Α fictional story based on actual events from Russia’s war against Ukraine
The sound of the bomb explosion awakened her. The building was shaken. “This one fell close,” she thought as she pressed her hand to her mouth to stop her teeth from rattling unconsciously. She unzipped her sleeping bag, sat up, and checked the time on her cell phone. It read 6:30 am. She had barely slept. The freezing temperature in the underground bomb shelter made her cramp. Τhe lack of privacy also made relaxing difficult. It was an entirely new situation for her. Being alone among dozens of strangers lying a few centimeters away kept her on guard. Yet she felt lucky to be with them. This morning, she fled her mother and two daughters to Poland to keep them safe while staying in Kyiv to join the city’s resistance. Her husband and father were digging trenches and raising barriers somewhere in the area.
She hastily stood up. Everyone was on their feet, even the kids. There was not a whisper or a sigh or a cry. Having been violently awakened by the explosion, they tried to process the war as reality, not just a nightmare. She folded her sleeping bag and started for her apartment without waiting for a cup of tea. She wanted to pass from home to take a bath and change her clothes before going to the public library where women were weaving camouflage nets for Ukraine’s front lines. She was in a hurry to be among them. The feeling of being alone in a city under bombing made the situation she had to face even more cruel.
Shortly after, she stood in front of the ten-story apartment building where she lived, not far away from the shelter. The shock wave had shattered the façade walls, and the explosion opened a crater in front of the main entrance. “So, it was here where the bomb dropped. In my house,” I guessed her thought. She was pressing her mouth again with her hand. I could see her jaw quivering. I felt her straggling the scream rising in her chest at the sight of her bombed-out apartment on the second floor.
Her wilderness tore me apart. I reached out to embrace her, but my hands met the void. She started moving. With slow, cautious steps on the wrecks was heading for the entrance. I wanted to scream at her: “Stop!” To prevent her from entering her ruined house. How could she bear this alone? But instead, I watched her disappear into the building.
The camera turned to record the destruction caused by the bomb. We saw scattered debris and devastated people trying to deal with what had hit them. Οthers carried whatever they could hold in their hands in a couple of bags. They could not take more with them anyway. Take them where? The bombs were chasing them wherever they took refuge. In theaters, hospitals, and cars in which they flee their city and country.
As the camera slowly returned, I saw her again in an apartment on the second floor whose outer wall had collapsed. She was sitting in front of a white piano covered with pieces of plaster, where there should be a glass window overlooking the tree-lined road. The sound of the piece she was playing did not penetrate the camera, and the scene was entirely eerie. The camera operator spotted her and focused on her. I saw her making room on the stool she was sitting on for an imagery player with whom she continued playing, probably sharing a four handed piano piece. Whose presence did she recall to be with her at that terrible moment from which nothing would ever be the same? I wanted to shout to her that she was not and would not be alone. That I would be there for her. But neither my voice or my solidarity could reach her. I was a stranger miles away watching online bloody cruelty unfolding in real-time and was utterly powerless to do anything to stop it.
They say that everything that happens teaches us something and evolves us as human beings. Who knows, maybe it is so, right? She will become more courageous. She will learn to survive under extreme savagery conditions without becoming depraved and be there when it is all over to create a new future for those to come. And the lesson for me might be accepting that life is not fair, and I am not God. I should finally learn to live with that, however much pain and fear the realization of weakness may hold, and settle for the little I can do to help.
