"I will troll them daily: Crimea has never been and will never be Russian" — story of Crimean restaurant in Warsaw

Belwederska Street in Warsaw is not very crowded. Except that there are always police officers on duty around the clock at the gates of the Russian embassy, a monumental building with columns surrounded by a huge peaked fence. Next to the embassy is a long gray building. This is a Russian cultural center that, among other things, offers to learn Russian.

Across the street from the embassy, the words "Glory to Ukraine!" are painted in huge yellow and blue letters on the sidewalk. And people sometimes bring soft toys to the young trees along the fence and put them there in memory of the Ukrainian children killed by the Russians. Both buildings, along with the surrounding areas, occupy a huge stretch of the street and make a depressing impression. The only time it gets crowded is during numerous rallies and demonstrations against Russian aggression.

Every morning, 54-year-old Crimean Tatar Ernest Suleymanov walks down Belwederska Street. He passes the embassy of the country that annexed his homeland nine years ago and forced his family to leave. But together with his wife, he created his own little Crimea — right across the street from the Russian embassy.

Two months ago, the couple opened Krym restaurant here. The first thing Ernest does every morning is to hang three flags over the entrance with a yellow and blue sign (made in Zaporizhzhya under fire): Crimean Tatar, Ukrainian, and Polish.

"The Russian embassy has reception days, when a crowd of Russians gathers here in the morning to get their documents. I'm in such a hurry to get to the restaurant as soon as possible and put up the flag of Ukraine. It's like a sight for sore eyes. I run here for these moments," Ernest Suleymanov bursts into loud laughter.

And then he adds more seriously: "When we were looking for a place for our restaurant, we had several options, including crowded places where we could make money. But when I saw this place, I thought: I can build my own Crimea here, right in front of the Russian embassy. I will troll them and remind them every day that Crimea has never been and will never be Russian."

Getting to Crimea

Through the large windows, sunlight falls on the traditional copper utensils on the shelves, illuminating the rack of ceramics and the large graphic works on the walls. It smells like coffee, which Ernest is making on the sand. On a nearby table is a vase with a dried sprig of kermeka, a shrub with pink, small flowers that dot the Black Sea coast.

"We are pleasantly surprised that people come to us," says Ernest. "It's a street with minimal foot traffic. But when we chose this place, we thought first and foremost about how to make our institution educational. This is our little Crimea, which we can and want to share with people. Not only with food, but also with music, ceramics, dishes, and history."

Ernest puts freshly brewed coffee on the table in small copper teapots. Crimean baklava appears on the table to accompany the coffee. Crimean Tatar music plays in the background. In the corner of the room, two Crimean Tatars are drinking coffee and talking. For a moment it seems that we are not in Warsaw, but somewhere in Bakhchisaray. I feel absolutely calm. Only the tip jar near the cash register, which is collected to help the Crimea battalion, reminds us of reality.

"At first, I thought of calling the place the 'Gastro Embassy of the Crimean Khanate', that is, the period that was thoroughly erased by the Soviet government, but 'Crimea' is also a good name," the owner smiles.

A few minutes later, Suleymanov's wife, Elmira Seit-Ametova, a smiling woman with a calm voice, enters the restaurant. While our conversation continues, Elmira and Ernest take turns disappearing for a few minutes into the kitchen. There, they wear aprons and help the cooks prepare the dishes.

"Almost all of our employees in the café are Crimean Tatars. There is one Ukrainian, but he is also from Crimea," laughs Ernest. "Everyone knows Crimean Tatar traditional cuisine very well. This is important. We cook together with everyone."

Elmira says: "Ernest calls all the employees our children. It is important for us that they feel at home here, that they feel good. Yesterday, one employee had a day off, but he still came because he feels at ease here."

This is indeed a very personal little Crimea of Ernest and Elmira. The works on the walls are graphics created by Elmira's father, Amet Seit-Ametov. He was inspired by old photographs taken before the deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944.

"Here's a woman making coffee on coals," Ernest Suleymanov points to one of the works, "and here's a man selling chebureks. There was a special window in this drum where the coals were placed to keep the chebureks hot. And this is a seller of buza or ayran, a drink we called yazma. And this is Kalaidzhi, who makes copper utensils. When we returned to Crimea from Uzbekistan, it turned out that there was not a single copper vessel left here — the Russians had melted everything down."

"Into samovars," Elmira smiles bitterly.

