The first message I replied to this morning was to my architect colleague Oudai - I just read the news - was my message, followed by 🫂🫶
My next message was to Tahaf from Damascus - Happy Birthday - today she turned 60, and last night she applied lavender oil on my face while adding - you can’t find it here, I brought it with me from Syria. I thought of my grandma for the second time, as she gifted me lavender oil from Ukraine, while being displaced to the other side of the country at the beginning of the full-scale war, as well as the slippers that were standing next to me at this moment.
My thoughts took me back to 2016. I was on the train to Dessau with a fellow architecture student. I thought of the postcard he had given me about the conference he had just attended on the architectural heritage of Aleppo. Furthermore, I thought of my artist colleague Afaf and her warm belly, which I touched this Thursday—it was the first time I felt the warmth of a new life.
I am grateful to Berlin streets for becoming our meeting point, where our wounded souls could embrace each other and share our stories. News stops being abstract once you engage with the community around you and discover that you share simple things: family, food, and longing for your native streets. As one of Kharkiv’s theatre actors said - the soul is not singing without native streets. So here is to our next concerts together in Berlin and on our native streets.
With all my love to my friends
Vasylysa
Photo by Julia Marquardt, from the Mobile Community Studio of the art education program Ubuntus e.V. within the Mäuserbunker Festival - read more about it here