Stories of scary windows, which become not scary

Residents of the “peaceful” territories are careless. Not only children, but adults often do not know elementary safety rules while shooting. Recently, my daughter brought an incredible story from school. Like, when the younger students were walking along the street, in the house opposite to the school, someone was shooting, and then snipers, or the archers ran on the roof. The children told their young teacher about this, but she did not believe them, saying: “Do not make it up”. Some of the children ran into the classroom – to hide and call their parents. Most pupils were staring in the mesh fence to better see what is happening. According to her daughter, children were taken to school after all, and the administration called the police.

The story seemed so incredible to me that I did not take it seriously. I decided: either she made it up, or they shot a movie next to the school. But in the evening in the parent chat it turned out that the story was not a fiction either – in the next house, indeed, somebody shot with pneumatic weapons, and the police came. In addition, this is not the first case. Last year, two people in camouflage came into the territory of the secondary school, next to ours, they started shooting at the windows, and then disappeared. The police, who responded to a call, could not find them.

Imagine: the children called their parents during the event, told about it in the evening, but none of the adults took it seriously! Capital residents feel that the war is far away. But it, unfortunately, is already in the heads and anytime can touch not only each of us, adults, but also our children.

And then I thought of inviting to our school a wonderful person, a veteran and also a children’s writer Serhii Loskutov (a pseudonym – Serhii Loskot), whose book “Big Dogs Are Afraid of Little Girls” claimed the “Book of the Year-2016” award and got in the top 10 on the BBC rating. Parents, class teacher and school director supported the idea. And I am very grateful to Serhii Loskutov that he immediately agreed and came to our school children with books, among which were not only his “Big Dogs Are Afraid of Little Girls” (Vivat Publishing House), “Bad Day and Freckles”, “Boy and Witch “(Ranok Publishing House), but also Tetyana Stus‘s books from the series “Chytalnya”, recommended by the Ministry of Education for extra-class reading of junior schoolchildren.

Photo by Anna Tretyak

By the way, it was Tetyana Stus, who became the godmother of Serhii Loskutov in children’s literature. After reading his philosophical tales on Facebook (one of them, “The Crystal Caterpillar”, was translated into Ukrainian and voiced), which Serhii began to write in the war (“Everything was very tough. There was a lot of blood, fear. It was necessary at least somehow to hide the brain. I began to invent my own worlds and go into them”), Tetyana asked her friend to write a children’s fairy tale. So the book “Big Dogs Are Afraid of Little Girls”  – a story about the friendship of a big dog and a little girl, which was illustrated by priest Maksym Dolynny, appeared. And then two more books from the series about the witch Kukaracha (already with illustrations of Nadiya Kushnir – the author of the famous Goose), the prototype of which Serhii took from his own childhood: “Probably in every yard there is such a “bad” aunt, “witch”, which is hated, for some reason, by the children. And we had this. We’ve done pretty much everything to her, even threw spiders at the window. And then we learned that the whole family of this woman was repressed, she was a lonely, but a very kind person. Therefore, these stories are about the fact that although some people sometimes evoke some negative emotions with their appearance, they can be very good and kind inside. And a little more about loneliness. Because people often close in their own shell”.

To date, there are  more than 30 stories of the writer. A new book is being prepared for publication – a detective story for teenage children.

At the meeting with Serhii there were two classes at once: the first and the third. Therefore, it was not easy for the writer, but he coped. He told the children that if somebody shoot nearby, then they need to run to the other side and seek shelter, and not try to come closer to better see what is happening. The fact that in the gray zone, where shelling is a sick and terrible routine, schools work, and children study in them, unfortunately, are already familiar with the safety rules very well. It needs to be known, although we all hope that they will never need this knowledge. The fact that the war is very, very scary, and not at all romantic, and that’s why, after returning from there, Serhii, an engineer by profession (graduated from the Kyiv National Architectural Department of the University of Construction and Architecture, with a specialization in «Arts», worked as a designer, manager advertising, foreman and even was a co-owner of a cleaning company), began to write children’s books. Among them, one – “Seven Tales of a Twisted Tail” – was written in Braille, specially for children with visual problems).

“Some of these children, – said Serhii, – putting the book in a circle so that the students could touch on its snow-white pages with small relief points, – never saw the usual colors of the sun, sky, green grass. Try to close your eyes for a little while – and you will immediately find yourself in total darkness and feel lonely. Many children remain in such special boarding schools for a long time, without parents. Therefore, if you write letters to them, I will be happy to deliver them, and the teachers will surely read them to the children”.

After the meeting, the third-grade students surrounded Serhii and asked questions. They were interested in war. True, they did not get enough books that first-graders ran to read. The very award for this meeting were the words of one of the girls, first-graders, that her mother retold: “I realized that when you are scared, someone is scared too. And we need to help him, that everyone was okay”.

“We need to talk with children about the war, – the veteran believes. – Although it’s difficult to talk about it even with adults”. In March 2014, Serhii was literally taken to the military enlistment office at night. As part of the 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade, he went through the most infernal points of the war – from Mariupol to Izvarino, got to the hospital and again returned to the ATO zone. On the front Serhii had a foster son, 23-year-old Mykyta, very similar to a man from the outside. Once he died…

Returning from the war, Serhii does not like wearing a military uniform. He came to the meeting with the children in the civil clothes too: “I was demobilized almost three years ago – at the end of 2015. Now there, in the trenches, are sitting young guys, almost children. And I am ashamed of them.”

It is very difficult for the war veterans to return. I remember how I met Serhii Loskutov in June 2016 at the first forum “Captured by life. Success stories of the ATO veterans”, organized by the project “Decent work for Warrior” by NGO “Free People Employment Center”. About 9 months passed after his demobilization, Serhii had already undergone a rehabilitative course of PO “Pobratymy”, where, among other things, veterans were taught to provide psychological support. But my first impression after meeting him was the feeling of a strained string.

Time, creativity, support of close people and a sense of need are curing. But in the car, after the meeting, Serhii told me that three of his acquaintances committed suicide in six months. And he was personally dragged by those children with visual disabilities from the orphanage, which he told about at school. Children need veterans. And veterans need children. For windows to stop being scary. Because life is bubbling outside them.

Text: Hanna Drozd