A miniature Eiffel Tower and four smiling figurines representing a family: it's pretty much all Tamara Abu Auda, 25, was able to take with her when she fled Gaza City. These keepsakes now rest on the window sill of her room overlooking a courtyard surrounded by gray buildings in Odesa, Ukraine. Located on the impoverished outskirts of the port city, the building has been converted into a social center. Until recently, it only housed internal exiles from the territories occupied by the Russian army. In recent months, an entire floor has been reserved for 32 women and children from Gaza, fleeing one war to another that has been ravaging Ukraine for over two years.

Abu Auda and her two children, Tala and Ayham, aged 5 and 7, are among the 50 or so Ukrainian nationals who were evacuated from the Gaza Strip in the early days of March. "We've been through many ordeals," said the grandmother, Tatiana Abu Auda, 49, "and it's hard for us to enjoy life again. Part of our family is here, while the other is still over there. We don't know what the future holds for us."

April 26 was a quiet day in Odesa, a rare occurrence given the regular bombing of the city by Russia. Children were busy playing and shouting in the sunny courtyard of the building they reside in. From the 5^th-floor bedroom she shares with Tamara, Tala and Ayham, Abu Auda cast an affectionate glance outside. "The children struggle to find sleep after all they've been through." It had been more than 14 years since the woman, originally from the city of Melitopol, now controlled by the Russian army, had last visited the country she was born in.

Her life had been in the Gaza Strip since 1998. Like hundreds of other women who used to make up the territory's Ukrainian community (1,500 in recent years, according to the website of Palestine's diplomatic representation in Ukraine), Tatiana decided to move there for love. In 1992, while studying at the University of Agriculture in Kharkiv, a large city in the east of the country, she met Nadil, now 55, a Palestinian who, like others, had come to train in the newly independent Ukraine.

Scattered community

In 1998, they moved to Gaza City, where they had four daughters: Tamara, Diana, Nadia and Nour. "We were happy," said simply Tatiana. Nadil worked in an electricity company. The two older girls got married, while the two youngest dreamed of becoming a singer and a photographer.

In Gaza City, "we were all friends with each other," said Irina Kharara, her sad, downcast face wrapped in a black scarf. A mother of five, she too met her husband, Sidon, while he was studying in Kharkiv in the early 1990s. In Gaza, the couple owned a small store selling mobile phone accessories in the city center. The Ukrainian women were keen to continue some of their country's traditions, teaching their children Russian and Ukrainian languages and customs with dance and song workshops.

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