I could never shake this sinking premonition that something might happen to him. I begged him to stop going out. He listened indifferently, but if the artillery kept up, he would agree to be taken down to the basement.

There was a notice stuck at the entrance to the flats: “When shelling begins in residential areas, immediately take refuge. The keys to the basement may be collected from the flat supervisor.” I couldn’t quite take in the fact that this sign—was not something somewhere far, over there, but in Europe, in the twenty-first century. The dissonance grew only stronger in the basement.

A whole community had formed down there. We were lucky: our basement was spacious and still connected to the power grid. The first time we went, during a bout of shelling, some of our neighbours had already taken up residence and converted it into a bomb shelter.

They brought pickaxes and shovels in case a shell hit the wall and blocked the entrance. Residents of the various blocks agreed they would dig one another out if needed. The floor was carpeted, and old armchairs and wooden chairs placed in the corners. Folding beds were arranged in a row, mattresses were laid out, the table had been covered in newspapers, Tupperware dishes and bottles. A television chattered away in the corner. Old calendars and an advertisement for Wella hair products (“glorious shade”) hung on the ragged walls. A languid girl with lush hair looked down from the poster onto the basement dwellers. A small window had been punched through to the street and a fan installed in it to suck out the hot summer air.

We greeted everybody and found ourselves a folding bed by the entrance. There were about twenty-five people in the shelter. Pensioners, women with children and a few, mostly elderly, men. There were people leaning against the wall with elbows on their knees and their chins propped up on their fists; some lay flat on beds. Others stood, not knowing what to do with themselves, chatting about the news and arguing. I didn’t listen. I was irritated by the children—there were about a dozen of them, I never managed to count, and it was never clear which child belonged to whom—running from one adult to another, hiding under the table, crawling on their hands and knees. “For God’s sake, why are there so many children here?” I wondered.

I looked at Dad. He was silently pointing at the distant corner of the shelter to a woman sitting in an armchair. There was nothing out of the ordinary about her. She was old, dressed in a flowery dressing gown, and she was holding a small, red-haired dog in her arms. I looked at him quizzically and he grinned heartily and pointed to the ground, to a spot next to the table. And then I saw it: Grandma’s carpet, the one we had carried out at the start of winter. And the woman with the dog was sitting in my grandma’s old armchair. The smile would not leave Dad’s face. An explosion outside. The shelter jolted. The light flickered. Everybody suddenly fell silent and listened. The women who had been smoking outside by the entrance hurried down the stairs. One held a two-year-old toddler in one arm and a cigarette in her hand.