Ukraine refugees plant seeds of a second life in our home

{"text":[[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":12.58,"text":"We played host to Ukrainian refugees because of a man called Ilya Neustadt. "},{"start":17.072,"text":"A Jewish Ukrainian, he was studying economics in Belgium when Germany invaded in 1940. "}],[{"start":22.880000000000003,"text":"Britain took Ilya in. "},{"start":24.847,"text":"This may have saved him from the camps. "},{"start":26.977000000000004,"text":"He later became a distinguished academic, a mentor to my parents and a family friend. "}],[{"start":32.63,"text":"It was by similar happenstance that a seven-year-old Ukrainian found himself standing in our London back garden in May 2022. "}],[{"start":39.82,"text":"“Why have we come to England if the Russians are shooting missiles at England too? ”"},{"start":43.787,"text":"Oleksii asked. "},{"start":45.117,"text":"He pointed to the white trails stretching out across the blue sky. "},{"start":48.547,"text":"His mother Mariya* explained that the trails had been left by airliners taking holidaymakers to and from Gatwick airport. "}],[{"start":55.5,"text":"Their own home is near Kyiv’s main airport. "},{"start":58.317,"text":"The area took a pasting in the first few days of the invasion because Vladimir Putin hoped to land troops near there. "}],[{"start":64.99000000000001,"text":"Mariya bundled her two children into her car and drove lickety split to Moldova and safety. "},{"start":70.119,"text":"She arrived in the UK a couple of months later with nothing more than the clothes the family was wearing, a single suitcase and her enthusiasm for 19th-century literature. "}],[{"start":79.64,"text":"This column would be more arresting if I could write that my wife and I battled intransigent British bureaucracy to get Mariya and her boys out of Moldova. "},{"start":87.432,"text":"One colleague had epic difficulties with the visa-wrangling nabobs of the Home Office. "}],[{"start":92.42,"text":"But for us, everything worked like clockwork. "},{"start":95.487,"text":"The Homes for Ukraine team at Bromley Council were fast, well-informed and efficient. "},{"start":100.242,"text":"A kind old official who looked like Santa turned up to welcome Mariya and her boys. "},{"start":104.48400000000001,"text":"He advised me to put a picket fence across the middle of our garden so the two-year-old could not fall into the pond. "}],[{"start":111.02000000000001,"text":"I sweated over this job for most of one hot Saturday in June. "},{"start":114.662,"text":"Returning from the park that afternoon, Oleksii vaulted the fence so he could inspect the new infrastructure. "},{"start":120.242,"text":"Little Dmytro appeared too. "},{"start":122.17200000000001,"text":"Solicitously, Oleksii lifted his brother over the barrier so he could also see what I had been doing — from behind the fence that was supposed to keep him out. "}],[{"start":130.78,"text":"The garden has been the scene of much other activity: kickabouts, swingball duels and some well-meaning but overenthusiastic help with watering. "}],[{"start":139.28,"text":"We planted sweetcorn together. "},{"start":141.484,"text":"My family had regarded this as an insipid food, encountered floating despondently in lukewarm soup in British canteen serving areas. "},{"start":148.639,"text":"Mariya said that a person has not lived until they have eaten maize cooked straight off the plant. "}],[{"start":154.17000000000002,"text":"Roots pushed out into British soil: weakly at first, then strongly. "},{"start":158.662,"text":"The ears of corn were delicious. "}],[{"start":161.57000000000002,"text":"The family, members of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking community like President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, now switch comfortably between that language and English. "},{"start":169.67400000000004,"text":"Mariya has to stay on the boys’ case to ensure they keep up their Ukrainian. "}],[{"start":174.56000000000003,"text":"The house share has worked out. "},{"start":176.66400000000004,"text":"We have become friends. "},{"start":178.18200000000002,"text":"Mariya says it is like borscht, her signature dish. "},{"start":181.39900000000003,"text":"Get the ingredients right and the recipe will succeed. "}],[{"start":185.22000000000003,"text":"She found places for her kids at nursery and the local school. "},{"start":188.83700000000002,"text":"She took a part-time job — well below her pay and seniority back home as an IT project manager. "},{"start":194.61700000000002,"text":"But she is glad of the work. "},{"start":196.30900000000003,"text":"It is a step on the ladder. "}],[{"start":198.91000000000003,"text":"Now she has secured a small flat on the street where we live. "},{"start":202.43900000000002,"text":"It is another step on the ladder. "}],[{"start":205.28000000000003,"text":"For Mariya, the UK is both daunting and fascinating. "},{"start":208.93400000000003,"text":"But she is young, enterprising and hopeful. "},{"start":211.65200000000004,"text":"These are useful qualities for new arrivals in London, a city that can be merciless as well as accommodating to those of limited means. "}],[{"start":219.00000000000003,"text":"Like every refugee ever, Mariya is learning to crack the codes of a foreign society. "},{"start":224.19200000000004,"text":"We have tried to explain the UK to her. "},{"start":226.48400000000004,"text":"We did not bother unpicking the class system. "},{"start":229.05200000000002,"text":"We do not understand that ourselves; perhaps nobody does. "}],[{"start":233.33000000000004,"text":"No one knows how this story ends, either. "},{"start":236.44700000000003,"text":"Mariya wants to resume her interrupted life in Ukraine. "},{"start":239.68900000000005,"text":"But even a brief trip exposes her children to the Russian bombing she has sacrificed so much to avoid. "},{"start":245.05700000000004,"text":"Both armies are stalemated in the east, in conditions the men of my family experienced on the western front in the first world war. "}],[{"start":252.66000000000003,"text":"Meanwhile, Ukraine risks becoming, in the words of a gloomy friend who helps sweep up after African conflicts, “just another of the world’s forgotten wars”. "}],[{"start":261.46000000000004,"text":"But this spring I will plant sweetcorn. "},{"start":264.014,"text":"And this autumn, we will eat the fresh cobs and think of Ilya and Mariya. "}],[{"start":268.95000000000005,"text":"some names have been changed "}],[{"start":270.69000000000005,"text":""}]],"url":"https://creatives.ftacademy.cn/album/135705-1703497746.mp3"}