tunnels to find a safe spot.

Three nights and three days in this wretched hole with no chance to play anything, never mind basketball. I could say I feel like a rat down a sewer but people are often kind and share things, even chocolate, and rats don’t do that, do they?

Dad looks worried; gran and gramps’ street has been raised; their home flattened; phone contact pulls a blank.

It’s not so much that Dad’s childhood place has been popped, but the unknown fate of his parents troubles him a lot. Are they even alive? Only recently, gramps made it clear he was digging his heels in and would never abandon their home for some bashed-out bunker.

‘No bloody Russians are coming taking my house!’ he stubbornly asserts, as whispers of war grow. ‘They tried that one before.’

‘I’m going up!’ Dad asserts, as word reaches us that bombing has temporarily ceased, and the sirens have quit screeching.

‘There’s a Red Cross post just across the way where we can get news and buy bread.’

Hurriedly he prepares an empty bag; then kisses Mum and Lidiya.

I leap up.

‘Let me come too, Dad,’ I plead; desperate to escape the suffocating subway and see the world again. I also feel sort of protective towards Dad since I love him almost as much as basketball.

‘No, no,’ he says, ‘too risky for a young lad.’

But he can see how pent up I am and suddenly changes his mind, ‘OK then, but mind how you go and stick close. And you can leave that darned basketball right here!’

He waves to Mum, ‘Back in a tick,’ he reassuringly affirms as we pick our way to overground.

First thing: the smell. Not fresh air but an acrid, hot stench, like smoke and metal mixed. You can sense it even through the old covid mask Dad made me put on, against toxic air and whatnot.

‘Not these again,’ I think, resenting the too-tight elastic, pronged about my ears.

Moments later, we are in what was once a street. Now, just piles of angry, hissing rubble. All around as far as I can see, zapped, charcoal skeletons of homes-that-used-to-be, and the leftovers of pointless destruction. Dad and me can’t believe it. Our own neighbourhood, a heap of ashes.

‘Good God!’ mutters Dad, as he draws the flap of his coat around me. ‘Look! That’s the Red Cross over there, where all the people are. Better make a dash for it. Just in case.’

‘Just in case of what?’ I’m thinking, when some weird high-pitched whistle, whizzes towards us and…

BAM!

Dad’s shot. A sniper bullet.

He slumps to the ground pulling me hard down with him. Something red and hot covers my face and hands. It’s Dad’s blood.

I pass out.

Days later, Mum finds me at the Red Cross shelter. She’s in a right state. She doesn’t tell me Dad’s dead but I kind of know. Worse still, it feels like my fault: I should have taken my basketball, it would have saved him, I know it would. Dad isn’t coming home, that’s for sure. And we aren’t either because our block has been bombed out too.

That’s why the very same day, we squeeze aboard the refugee train from Kyiv, heading west. Just me, Mum and Lidi.

By now I realise something’s up; something inside me has shut down.

Mum and Lidi keep talking to me and asking questions, but I can’t answer. I can’t speak. Not a word.

‘Talk to me,’ Lidi insists, tugging at my arm. ‘Please talk and say you’re alright or something.’

But I’m not alright. I open my mouth, and nothing comes out; like my voice disappeared; like my tongue stopped moving; like I’m trapped inside in a dark cave.

So, when we finally reach our friends in Czech Republic it’s awkward for Mum with me being dumb. But Pani Popova, the teacher at our new school, tries to console her: ‘Don’t worry. These things take time…’

The teacher wants to make it right for me and Lidi; take our minds off it all. She arranges for a group of kids including Lidi and me to visit the hot-air balloon factory, Kubicek, just outside Brno.

‘It’s a very magical place,’ teacher says as we get off the bus, ‘here, you’ll see how the world is still full of wonderful things!’

The manager at the factory is kind and super friendly. He’s very excited to show us all round his workshop.

In the entrance hall, a wall-sized picture shows him and all his workers standing together, with a big red balloon behind them and a bright blue sky. They all look really smiley, as if there was no war going on.

First, we go upstairs to where the patterns are cut and sewn. Rolls and rolls of cool, colourful fabric are piled up on vast shelves, just waiting to become hot-air balloons. On a giant table, a robot whizzes about cutting out shapes, and surplus material flies into bins.

Some of my new schoolmates are falling head-first into the containers full of balloon-fabric scraps.

‘Do help yourselves,’ beams the manager gleefully, as arms rummage deeply.

‘Would you like a piece Giorgiy?’ urges Pani Popova, enticing me to speak.

I don’t answer. She thrusts a strip of yellow balloon material into my hand. All the kids have some and are waving their pieces around the place. I just hold mine close.

It’s a huge room, like an aircraft hanger. Lots of ladies sit dotted about the room in front of sewing machines, piecing bits of fabric together. Around each of them wafts a swirling mass of balloon-in-progress, so that each lady looks like a puffed-out, hot-air princess, in a big balloon dress.

