By Alina Bădălan

AFTER 6 MONTHS IN HELL, SERHIY RETURNED HOME. A poor household, but for him it’s a palace. His wife is there, his children are there. The report by journalists Viorica Tataru and Andrei Captarenco is sharp as a knife. The camera follows Serhiy in the most intimate moments: family banter with his wife, personal conversations with his child, and then his own thoughts.

There, meaning at war. A word that Serhiy avoids saying. He sits at the table with his boy and says he doesn’t want to sadden him:

And if his heart would let him tell more, perhaps he would tell him for starters how the enlistment was, how he waited three days for assignment and slept in a tent in a forest near Chernihiv, how he dug trenches at the training center and, finally, how he began repairing combat equipment in the mechanized battalion where he was sent. Then perhaps he would tell what this there, looks like, but without details, perhaps he would pack everything into two words from which the boy would understand everything: “There very few people with initiative remain. Because simply put, those with initiative are no longer alive“.

“MY SOUL HURTS, AND FOR MY COMRADES TOO. EVERYTHING IS TERRIFYING”

Since he returned home on leave, Serhiy seems like a different man, his wife says.

“Until now we could talk about any subject. Now he looks at TikTok and tries not to get into emotional subjects because it’s very hard for him. He suddenly became more mature and more serious, with fewer jokes, almost no fun“. He rarely laughs and doesn’t socialize much anymore.

In the first three weeks he was in– a trance, unable to do anything, not even start the home renovations. Then his wife forced his hand to make him snap out of it.“I told him: get up and do something around the house! I‘ll call you every day and tell you to do some repairs“. And that’s how she got him up.

They would like to embrace at some point, but the camera is right in front of them. And they anyway, since Serhiy has been at war, have forgotten what it’s like to be husband and wife, they no longer know what normal life means with its little details day by day.

Before leaving for the front again, Serhiy looks at himself in the mirror. He tries hard to hide the emotion of departure, but it seems to seep through his skin. He’s pale, haggard and stares motionless at his own reflection.

Then the camera follows him at length as he puts on his combat uniform, , how his hand trembles as he places in the pocket over his heart the lucky charm given by his wife, and then how he caresses for the last time the family photo, like an icon: “Well, mom, let’s say goodbye in the morning so I can leave without tears while you’re at work.”

And Serhiy leaves, to enter from one life into another life. He leaves for the place he still doesn’t dare put into words. There.