Aiwa and Aij
Long before and thousands of miles away, the storks were preparing their arduous return from northern Africa. The young female Aiwa felt an inexplicable unrest she had never experienced before. She wasn’t used to ponder the next day, let alone the creeping worries coinciding with the beginning of their migration. Yet the further she flew with Aij from the warm shores of Africa to the distant forests of the north, the doubts grew stronger over whether the journey would be worth the risks. But the ancient instincts propelled her forwards with irresistible force, and soon she turned to comforting thoughts of the nest she’d grown up in, and in which she together with Aij had raised 2 new generations of their own. This is how it has been for centuries and, she convinced herself, this is how it will continue into the future.
Flapping their wings in silence they were heading towards the serene, lush forests of Belarus. Soon a pleasant updraft allowed them to soar effortlessly, conserving their energy for the long way ahead. Aiwa looked down at the sky-blue sea and the green islets within when she was again overcome with the foreboding feeling that this year would not be a lucky one for her chicks. She had to resist the urge to beg Aij to return to their African refuge and to remain there for the years they had left. Knowing that he would reject such thoughts she remained silent. And so she kept on flying until they’d reach the forests near the village Kozhushky where, on a sandy hill near the cemetery, the copper-colored trunk of a pine tree would rise into the sky. Many years ago the good villagers had hoisted an old harrow into its crown and covered it with twigs, thus creating an eyrie. Aiwa’s parents took to it, padding the nest with down feathers to keep their chicks comfortable and warm. When Aiwa had grown up and met Aij, they settled into her parental nest. They re-padded it with moss they collected in the dried-out marshes nearby. Once the work had been completed, they raised their heads skywards and started clacking their beaks to signal their readiness to start a family - and their gratitude to the villagers.
Aij was flying ahead. He had been chosen to lead the flock which made Aiwa proud. She was flying behind him, at the left edge of the triangular formation, helping to guide the air parted by his beak and chest. She knew of his enormous strength, and that, for the entire flight, he would not ask to be relieved of his leading position. ”How are you doing? Are you getting tired?” she felt his thoughts. ”1 am fine, my love” she answered, glad of his attention. ”How are the others doing?” ’’They are following you, relying on
your guidance.” ”1 can sense unrest in you. Are you afraid of something, my dear?” ’’Female superstitions, don’t worry about it. I trust in you and know that there’s nothing to fear.” ’’Things will be fine. Think of the forests ahead, their cool, soothing air and the catch they’ll afford. There’s no other place like this in the world, a godsend. Let’s hope the marshes haven’t been drained so that our chicks can easily find food once they’re out of the nest”.
It’s the third year that she and Aij are returning here. She had dreamt of this place in Africa, felt its pull. Every spring she was returning with joy and anticipation. She would lay her eggs and start to hatch them, patiently waiting for the sound of little beaks knocking against the inside of the shells. She would sit through leaden clouds bursting and drenching the earth; she would sit through angry winds tearing at the nest and threatening to knock it to the ground. It wouldn’t be any easier for Aij, either. He would fly from marsh to marsh, from one drench to another; carrying home rodents and reptiles in his long beak, frogs and snakes. He would notice that Aiwa was losing weight and feed her with great care and tenderness. She would suffer through this time without protest, trusting that she will regain her strength. She would spend more than a month in the nest hatching her eggs. And her patience would be rewarded when the chicks would finally emerge. What joy this moment will bring! The little ones would almost immediately open their beaks, squawking to be fed. With a renewed sense of urgency Aij would carry home food for the chicks. After a week of regaining her strength, Aiwa herself would fly out to the marshes to forage. By then, both would tirelessly provide their young with the food of which the area was so abundant. It was of those happy days they were thinking as they journeyed north, and those thoughts gave them the strength to fly on.
And finally there was the village. Tall chimneys were looming at the horizon which, oddly, weren’t smoking. Here was one of the marshes, and there a familiar field and - finally - the tall pine with their nest. It appeared that no one had beat them to it. In the shaded valleys still lay snow, gray and granulated. ’’Are we here a bit early?” But with the sun shining, the valleys would soon be filled with the rush of melt water. Anticipating spring and its abundance of food, the storks rose their beaks to the sky and, clacking, announced their arrival. For the villagers, raised in the belief of storks as the harbingers of spring, the sound was a welcome signal to start sowing the summer crops. The joyful harmony with nature spread from the storks to the humans. Their hearts, weighed down by the gloom of winter, began to lighten by the prospect of the happy days of summer.
In the first year of Aiwa’s and Aij’s courtship two children - a boy and a girl - played in the sandy soil beneath the nest. After hearing the clacking of their beaks, the girl, Olesja, fell in love with the pretty birds. She said to Andrej, the boy, ”1 thought of names for them”. Andrej looked up from playing in the sand ”How do you want to call them?”. Olesja, who had knelt in the sand, rose and looked up to the birds and announced ’’The male I’m going to call ’Aij’, the female ’Aiwa”. Andrej, following the girl’s gaze upwards, responded ’’These are pretty names, Olesja”. They sat down and continued to play with their sand castles when they both thought of modeling the newly christened storks with sand. ’’Andrej”, Olesja asked, ”How old do storks grow?”. ”Dad says more than 30 years” he replied. ”How long are we going to live?” ”1 don’t know. I do know that I would like to live a long life - with you.” What the boy had just said wasn’t lost on Olesja, she knew that he had opened up to her and offered his feelings, that this wasn’t to be taken lightly, that she needed to think about her response. ’’Why a long life?” she asked. ”I’d like to live like they do” he pointed to the birds above. ”I’d like to return here, to this tree and this nest, year after year”. From this day on, they regularly went to the tree, bringing food for the storks and calling out their names which, they thought, the birds liked. Upon hearing the voices of the two children, the storks would lift their beaks to the sky and start clacking.
