Chapter Three: Ania:

Location: Moscow, Russia

Diary Entry: Ania

Night One

We couldn’t stay there. The power was gone. Most of our neighbors had vanished. Mother packed up what we had left and took my sister and I along with her. We had to walk through the endless miles of sand. My sister, Olga, complained for the first part of the trip. I shushed her and patted her on the head.

“Please be quiet,” I whispered. My heart stung as her lower lip quivered.

“Look,” I told her. “I know you’re hungry and all. So are we. Please bear with it a little bit longer.” Olga sniffed as I pulled her into my arms.

“Keep up, girls!” Mother shouted.

“Yes!” we shouted. We weren’t the only ones leaving our homes. It didn’t take us long to be joined by the remainder of our neighbors. They too looked tired and confused. I had never seen sand and snow mixed together before in my life. My mother couldn’t believe what she was seeing either. The sand started to wear down my boots.

“Where exactly are we going?” I asked.

“I have no idea, baby,” Mother said. I pulled Olga up into a piggy back ride.

We were still walking by sundown. Our neighbors walked with no direction in mind. I began to feel my own hunger as my shoulders ached from carrying a sleeping Olga on my back. The sand seemed endless. Many people in the crowd stopped to catch their breath.

“Mama,” I said. “Can we stop now?”

“No,” she said.

“But where are going?”

“I don’t know. We can’t stay here.” She kept saying that, but I didn’t think she knew what to do. I looked around as we walked up a small hill of sand and snow. Nobody seems to coming up with any ideas of what to do next. I tried to shake my sister awake.

“Oi, oi, oi,” I whispered. “Get up. Come on now.”

“Let her sleep, Ania,” Mother said.

“But Olga’s hurting my back.”

“Then give her to me. You can carry the bags.” To my surprise, the bags were a lot lighter than my sleeping sister. It wasn’t snowing tonight, but this sand flooding the streets only slowed to a crawl. The setting sun only brought more questions. Where would we sleep tonight? What were we going to do now? My thoughts were interrupted by my stomach growling.

“Mama, I’m hungry,” I said.

“Look in the small bag,” Mother said without turning around.

“The small bag,” I repeated. I pulled up the small bag that I had tied around my hip and pulled it open. I frowned and then my face went blank. Dried pork sticks? I am not one for dried foods, but given this situation, I reached inside.

“Do you want any, Mama?” I asked.

“I’ll take one,” she said.

“Okay.” I pulled out about four sticks.

“Don’t overdo it,” Mother said. “We need to preserve our rations until we could find more food.” I wondered when that would be as I handed her two of the four sticks I pulled out.

“Are these enough?” I asked. Mother turned her head and looked at the sticks handed to her.

“Yes, thank you,” she said. As I chewed on a dry stick, I wondered how long this would last before things could go back to normal. Would they even go back to normal? We walked out of our neighborhood just as night fell. The city looked just as covered sand and snow as former neighborhood.