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Our skin has thickened into armour, but I do not want survival to take away my tenderness towards others – or myself
My grandma was as hard as nails. She had just turned 17 when the Nazis entered her village in the Kyiv region, near what is now the city of Bucha. She hid in the attic to avoid being taken for forced labour. They didn’t find her that time, but a few weeks later she was caught working in the fields. They put her in a cattle wagon and took her to Germany. She escaped and walked a couple of hundred kilometres back to her village. Grandma said that life was hard for everybody during the war, but she was lucky.
In the past month, two of my friends here in Kyiv happened to tell me that their hands have started shaking during Russian airstrikes. Everybody who knows that my hands shake during airstrikes tells me their stories. One day, during an airstrike in the Donetsk region, I had a meltdown and have never recovered. Today you could say I am an ambassador for people whose hands shake during airstrikes.
Alina Sarnatska is a Ukrainian writer, playwright and war veteran. She is the author of two books and nine plays, and her work has been staged and presented internationally
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