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.
This story is from the January 02 - 09, 2023 (Double Issue) edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the January 02 - 09, 2023 (Double Issue) edition of The New Yorker.
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STUNTED
\"The Fall Guy.\"
MOTHERS OF US ALL
Paula Vogel's \"Mother Play,\" Shaina Taub's \"Suffs,\" and Amy Herzog's \"Mary Jane.\"
PURE PLEASURE
The \"Radical Optimism\" of Dua Lipa.
PARADISE LOST
The search for a home that never was in Claire Messud's new novel.
ORIGIN STORY
What do we hope to learn from our prehistory?
DEATH IN VENICE
At the Biennale, the past dignifies the weird, desperate present.
WE'RE NOT SO DIFFERENT, YOU AND I
\"You'll never get away with this!\" Ultra Man vowed as he wriggled in his chains. \"You may destroy me, but you'll never destroy what I stand for!\"
STONES OF CONTENTION
The British Museum faces accusations of cultural theft-and actual theft.
A CAMPUS IN CRISIS
Dissent and defiance at Columbia's pro-Palestine protests.
ARROW RETRIEVER
I am an arrow retriever. After a batrows are costly and time-consuming to make. It seems like a terrible waste-and maybe even a sin―for an arrow to fall to the ground without hitting someone. Even if the arrow kills somebody, it can be reused to kill someone else. As Randolf the Scot famously said, \"Arrows don't grow on trees.\"