{"id":112733,"date":"2024-03-19T03:37:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-19T00:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theukrainians.org\/?p=112733"},"modified":"2024-12-04T03:47:39","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T00:47:39","slug":"my-mom-wants-to-go-back-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/my-mom-wants-to-go-back-home\/","title":{"rendered":"My Mom Wants to Go Back Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On one of the first days of March, the train carrying Hanna and her mother arrived in the Zakarpattia Oblast. Hanna breathed out in relief. It felt safer here, although, at that time, no place in Ukraine felt truly safe. Mountains flashed outside the window. She looked around; in the mirrors hanging in their sleeper compartment, a beautiful, endless reflection appeared, and for the first time since February 24, she felt like picking up her camera. She took it out and snapped a few photos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This moment marked the start of her photo project, \u201cMy Mom Wants to Go Back Home\u201d. But at that moment, Hanna wasn\u2019t thinking about any project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hanna Hrabarska is a photographer who lived in Kyiv before the war. But the place where her roots are \u2014 where she was born \u2014 is Kryvyi Rih. In the early days of the full-scale invasion, she returned there to be with her mother, to the neighborhood where her friends and family lived within a 15-minute walk. She barely managed to persuade her mother to leave. They left on February 27.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hanna shared her train photos on Instagram, receiving responses from around the world and publication offers from international media. She says that her quiet, intimate story about the journey from Ukraine filled a gap \u2014 capturing the human side of the war. Since then, she\u2019s been documenting her mother\u2019s life more deliberately, now abroad.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These photos reflect what it\u2019s like to live and to want to go home. In the first months after they left, her mother would often say, \u201cI want to go home,\u201d or \u201cWhen we get home\u2026\u201d And so the project got its name.

\u201cI\u2019m often asked about the message of the project. Words are just symbols; everyone interprets them differently. Images are the same. I didn\u2019t try to convey a deep meaning. When I started photographing my mom, it wasn\u2019t a project; I just needed something to keep myself busy,\u201d Hanna explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those first photos from the sleeper car don\u2019t quite capture infinity \u2014 her lens was too narrow to \u201ccatch\u201d it. But they hold all the feelings of someone forced to leave a place they\u2019re attached to \u2014 a refugee of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Among Hanna\u2019s favorite photos is one taken in Budapest (Hungary) and another in Austerlitz (Netherlands).

There\u2019s one of her mother eating a big red strawberry and crying. People who saw it thought, \u201cSomething sad must have happened in Ukraine?\u201d In reality, Hanna had bought strawberries in early spring to cheer them up, but they turned out sour. Her mother was so disappointed she started to cry.

\u201cWhen you\u2019re in that kind of situation, your nerves are on edge,\u201d Hanna explains. \u201cFor example, I can\u2019t cry over events in Ukraine. I cried once \u2014 after Bucha. After the Kakhovka Dam was destroyed, I just felt numb. But little things can suddenly trigger an emotional release, like the strawberry did.\u201d

Or there\u2019s a photo of her mother waving a blue and yellow flag. This was mid-March, just a couple of days after they\u2019d arrived in Austerlitz and were staying with friends.

\u201cOne morning, they told us, \u2018We bought a Ukrainian flag and want to hang it up.\u2019 My mom grabbed it and walked around waving it in the yard \u2014 it was a very happy moment. There you are in the Netherlands, in a small village, and suddenly there\u2019s your flag. It felt like global support: people didn\u2019t just invite us in; they bought a flag to make us feel welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hanna says her mother \u201chas always been beautiful, and she knows it, as does everyone around her\u201d. Iryna, who is 71, is from Kryvyi Rih. She worked in the food service industry and later became a ma\u00eetre d’hotel. When her daughter was born, she stayed home to dedicate herself to family. Once Hanna grew up, her mother decided to become a nanny and excelled at it, raising wonderful children. In the Netherlands, she easily connects with people, despite not speaking the language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cShe wins over the kids by giving them candy, which isn\u2019t the custom here. But she still buys Roshen lollipops (Dushes and Barbarys) and quietly slips them into the children\u2019s hands. It\u2019s gone so far that sometimes kids run up to our apartment door and ring the bell, and she\u2019ll go to the balcony and toss candies down to them from the first floor, which they catch.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leaving Ukraine was Hanna\u2019s decision. Recently, two missiles hit near their home in Kryvyi Rih. It made her realize, once again, that leaving was the right choice. When they left, she tried to convince many of her friends to do the same, but later she understood that it\u2019s essential to respect each person\u2019s choice, whatever it may be. 
Hanna is preparing a photo book based on the project, also called My Mom Wants to Go Back Home, set to be released in January 2024. It tells the tale of a year in the Netherlands, a story \u201cfirst about the journey in every sense, later evolving into a kind of constancy after our move to Amsterdam\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hanna and Iryna still live in Amsterdam. The photo project continues, though Hanna now photographs less often. The project will end, \u201cwhen my mom finally comes back home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translation \u2014 Iryna Chalapchii<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a7\u00a7\u00a7<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[The translation of this publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework “European Renaissance of Ukraine” project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What it means to want to go back home\u2014in the photographs of Hanna Hrabarska<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5239,"featured_media":112734,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2232],"tags":[2264,2435,2242,2236],"class_list":["post-112733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reporters-en","tag-kul-tura-en","tag-family","tag-society","tag-war"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5239"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112733"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112752,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112733\/revisions\/112752"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}