It was difficult for the couple to go down to the basement from the 9th floor of the apartment building, so during the shelling they stayed in the apartment and prayed. Zhaneta recalls how each time the air strikes came closer to their house: first, a neighboring school was hit, then a five-story building next door. And on March 14, 2022, their house was on fire. Then, from noon and all night long, Zhaneta and her husband sat by the mailboxes while neighbors put out the fire with buckets of water.
Because of the shelling, the woman sometimes did not even recognize her hometown.
“There were burnt-out buses and trolleybuses on the streets, and I couldn’t find my way home,” Zhaneta says.
There was no heating, so the couple slept in warm padded pajamas, winter pants, boots, jackets, hats, under three blankets. They could eat thanks to the supplies the couple had made in advance.
“When the power went out, but the gas was still on, I decided to use the frozen food so that it wouldn’t go to waste when a refrigerator doesn’t work,” Zhaneta recalls. – “I took the soup and cutlets out to the loggia so they wouldn’t spoil. Then I went to get some food, opened the pan, and an explosion happened. Glass from the loggia flew over my head and fell into the bowl. It was good that I bent down, the glass fragments did not hit me. I had to throw away the food and cover the windows with a blanket. The broken windows made staying at home even colder.”
During the war, some food became a luxury in Mariupol. One of Zhaneta’s greatest experiences in the city during the war was when her son brought her 2 kilograms of frozen tangerines.
“I wanted them so badly that I ate them frozen,” Zhaneta recalls. “Because of this, I got sick and had a high fever.”
Zhaneta’s son and his wife collected snow in a basin to heat it and use it as industrial water. When the gas went out in the apartment, Zhaneta made a torch with dry alcohol tablets and lit the room. She tried to do it carefully because she was afraid that the military would shoot at the apartment if they saw the light.
Zhaneta was coping with stress by keeping a diary, in which she wrote down how the day went every day.
“It was a kind of chronology of the war,” she says. – “When the phones ran out of power, I kept a calendar and crossed out every day, just like in prison, so as not to lose track of time. One day I had a severe shock, so I wrote a note asking people to call certain numbers if something happened to me and someone found my notes. When I left Mariupol, I wrote to myself that I would never return there. I took this diary with me, but now I don’t keep it, I just reread it.”
The couple left Mariupol for Zaporizhzhia, where Zhaneta’s granddaughter lived, at the end of March 2022.
In Zaporizhzhia, Zhaneta’s husband was diagnosed with inoperable throat cancer and soon passed away. The woman started attending “I am Mariupol” center, where she found friends, visited psychologists and received free medical services. Zhaneta suffered from third-stage cancer in 2009, so she critically needs special hygiene items, and her entire pension goes to food and utilities. The financial assistance from Action cContre la Faim allowed her to cover the need for hygiene products.
In Zaporizhzhia, the woman still does not feel completely safe: a rocket warhead fell near her new home, buried itself in the ground and did not explode.
“The first days in Zaporizhzhia I was crying all the time. I feel anxious, but I think that if something saved me in Mariupol, it will save me here. I will live for the sake of my granddaughter,” Zhaneta comments.
