Olga and Sasha are two Ukrainian sisters. The first is 34 years old and is a wine merchant in Paris, where she has lived for seven years. The second, aged 33, lives in kyiv with her parents and grandmother. Recently, she has been working remotely for a French digital communication agency. The two sisters have agreed, since the beginning of the conflict, to keep their logbook for “M”. This week, Olga and Sasha are finally reunited. And the eldest in turn experiences life punctuated by warning sirens.
Tuesday August 2
Olga: I prepare the list of what I want to take to Ukraine. I’m going to take very few things, I’m only allowed a 10-kilogram suitcase.
Sasha: My routine has changed. I wake up at 6 a.m. to go for a walk with the dog in the forest and on the banks of the Dnieper, which has a small arm along the tourist base where we settled for a few days with Y. [une de ses copines]. Yesterday it was sunny. Today, I feel that we will have a cold week with rain. Bad luck, no swimming pool possible. Never mind. The place is beautiful. I don’t want to read the news during these four days. If something bad happens, I will know it without even looking at these hundreds of photos and posts that hurt me. I’m thinking about this weekend, I’m going to see Olga again and it’s great. Today, I am also starting my psychotherapy at a distance. I have the chance to take myself in hand after these six months of war, stress, fear, personal ruptures, professional changes… So many things.
Wednesday August 3
Olga: I read on the Internet that every day bodies of people are discovered tortured and buried or thrown into rivers and lakes in the suburbs of Kyiv. The rachists [contraction de « russe » et de « fasciste »] torture people. Behead human beings. I learned that the police had found the body of a girl my age – I later found out it was a college friend of a friend – she was tortured, raped and then executed. It terrifies me.
Sasha: Time stops here. The walk, breakfast, work, dinner, sleep. In the middle of the forest, I really feel that I regenerate myself. I love the pines that have surrounded me throughout my childhood. We were going to the same region with Olga for our summer vacation. The smell of these trees makes me happy.
“For the first time in the last six months, I can’t think of anything. We are surrounded by warmth, nature and all the sounds of the forest. I empty. » Sasha
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