The ceramic dishes on the rack were made by Elmira's brother Abdul. After returning to Crimea in the 1990s, Abdul, who studied graphic arts in Kharkiv, began to revive traditional Crimean Tatar ceramics. He continues to do so to this day. At the entrance to the institution hangs the work of Elmira herself, who, before the annexation of Crimea, taught at the Department of Decorative and Applied Arts at Simferopol University.

The family moved to Poland from Kyiv three years ago when their son entered the university here. Elmira and Ernest speak Polish perfectly because they studied here in the early 2000s. Ernest defended his thesis on the deportation of Crimean Tatars. They have many friends here who supported them and helped them open this restaurant.

Simferopol - Kyiv - Warsaw

When the first unmarked Russian troops appeared in Crimea, Ernest was in Kyiv.

"I was on the Maidan from the very first day to the last. I remember walking down Instytutska Street with a friend. People were lying in blood, dying, and we were walking like in a horror movie. We thought we understood what was happening, but at the same time we didn't. These bullets are flying overhead, we understand the danger, but there is no fear. It was the same later in Crimea — there was no fear," Ernest recalls.

He immediately left for Crimea because he realized that it would soon be dangerous there. On the other hand, Elmira and her son left Simferopol for Kyiv.

"I submitted a leave request. But a month later I handed in a resignation notice. My life changed completely. I had a home, friends, a job, and now..."

Their parents stayed in their homes. Ernest did too. In Crimea, he began organizing pro-Ukrainian actions.

"We prepared leaflets against that pseudo-referendum. Together with my friend Ismail, we organized a rally on Shevchenko Square. Local ultras provided us with security at the time."

Ernest recalls walking from Shevchenko Square and being literally attacked by women, who he thinks were brought from Russia.

"These women set the mood in the crowd. They were shouting like crazy: ‘RO-SS-I-YAH!’ I was walking at the beginning of the procession, and these old women were shouting it right in my face. It was so wild," he says.

Even then, people began to disappear, and several of his friends went missing. And at some point, posters with his photo appeared on poles in the city center. They said that he was a Maidan activist and a danger to Crimea, so the person who would turn him in would receive a reward. Ernest realized that he had to leave. It was the last days of March 2014.

"I went to say goodbye to my parents, my father-in-law and mother-in-law. I was walking to the train platform not through the central station, but from the crossing. I ran to my carriage and saw these masquerading ‘Cossacks’ coming out of it — they were probably conducting checks. I boarded the departing train," Ernest recalls. "I have not been to Crimea since then. During these nine years, my mother died there, my mother-in-law died... After leaving Crimea, I was in a prolonged depression, I didn't want to do anything, I didn't see how to live anymore. But I had to live."

When Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, Ernest volunteered at the train station in Warsaw, helping to resettle Ukrainians with his friends. Together with Elmira, they collected necessary things and money from friends and sent them to Ukraine to those who needed them. Now they provide jobs for Crimean Tatars, including those who fled Russian mobilization.

"We are from families of deportees"

Elmira Seyit-Ametova and Ernest Suleymanov were born in deportation in Uzbekistan. They met and got married in Crimea, where they returned when Elmira was 20 and Ernest was 25.

"My father was born in Bakhchisaray, and my mother was from Simferopol. They got married in Uzbekistan," says Ernest. "My dad was placed in an orphanage when he was 7 years old because my grandparents were deported. My grandfather, my mother's father, was a military interpreter, he was wounded during World War II, and he was immediately sent to deportation with his wounds, where he died quickly. My mother was 6 years old at the time. My grandmother also died shortly from an illness. I don't know my grandparents."

"In all our families, there are those who died in deportation or on the way there. We, who were deported to Uzbekistan, were lucky, but among those Crimean Tatars who were sent to the Urals, up to 80% died. The climate and people there are difficult. In Uzbekistan, people are kinder," Elmira says and recalls: "We were pioneers at school, and my grandfather always regretted that the Soviet Union won the war, not the Germans. I was so surprised at the time, and then it dawned on me."

Elmira tells a similar story about her family: "My mother's parents died when I was very young, so I don't remember my grandparents. My mom was born when my grandmother was already 40 years old. She had two sons, but when my grandfather was dekulakized and sent to the Urals, the boys died on the way. And then my grandmother decided to give birth at 40 to have at least one surviving child. That's how she gave birth to my mother, and at the age of 42, to my mother's younger sister. But she died in deportation."

Elmira recalls how in 1984, when she was in the fourth grade, she and her parents went to Crimea for a tour of the southern coast.

