Novel explores Chernobyl's ``Dead Zone'' villages

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Novel explores Chernobyl's ``Dead Zone'' villages

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - They are called the ``Dead Zone'' -- villages 
evacuated after the explosion at Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 
Ukraine spewed a deadly radioactive cloud into the sky on April 26, 
1986, changing the lives of millions. 

Ukrainian American author Irene Zabytko's first novel, ``The Sky 
Unwashed,'' looks at the aftermath of the world's worst nuclear 
disaster through the eyes of some elderly women who defy government 
orders and return to their irradiated homes. 

Zabytko, who now lives in Orlando, Florida, says she did not have a 
political agenda when she wrote the book and wanted to focus on the 
determination of a group of people often ignored: the babysi, or old 
women. 

``I grew up with these women. I have always been in awe of these 
indomitable, strong women. I see them around me and feel their 
strength and because of that I wanted to infuse that in my book,'' 
she told Reuters in an interview during a tour to promote her book. 
``If anyone is going to survive Chernobyl, it will be these old 
women.'' 

Wednesday is the 14th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident that 
poisoned vast areas of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, republics of the 
then-Soviet Union. Despite official claims to the contrary, Zabytko 
said Chernobyl's radioactive fallout remained a persistent blight. 

``This is just a horrible catastrophe. Kids are still suffering from 
it, from leukemia. It angers me that medical supplies don't get 
through because of corruption there. This country has still not 
gotten on its feet since independence. People are really, truly 
suffering,'' she said. 

While teaching English in Ukrainian capital Kiev in the early 1990s, 
Zabytko traveled clandestinely to a Dead Zone in a taxi but did not 
see anyone to interview. 

``I never met anyone, but every now and then I thought I saw a thin 
spiral of smoke floating from the chimney of a dilapidated house. 
There were a few souls alive there and I wondered whether they were 
the displaced elderly who had returned to their contaminated homes 
because they had nowhere else to live.'' 

The only living souls Zabytko saw that day were two geese waddling on 
a dirt road and a policeman who pulled her cab over and told her to 
leave quickly ``before you get cancer.'' 

DREW ON EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS 

Zabytko said she used eyewitness accounts for her novel. 

Many people buried their cars, television sets and other precious 
items when they were evacuated, thinking they would soon return. ``No 
one quite understood the impact of the radiation,'' said Zabytko, who 
is now working on another novel set in Ukraine. 

To narrate the book, Zabytko chose a stubborn widow called Marusia 
Petrenko whose son dies from radiation poisoning. 

The book opens with a traditional village scene -- a wedding to which 
everyone is invited. Marusia has prepared her famous nuptial bread -- 
a korovai -- and the wedding party continues late into the night. 

After the party, her son Yurko joins many other villagers for what 
they think is the usual night shift at the plant. But many of the 
workers never go home. The air has a strange metallic taste the next 
morning and the priest does not show up for the Sunday service. 

The official version is that there has been a fire at the plant but 
suspicions abound for many days about the real cause of the strange 
events. Soon tens of thousands of people are evacuated to unfamiliar 
cities where they struggle to survive. 

Marusia, her son and his family are sent to Kiev, where the air is 
not much cleaner. After her son dies, she defies the evacuation order 
and returns to her contaminated hometown, Staryslis, thinking life 
cannot be worse there. 

A NOVEL ABOUT SURVIVAL 

Zabytko said her novel was about survival and the human spirit rather 
than a scientific book about Chernobyl. 

``I am fascinated at how people are able to survive these 
catastrophes which are not of their making, what drives them to move 
forward. How did people survive the Holocaust, how did they survive 
Kosovo? What happens to them afterward and how do they get on with 
their lives?'' she said. 

``That's what I wanted to look at in my book.'' 

Marusia is the first to return home and she valiantly climbs the 
steep steps of the church tower twice a day to ring the bells, just 
in case someone else has quietly slipped back. 

Her first visitor is a mangy cat whose fur is gnarled by the 
radiation. Gradually five elderly women return and survive by eating 
food stockpiles left behind before the explosion. 

They debate furiously over whether to raid the larders of friends who 
have not come back and finally decide to put the food in a warehouse 
where a strict inventory is kept. 

Marusia replants her garden in radioactive soil even though she knows 
the vegetables will be bad for her, and the women win a moral 
victory, getting a contaminated cow from officials who give it to 
them only because ``the old women will die anyway.'' 

A lot has been written about Chernobyl but Zabytko said she had never 
read a novel on the subject. 

``I think for many people it is too painful to write about but it is 
something that needs to be discovered,'' she said. ``I know people 
are proud of being Ukrainian but there is a lack of self-esteem. I 
think this book might help that and show that people have survived 
such a horrible situation.'' 

The book has been on sale for nearly a month and a major book chain 
selected Zabytko as one of the best new writers. ''I'm just so 
grateful the book is out and am still shocked when people tell me 
that they read it and enjoyed it,'' she said.  

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Sandy Perle					Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100   				    	
Director, Technical				Extension 2306 				     	
ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Division		Fax:(714) 668-3149 	                   		    
ICN Biomedicals, Inc.				E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 				                           
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Costa Mesa, CA 92626                                      

Personal Website:  http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205
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