Héctor Abad Faciolince: "I was saved from dying from a missile attack because I was deaf."

Héctor Abad Faciolince (Medellín, 1958) had just recovered from open-heart surgery when his Ukrainian publishers invited him to attend the Arsenal Book Fair in Kyiv to present his translation of El olvido que seremos (The Oblivion We Will Be) . He quickly accepted and began preparing for the trip, while his family begged him not to visit a country at war, especially after his operation.

His stay allowed him to witness the horrors of the Russian invasion, from the capital to the Donetsk region, close to the front lines. Before leaving, he said goodbye to the team of writers and journalists who had accompanied him to a pizzeria in Kramatorsk. What he couldn't imagine was that a Russian missile would fall on the premises, leaving thirteen dead. One of the victims was the Ukrainian writer Victoria Amélina, with whom the Colombian author shared experiences during those days, which, he says, "I will never forget." In Ahora y en la hora (Now and in the Hour) (Alfaguara), he chronicles what happened.

His hearing saved him.

It sounds paradoxical, but I was saved because I was deaf. My right ear is defective, so I decided to move to another place at the table so I could hear better. Victoria took my place. You never think your destiny depends on something like that. Minutes later, at 7:28 p.m., everything exploded.

A Russian missile with six hundred kilos of explosives.

I'll never be the same again. I touched my body because it was covered in a black, sticky substance. I assumed I was hurt, even though I didn't feel any pain.

I will never be the same again”

The wound was his companion: the poet Victoria Amélina.

At the base of her skull in the back, from a missile splinter. She went pale. We started shouting at her, but she didn't react. Journalist Catalina Gómez, who was with us, got into the ambulance with her, even though she knew that, for the Russian invaders, an ambulance was a perfect target. She then stayed with her dying friend in Kramatorsk until she died.

Read also Victoria Amelina, killed by Russian missile Xavi Ayén

In addition to the writer, twelve other people died.

Among them were two fourteen-year-old twin girls, Juliya and Anna Aksenchenko. They had gone to dinner with their father to celebrate their good grades. They were murdered, and the father survived. What's happened to me since then with the twins is strange. When I was finishing writing the book, my daughter told me she was pregnant with twins. That gave me an almost mystical feeling, like reincarnation.

In his book he admits that he sometimes still wonders what they were doing there.

Celebrating life. It was one of Victoria's favorite places. She had been there before with Catalina Gómez, and the last time they had visited Kramatorsk together, they couldn't find her. That's why they persisted until we found her and had dinner, and then everything else.

Aside from Amélina, the rest of the people on the terrace with you were saved.

Those inside were buried and killed. The blast wave destroyed our car, which was much farther away. I still can't figure out how we're still alive.

Read also Victory at Kramatorsk José Manuel Cajigas, editor of Avizor

Do you believe in guardian angels?

We must have had one. Or maybe it was the "Hang in there, Ukraine" stickers Sergio Jaramillo handed out to diners. It's a campaign he created to debunk the disinformation paid for by Russian propagandists that was reaching South America.

What were the weeks and months like after the attack?

Terrible. I don't think it's something you can ever fully recover from. The one who suffered the worst was Dima, Dmytro Kovalchuk. He suffered post-traumatic stress and a kind of concussion from the explosion. His brain is temporarily left feeling like a maraca. I think we all feel a little like that, but he ended up in rehab. And for me, well, guilt eats away at me. After a terrible experience, you don't know what it was, but you feel guilty.

After a borderline experience, one doesn't know why, but one feels guilty.

Of being alive?

And leaving right after the attack. I was scared. I did it because the Russians like what they call double-tap , firing a second shell at the same location to take out the rescuers and finish off those who were already wounded. I was a coward, but I couldn't stop thinking about my family.

Minutes after everything happened, a book by Amélina, translated into Spanish, arrived in her mailbox in Madrid.

A Home for Dom , by Avizor Ediciones. Amélina and I often didn't know what to say to each other. We suspected it was because we didn't know what the other had written, so I gave her my book translated into Ukrainian, and she asked the editor in Spain, José Manuel Cajigas, to leave her work in Spanish in my mailbox. A chilling, yet beautiful coincidence. We became friends since her death.