At just ten years old, he fled the war for the second time. It is the story of a Ukrainian child who arrived in Norcia, in the province of Perugia, in early March with his mother, his eighty-year-old great-grandmother and a small dog. For the past few weeks, they have been living in one of the Sae houses of the earthquake evacuees, which remained vacant after the previous occupants returned to their house and made it livable. The child, dark hair and sly eyes, knows what an earthquake is.
“The houses I saw collapsed here – he tells ANSA – are similar to those destroyed by bombs”. The mother nods and, with tears in her eyes, tells of her ordeal that has lasted for eight years. “In 2014, when the war actually started,” she says, “we lived in Donetsk with my husband and had to flee. He was very young. We moved to Kramatorsk, from where we again had to flee. It’s hard to escape, leave parents, husband and all loved ones. I want the war to end immediately so I can return to my country. The grandmother sits in a chair in a corner of the Sae, listens and doesn’t say a word, except that she misses home. The little one, on the other hand, misses his dad the most. “I hear him every day – he says – he asks me how I’m doing in Italy, if I eat and what I do”. They feel nostalgia for Ukraine, but mother and son don’t even dismiss the thought of a future in Italy, “of course, if my husband can come with them,” the woman specifies. The little boy, soccer fan and Juventus fan, from Italy particularly likes the climate – “it’s hotter here” – and the pasta.
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