‘Ukraine is beauty itself’:  Bosnian writer Faruk Šehić’s trips trip to Odesa

In Odesa, I turned aware of numerous medical phrases. They included “tourniquet”, “HALO chest seal” (a sophisticated 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 through the Bosnian struggle [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 via the roof, a prefab panel and two concrete slabs (the scene is described in my guide “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, resembling Enes Hasanagić, in my unit. This was in the direction of the tip of the struggle 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 spot of the written phrase is that it can’t totally characterize the truth one skilled for a number of days in Ukraine. However it’s nonetheless value 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 a fantastic sense of calm pervade me. A calmness that towers over us, simply because the bushes towered over the highway. All the pieces in Ukraine appears completely different, though Poland was comparable in so some ways. We journey quick via the Ukrainian panorama, and the sights rushed by at lightning pace.

It might have been the greenery, the lushness and the dimensions 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 could have been that magnificence actually is within the eye of the beholder. However Ukraine is magnificence itself. It acquired 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 the direction of our vacation spot.

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 endlessly. A compass, a tool to navigate in an uncommon actuality. It’s deep inside you and activates itself when obligatory. Individuals who observe struggle on their cell phone and laptop computer screens assume {that a} nation at struggle is in a magical, distorted state the place horror reigns repeatedly and in all places (as in Bakhmut). This isn’t totally true, however there’s admittedly a modicum of fact there.

The distinction is made by the context. While 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 set to withstand all adversities, you realise that this additionally happens in locations with out struggle, like Berlin or Sarajevo. However it’s exactly this struggle context that decrees the approaching hazard of life. Solely in struggle 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 methods to behave if a state of affairs arises that arouses struggle trauma in me. However one thing else occurs: a traditional acceptance of the state of struggle. As a result of in these conditions I understand how to be smart and keep away from waking the sleeping canine. You’ll be able to enter the identical river twice, as a result of struggle is identical river.”

It’s unusual to take a look at what folks put up on social networks: you see completely different realities the place issues are perceived in several methods. The fact past the Ukrainian borders was alien to me. It’s not that I really feel contempt for peculiar human aspirations, however I see their banality extra clearly. Within the face of mortal hazard every part turns into secondary to survival.

After all, on my first night time in Odesa, I imagined a rocket getting into proper via my window. However these rockets are made in such a means that they might wipe out your complete lodge constructing if that had been to occur. So I ended imagining my dying and fell asleep peacefully. My good friend 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. Throughout the struggle within the Nineteen Nineties I conquered worry in the same means and realized to manage it.

In Ukraine every part works, there is no such thing as a signal of chaos or disorganisation. And sure, the struggle is in its second yr, however the cleanli…