So, why am I going to Kiev?

My cousin Difa is exactly what you’d ima­gine a small Jewish grand­moth­erly type to be. She’s half my height and round as can be. When I arrive, she has pastry ready filled with sweet cheese and apricot jam, ready to put in the oven. Her hands are covered in flour. With abso­lute pre­ci­sion and a heavy Rus­sian accent, she says, “If you wait half an hour, it will be pie.” She’s not a grand­mother, though. She never mar­ried. She’s 82. She’s still work­ing, as a plant physiolo­gist, spe­cial­ising in the res­pir­a­tion of plants and how they pro­cess CO2. She’s still pub­lish­ing. She used to be the head of the Insti­tute, now they come to her at home for con­sulta­tion. She tells stor­ies of going to Ger­many for con­fer­ences. She tells stor­ies about everything. She makes amaz­ing borscht.
I ask Difa about where my grand­father grew up, what does she remem­ber? I never met him: he died before I was born. None of the people I’m talk­ing with ever met him: they were born after he left the coun­try. Appar­ently, Lusya, his sister, took my Dad and Uncle Norman there when they first vis­ited, showed them the street I’ll be trying to find tomor­row, showed them the house. But Lusy­a’s dead now. Difa can’t remem­ber the house number now, and neither can Dad, so I’ll just be walk­ing down the street. Appar­ently, later, after Misha left, they lived near the Botanic Gar­dens and my great-grand­father loved walk­ing in the gar­dens. That makes me happy. I can walk in the gar­dens and know that he walked there too. But that’s not my grand­father, that’s *his* father.
I ask Difa if she has any photos from before he left. We spend the morn­ing look­ing at photos she had of her family without him, photos my father had brought to her of him in Aus­tralia after he left. There seems to be no trace of him before he left, no proof he was ever here.
What is this thing I’m look­ing for? Family? His­tory? Roots? This is in some ways the found­a­tion of my thesis work. What is this thing, belong­ing? What is this thing, eth­ni­city? Why is this more mean­ing­ful to me than where my grand­mother came from? Her Dutch roots are much fur­ther back. The family had been in Aus­tralia six generations.
We run out of photos and talk instead, about trav­el­ling, about polit­ics, about fem­in­ism in Russia, the dif­fi­culties of being a woman sci­ent­ist. She makes lunch: caviar and bread, rich red borscht (tra­di­tional dish from the Ukraine, she says, made from red cab­bage and beet­root and sweetened with ber­ries and sugar, served with sour cream), cucum­ber and tomato salad, hon­ey­dew melon for dessert.
She insists I take tra­di­tional treat­ments for my runny nose: first inhal­ing water with a few drops of iodine and soda, spit­ting it out my mouth (ugh) then rub­bing a mix of honey and fresh aloe vera into the nos­trils. Interesting.
She wants me to see some of Moscow, per­suades me to leave my bags and head to Red Square. I do. It’s a lovely sunny day. Bizar­rely, the centre of Red Square is a hive of activ­ity as road­ies set up enorm­ous scaf­fold­ing for some insanely huge rock concert.
I see St Basil’s crazy church, check out the State His­tory Museum (love the build­ing) and head back to Difa’s. I buy her flowers and dill pickles for dinner. She (bless her cotton socks) has pre­pared a travel pack for me: break­fast for tomor­row and everything. Dinner is hot potato fried Rus­sian style, sardines, more caviar, dill pickles, bread. She packs me off to the train.
My first encounter with a Ukrain­ian is someone who speaks spot­less Eng­lish and helps me find my car­riage. My second is the sweet lawyer sit­ting oppos­ite me who speaks hardly any Eng­lish but a little German and we are using my lan­guage guide to exchange basic inform­a­tion. His name is Valery. And now he’s just helped me com­pile a list of essen­tial words in Ukrain­ian using my poor Rus­sian and hand sig­nals. This all bodes very very well.