Paris, September 21, 2023
Dear readers,
This morning, I woke up at 5 o’clock, I saw that several attacks had taken place all over Ukraine. For the first time in a long time, rachists [contraction de « russes » et de « fascistes »] again targeted power plants. It’s also the first time in a long time that I haven’t been so afraid for my family. Especially for Sasha and mom, they are on vacation in a small town in the West which is much less protected than Kyiv [Kiev, en ukrainien]. Today is our mother’s birthday and three hundred and ninety-eight Ukrainian cities were without electricity.
Since my last letter, many things have happened. All the weeks of our newspaper have been brought together in the form of a book, published by Actes Sud, which was released at the beginning of September. It makes me weird to see this portrait of Sasha and me in bookstores. Sometimes I think I wish this book had never existed. And on the other hand, if it helps people become interested in the war in Ukraine, I will be happy. And then, it warms my heart, because it’s a job that brought me and my sister very close together.
Last weekend we participated in the Festival du World. Our diary was performed by two actresses and set to music by a talented composer. I had the pleasure of participating by singing two Ukrainian songsChervona Routa And My Kyiv. During the rehearsals, I was very troubled, all the memories of concerts with my choir in Ukraine during the Kyiv sings festival, every May, came back to me: my beautiful Kyiv, which was then all adorned with chestnut flowers, its smell of wet asphalt after storms, beautiful schoolchildren preparing for the end of the school year. I have watched this video so many times from the 1960s where Yuri Gulyaev, a Soviet singer, performs My Kyiv with magnificent images of the city at that time, the one that my grandmothers described. Go watch it on YouTube !
During the performance, I couldn’t hold back my tears. Listening again to our life in 2022 and 2023 is a difficult test for me. I’m not ready to reread the journal yet. But we got a lot of feedback from spectators on the importance of telling the lives of ordinary people, civilians, during a war. During the question-and-answer session which took place after the show with the whole team, Elisa and also Sasha – who was with us, connected on a big screen – my companion, Yanis, spoke in front of everyone. world. I was not excpecting that at all. He said things he had never said to me face to face. It touched me to the depths of my soul. I don’t realize how difficult it must be to spend your life with someone – in this case me – who is constantly under the psychological pressure of war. He’s holding up so well. He is a huge support for me.
You have 66.2% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.