More than 30,000 people have fled Aleppo since the latest government offensive began last month, joining the more than 10 million Syrians — nearly half the population — who have fled their homes since the conflict began. (c) Hassan Ammar AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.I came back to Kyiv, the city of my birth, on a snowy evening this week. The trip was reassuring in its ordinariness. I had taken the red-eye from New York to Frankfurt, following by a layover that had me wandering the duty free shops in an exhausted stupor as the attendants, spotting an easy mark, scrambled to try to get me to spend a hundred euros on moisturising my tired face.
The plane to Kyiv sat at the gate for a long time, with the cheerful Lufthansa pilot occasionally piping up about how there have been knock-on delays due to fog. I passed out from exhaustion in my window seat and woke up just as the pilot announced that we had entered Ukrainian airspace.
My native country glittered below us, all snow and the scattered, shivering lights of towns. The moon reflected on the Airbus’s shiny wing as if it were a puddle. I watched it as the plane began its smooth descent. Something caught in my throat. Something always catches in my throat when my plane is on approach to Kyiv.
