Still no news whatsoever about papa.

The horror of not knowing, the horror of being totally helpless, the horror of trying not to lose hope.

Mama walked around Kyiv from around 6 am till around 8 pm, with a break for the police station. It was a very hot day. The police girl was very sweet, did her best to help mama cope psychologically and also worked real hard to locate someone who could've seen papa.

Mama had a large-format photo of papa's smiling face with her - they were showing it to people. Back home, she placed it prominently in their room, and when I saw it, it totally broke my heart: he looked so happy in that pre-stroke picture.

I walked around Lipki in the evening - he used to work at a school there, up until last summer, and I hoped I'd run into him, hoped he'd be sitting on some bench there somewhere, waiting for me.

If only Kyiv weren't so big. The irony is that I thought it was so small when I walked all the way to Goloseevo last week, taking pictures.

There was a portrait of Felix Dzerzhinsky in the office of the head of one of the departments at the police station.

So strange how I can write all this here - while also going totally crazy inside. I think I'll even be able to do some work for GV tonight. I can't fall asleep anyway. Mama seems sleepless, too.

Has he had any food and water in all this time? This question keeps popping up in my head, but then I have to tell myself to stop thinking in that direction, because other obvious questions are just too scary.