TESTIMONIES
We have interviewed refugees from the war in Ukraine and incorporated some of their tesimonies and stories into our play The Fountain of Light
People began to disappear. Just a few at first. A neighbour, an acquaintance, a face that was familiar to you, you suddenly realised you hadn’t seen them for a while. When you asked about them, people just shrugged and looked away. There was a look in their faces, you didn’t understand what it was at first, but then you realised – it was fear. And you’d begun to feel it too. That fear. It was in the air, like a poison, seeping into your skin, infecting everything. And you noticed that people had stopped smiling. You’d stopped smiling yourself. I asked myself, “When was the last time you smiled?” and I couldn’t remember…
It was always at night when they came for you. You lay awake, listening for the footsteps in the street, the boots on the stairs. Staring into the dark, your fingers clutching at the blanket, wondering if tonight those boots would stop outside your door. Then hearing them pass on, stop somewhere else. Fists beating at another door. Voices crying out. Then the silence that came after. That was almost worse, like a weight pressing down on you, covering your face, sucking the breath out of your lungs. It went on like that all night, till the dawn came, and at last you could relax. “That’s it,” you’d say to yourself. “It wasn’t me this time. I’ve survived another night, I’m still here…”
We were just clearing away the plates after supper when they came. He had his bag ready. It had been ready for weeks. I packed it myself, a few clothes, things I thought he might need. He seemed very calm about it all. Taking it all in his stride. And the men were pleasant enough. They told me not to worry, it was all routine. He’d be away for a few days, they said, a week at most. Then he’d be back home, in the bosom of his family, none the worse for wear. Of course I knew. And he knew as well. I could tell from the look on his face. So I handed him his bag and he smiled – that smile of his that always made me feel that everything would be all right. And then they took him away…
People queued for hours before the shops opened. Sometime all night, just on the chance of being able to buy something. Half a loaf of bread, a few vegetables. It was the middle of winter. No one spoke. We were too hungry to speak. Sometimes people would faint from the cold and the hunger, and you just stepped over them and took their place. Beggars came along sometimes, going up and down the line, but we ignored them. Told them to get out of the way, move on. There was this one girl, she couldn’t have been very old, she was going slowly along the line. A woman in front of me took a crust of stale bread out of her pocket and gave it to her. She grabbed it and sat down on the street and started to eat it, tearing at it with her teeth, like an animal. Then suddenly she stopped, she kind slid sideways and fell over onto her side in the gutter. She was dead. And her hands were still clutching that crust of bread…
You couldn’t trust anybody. There were informers everywhere. Friends, neighbours, even members of your own family. You never knew who might be watching you, making a note of something you said or did, and reporting it. We learned to hold our tongues, watch what we said. We had to learn to not even think, because even a thought could be dangerous, a thought you might not realise you’d had. Even an expression on your face. We took to sleeping alone, in case our dreams might betray us. And then you began to think, “Maybe I should report them before they report me.” It didn’t matter what you reported them for. It was enough just to give a name. It was a matter of survival, self-preservation. So that in the end we were all informers, no one was innocent…
Transcribed by David Calcutt