March 16, 2023. Today, I decided to go into the hell of Mariupol. A few hours ago. A year ago. Because Yulia is alive and she is there, on the neighboring street, near the Drama Theater that was bombed today. She sent a note with someone that she is alive. She was. Before that fraternal megaton bomb that took the lives of half a thousand people under the …
March 24, 2022 I was lying on the couch right next to the window, with shoes on, dressed, in a jacket pulled up to my chin, with a backpack, with 4 dog leashes tied to my hand. The dogs were sleeping with me under the blankets. There was silence, the tanks got quiet. For three days, the tank battle was happening on the neighboring Makar Mazai Street, …
April 30, 2022 Mama is gone… Blew up on a mine in Mariupol… Papa brought her remains home on a cart… That is all that is known… There is still no connection. We received bits of information through multiple sources… don’t even have the date of death. Don’t message me please. Papa stayed there by himself. _________________ May 27, 2022
My grandmother Lena was born (1931) and grew up in Mariupol. In our family archive there are photos of the old city, of her grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, with* the first car in the city. Grandma told many stories of her childhood to all her grandchildren, but I am perhaps the only person in the family to whom she entrusted the terrible stories of the war. The war she saw as a child. …
When you arrived in the city, you’d call your friends to arrange a meeting: «Are we meeting in the usual place?» «Near the Drama [Theater]?» «Of course, near the Drama [Theater]!» All roads converged here. There was always a lot of movement and energy at this place. Every year, coming to my native Mariupol, I felt incredible pride and admiration, watching how fast the city was developing. …
Halya… I wrote about her in March. Just before the war started, Halya travelled to her elderly parents in Mariupol and found herself in the HELL of war. Their building was burned, her father stopped walking, and the first few weeks of the war, like most Mariupolites, they hid in dark, old basements from the endless air raids and shelling. At the end …
My friend Halya was a heroine of newspaper articles in the 1990s. Mariupol was proud of her. What’s more, at the end of the 90s, the young doctor from Mariupol won a prize in a very difficult competition among medics from the former Soviet Union—only two won out of hundreds of participants—and so she moved to Spain to improve her qualifications. Halya studied a lot, worked hard and became a good physician …
Artem misses his dad. He’s trying to understand why we left without him, and why his dad can’t join us. I have to answer his questions. My son accepts this difficult information in his own, seven-year-old way. I answer him honestly. «Why are you talking about 8 years? What do you mean, there was no shooting for 8 years?» «Yes, Artem, 8 years ago the …
I go outside during the breaks between rounds of shelling. I need to walk my dog. She constantly twitches, trembles and hides behind my legs. I just want to sleep all the time. My yard among the high-rises is quiet and dead. I’m no longer afraid to look around. Opposite, the entryway to #105 is still burning. The flames have devoured five floors and are slowly chewing through the …
