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Children’s tears and drawings

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Children’s tears and drawings

The drawings of the children of Mariupol who fled the war. Photo by Omar Marques / Getty Images

Weeps, says a lady on Twitter commenting on one of these war photographs. Perhaps you would also say so about these drawings: the authors are boys and girls from Mariupol, fleeing the war. Teardrop! We have become so cynical that we attribute emotional blackmail to the neutrality of a testimonial document. But a war photo doesn’t want to tear any tears away, let alone if we’re not willing to cry.

You see, madam, here, in these drawings, the war is not seen. There is no blood, there is no devastation, there is no rubble. They are felt-tip, pastel drawings. All very soft, reassuring! No. There is something even more frightening than can be seen in heartwarming photos: the mark a war leaves in a child’s imagination. His fantasy populated with tanks. His nights filled with nightmares. It’s scary, it’s scandalous, it’s unfair. But you mustn’t cry, lady, if you don’t want to, don’t worry, don’t cry. But maybe you can read a book by Svetlana Aleksievi? which is called “The Last Witnesses”. The great Ukrainian-born Belarusian writer interviews people who lived through war as children. People who were five, eight, ten and couldn’t forget.

The epigraph evokes a Russian writer, perhaps a tearjerker too, because he wonders how we will ever be able to justify the world, our happiness and eternal harmony if “even one child’s tear must be shed”.

No progress, no revolution, no war will ever be worth even that single tear. It will weigh forever

Ah, I forgot, madam: the Russian writer is called Dostoevsky.

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