On my way back from the half term holidays, in the seat next to mine on the plane sat a rather large old looking lady, her Italian had a strong Eastern European accent and her tenses were all wrong. She sat in her seat clinging on to a large shopping bag filled to the brim, I asked if she would like me to place it in the overhead compartment. After having done so I sat back in my seat and she turned to me once again and asked me how to fasten her seatbelt. As the plane took off she put her hands together and began praying in a language that sounded Russian. Her background interested me and I had two hours worth of flight with nothing to do, therefore the only logical thing to do was to learn more about the life of the woman sitting next to me.
Luda, born and raised in a small town in the Ukraine met her husband at the age of 17,she was walking on the sidewalk with a friend when her heel broke and the man who would become her husband caught her and brought her home. When telling me the story she made sure to repeat the fact that he was a Russian soldierserving in Ukraine with three gold medals, he was 38 when they met and two years later they were married. The two moved to Moscow where they lived happily and had two boys before her parents became very sick and the family returned to the Ukraine to look afterthem. It wasthen that her hatred for her people grew, because her husband was Russian he wasn’t accepted and was often threatened and insulted on the streets, now, when she speaks of the Ukrainian people she refersto them asthe “wolves”. Her husband could no longer live in Ukraine and therefore he offered her an ultimatum: he would return to Moscow and if she didn’t return within a month he would remarry and forget all about her. Luda couldn’t abandon her parents which meant her marriage was over. I asked if she ever thought of remarrying, she looked at me and laughed.
Shortly after, at the age of 28 Luda came to Italy and began working for families. She has been in Italy for 45 years and has now decided to move to Portugal, where her two sons have already begun a new life. She told me that in Itlay she once worked for a family of Satanists, this to her, a Christian orthodox, was the biggest sin that ever existed and when she spoke of it she only did so in quiet tones fearful anyone else would hear. She told me that it was a beautiful family with 5 children but they all believed in Satan so intensely that the youngest child hung himself. I then asked what she thought of what was happening in the world with the coronavirus and she told me it was our fault; humanity has sinned and now we have to pay. She then told me that in Ukraine the wolves had been throwing stones at buses of Chinese tourists and shouting they all had to be burnt. For her there was a simple way ofsolving all that is happening; 7 days of fasting and praying.
I began to direct my questions towards her religion, I found it so curious how one could believe in something so profoundly that their whole life was devoted to it. I asked her what would happen after life, and she said that those who followed God’s words and leadership would fill
their place alongside him and the rest... well the rest would go to Satan. She then turned to me and said that even though I don’t pray and fast there is good in me and that, maybe he would spare me. At the end of the two hours she promised, due to my interest in her religion, that she would one
day take me to the orthodox church in Lisbon and she would organize a meeting with the priest and I would then be enlightened.