"Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster" by Svetlana Alexievich, translated from the Russian by Keith Gessen
It happened late Friday night. That morning no one suspected anything. I sent my son to school, my husband went to the barber's. I was preparing lunch when my husband came back. "There's some sort of fire at the atomic station. They're saying we are not to turn off the radio". This wasn't any ordinary fire, it was some kind of shining. It was pretty. I'd never seen anything like it in the movies. That evening everyone spilled out onto their balconies, and those who didn't have balconies went to friends' houses. We were on the ninth floor, we had a great view. People brought their kids out, picked them up, said: "Look! Remember!" And these were people who worked at the reactor — engineers, laborers, physics instructors. They stood in the black dust, talking, breathing, wondering at it. People came from all around in their cars and on their bikes to have a look. We didn't know that death could be so beautiful.
I didn't sleep all night. At eight that morning there were already military people on the streets in gas masks. When we saw them on the streets, with all the military vehicles, we didn't grow frightened — to the contrary, it calmed us down. Since the army has come to our aid, everything will be fine. We didn't understand then that the peaceful atom could kill, that man is helpless before the laws of physics.
All day on the radio they were telling people to prepare for an evacuation: They'd take us away for three days, wash everything, check it over. The kids were told that they must take their schoolbooks. Still, my husband put our documents and our wedding photos into his briefcase. The only thing I took was a gauze kerchief in case the weather turned bad.
Source: The Paris Review
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