​​I’ve never been under fire from Russian infantry. They only launched rockets near my home. Amid the sound of explosions every minute, I fled to the west of the country. Before that, I had been sleeping in a basement—on cardboard, in my father’s coat. When Europeans heard my story, they pitied me like a shivering, starving puppy. But compared to those from the east, my escape was relatively easy.
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In April Kyiv, I had coffee with an artist who had fled occupied Nova Kakhovka—the same place where Russians later blew up the dam, drowning entire towns. She had escaped through dozens of Russian checkpoints, sending her father the number of each post she passed, just to show she was still alive. At one checkpoint, they started shooting at the bus for fun. She made it out. And over coffee, I complained to her about the segregation of Ukrainians—between those who left and those who stayed. Why the hell am I even complaining? At least I can still visit Kyiv.
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At my art class for kids, I have two little boys from Syria. Their mother is lovely and signed in WhatsApp as “Doctor.” She wears a hijab. A friend in Kyiv once told me, "Maybe it's right that Arabs are being pushed out of Germany. Why do they come here and still wear their hijabs?"
I was furious. No one says that to me. Nobody gives a damn about my religion, even though in mine too, technically, you’re supposed to cover your head with fabric. But my fabric is socially acceptable. Lovely double standards.
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I am the right type of refugee. Exotic enough, but not too culturally distant. Still mysterious. They say, “In your country, all the girls are beautiful and always wear makeup. You know, German women are so boring. Tell us about the war, you're allowed to—unlike the others. We listen to you. Tell me—are all Ukrainian women like you?”
 
Someone addressed me in Russian. Without asking. Without realizing that it’s an imperial narrative to expect the colonised to speak the coloniser’s language by default. I want to scream at them for their ignorance, ask them if they’d like to sit under Russian shelling for a while. But I smile and play dumb. Nothing happened.
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Two kind women approached us on the street when they heard us speaking Ukrainian. They asked if we knew where to find housing—they were staying in a hotel and struggling with their German classes, saying how hard it was to survive in Germany. I asked where they were from.
One said Ivano-Frankivsk, the other—Zakarpattia. I thought to myself: But missiles don’t even reach there. While I was thinking it, they hugged me with joy.
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Where do we draw the boundaries of our empathy? How do we compare experiences without being judgmental? How do we learn to move beyond our own pain and the pain of others, and how do we see the reality in the midst of it?
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Even within a single war, experiences create a pattern so intricate and diverse. A war, embroidered with the pattern of other wars.​