The show must go on!

A girl at the dance studio in Wroclaw says that her parents never called today. They are in an occupied town in Sumy Oblast. There’s no power and the shelling is non-stop. Then she takes a deep breath, smiles at her pupils, turns on dance music, and begins the lesson, just like a month ago. In the evening, someone will bring her 8 cats.

The show must go on!

Thousands of mothers and children. Thousands of kilometers from their homes. One of them now copes with the hysterics of her 3 year-old 24/7.

Another has to forget about her degrees and grab any job that comes her way because somehow she didn’t manage to learn a foreign language during her couple of hours in a bomb shelter.

Another is crossing all of Europe by car, although not that long ago she was afraid to get behind the wheel after an injury.

But they all curse Russia, grit their teeth and do what they have to do.

The show must go on!

A man wakes up at 10 because he has a call from work. He was up until five in the morning, helping to accommodate people at the train station, explaining and translating. He wants to join a territorial defense unit, but friends say that financial help is just as important right now. So, he continues to write code so that he can transfer money for sleeping bags and thermal imaging devices.

The show must go on!

I stop scrolling the news feed. I still haven’t seen the one piece of news we are all waiting for. I take out my books and put them in my backpack. I overcome a deeply-layered sense of guilt for being safe, for being able to do my favorite thing. I’m heading to the other end of Wroclaw to teach a literature class to school kids. With the younger ones, we make up a fairytale that is surprisingly good. It’s about a gnome who is looking for his cat. With the older pupils, we talk about different story lines. About how a word can also be a weapon.

«What place in Ukraine would you like to return to?»

«Home. Just home.»

I’m sure that this dream will come true, soon. That teenagers will be able to write their government exams at desks in Ukraine. They will rebuild this country and then write such stories that the world will give them standing ovations.

And the show will go on!

Anna, Wrocław