Item #184 | Paradise In My Mind by Eva Shammadova

Little Eva’s story

Hello! My name is Eva. I recently turned 10 years old. When the war came to our home, my mother, father, little brother and I went to my grandmother’s house in Lyubotyn, a city in the Kharkiv region.
Soon, the war reached that city too. On the night of March 10th, I woke up from a terrible noise. The windows were glowing; the house was shaking.
My mother, father, brother, grandmother, and grandfather ran to a small hallway. My mother gave me an icon of the Virgin Mary and covered us with a blanket. We were all dressed lightly and very cold and scared. We all cried and prayed.
Thank God we survived.
The next day, we found out that neighboring streets were hit by bombs. They flew over our house, and my father’s car was hit everywhere.
The next day, my father took us to Poltava in the damaged car. We stayed there for about two months. When we returned to my grandmother’s, rockets were dropped from an enemy plane near our house at night. They bombed an orphanage in Lyubotyn.
It was a terrible noise. We woke up and ran to the basement of a garage near the house. We were undressed, barefoot, and my mother gave me the icon of the Virgin Mary. We sat there and prayed. I had a terrible headache and felt sick from fear. The next day, we left for Zavodske in the Poltava region.
My mother says that when I fall asleep, I start screaming and running somewhere. My little brother screamed very loudly in his sleep, “Don’t bomb us! Please, I beg you!”
My mother and father bought us a dog. We named her Milka.
I love to dance, draw, play with my brother, and walk with Milka. I really want this war to end soon, and I wish that no child on the planet feels what I felt.
Note: This story, told to us by little Eva, was translated into English by ChatGPT, an OpenAI bot.