Tania Drobot is from Kyiv, Ukraine, but has been living in rural England in someone else's house for around two years. Olena Bilokrenytska, her mother, Polina Zherdieva and their little dog, Asia, live with a family in a nearby village. There are many others — as of January, more than 140,000 Ukrainians have come to stay in Britain, many of them with host families who opened their homes when Russia invaded in early 2022. Frankie Mills, a photographer and journalist, went to Devon on the southwest coast to document the experiences of these refugees. When Mills reached out to us with her photographs and interviews, the word that came up over and over again was "home": people grappling with what makes it, and why it's just so hard to let go of one idea of it. "Many of the Ukrainians who fled the country in the wake of Russia's invasion have returned in spite of the war," Mills wrote in a guest essay. "From what I've seen, those who don't go back seem to reach a turning point, when home stops being the memory of a place that is out of reach and becomes the accumulation of recent experience. Questions people don't have answers to are abandoned in favor of what is possible right now." The way in which war seems to always come for home in one way or another is a theme that has emerged repeatedly in the multiple conflicts we are covering in Opinion. "There once was a small home in the city of Jabalia in northern Gaza filled with love and life, established by the sweat of a young man seeking stability for his family," Yaqeen Baker wrote in a guest essay in January after she and her family lost that home in an airstrike. "It was a precious kingdom, embracing you with its warmth as soon as you walked inside." And earlier this month, Dena Ibrahim described how the homes in which her family had held weddings and funerals and gathered for Eid, in Khartoum, Sudan, were now "the spoils of war." Each writer eloquently points to the pain of a loss that Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, who co-wrote the guest essay with Baker, has argued should be recognized as a war crime. "We all understand that killing can be a murder, a war crime, a crime against humanity or an act of genocide, depending on the gravity and intention of the act," he wrote. "The same should apply for the destruction of homes." Read more: Here's what we're focusing on today:
We hope you've enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Games Here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle and Spelling Bee. If you're in the mood to play more, find all our games here. Forward this newsletter to friends to share ideas and perspectives that will help inform their lives. They can sign up here. Do you have feedback? Email us at opiniontoday@nytimes.com. If you have questions about your Times account, delivery problems or other issues, visit our Help Page or contact The Times.
|
Wednesday, June 19, 2024
Opinion Today: When war comes for the home
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment