Alina is scared.
Not “monsters under the bed” scared, or “I spilled milk on the couch” scared. She watched her home implode. She didn’t just watch it happen, she survived it.
Alina, 6, is one of thousands of people who are as destroyed as the buildings being decimated by the Russian war machine. But unlike the concrete and glass that can be easily repaired and rebuilt, I’m not sure if she will ever be the same.
Alina had a family. Her father was an electrician and her mother sold used cell phones in the local market. Her brother, Arten, just celebrated his ninth birthday the week before. They both slept in Paw Patrol pajamas and shared the same bed covered in Disney sheets with a Mickey and Minnie Mouse pattern. Her brother was teaching her how to play soccer; he was going to be a professional footballer and he talked about his plan to buy her a beach house in Zatoka where she could live as a little mermaid.
Alina was going to be a veterinarian.
They both did well in school and their parents were as proud of them as I am my own children and you are of yours.
It all changed when a Russian missile smashed into the building across the street. Their ceiling fell, the walls collapsed and the floor gave way. Alina and her family were buried in the rubble and it would take several hours for the volunteer rescuers to find her bloody, battered and near death alongside the body of her brother, still tucked into his bed like his mother left him just a few hours before. Her parents would be found later that day by a different group of rescuers. Rescuers braving air raids, never knowing where or when the next missile would strike.
Alina was rushed to a hospital and eventually taken to Poland where I met her in a refugee camp. The doctors are still hoping her mangled leg can be saved and will not have to be amputated, but her prognosis grows worse every day it seems. Even so, she will never kick a soccer ball again and she screams when she hears an ambulance or fire truck in the distance, terrified it’s an air raid siren and that death from the skies coming again for her.
She refuses to look at anything with Paw Patrol characters or Mickey Mouse.
What makes Alina special? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. She is just one of thousands of children. One of millions whose story you will never hear. When you read the figures of death from this war, please remember to add one more soccer player and one little mermaid/veterinarian because the first casualties of war may be innocence, but the last are dreams.
Slava Ukraini! Heroyam Slava! (Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!)
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