style="font-size:15px;"> – Tell me, Granny, – begged the girl.
– In other occasion. That’s it for today. Let’s go to bed, – Granny didn’t agree.
– Please, Granny, – asked Solnishko.
– Don’t ask me. Wash your hands, brush your teeth, wear your pajamas and go to bed, – strongly ordered Granny.
– And what about a bedtime story? – Solnishko added.
– Surely. Choose what to read, – Granny agreed. – Would you tell me about your family instead of a fairy tale? – asked the girl craftily.
– You, sly girl! Next time, – answered Granny.
– I don’t want to sleep and I won’t go to bed, – replied the girl without calming down. – If I go to bed it will mean, I accept that I’ll see Mom and Dad not so soon. And I don’t want to accept it.
– I’m afraid, nothing more you can do. It’s out of our power to fight a disaster. And besides, it’s not so bad. Your parents will soon come back. Look, what happens in airports. The people are without any food and water for already several days and can’t fly. So, consider us very lucky, – said Granny.
– Can’t they also fly because of disaster? And don’t they have any food and water also because of disaster?
– It is difficult to ascribe the fact of their appearance in such a terrible situation to only the disaster: it happened because of bad work of corresponding services, – explained Granny.
– Did they also accept the fact they feel bad? – Solnishko puzzled Granny.
– It’s difficult to accept that, moreover, it can’t be tolerated. Nobody will help you until you don’t fight for your rights yourself, – continued Granny.
– And what are they doing? How do they fight? – wondered the girl.
– They try to find the cooperators of the airport, the airline company to get some information about flights, and they finally try to rebel, – answered Granny very seriously, even a little bit tensely.
– But why do they try to rebel? Can it help them to fly, – the girl was surprised.
– No, it won’t help them to fly, but it will draw attention to their problem and will make them think, – Granny tried to explain it to the child as simply as possible.
It seemed the girl was greatly interested in that topic and though she didn’t understand everything but she felt that everything Granny told about was very important.
Solnishko was a clever girl. She was getting everything: and first of all her feelings which helped her to guess what was important from her point of view but what she didn’t understand yet.
The girl bickered for a long time, but at the end she got tired and fall asleep.
The parents returned home safely. In the following morning Solnishko was happy as much as never over the past three months.
CHAPTER 2. THE TERRORIST ATTACK IS NOT A WAR
Several days passed. Everything went as good as possible for Solnishko. She didn’t have to go to kindergarten which was closed connected with the flu epidemic. It was too cold outside and it was impossible to go for a walk. In a word, the girl passed all her time with her family, in the most favorite atmosphere for her. It should be mentioned that Solnishko liked her flat, her room, her books, toys, DVD and audio discs very much. Sometimes it seemed to be very difficult “to take her out” for somewhere. Very often she had to be persuaded, for being interested in anything. But when she went out she didn’t want to come back any more. During such days one of the most wanted places was the Museum of the Peoples of the East. The girl liked to walk through the half-empty halls of the museum and enjoy the ancient culture of the Orient. She was especially attracted by the exhibits in the halls dedicated to India, China, Japan, Iran and of course the paintings of Nicholas Roerich and Svetoslav Roerich. Some kind of magic existed in them, the blessing light emanated from them. And the color scheme amazed the imagination. She could look at those paintings for hours and without getting tired. If some paintings of Shishkin, Vasnetsov, Vrubel, Polenov, Kuindzhi and even Aivazovsky demonstrated in Tretyakov Gallery were closer to the child by their themes, and that’s why she understood and liked them, then the paintings of Roerichs fascinated little Solnishko so that she looked at those works with wide eyes and didn’t hurry up to part with them. The girl used to come here often with her parents.
Each visit was dedicated to a concrete hall. In such way the parents measured out the physical and emotional tension in doses. Step by step they made the child closer to the high art in order for the perception not to be blurred over, the feelings be remembered and the formed interest be stable.
As a rule, after such excursions, during several days, the girl played with her grannies the subjects of the paintings she liked most of all or improvised over the themes of expositions. By sitting on a carpet Solnishko placed her toys and made compositions – she remembered the prototypes of the most interesting scenes, divided the roles and involved the adults in theatrical performances. Sometimes the girl greatly suffered from the fact that she couldn’t get the corresponding decorations. In that case the adults had to solve the problem very quickly by any possible means: to knit, to sew, to sculpt, to draw, to color, to buy again. Solnishko herself was actively involved in the process of making decorations. She was very happy when everything worked. Only seldom it could be defined especially what made her happy: the process itself or the final result.
Grandpas also were involved in the games, yet communication with grandpas was remote as they lived in “the near abroad”. Solnishko also had relatives who were in “the far abroad” by fate.
Sometimes after visiting the museum the girl got tired and preferred listening to the audio recordings of her favorite fairy tales and stories by sitting on the floor. At that time they left her alone with her thoughts and fantasies.
However at this time things were different. Still on the road, in the car it was reported that there was an explosion in the airport “Domodedovo”. By this way Solnishko heard the words “a terrorist attack” for the first time. According to the reaction of the adults, she understood that something terrible had happened. Naturally she wanted to know what “a terrorist attack” meant and she turned to the parents for explanations. The girl was very sensitive, that’s why the parents protected her from details and only briefly telling that the criminals caused an explosion, in the result of which some people died. Everything was done in order for the imagined scene of the events didn’t appear in front of her eyes. Nevertheless, the mood was ruined and it seemed to be some feeling of anxiety which nobody could get rid of for a long time.
Everything, of course, ends sooner or later. Life was normalized and returned to its former routine. However, nothing disappears without a trace.
Once after dinner when Larisa, the close friend of the family was visiting them, Solnishko told Granny to ask something by Jane Eyre, the porcelain doll Granny had recently presented to her granddaughter and which Solnishko loved very much. Granny asked the doll in English. It was a surprise for the child. The girl wondered in which language Granny said to Jane. After hearing the answer Solnishko asked:
– But
