#BeingHuman. To my friends and partners in the “collective” West. Look closely at the photograph of this child’s back, where her name, her date of birth and the phone numbers of her mama and papa have been written in permanent marker. What you are seeing is the ordinary reality of hundreds of thousands of children driven from their homes by russia’s invasion, some of them abroad now and others sheltering in the relatively safer regions of central and western Ukraine. I have tried many times to sit down and write this out for you, and each time the memories come back too strongly and the words refuse to arrive.
In this full-scale war we have had to instruct parents to write their contact details on the backs of their children under twelve, because the chaos of an evacuation makes young children forget their own surnames and their parents’ numbers. And in the worst cases, when a child is killed by russian shelling, those makeshift markings are how we find the parents in order to deliver the news no parent should ever have to hear.
Try to imagine the weight of coordinating the evacuation of hundreds and then thousands of people. You ask each parent whether they have a child, and how old the child is, and then you ask them to write the information on the child’s back or hand. Many refuse at first, because the request is unthinkable, and within a few seconds the reality of where they are standing settles on them. This is a full-scale war, we explain to parents who are already in panic, and people and children get lost very easily.
If you want to understand what this actually feels like, do something that will seem cruel to you. Take your own child or grandchild, play the sound of an air-raid siren from YouTube, and while that wail fills the room, explain to your child that you are leaving your home behind without knowing whether you will see it again, since russian bombs will most likely reduce it to rubble. Then ask your child to let you write their name, your names and your phone numbers on their back in permanent marker. Keep your face steady while you explain that children get lost, sweetheart. Then gather your emergency bag and walk out into the dark with the siren still going.
You may find that request cruel and unthinkable, and for millions of Ukrainians it has become a plain necessity. Imagine your family waiting for evacuation at a railway station and then being targeted by russian missiles, as happened at Kramatorsk, where the explosions threw the bodies of the living and the dead in every direction. And now imagine taking a phone call from a parent thanking you for this “lifehack”, because it let them find their child days later in a shelter full of lost children.
Here this describes an ordinary week rather than a hypothetical. When the war finally ends I dream of taking a single week simply to cry and scream and let out everything we have been carrying. For now we carry on, following the job description, continuing the voluntary ministry, supporting our soldiers at the front and their families, and comforting the orphans and the widows they leave behind. There is no time for tears yet. Some day, when peace returns to this land, we may have the luxury of grieving properly. Maybe. Maybe not.
Thank you for your prayers. Keep your children out of the war. Peace be with you and your families, and we wish you a silent night and peaceful skies.
Taras Dyatlik, Ukraine
741 days of the full-scale russian war against Ukraine
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