One Sunday in early October, T had lunch at an outdoor restaurant on Andriyivsky Descent, in downtown Kyiv, with a thirty-seven-year-old American who went by the code name Doc. I'd rented an apartment on the same cobblestone street back in March, while the Ukrainian military was repulsing a Russian assault on the city. At the time, the neighborhood had been deserted, and a portentous quiet was broken only by sporadic explosions and whining air-raid sirens. Now Andriyivsky Descent was thronged with couples and families promenading in the autumn sun. Local artists sold oil paintings on the sidewalk. A trumpeter and an accordionist played for tips. Doc sipped a Negroni. Longbearded, square-jawed, and barrelchested, he wore a green tactical jacket and a baseball cap embroidered with the Ukrainian national trident. A thick scar spanned his neck, from a bar fight in North Carolina during which someone had sliced his throat with a box cutter. Toward the end of our meal, an older man in a leather fedora approached our table. International Legion?” he asked, in accented English. I pointed at Doc; the man extended his hand and told him, I just wanted to say thank you.”
Doc scrutinized his glass, embarrassed. After the man left, I remarked that such recognition must feel good. It feels weird,” Doc replied. He'd been a marine in his twenties, and had fought, as a machine gunner, in Iraq and Afghanistan. It had always made him uncomfortable when American civilians thanked him for his service. When his contract ended, in 2011, he'd been eager to put war behind him. Tt was a hard cut,” he said. I was never going back.” Shortly after being discharged, he moved from North Carolina to New York City, where he’d been accepted at Columbia University. Using the G.I. Bill, he majored in computer science, with a minor in linguistics. He did two summer internships at Google, and when he graduated the company hired him full time.
Esta historia es de la edición January 02 - 09, 2023 (Double Issue) de The New Yorker.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición January 02 - 09, 2023 (Double Issue) de The New Yorker.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
INSIDE JOB-"Hit Man"
Years before Hannah Arendt coined, in the pages of this magazine, the phrase \"the banality of evil,\" popular films and fiction were embodying that idea in the character of the hit man. In classic crime movies such as \"This Gun for Hire\" (1942) and \"Murder by Contract\" (1958), hit men figure much as Nazis do in political movies, as symbols of abstract evil.
WHATEVER YOU SAY
Rereading Jenny Holzer, at the Guggenheim.
SUBCONSCIOUSLY YOURS
Does every generation get the Freud it deserves?
BY A WHISKER
Louis Wain and the reinvention of the cat.
Beyond Imagining
Bessie, Lotte, Ruth, Farah, and Bridget, who had been lunching together for half a century, joined in later years by Ilka, Hope, and, occasionally, Lucinella, had agreed without the need for discussion that they were not going to pass, pass away, and under no circumstances on.
STATES OF PLAY
Can advocates use state supreme courts to preserve-and perhaps expand-constitutional rights?
THE LONG RIDE
The surf legend Jock Sutherland's unlikely life.
ARE WE DOOMED?
A course at the University of Chicago thinks it through.
GOD EXPLAINS THE RULES OF HIS NEW BOARD GAME
Guys, want to play this new board game? It’s called Life. No, it’s not “one of God’s impossible-to-understand games that take three hours to learn.” It’ll be fun, I promise!
RED LINE
With the election approaching, the U.S. and Mexico wrangle over border policy.