“I’m an anxious person, that’s just the way I am. And that’s why it was so hard for me to cope with the pressure during the days before the war had started. Part of me was saying “there can’t be a war, it’s impossible”, and another part was struggling with anxiety. Anxiety peaked during those days – February 21, 22, and 23. After the war began, I travelled with my little girl to Poland and from there to Belgium. It was tough for us in Belgium, it’s a place where we didn’t manage to adapt and where things just weren’t working. We left Belgium and came to Romania. We want to stay here for a while.
And just like that, a year went by. I remember on February 23, 2022, I was at home playing with my little girl. She was glad she had just completed a collection of tokens that she was into at the time. The photo was taken that night. It seemed like a normal evening, like all the others before that.”
Story collected by Ionuț Sociu for the Suitcases of Abandonment campaign. Project funded by CARE through SERA Romania, Care France and FONPC.
Last Day of Peace, First Night of War is an interactive digital installation, part of the Museum of Abandonment, a digital wall of images showing the last days of peace collected from mobile phones.
