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‘Ukraine is magnificence itself’:  Bosnian author Faruk Šehić’s journeys journey to Odesa


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In Odesa, I turned aware of quite a few medical phrases. They included ”tourniquet”, ”HALO chest seal” (a complicated dressing for unhealthy chest wounds) and ”BIG” (bone injection gun).

Such issues are of nice significance for a severely wounded soldier on the battlefield. As soon as throughout the Bosnian battle [in which the author fought], I improvised a tourniquet with my long-sleeved shirt. It stopped the bleeding of a person hit within the thigh by a 120mm grenade that had not detonated. The projectile was so small that it had handed by the roof, a prefab panel and two concrete slabs (the scene is described in my e-book ”Below Strain”, Pod Pritiskom). When one other man, Ćerim, was severely wounded within the chest we didn’t have a specialised patch however we did have group of paramedics, comparable to Enes Hasanagić, in my unit. This was in direction of the top of the battle in 1995.

In Odesa, we delivered white waterproof physique baggage for the corpses and neoprene drysuits with boots. Part of Kherson was flooded by the Dnieper after the destruction of the Khakovka dam.

A weak point of the written phrase is that it can’t absolutely symbolize the truth one skilled for a number of days in Ukraine. However it’s nonetheless price making an attempt to place that actuality into language.

As soon as over the border between Poland and Ukraine from the Korczowa-Krakovets border crossing, on the broad freeway I really feel an ideal sense of calm pervade me. A calmness that towers over us, simply because the bushes towered over the street. Every thing in Ukraine appears totally different, regardless that Poland was related in so some ways. We journey quick by the Ukrainian panorama, and the sights rushed by at lightning pace.

It might have been the greenery, the lushness and the scale of the bushes, cities, villages, rivers and lakes that made me really feel extra immersed in actuality than if I had been in Berlin or Sarajevo; or it might have been that magnificence actually is within the eye of the beholder. However Ukraine is magnificence itself. It bought into my eyes and into my reminiscence. It actually was love at first sight. We keep in a single day at a roadside inn within the small city of Zoločiv, close to Lviv. Within the night it rained like God himself had despatched it, and within the morning we set off once more in direction of our vacation spot.

Faruk Sehic Odessa 2023_1
The countryside on the way in which from Poland to Odesa. | Photograph: ©Faruk Šehić

I jotted down some ideas about Ukraine within the notes on my cellphone whereas we had been there:

”Even earlier than I set out, I knew what awaited me in a war-torn land. When you expertise that, it stays with you eternally. A compass, a tool to navigate in an uncommon actuality. It’s deep inside you and activates itself when essential. Individuals who observe battle on their cell phone and laptop computer screens suppose {that a} nation at battle is in a magical, distorted state the place horror reigns constantly and in all places (as in Bakhmut). This isn’t solely true, however there’s admittedly a modicum of fact there.

The distinction is made by the context. Once you stroll the streets of Odesa, you’re acutely conscious that your life might finish at any second, that supersonic rockets might fall on you. If you end up there and also you see that life, like a plant, is decided to withstand all adversities, you realise that this additionally happens in locations with out battle, like Berlin or Sarajevo. However it’s exactly this battle context that decrees the upcoming hazard of life. Solely in battle can one perceive the worth, the fragility and the nullity of life.

I breathe naturally in Ukraine, my coronary heart is extra at peace than in Berlin. It was a paradox I anticipated. But my companion is frightened about find out how to behave if a state of affairs arises that arouses battle trauma in me. However one thing else occurs: a traditional acceptance of the state of battle. As a result of in these conditions I understand how to be wise and keep away from waking the sleeping canine. You’ll be able to enter the identical river twice, as a result of battle is identical river.”


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It’s unusual to have a look at what individuals put up on social networks: you see totally different realities the place issues are perceived in several methods. The fact past the Ukrainian borders was alien to me. It isn’t that I really feel contempt for abnormal human aspirations, however I see their banality extra clearly. Within the face of mortal hazard all the pieces turns into secondary to survival.

In fact, on my first evening in Odesa, I imagined a rocket coming into proper by my window. However these rockets are made in such a means that they’d wipe out your complete resort constructing if that had been to occur. So I finished imagining my dying and fell asleep peacefully. My pal Kathrin went to mattress with headphones on in order to not hear the rockets and drones. She had extra braveness than I did: she was afraid, however persevered nonetheless. In the course of the battle within the Nineteen Nineties I conquered concern in an analogous means and discovered to regulate it.

In Ukraine all the pieces works, there is no such thing as a signal of chaos or disorganisation. And sure, the battle is in its second 12 months, however the cleanli…

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