Anna Desnitskaya is the author and illustrator of At the edge of the world, The Apartment: A Century of Russian Historyand other books for young readers. Her new picture book, A star shines throughis inspired in part by her experience of leaving her long-time home in Moscow with her family in light of the current unrest in Russia.
I was born and raised in Moscow. My family has lived in Moscow since 1917. Before the Russian Revolution, Jews were not allowed to live in big cities. As soon as this became possible, my great-great-grandfather Abram and his young, pregnant wife Revekka moved to the capital, where my great-grandmother was born.
I always felt that this city was mine: the alleys in the city center, the small courtyards, the view from the hill where five generations of our family lived, the red bell tower of the monastery, the long northern summer days and the short winter days (at four in the afternoon in December it was already dark and the gray sky hung very low), the snow-covered houses after a snowfall and the completely empty city on the morning of January 1st. And then the smells: the scent of poplar buds, the wet hot asphalt after the rain, the warm March wind, the metro, the first snow, the lilacs, the railway, the old wooden houses. It was all mine.
You could say that everything changed on February 24, 2022, when at six in the morning I held my phone in shaking hands and read the news: “Russia has begun invading Ukraine.” “Russia is firing ballistic missiles at Kyiv.” “Russian troops have landed in Odessa.” It was as if the air was being imperceptibly sucked out, as if a terrible black cloud was creeping over my beloved country and city.
My husband and I knew we could not stay in Russia any longer, and as soon as the war began, we traveled to Israel with our three children, a cat and a dog. In Israel, we were surrounded by incredible care. We received so much support from friends and strangers – but it felt like we had flown to Mars. Everything was absolutely incomprehensible and alien – the letters (we couldn’t even read a pizza sign!), the food, the weather, the architecture, the holidays, even the weekends (I still couldn’t get used to Sunday being a work day).
It was very hard for my husband and me, as well as for our children, because we no longer had a home, because there was no stability left in this country that was completely foreign and incomprehensible to us.
Then we rented our first apartment (tiny, uncomfortable, completely different from our beloved home in Moscow) and went to Ikea to buy a few bits and pieces for it. It was absolutely incredible – just like the Ikea in Moscow. It seemed that when you looked out the window you didn’t see sweltering Haifa, but Moscow. We bought a paper star – just like the one we had on the window at home in Moscow, and when I lit the star and put it on the balcony, this foreign place became a bit more homely.
Gradually we got used to the apartment, learned to read the signs and even speak a little Hebrew, and the world around us began to resemble Mars less and less. No, it was still not our home – but it was a world in which our star shone.
One day, during a Hebrew class, the idea came to me that this could become a book, and in the middle of the class I wrote a manuscript in my phone notes. It was very difficult to draw this book; I felt inner resistance the whole time. But when I finished, I realized that this was also part of the healing process. And I hope that this book can help children from different countries who have lost their homes to love the place where they were forced to be.
We never really settled down in Israel. Now we live in Montenegro and I don’t know where we’ll end up next. But wherever we go, we’ll take our star with us.
During the two and a half years of the war, I thought a lot about my great-great-grandfather Abram and my great-great-grandmother Revekka. What was it like for them to leave their beloved hometown and move to distant, cold Moscow? What was it like for them to be in a foreign city without their relatives? The city they left ended up in another country after the division of the Russian Empire, and because of the Iron Curtain they could no longer see their relatives who remained there. During World War II, all their relatives perished in the Holocaust.
I don’t know if my great-great-grandfather regretted leaving his hometown, but I am so grateful to him for giving me my hometown. And I hope that one day the darkness will pass and we can return home.
A star shines through by Anna Desnitskaya. Eerdmans, $18.99 August 20 ISBN 978-0-8028-5631-9
