She was introduced as “Babushka Vera” and immediately she was “grandmother Vera” for us too.
A frail old woman from Mykolaiv, very thin, with white hair.
She was the first person we used to say good morning to when we woke up and goodnight before sleeping. As Vera, like us, slept in the basement shelter.
She had decided not to leave despite the war, because that city was also her home.
So, every night around six, she used to come to the shelter.
Maybe because finding ourselves and being together, the bombs that fell at night seemed less scary.
Or, maybe because, despite the great fear, she was not alone.
She had worn-out green plastic slippers that she left under her bed/sofa every day.
Who knows if they are still there.
Vera loved us!
She used to smile at us, always glad to see us, she hugged us and in the evening she used to chat and joke with us.
Once her son came to visit her, we saw her sitting in the backyard with her granddaughter. Who knows what she was talking about.
UKRAINE EMERGENCY
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A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
Inspired by people met in Ukraine and by Bob Dylan...
Oh, where have you been, my sweet soul son?
And where have you been, my darling loved one?
I’ve been to the country of the red Kalina,
I’ve walked yellow fields and swim blue skies
I’ve been in a land claimed by war
I’ve been in a country painted by fear
And I’ve been to a place that cry the presence of a dove
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall
As if it were just one of the first Spring days
Olena lifts her gaze from the iron looking tense:
“Is it the siren?”
I look around,
I go outside in the courtyard and listen,
construction workers working,
cars honking in the traffic,
everything seems fine.
“No” I answer “I don’t think so”.
Olena slightly lets herself go
with teary eyes:
“I think I am going crazy, I hardly sleep, my life has been hard in the past, but I never imagined I would live a situation like this.”
“By now, when I hear the siren I sit down and pray, this is what is needed, pray for healing from the disease of power and money, which has infected the mind of the person who started it all.”
OPERAZIONE COLOMBA
