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I want to say that wherever I am, I don’t lose hope. I believe all the way: God’s power is there,

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and how many tears I had to shed and how much grief I had to endure to get that house. I have neither a father nor a mother; everyone died on the front line.

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I am an orphan. On February 25, I was cleaning the hallway, and it was like a bang from there – and a frame flew out, hitting me on the head and back.

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. I fell down and crawled under the bed. I stayed there and cried. I was crying. I sat down... Well, it was evening, it was dark, and there was no light. It was two o’clock in the morning,

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and the door was unlocked. A soldier ran in and said, “Ma’am, are you alive?” I said, “Yes, sonny, I am alive.” He said, “Tomorrow, a car will come to you.

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You need to be taken away immediately because you will die here.” The car arrived at about 11 o’clock. I was already getting ready; I put the dog on the leash, prepared the cats’ boxes,

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and told them that my daughter lived in Pushcha. They brought me there, to somebody’s basement near the tram line, and we went to sleep on those bags filled with potatoes.

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Water was coming down from the roof, clay was flowing, and there was bombing everywhere. I put a headscarf on Bonia to keep sand and water out of her ears, and she obeyed.

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I stayed there for a week and then said, “Take me home, Valia, take me home.” I came here. I have a cellar here. I hid in the cellar and in the barn. That house was burning,

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and our village head’s house was burning. But what can I do? I was screaming and crying. That one was flying, and what would have happened if it hit me? But it hit the window.

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Here is a guy like me, and this is nothing. The journalists took many things here and let the children take them as souvenirs, and this, look,

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they say it’s made of some kind of copper; I don’t understand what it’s made of, like this. She hides when she hears explosions like this. I can’t breathe.

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I tell her, “Bonichka, Bonichka.” I give her what I have, but she has no teeth, so I chew it up and put it in her mouth, “Eat, daughter, so that you don’t die.”

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That’s how I stayed with her, and she turned gray and became so smart. She’s a smart girl. I feel sorry for her as if she were a child. Everything was stolen. I had tomato seeds,

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and they took them, as well as bowls like this one that were in the cellar and a bottle of wine. They took everything. I’m not the only one. Other people had to deal with greater grief.

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You know, it’s my only sin... Maybe I don’t deserve it; perhaps I don’t know how to say it. When this war began, I took holy water, went in, sprinkled myself,

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and also sprinkled my son and daughter-in-law with it. They left right away, and I walked around with this icon and said, “Everything will be fine. You will return home.

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It does not matter whether I will live or not; I have already lived my life.” And now they tell me that I as if felt something when I did all that. And you know that everything got hit,

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everything got broken, and there are two icons in the corner. That’s what it means – there is some kind of power. When I think about it, it’s the Last Judgment.

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You watch a movie, and it’s a movie, and there was a war there, but to see this, it’s scary; it’s just scary.

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So every night, I ask them to play me the Viburnum song. I cry and go to bed, and that’s it.