祖国シリアから逃れた医師、ウクライナで再び戦火に

【ＡＦＰ＝時事】医師のオサマ・ジャリ氏は２０１４年、祖国シリアの首都ダマスカスを離れ、黒海沿岸にあるウクライナの港湾都市ミコライウへと逃れた。妻はウクライナ人で、ジャリ氏がこの国に留学していたときに知り合った。（写真はミコライウにある病院で患者に声を掛けるジャリ氏）
　だが、平和に暮らしていた二人の背後に、今また戦争とロシア軍の爆弾が迫っている。
　ミコライウは１１日夜から翌日にかけて、ロシア軍の容赦ない爆撃を浴びた。市北東部にある眼科診療所にいたジャリ氏は、職員や患者と共に地下室へ避難した。死者の報道はなかったが、窓ガラスは吹き飛ばされ、地面は砲弾で穴が開き、近くのボイラー室は被弾した。
　「信じられませんでした」とジャリ氏。「ここで平和に暮らしていたのに。ロシア人は何をやっているんだ？ 私たちを何から救おうというんだ？ 彼らロシア人からではないのか？」
　船やいかりの柄があしらわれたカジュアルなシャツ姿で、ジャリ氏はなお患者の診察を続けていた。だが、眼鏡の奥の目には疲れがにじんでいるように見える。
　祖国シリアからの退避を余儀なくされたのも、ロシア軍が介入した内戦が理由だったというのは、非情な運命のいたずらだったとしか言いようがない。
　ロシアは２０１５年、バッシャール・アサド政権にてこ入れするために、シリア内戦に軍事介入した。
　「シリアとウクライナは今、同じ状況だ」とジャリ氏は言う。「戦争は戦争だ。向こうで終わっても、そこここでまた起きる。戦争は最低だ」
　だがジャリ氏は政治的な事柄に引きずり込まれるつもりはない。「ロシア人？ ロシア政府？ そんな話はしたくない」。ジャリ氏はそう言うと、患者を診るために階段を上っていった。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2022/03/24-13:02）

Syrian doctor Ossama Jari fled Damascus in 2014 to find peace with his Ukrainian wife in the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv. But now war, and Russian bombs, have caught up with him.
In an ophthalmology clinic in the northeast Ingulski district of the city, Jari huddled for safety with other staff and patients in a basement filled with mattresses and jerry cans of water during the merciless bombardment in the night from Friday to Saturday.
While no deaths were reported, windows were blown out, the ground was pockmarked with shell and the neighbourhood boiler room was hit.
I couldn't believe it, said Jari. We were living peacefully here. What are the Russians doing? From what are they trying to save us? From themselves?
Not really dressed for work -- kitted out in a shirt printed with nautical motifs -- Jari was still trying to treat patients, his eyes weary behind his glasses.
It is a particularly cruel twist of fate for the doctor who had been forced to flee his war-torn homeland during the civil war there, where Russia intervened in 2015 to prop up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Jari and his wife -- whom he met while he was studying medicine in Ukraine -- fled the Syrian capital to find peace in Mykolaiv.
But the war followed them.
- 'War is war' -
Syria and Ukraine are in the same situation now, he said. War is war, whether it's over there, here or somewhere else, and it's the worst thing you can imagine.
But he would not be drawn on political matters.
The Russians? Their government? I don't want to talk about it.
Jari went upstairs to check on a few patients.
Among them was a 14-year-old boy called Timur, watched over by his mother Natalia Malichka.
In the first days of the war, Timur got a splinter in his eye while cutting wood with his grandfather.
Unable to get to hospital immediately because no buses were running, the teenager's eye got worse.
Timur remains silent as his mother, shaking, says she is also worried about her two other sons, aged 10 and 20, at home.
When I'm here with Timur, I know that my baby is at home, and I don't know if I'll see him again. I'm torn, Malichka says.
She and the two other boys were at home when the neighbourhood was shelled.
I was reassured because I knew that Timur was in the basement of the hospital with the doctors. But despite that, he called me, he was terrified.
Everything was shaking, said the hospital's director Krasimira Rilkova, who looked as exhausted as Jari.
We didn't know if we would find the hospital still standing when we came back up from the basement.
Mykolaiv, a city of around 500,000, stands in the way of Russia's campaign to take the Black Sea port of Odessa.
For several days now, Ukrainian forces have managed to hold off the besieging Russian troops.