慢速见证：用画笔记录战争废墟下的具体人性

A couple of years ago, I stood on the streets in eastern Ukraine, in Kramatorsk, in the aftermath of a Russian cruise missile strike on a residential apartment building. I remember the front of the building was blown off. You could see a living room and a kitchen inside, belongings burnt, scattered on the floor, mixed in with the rubble. There were some weapons inspectors on one side, an excavator in the middle, and of course, in amongst it all, the journalists were there, trying to interview those involved. One lady in particular had soot on her face. It was very moving to watch. She gathered her belongings from the rubble, and she put them on the floor, and she sat on them for safekeeping. These are the sorts of scenes that are broadcast around the world every night. And I sat and drew this image -- that’s her in the black at the front. I found them to be so moving. And let me tell you -- the destruction is truly captivating.

But around the back of the same building, I found a library of books had been blasted into a rose garden, and in amongst the thorns and the roses stood Petro, age 70. On his morning walk, he couldn't go any further. He felt it was his duty to stop, pick up the books, stack them in neat little piles. And as I drew him, he challenged me, and he said "I was brought up that if I see a loaf of bread on the floor, I'll pick it up. It's the same with books. They are food for the soul." I've drawn mass graves in Ukraine, a cesarean in Afghanistan and the war in Syria. And over two decades, I’ve had one realization over and over, that there are many truths to war. But on that morning in Kramatorsk, in Ukraine, it was so stark. It was Petro that captured my heart, this gentle soul standing amidst atrocity.

This is what I do. I draw for magazines and newspapers, in ink, on location. And over weeks and weeks in Ukraine, it became my mission to be slow, to delve deeper. And I found that the news can tell us what happened, but the drawing can show us how it felt.

In Kyiv, I met Madame Olga, aged 99. She was too old to get out of her bed when the air-raid sirens rang. I remember she had a Bible tucked under her pillow. She was very muddled, she was confusing Putin and Hitler, and she held the translator's hands about six inches from her face. And in this moment of wonderful clarity, she said, "If you be quiet, I will tell you the story from the beginning." She was born in 1923. She was taken to a collective farm with her father. She survived the Holodomor -- the great famine which killed four million Ukrainians. When World War II started, she worked as a slave for a Nazi family. She recounted the story about one time they fed her worms. She ran away, on another occasion, to the police station, but the policeman returned her straight back to the house. When the war ended, she began to walk home to Ukraine. She met her husband on the way -- future husband, I should say. They got married. She had four children. She lived another 80 years. If it hadn't been for the process of drawing, I wouldn’t have shared this moment with Olga, and I wouldn't be able to share it with you. She died a couple of months after we met, peacefully, in her sleep, before her 100th birthday.

I believe the news is failing us. It promotes destruction before humanity. It's polarizing and fatiguing. It gives the illusion of certainty. You might feel helpless or hopeless. We'd certainly be forgiven for turning it off. My antidote is to wander the streets and stand on corners. I work with local translators and fixers to interview the unsung and the understated. Like Oleg, 23-year-old mixed martial arts fighter and football fan from Ukraine. He joined the military to fight the Russians with his football friends. But on this day, I drew him being served borscht by his mother, Lisa, the English teacher from that town, and he posed for me with his Kalashnikov, but also, more unusually, with his guinea pig, Almond. And throughout the sitting, he whispered to Almond affectionately, "You are a big pig." "You are a big pig."

It's people like Sergei that remind me that these stories are continuing as I stand in front of you. Perhaps the most ordinary of them all. An architect whose house fell on his head when it was hit by a Russian missile. And I met him in the hospital, bandage wrapped around his head. I asked if I could draw him and the nurse translated. And he looked at me down his nose and he grinned from ear to ear, and said, "Yes, but I will also draw you." And, very formally, a date was arranged for the next day, and I came back and we sat in one of the wardrooms. The windows were still sellotaped up in case there was an explosion. And we sat and we drew each other. We didn't share any common language. We were both shy about our drawings. Like all good artists, he blamed his tools for the quality of his picture. And he'd probably be secretly proud to know that I'm showing you this. Sergei, this is your story.

Of course, these are only four stories from Ukraine. But over the years, in Syria and Tajikistan, Gaza and Iraq, I have met and drawn hundreds of other people. But why, in the age of immediate news, do you need to know about Almond, the guinea pig, or Sergei the architect or Olga, the great-great-grandmother? Or Hamdo, Lisa, Dimitri? Well perhaps it’s obvious: I believe they could so easily have been one of us. They are the true consequences of war. And I tell you about them, I share them with you tonight because they are ordinary people who had terror poured on their lives and resisted it with their hearts.

I would like to finish with a confession. More of an admission, if you like, but a difficult one for artists, I think, to admit. As it turns out, it isn't really about the painting at all. That's just an excuse to sit a little longer, to give time. We've heard about listening accurately today. This is about observing, seeing properly. Drawing is the only way I know how to do that. But today, I invite you -- more than that actually, if I'm allowed -- I urge you to witness these stories and not consume them. To be deliberately slow and to cherish human connection. Thank you for listening.