By Olha Chepil | 2025-12-26

Alfad Galimov has been forced from his home three times: first by history, then by occupation, and finally by war. Today, at 67, he cooks plov from a gray food trailer on the outskirts of Irpin, serving neighbors and preserving a sense of home he has spent a lifetime losing and rebuilding.

The trailer sits in a residential neighborhood of the Kyiv suburb, sending the smell of plov through the air each morning. A sign on the roof reads Avdet/54, a name that may seem cryptic to some.

Galimov runs the trailer with his wife, Elmira. They are Crimean Tatars whose family history spans nearly every upheaval their people have endured: the mass deportation of 1944, Russia's occupation of Crimea in 2014 and their forced evacuation from Irpin under Russian fire in 2022.

Each day, Alfad lights the gas burner beneath a large pot of plov while Elmira prepares waffles from a recipe that has earned a loyal following.

"I sometimes feel like people come to us for reasons other than that our food is good. Here people get to be transported for a few minutes to Crimea, back to a time when everything was OK," Alfad told Kontur.

The food trailer

Avdet/54 is indeed more than a place to eat. Customers often linger after ordering plov, waffles or coffee, drawn into conversation. Hospitality is central to Crimean Tatar culture, and the Galimovs’ experience as displaced people resonates with many residents of Irpin, itself reshaped by war.

"We have customers who come from the other side of the city, and there are some who even come from Kyiv, and that means a lot to us. We feel like people need us, and they in turn support us, and that's how we hold on to each other," Elmira told Kontur.

"To be honest, I never thought I'd be cooking plov as a pensioner," Alfad said. "I served in the military, then I worked in tourism, and in the banking sector in Crimea, but if I look at this whole path, I'm probably happiest now, in this little trailer."

He experiments with ingredients, sometimes adding quince or substituting quail for meat.

"I like discovering new things, and I enjoy seeing how people react," he said.

A story of expulsion

The Galimovs are now preparing to take part in a food festival in Irpin. Their trailer has become a fixture of city life. Their family story mirrors the history of the Crimean Tatars as a people.

In 1944, Soviet authorities accused all Crimean Tatars of "treason" and deported them en masse to Central Asia, primarily Uzbekistan. More than 200,000 people were removed from Crimea over the course of days. Historians estimate that between one-third and one-half died in the early years of exile.

One of the deportees was Elmira's father, Akim, who was 16.

"My father's relatives were deported the day before, right from their home, in the clothes they were wearing. They were given 10 or 15 minutes to pack. He left through the yard and they didn't find him. But then they caught him anyway and deported him too," Elmira said.

Families were herded into freight cars and sent on days-long journeys in unsanitary conditions, without toilets or clean water. Those who died were thrown from the moving trains. Akim survived.

"It's hard for me to imagine how a teenager went through all of that, but the deportation marked him for the rest of his life," Elmira said.

He later settled in Olmaliq, near Tashkent, and eventually reunited with two sisters who had also survived.

Crimean Tatars in exile lived under surveillance and were used as cheap labor. Speaking their language, singing songs or gathering together was forbidden. Leaving their assigned locations was not allowed.

Leaving again

Alfad and Elmira were born in Uzbekistan, where they studied, married and raised a family.

"For his whole life my father dreamed of returning to Crimea," Elmira said. After the Soviet Union collapsed, he traveled back, bought a house and began planning the family's move. He shipped their belongings ahead, but then suffered a fatal heart attack.

"He didn't get the chance to live in his home," she said.

The family returned to Crimea in the 1990s and rebuilt their lives in Simferopol. Then came 2014.

"We realized that the occupation was just the beginning," Alfad said. "We had lived 25 years of our lives in Crimea, but we understood that we needed to leave."

They moved closer to their younger son in Kyiv and settled in Irpin, where they opened a small café selling coffee, Crimean Tatar pastries and plov.

In February 2022, Russia followed them again. After two days in a bomb shelter, they fled Irpin for Uzhhorod. Weeks later, friends sent a photo of their destroyed café.

"We were in shock. Everything we had built was gone," Elmira said.

In a park in Uzhhorod, Alfad noticed a broken, rusted German trailer.

"I asked if I could buy it," he said. "My son and I cleaned it up, painted it, repaired it and cut a window. That's how our new story began."

Displaced people gathered around the trailer. Locals helped with tables, lamps and supplies.

"That is where Ukraine's strength lies: the strength of the people," Alfad said. "Yes, there is a war going on. But we will win."

When the Galimovs returned to Irpin, they brought the trailer with them.

"Avdet is the name of our street in Crimea, and 54 is our house number. 'Avdet' means 'return' in Crimean Tatar," Alfad said.

"If we could return to Irpin, that means we will also return to Crimea," he said. "It is our Avdet. Our road home."