Our children know that monsters aren’t living under their beds.
They run from those monsters leaving their homes, their fathers, their toys, friends,
beds, plates, everything. And now being here in a hostile environment they talk,
but no-one understand their language; they play with toy pistols, but got scared of
fireworks; they still are very much kids, but they need to become older to keep up
with all the problems.
The world of our kids is like The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, they are not
on the island by themselves, but they are still pretty much lost, independent and
angry.
Their room now is full of scary myths as the only way of expressing all their fears
and anxieties.
March, 13 2022. 4 years old Mykhailo arrives at central bus station Berlin along
with his 8 years old brother and mom. I shiver and cry the moment I see them. One
week my mom and my brothers spend in the basement in Kharkiv hiding from
explosions, more than a week takes them to get to Berlin. Mom seems to be nearly
alive, Mykhailo cries and shouts constantly. When they were catching up on an
evacuation train, I asked my mom to put notes in brothers pockets with their
names and my phone number, so they can be found if something happens.
This note is now laying on my table as kind of compass for the project about
premature adulthood, lost of their usual environment and endless number of fears
which cannot be spoken by a child, but which he feels under the skin and see
every night in his nightmares.
