Went back to my sister's appartment

Nathalie Halbout

I felt it was not really appropriate to talk about how the war affected me, considering the huge grief and destruction I have experienced for the past weeks being in Ukraine. But my story needs to be told,as it is part of our national history.

I have an older sister(disabled in a wheelchair )and her elderly husband. They were living with their daughter( my niece Maiia)on the outskirts of Kyiv, only about 5 miles away from Bucha. When the war started, they refused to leave, believing that it was not a real war. Under a lot of pressure from me, they let Maiia evacuate( not without a tremendous difficulty) to Prague. When the nearby high rise was hit by a rocket an blew out their windows, killing and burning dozens of people. It is then they decided to leave for Europe. Just with two little bags, leaving their humble appartment and everything they had behind.It was not easy: my sister could not possibly get in an evacuation train or a bus. Fortunately some courageous drivers were offering to drive them to the Polish border for a good some of money. The only danger was that russki were shelling the roads. There was little choice. Every couple of hours the driver was sending me messages and even photos that they were alive. At the border my sister fell out of the wheelchair ( she was pushed by a border officer, who had little experience with those kind of wheels,). After all that they made it to Prague, where my husband David Halbout and I were waiting for them. The two bags they took with them: one had all medications for my sister and the second bag had the perishable contents of the fridge and one set of clothing for each of them. They did not want the food to go to waste and took it with them! Now two years later I went to check on their place. I was very scared to find it looted or occupied by others… And occupied it was! By pigeons! They got through the blown up windows and called it their home. I will not post the photo of their droppings( IG might call it sensitive content). The only thing to do was to close the windows with the wood planks( that is what everyone does, apparently).

With a lot of effort I found guys willing to do the job. Not an easy task!

Going up to the 10th floor without electricity and air conditioning in sweltering heat of 104 F.

The guys closed the windows with brown MDF boards, that made it look like brown bandaids on the wound.

I was left alone to experience the reality: dead plants, papers strewn around the place, the smell of rotten food( the fridge is on and off several times during the day), and worst of all- realizing that the chances are-they will not be able to come back here. Ever. Their health is too fragile and getting worse. My sister’s husband dementia is progressing and he gets very confused.

I entertained the idea of them coming back to Kyiv.

But return to home would be lethal. Power outages would really jeopardize their life. Should there be a medical emergency, the ambulance would not be able to get to them in time, and would have even harder time to get them out if there is no power.

Not mentioning it would be impossible for them to get to a shelter in case of air raid.