In Ukraine, many people affected by the conflict are being treated and supported by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). I was able to meet some of them: in a rehabilitation centre for war veterans in Cherkasy and a mental health clinic for internally displaced families in Vinnytsia.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, I’ve drawn many political cartoons about the war; drawings that feature Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Vladimir Putin and the occasional bear. It looked very different from the ground, where war is fought and lived by ordinary people, just like us. In the hospitals I visited in May this year, I sketched the precise way in which war is mapped on individual bodies and listened to the stories behind their scars. I drew what people told me, as well as what I saw, because trauma and hope are intangible things of memory and imagination. There’s nothing left to draw of an amputated limb but memories – the same could be said for a lost home or relative. These things are beyond a camera’s reach, which I think gives you licence to reach for a pencil.
I watched an MSF psychiatrist help a soldier regain feeling in his paralysed hand using tiny scraps of textured materials intended to evoke strong memories. As she brushed them against his fingertips, she explained: “This cable-knit might remind him of a grandma’s jumper; this fluff, a child’s teddy; this one, grass.” I saw echoes of this image throughout the hospital in injured people reaching back or forwards to life beyond the war. People described their memories of peace in vivid terms, but when I asked what victory meant I was met with nonplussed stares. One soldier said: “No idea … but when it happens, I’ve promised my wife I’ll shave off my beard.” His beard was long. His wife was perched on his hospital bed and asked if I’d like to see how well her husband can lift his dumbbells with his one remaining arm.
