Stories

A few weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a tango dancer from Kyiv who fled the war with just a backpack, was passing through my city and asked if she could couchsurf for a night. I made the guest bed, prepared some food and suggested she’d come with me to a nice weekly milonga. She wasn’t sure. After weeks of fleeing, of cars, trains, crashing at stranger’s homes, wearing the same set of clothes, trouble sleeping, panic attacks in the middle of a street, of realising the word “refugee” now applies to her too, she was hardly in the mood for a milonga. She said she might just come for a bit, have a look and then go home. I said, whatever made her feel comfortable. Luckily, I had a pair of fitting shoes. I gave her a skirt and a bright red lipstick. “Nothing like red lipstick to put you in the mood!” I said. In the milonga I introduced her to a couple of friends and she ended up dancing until the end. I saw people’s expression change when she told them where she was from, and I saw how they embraced her. Sitting next to me on the sofa between the tandas, she said: “Tango is really like therapy. I start to feel my body again, after all these weeks. And my brain is thinking now of how to move, of other things rather than… you know.” I put my arm around her and we sat watching the dancefloor, each of us trying not to cry.