Jan Jurczak

Bedside ('22-'23)

Irina had to make the most unspeakable choice for a mother. On 4 March, when the three of them fled, she, Ivan and her nine-year-old sister Daria […] the roads were already on fire. We had to turn back. The car was machine-gunned. Irina was wounded in the hands. Ivan had a hole in his chest. He was still conscious, but could not move. The car was out of order. He had to walk.

Ivan said to his mother: "Go ahead, it's dangerous to stay here, I'll catch you."
Irina could not carry him. What to do, save Daria or stay with Ivan? Irina left, telling herself that she would seek help to return to her son. She managed to reach her house and get her daughter to safety. Then, frantically, she called everywhere, the police, the emergency room, the hospital. All in vain. The place where Ivan was was too dangerous, especially at night, with the curfew: anyone outside at that time of the day was targeted, by both Russians and Ukrainians. As the hours ticked by, Irina sank into a cottony delirium, convinced that her beloved son had returned. At dawn, she set off on the road again. It was too late. Ivan lay with his arms crossed and his legs pressed together, as if he had wanted to warm himself in the icy night. His eyes were wide open, staring at the blind sky. When we heard this detail, we said to ourselves that we had never heard anything so atrocious as this lonely death of a kid looking at the night, shivering with cold.

The Russians would not help the mother to carry the son. It took Irina several days to find neighbours who agreed to accompany her with a wheelbarrow to bring back her son's remains. She then washed her beautiful Vania with rainwater from the cistern.

by Doan Bui for @lobs

Parts of Doan's text read in Polish

The old man points to 3 March. Then he stops abruptly, his voice broken, his eyes misty, his mouth twisted by a silent sob. Igor, his grandson, was 15 years old. On the evening of 3 March, he was shot by the Russians in front of the cellar entrance.

They were no longer entitled to this sacred ritual, to prevent the bodies from being eaten by animals: they lay on a road, in a ditch, inaccessible because of the bombs, the shooting, the Russian tanks.

by Doan Bui for @lobs

Yablonka Street is where, on 5 March, the life of 14-year-old Anna Mishchenko, who loved to paint and draw so much and dreamed of being admitted to the Fine Arts in Kiev, ended. Anna was with Tamila, her mother, and Janna, a volunteer who had offered to help them escape. Big brother Yevgeny tried to dissuade them: it was too dangerous to leave without waiting for the humanitarian corridor. He stayed in Butcha with their 83-year-old grandmother, in their flat near Yablonka Street. Anna and Tamila's car did not go very far. Half an hour later, Yevgeny tried to call, and there was no answer. He didn't know that his mother and little sister were already dead, nearby. He thought "their phones had been confiscated at the checkpoint". On 15 March, Yevgeny was evacuated with his grandmother through one of the humanitarian corridors and fled to Ivano-Frankivsk in the west of the country. He continued to post search notices on social networks to find his mother and sister:

There has been too much drama in Yevgeny's building, too many bodies buried in the backyards. The first floor neighbour, an old man who lived alone, was shot dead on his way to the fountain.

by Doan Bui for @lobs

On another floor lives 20-year-old Tania and her father. She saw her mother executed by a sniper in front of her as the family went out to bring food to their grandmother. A bullet right between the eyes," says Tania. My father was walking ahead with a white flag, but the sniper aimed at my mother. It was like shooting a rabbit. Tania's great-grandfather is missing. It is impossible to know what happened because his wife lost her mind during the war. She sometimes talks about a body that was there on the stoop, but which had vanished. 

by Doan Bui for @lobs

Nastia was 6 years old when she was hit by a bullet, in the car where the whole family was trying to escape. The parents had written the word "CHILDREN" in Russian on the car and hung white flags. Her older sister Lida, 11, with whom Nastya shared a room - you can still see their two small purple backpacks with their school books - was also shot in the corner of her skull. In the car, there was also the newborn baby. Seven children in all. Under fire, the family got out of the car in panic, Lida and Nastya were carried in, and everyone got down on their stomachs in the dust, pushing the children under the car. Then the father went to look for help. But neither the hospital in Boutcha, nor the emergency room, nor the police could intervene. Finally, Lida and Nastia were taken to a kindergarten, where a veterinarian had moved the animals from his clinic. The vet put them on a drip with animal painkillers. Nastia died there, among the dogs and cats. She died at 7.15 pm. And on the photo that an aunt of Nastia gives us, as if to prove that this horror is real, we see the little pale face of the dead girl, her eyes closed, wrapped in a colourful blanket. Galina, the grandmother, says:

"She was all dirty, full of dirt, because we had put her under the car while it was still pulling. So we had to wash her, darling, I couldn't realize she was dead, I thought she was asleep. But she was cold. And then we put her favourite white dress on her.

by Doan Bui for @lobs