This year though, the children weren’t there. ”1 wonder why they aren’t coming” mused Aiwa, distractedly. She fended off another wave of doubt, telling herself that the children hadn’t noticed the arrival of the birds yet, or were busy with something important. She didn’t tell Aij anything about her thoughts. It occurred to her that the warmer the days became, the heavier her heart felt. It was the same kind of pain as when last year she threw three of her five fledglings out of the nest. She was heartbroken then, but knew that she had to do it for only two of the young birds would be fit for the long flight to Africa. The boy and the girl had come to the pine tree and carefully picked up the rejects, still alive at that point. They looked up in disbelief, unable to fathom the cruelty of the birds. The girl stood there, pressing one of the chicks against her chest, crying. And Aiwa, too, cried on the inside, for she couldn’t explain to the girl why she had to be so heartless.
Aiwa didn’t understand why she felt so strange and restless this year. She gazed over the tree tops and remained silent. Aij, too, seemed glum and taciturn. Perhaps also feeling something ominous, he hid his beak and eyes under his wing and stood on one foot, brooding. That night, neither of them fell asleep. They should have rested, recuperated after the long flight - but
they couldn’t get rid of the unease they felt. Dark shadows moved over the land as grey clouds began to gather, threatening to burst into a downpour. Half dreaming, Aiwa felt something pushing them out of the nest like she had pushed her chicks out of the nest last year. Shortly after one in the morning, she woke up with a cry and leaned onto Aij’s neck as if to burrow into his feathers, wishing that he could protect her from the shapeless evil she felt. He could feel it, too. They didn’t know yet what was about to happen to them, but were haunted by a fear that grew stronger by the minute.
Chernobyl, 04/26/1986
At 23 minutes and 40 seconds after 1 o’clock in the morning? shift supervisor Alexander Akimow pushed the button to activate the reactor protection system. This caused all control rods, including the ones meant for manual override, to get lowered into the reactor core. Eventually, insertion of the graphite control rods was to be followed by the introduction of neutron- absorbent boron. However, due to a reactor design flaw, the control rods were initially displacing neutron-absorbent coolant with the moderating graphite.
This caused a spike in the reaction rate in the upper half of the core where the tips displaced the water. The core began to overheat at a rapid rate.
An increase in reaction rate causes more heat to be released and the reactive material to expand. This allows a greater portion of the neutrons to escape which in turn slows the reaction rate and lowers the temperature of the reactor core. In turn, core density increases again which makes neutrons more effective in causing fission. All this constitutes a self-regulating process which, in the case of watermoderated reactors, is further enhanced by water beginning to evaporate, forming bubbles that allow neutrons to escape more easily. Operational security of nuclear reactors depends on self-regulation. However, accidents are possible and can cause significant damage to the reactor and — more importantly — the environment by emitting poisonous and radioactive substances. This is particularly relevant for the Russian RBMK-1000 series. During the Chernobyl disaster, a reactor of that type became unstable.
Michael Bockhorst, www. energieinfo.de
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On a bright day a car stops on its way to Kozhushky. Two adults get out, followed by a boy and a girl. They walk to the pine tree with the stork’s nest in its top. ’’This, children, is where Aiwa and Aij lived”, explains the man. They climb up a small hill atop which a birch sapling is growing. ’’Your mother named them.”
”Is that true?” the boy asks, turning to his mother.
”Of course, Andrey, they were our friends.”
’’And they understood when you talked to them, papa?” inquires the little girl.
’’They understood very well, just as we understood them.”
’’But are there still storks living here?”
’’The saying goes that if humans offend storks, they turn black and leave, henceforth avoiding humans. But look up!” A male and a female stork were peeking over the rim of the nest above.
”Oh!” the children exclaimed. ’’Shall we call them Aiwa and Aij as well?” ”Go ahead and do that.”
The called the birds by the names their parents had thought up. The two storks didn’t understand. They had begun to settle into the nest not too long ago, and weren’t used to hearing human voices in this deserted land. Perhaps one of the storks was a previous chick of Aiwa and Aij, perhaps not. One thing though was certain: With their beauty and grace they were descendants of the fabled Polesia storks - a symbol of the pride and resilience of this region that had suffered through so much.
The parents and their children stayed for a little while longer before they returned to their car and drove on to the nearby village. The grandparents were still living there, having resisted all resettlement attempts. The new generation of storks was living at boundary of the thirty kilometer-zone, as if they were sentinels guarding the separation of the healthy from the tainted land, as if they were making good on the lives of their predecessors that had been cut short. Still, moving across the land like ghosts, white crosses could be seen - crosses, it seemed, Belarus had been crucified on.