The corner of the room opens onto an outdoor, metal, safety stair. One half goes downwards as a fire escape, the other rises to a platform in the sky. We all climb up above the factory, above the trees.

‘This,’ says the manager, ever so proudly, ‘is what it feels like up in one of my balloons!’

As if given a signal, all the kids started waving their balloon fabric madly again. Even though I want to join in, I don’t. I just stand there in my silent world, listening to the creak of trees in the wind. And yet unexpectedly, my mind starts remembering something good: how Dad used to take us up Lysa Hora at weekends to fly our kite, and how it would spin into the wind and fly free. It feels a bit like that atop of the balloon factory.

Moments later, we land back on earth; downstairs, where the burners and baskets are made. There’s a man in overalls, testing one of the burners on the airfield outside the building.

‘Watch this,’ he says, with a glint in his eye.

WHOOSH!

A funnel of fire rushes up into the sky with a terrific roar! Our new classmates love it and squeal with delight. But Lidi grabs me and begins to cry, and I shake uncontrollably. The burner blast seems to trigger off our recent terrors.

‘It’s OK, it’s OK!’ Pani Popova rushes over and caws apologetically, ‘just the hot air that sends the balloon up – nothing to be afraid of.’

But she hasn’t been there and seen what we’ve seen: the theatre of war.

At last, the hot-air balloon baskets themselves are standing before us and all the kids climb aboard. They’re really huge these baskets and could fit ten or more people in, and a pilot. Ours gives me the idea of us all being birds in an enormous nest. It feels safe, like home used to feel.

‘Well, that’s about it at my hot-air balloon factory for today,’ beams the manager as we return to the entrance hall.
‘How’d you like it?’ he asks, aiming his question right at me.

I want to say: ‘Feels like home.’ But nothing comes out.

The manager, who has been tipped off about mine and Lidi’s war trauma, has a lot of sympathy and a type of understanding of where we’re at. He senses there is still more to do to effect a cure.

He goes: ‘Since you have all been such excellent children today, may I invite you on a flight in my best hot-air balloon, next Friday?’

No one says no.

Even the strip of balloon fabric in my hand begins to tug excitedly. It acts like our kite used to just before launch, when Dad and me went up Lysa Hora together. But I hold my shred tightly, resisting its bid for freedom.

Next week comes too soon. I’ve been getting more and more anxious about going flying in a real hot-air balloon. If I could, I would tell Mum I’m not going. As it is, she reads my thoughts and simply says, ‘No Giorgiy, you must go. Your Dad would want you to.’

So here we are, ready for take-off; me, Lidi, five classmates, Pani Popova, and the extraordinary manager of the hot-air balloon factory – now our pilot.

This balloon is different from the one we tried before. It has a wicker gate so you can just walk in. This makes it easier for us and Pani Popova is relieved she doesn’t have to volley over the side. Lidi and me stand close together and peer over the rim of the basket.

Pani Popova reminds us that the burners are just a big type of engine that makes the balloon go. This helps a lot.
‘Is everyone ready?’ asks the manager-now-pilot. ‘It’s time for countdown: Five, four, three, two, one…’

Whoosh!

The mighty roar from the burner followed by… the ever-so-gentle lifting of the balloon from the earth into the sky – not even a murmur. And above us, the triumphant, spaciousness of the red balloon, so fantastic and enormous!

Slowly, ever so slowly, it glides above the trees, up into the morning sky above Brno. Way below, the spires of St Peter’s; the AZ tower; Spielberg castle; all the famous landmarks look like toytown models; the great Svratka a winding ribbon, and the people, just dots. It’s not windy at all; it’s totally calm and still, as if we’re a silent ruby cloud, drifting by in slo-mo.

I realise something. Down there the world looks peaceful and quiet – you might even say beautiful, like it’s a good world. This free, floating feeling seems to soothe my troubled inner landscape and sprinkles it with some kind of happiness. It’s the type of feeling I used to have before the war playing basketball.

Look! The sun is bursting out, rushing over the green world, lighting up the great Moravian forest to the north, painting the tips of Schneeberg and Rax in the distant south with a fringe of gold.

‘And this must be the east,’ I surmise, circling sunward.

‘That’s where I come from, my home, my country; Ukraine.’

It conjures up visions of how it was before the war; all the people I knew and loved; my family, my friends, my basketball team…

One of these is very special. A person’s face appears, clear-as-day, before me and seems to fill the whole sky, which had been my nothingness, with warmth and love. A face so kind and reassuring.

And something is happening to me again. As if my heart is bursting out through my throat. Something inside me is opening.

My lips slowly part. A word splutters out:

‘Da-a-ddy.’

‘The Balloon Factory’ was awarded third prize in the Brno Writing Contest.

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