Refugee mum fears she will never see her husband again
SHE FLED TO DERBYSHIRE, BUT PARTNER STAYED TO FIGHT
A REFUGEE has spoken about how her heart, her husband and her family remain in war-torn Ukraine, and she doesn’t know when or even if she’ll see her relatives again.
Daria Zalamai has settled in Derbyshire with her four-year-old daughter after escaping the conflict earlier this year.
“My husband is policeman and on the first day [of the war] he left home and is there now fighting for Ukraine – I prob- ably will never see him again,” said Mrs Zalamai, who fled to Poland along with a number of other refugees in March.
Originally from Dnipro, the fourth largest city in Ukraine, the 28-year-old told the Derby Telegraph the situation got so bad that she had to go for the good of her four-yearold daughter.
“I understood that every minute I was in Ukraine it was dangerous to be there with my daughter,” Mrs Zalamai said.
“We saw destroyed cities, destroyed houses, and I want a happy childhood for my daughter. I don’t want her to hear the sounds of rockets and other terrible things that are in Ukraine right now, and that is why I made this decision.”
Mrs Zalamai says that when she last spoke with her husband he was alive and healthy, but she can only hope that situation remains. She says she’s trying not to think about what her husband is going through in her home country.
She said: “I believe that everything will be all right, but our daughter is missing her dad very much. It is more difficult for her because I understand why and what I’m doing, but she doesn’t.
“She is asking all the time when we will go back to our house and why we are here and dad is there, and I haven’t answered those questions.”
After fleeing to Poland, Mrs Zalamai met up with a friend of Derbyshire businessman Steve Perez, who owns the Casa Hotel in Chesterfield and Peak Edge Hotel near Matlock.
He arranged for three families, including Mrs Zalamai, to come over to Chesterfield, offering them accommodation and a job. Mrs Zalamai now works at the Casa Hotel, while her daughter has started at a local primary school.
When asked what the future holds for Mrs Zalamai and her daughter, she said: “I thought about it a lot of times and I think that, for me, it is better for me to build a new life here because I don’t know how long the war in Ukraine will be and how long it will take to rebuild the destroyed cities.
“Time will tell what I do, but I do think about it a lot and I am happy to be here because I am safe, and my daughter is safe.
“But my heart is still in Ukraine because my family, my mother, my grandmother and my husband are there right now, and I can’t live a full life because my heart is there.”
I understood that every minute I was in Ukraine it was dangerous to be there with my daughter Daria Zalamai