I went.
I fell in love with the once-grand convent, a gray stone edifice surrounded by rolling green hills. Half of it was bombed away in the past decade, and much of the stonework is in disrepair, but even in its ruined condition it’s beautiful to me.
The nuns taught me to care for the goats. They were frightened to take them grazing too far from their home, but I wasn’t. Fighting men didn’t scare me; it was my dark past I was frightened of.
Mother Olga and the abbess taught me to pray, taught me about the Bible. I found it all quite pleasant, but I was not moved by any type of religious feeling until one day when I was out on the steppes with the goats.
I had not been sleeping, troubled by an incident in town when I’d wanted badly to break the nose and fingers of a Russian fighter who mocked Mother Olga. Out there in the grass, I accidentally dozed off.
When I woke up, there was a strange light blazing from a thicket. I went to investigate it and found myself scratching away dried leaves and dirt to uncover what felt to my fingers like a wooden slab the size of my hand. I brushed it off to discover it was an icon of Jesus shining up at me. I did not understand how this painted piece of wood shone so brightly. The light seemed to blaze from Jesus’s eyes and face, brighter than the sun and all the stars.
All I knew was that I was filled with such indescribable peace, just gazing upon his face.
This light illuminated the bushes and the faces of the goats who had gathered around me. Like lightning, but brighter. As soon as I was able, I carried it back to the monastery, running at top speed, eager to show the mothers, but the shine faded. By the time I burst through the doors, I held nothing but painted wood, an icon like all the others, only more damaged and weathered, some of the paint off.
Mother Olga was excited all the same. She told me the icon had been stolen decades ago and was thought to be lost forever.
The abbess arrived when she heard. She said, “The grace of God has come to comfort you.”
It was then I knew I wanted to join them. The nuns said Jesus would love me even if I wasn’t a nun, but I was determined, because of the darkness in my past, and the way this light spoke to me.
The fighters came soon after I found the icon. This was one of the greatest trials in my short memory. I shook at the way the three of them forced us to sit and watch as they took most of our food and relieved themselves on the rest. I heard the others outside, taking our best goats. When they mocked my beloved abbess as she prayed, I started toward them, meaning violence.
Mother Olga grabbed my arm. “Tanya!” This was the name they called me.
Hers was an old woman’s grip, but there was power in that grip, and love and goodness and faith. I forced myself to still, heart pounding so fast, I imagined the whole countryside could hear it. It was with an iron will that I stilled myself and bowed my head. “Please excuse me,” I whispered in Russian.
Even then, I strained not to fly at them, right there in my novice’s robe and head scarf, sure that I could make them sorry, elbow to throat, gun butt to nose, foot to jaw, all in one flowing sequence.
Oh, it would have been so easy. Bowing my head and saying words of peace… I could have crushed a mountain with the effort it took to bow my head and say those words.
When they left, the abbess lifted my chin with her bony fingers. “I am so proud of you, Tanya.” I wept with the frustration of it.
After being a novice for a year and a half, they said I was ready to turn in my head scarf for the nun’s veil and a new name. Except then I caught a man who had snuck into the pen at dawn, about to kill my favorite goat. I broke both his arms and his jaw. We had to drive him to a hospital a day away.
Thus I had to begin my period of being a novice over again.
It takes such a long time to learn the art of forgiveness. Mother Olga said that my love of fighting and lack of forgiveness was a lion at the gates of my heart’s desire to be a nun. She said that Jesus loves me all the better for it.
Then I was taken.
I was napping on a hillock. I woke up with boots pressed down on both my arms, like boulders on my arms, and a sweet cloth being held over my mouth.
When I awoke again I was locked in a dark freighter container with two dozen other women, out at sea for some weeks. The virgins among us were brought here to this place with cameras and many little rooms. They tested the other women for virginity, but they didn’t test me. It’s strange to me that they didn’t test me. There is no reason to assume a novice nun is a virgin.
I still have my head scarf and novice’s robe in this place. Still my prayer rope.