This week's long reads

Support the Guardian Support us   Fund independent journalism Fighting for our lives: learning Ukrainian and escaping the organ traffickers In this week’s newsletter: language lessons in wartime, and a plot to exploit the bodies of the poor Illustration: Nataliia Shulga/The Guardian ‘The war leaked into every lesson’: learning Ukrainian in a country under siege | Charlotte Higgins Soon after her first visit to Ukraine four years ago, Charlotte Higgins began language lessons, to gain a deeper understanding of what she was reporting, and as a courtesy to the people she was interviewing and working with. Learning a language in wartime is much more than an exercise in grammar. Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images/Image Source/Reuters/AFP/AP The body snatchers: how a young Nigerian man was lured to London in an organ-trafficking plot | Alexis Okeowo Daniel was working at a market in Lagos when he was given the chance to start anew in the UK. He had no idea what was expected of him in return. A vigilant doctor would uncover a sinister pattern of exploitation. Inside this week’s long read Charlotte Higgins has spent four years learning Ukrainian, and returning to the war-torn country. We asked her about this development in her life and work You’re the chief culture writer at the Guardian. Nothing about your job description meant that you had to go and report from a war zone. How did that happen? I continue to work on lots of UK-based and sometimes US-based culture stories, while making regular trips to Ukraine, where I am invariably firmly behind the lines. But yes – it was certainly a transition that I couldn’t possibly have predicted. It came from the conviction that Ukrainian artists would be bound to be documenting the war in compelling ways; and from a long-term interest in the intersection between politics and culture. After a colleague who’d been reporting from Ukraine suggested it might be a good idea for me to go, I pitched one piece to my editors. Everything grew from there: there were so many stories, and so many threads to pull on. You write that learning Ukrainian was more than a side interest. You’re a classicist, a musician, a writer. Did you need a massive challenge at this stage in your life? Yes, I did need this massive challenge in my life! I turned 50 the year I first went to Ukraine. A memorable year in other ways (my first sighting of the aurora borealis, my first Glastonbury). What is life without challenge? Also, is it not said that learning a language fends off cognitive decline? It is true that I have many commitments and many interests (and to my shame, Italian lessons got dumped after a time of trying to hold Ukrainian and Italian in tandem). I feel incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to be so enriched. How are you dealing with the stress of learning Ukrainian, in the broadest sense, as the war grinds on? As you suggest I’ll take “learning Ukrainian” in the metaphorical sense of learning about and from Ukraine, and reporting in Ukraine, as well as learning the language. To speak honestly, yes, I sometimes feel overwhelmed by sadness, particularly when I see my friends in Kyiv and Lviv coping with the huge, violent, bloody intervention in their life that is war. I see friends in their 30s who have organised more funerals than anyone should have to do in a lifetime. I see people whose futures – everything they had planned and expected and hoped for – ripped apart, and the very foundations of their lives fractured. I worry so much about my friends there. All of this connects to my experience of learning Ukrainian, but so does the great richness of friendship and laughter, and my joy in the people that I know there. This week’s audio long reads ‘This process has turned into a form of torture’: inside the trial of Erdoğan’s challenger My maddening battle with chronic fatigue syndrome: on my worst days it feels almost demonic ‘I see it as trafficking’: the brutal reality of life as a foreign student in the UK Listen to the Audio Long Read on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or in the Guardian app From the archive Photograph: Javier Bernardo/AP The Melilla massacre: how a Spanish enclave in Africa became a deadly flashpoint | August 2023 Last week’s rush on the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, with its deadly toll and subsequent row about migrants storming the EU, is not the first. Matthew Bremner wrote about the day at least 37 people were killed in June 2022 at the Morocco-Spain border in Melilla, while scores more were injured. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian The butcher’s shop that lasted 300 years (give or take) | September 2020 Frank Fisher was a traditional high street butcher his whole working life – as were three generations of his family before him. Tom Lamont paints a tender and funny portrait of a man dedicated to serving his community, at 90, facing the difficult decision to hang up his white coat. What else we’ve been reading Sibling hierarchies and rivalries get established early in life, and most adults worry that addressing old emotional wounds will make things worse. Daniel Bergner for the NYT reports on the rise in sibling therapy, and unflinchingly describes his sessions with his own younger brother. Clare Longrigg, deputy editor Equator magazine’s We Were Simply Animals blew me away. This tale of poor Mexicans tricked into slavery, working in the fields for drug cartels, brought to mind Primo Levi in its unadorned portrayal of evil. But for many of these guys, even being rescued did not bring relief, as they returned to families and communities who just didn’t believe what had happened to them. Your faith in humanity will be tested. Not to be read, as I did, just before bed. Dan Kuper, deputy production editor   Our journalism is free to say what it wants… but worth paying for. From breaking news to huge investigative projects; from masterfully told features and long reads to reviews, podcasts, videos, lifestyle advice and much more. It’s an incredible amount of valuable journalism, and it costs a lot of money to produce. However, we keep our website free to read because we believe access to quality news is a global public good: a positive force for the health of democracy around the world. For more than 200 years, we’ve been publishing fearless, independent journalism. 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