(This story is part of the refugee exodus coverage from Ukraine to Romania in March 2022)

There is something different about young Tanya.

She seems energetic and enthusiastic, but it feels put on like an outfit. There is an ocean of hurt in her eyes even when she manages a frail smile.

When I see her first, she’s wearing a volunteer vest and a badge, and scurrying around helping all the incoming people. But she also asks to take a picture with the volunteers, and with the firefighters, and with the priests. I finally ask where she’s from.

Irpen. Three days ago.

I come to find out Tanya nearly escaped the purgatory that the enemy turned Irpen into. Irpen that is now littered with dead bodies, fed upon by the orphaned pet dogs like in a trashy post-apocalyptic flick. Tanya fled with her dad who has a cardiac condition and mom in the advanced stage of cancer.

They are now resting in Siret’s shelter, while Tanya is volunteering at the border and waiting for her car to get fixed and brought over. The car is all they have left and both their home and transport for the long stretch now.

A chain of people get involved into collecting funds for the coarse-voiced mechanic on the other end of the line who’s working day and night to fix it for her while he’s still around.

In two days, the car gets fixed and driven over the border to Siret and it’s now time for the family to go choose where to grow new roots.

Before leaving, Tanya asks to take a picture with all of us. I try to figure out why she wants all these pictures with strangers at the border, until it hits me. Her life just got erased by an army of zombies. These photos is the proof she craves there is still humanity. And normality. And that she belongs in the world.

At dusk, they come to say goodbye: Tanya and her mom, a tiny frail woman in a grey coat, grey knit hat and a grey face. She can’t do much but stand facing the border and cry silently. I can’t look at her without losing my shit. I hug her to try and absorb some of her pain and I tell her everything I can think of, that she’s going to be ok, that she has an amazing daughter, that they are safe now, and we will help them every way we can, but she just keep sobbing quietly, trembling in my arms like a tiny broken bird.

They are on the road now. They’ve made it all the way to Croatia. I try to send Tanya more money and she keeps sending me long winded messages about how she’s embarrassed to take them and how she can’t believe we are helping her like that, after such a brief encounter. I keep telling her she and her parents deserve all the help and that we can’t wait to hear how and where they settle, but every evening now I keep thinking of a tiny grey ghost-like woman standing in the cold and the dark, watching the border and silently sobbing.

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