"My father comes from the village of Ay-Basil, near Yalta. The Russians managed to rename this Greek name into Vasilievka anyway. We went there. And on the way, the guide told us that such and such people lived here, and this and that happened there. And at the very end, my father couldn’t help but ask: ‘Were there no Crimean Tatars here at all? Why don't you tell us that all these villages had different names?’ And this guide was outraged: ‘What Tatars? They are traitors! I'm not even going to mention them!’" Elmira says.

Even earlier, in 1968, Elmira's grandparents visited Ay-Basil because there are still houses where they grew up. They wanted to go inside, but the Russians who lived there did not let them in.

"That's when my grandmother had her first heart attack. This is the house where she spent her childhood, and she can't even go in," Elmira recalls.

To return home, Crimean Tatars held rallies in Tashkent. They were dispersed and beaten with batons.

"I remember my mother came home one day and her knees were all torn up, she must have fallen when the rally was dispersed," Elmira says.

"I went to the rally for the first time when I was 14 years old. My father and I went to Tashkent on purpose. We had posters ‘For the return to the homeland’, ‘No to deportation’ and others. The police dispersed us. Oh, those were some memories!" Ernest laughs. He adds that he went to a rally in Tashkent when he was 14 years old and hasn't stopped attending them since.

Not like in a fairy tale, but so dear

Ernest and Elmira grew up in Uzbekistan hearing stories about Crimea. From these stories, they imagined the peninsula as a fairy-tale land. Ernest drew mountains in his imagination, with neat houses with tiled roofs huddled at their feet.

"And here we are coming from Chonhar, and along the road there are these abandoned houses built by Russian immigrants. Everything is so abandoned and untidy. And my dad is driving along and is happy. I asked him: ‘Dad, why are you happy? It's worse here than in Uzbekistan’. And my father said: ‘We're going home’," Ernest recalls.

Despite the unpleasant first impression, he immediately felt that he was back home.

"I never thought that Uzbekistan was our homeland. It was the homeland of the Uzbeks. We are strangers there. When I came to Crimea, I felt that it was my land. I was born in deportation, my homeland is Crimea."

Elmira also felt disappointed.

"I always lived in an apartment before. We arrived, and here is some village, a small nondescript house, we need to heat with coal, and we never heated. There was no bathroom, because everyone here went to a public bath once a week and no one took a bath. The toilet was outside. We were used to having a bath and a toilet in the apartment. It was also the 1990s, the electricity was cut off, prices changed every day, salaries were delayed, if you could find a job. But the main thing was that we were at home,” she says.

Taste of Crimea

"It is chebureks that I associate with home. With the home where my mother is," Elmira says, as chebureks are brought out of the kitchen and Crimean herbal tea is placed on the table. "For my mother, making chebureks was always a matter of five minutes. She used to say that it was very quick, hearty, and at the same time our specialty."

After a little silence, Elmira adds: "I miss my parents very much. My dad is already elderly, and I can't take care of him, cook something tasty for him. When I show him what we cook here, I want to feed him and treat him, but it's impossible."

Her voice trembles.

While we are talking, one of the visitors, a Pole, approaches Ernest and asks him to tell us more about the paintings on the walls and the dishes on the shelves.

"A lot of Poles come here, we feel their support. They like everything here. A lot of Ukrainians visit too," Elmira says.

The restaurant owners don't know if Russians come here. But sometimes someone leaves hostile comments about the restaurant on Google.

"Recently, they gave us one star and wrote in Polish: ‘Why did you open this place? Isn't it to further pit one nation against another?’ They are most offended by the place where we opened the restaurant and the fact that the flag of Ukraine hangs here. And that's good," Ernest laughs.

As she bids farewell, Elmira says that she has no doubt that Ukraine will soon return Crimea.

"I always tell my dad: ‘In the summer, we will come to you with our car, we still have Crimean Ukrainian license plates’.”

"In historical terms, one year is [small potatoes]. The occupation has lasted nine years. It is a long time for a human life, but in the context of history, it is a short period. I think we will liberate Crimea very soon. We are doing everything we can, each of us in our place to bring this victory closer. Here and now I am also doing my best," Ernest concludes.

The next day after our conversation, on February 24, about 20,000 people gather in front of the Russian embassy to support Ukraine. Later, we go down to the Krym restaurant to drink hot coffee and eat moon-shaped pies. But there is not a single free seat in the restaurant, and all the tables are booked for hours in advance. It's a relief: small Ukrainian Crimea is full of people and laughter, unlike the empty street alongside the dark Russian embassy.

Author: Maria Semenchenko