#Aj this american life update
He wrote me an update the way he always texted, in long, run-on sentences. And then a few days later, another text message came through. His mom and sister returned back to Warsaw while he and his dad continued to Mariupol. The border guards hadn't let his mom and sister into Ukraine because of a document issue. Had there been a bombing, a missile strike that I had missed?īut then a couple days later, Ilya popped up on my screen. I stayed up into the morning hours scrolling through Ukrainian Telegram channels made for this exact reason. I couldn't get a hold of Ilya or his mother. I don't know when I'll be able to write to you again. By the way, he wrote, we're already en route home. Two days later, mid-August, Ilya texted me from the road. Was Mariupol still going to feel like home? This is the thing he was trying to set straight for himself. When he did, he would get into long conversations with me, using phrases like, listen here, Val, or you got to hear me out, Val. He couldn't always break out of his quiet. When I would arrive at the shelter, he would be waiting for me outside.īut Ilya was also more reserved than the other kids. Sometimes in the mornings, if I was late to my shift, he would call me to make sure I was still coming and then confirm a time to be exact.
That's just the kind of kid he is, a little businessman. The day I met Ilya, he asked for my number right away. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, and psychiatrists would come in to help on site. Ilya and his family made it to one of Warsaw's nicer refugee centers, which offer them long-term housing. In all the time I was in Poland, I didn't meet anyone else from his city. It was remarkable to me that he had made it out of Mariupol. Ilya covered his face with his Angry Birds t-shirt. Here, Zhenya, the 11-year-old filming him, stopped recording. It wasn't until hours later he found out his grandmother had survived. We came to my grandma's, and we couldn't enter because the house was completely mined.
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