Each of our meetings with IDPs is filled with stories that are extremely touching because of their courage, bravery, and pain. They are rich with tears, love, and hugs. Every life story passes right through us and stays imprinted in our hearts. We continue the cycle of stories of people who were forced to leave their homes because of the war. The third story is about a family from Kharkiv:
Nadiya and her family lived for 44 days in a basement in Kharkiv, where they went down when the full-scale war started. On April 9, she, her husband, and two daughters evacuated from bombed-out Kharkiv to Lviv.
“When everyone was exhausted, we decided to evacuate to Lviv. I will never forget the moment when we went out into the yard, and my daughter covered her eyes with her hands for 20 minutes. After 44 days in the basement, the sunlight was too bright for her. My heart was just breaking then,” says Nadiya, “We were constantly living under explosions, there was constant bombarding, there were constant sounds we had never heard before. These sounds were so powerful and scary that my ears were bleeding. Since then, I have been hearing very poorly.”
“We saw rockets hitting residential buildings, people and children being torn apart, bodies flying around. You know, I’m saying this now as a zombie. What I and my children saw, I would not wish on anyone” explains Nadiya. “In the first weeks in Lviv, whenever we heard any loud sound, we would lie down on the ground because we could not control it. To this day, whenever the air raid alarm sounds in Lviv, I involuntarily start to cry.”
Today, they live in a modular town in Lviv. The eldest daughter is 8 years old, and the youngest is one and a half years old. “At first we lived in a temporary shelter, but now we live in a modular town, so the conditions are much more comfortable. My husband managed to find a job on the third day in Lviv, so we have enough money for necessities,” says Nadiya.
In the summer, the Maltese Relief Service donated strollers to the residents of the modular town. “You made us such a holiday back then! The girls and I thought it would be some old second-hand strollers, but we agreed to anything because it’s hard to carry the children all the time. And when we saw you, when we saw the volunteers’ smiles, when we saw the new strollers, the world turned upside down with joy. We now remember your visit as a holiday,” says Nadiya.
“What do I want most now? Peace! I don’t need anything else,” says Nadiya.
