Inga and Hana attempt to reignite their childhood memories.

Two young women were once neighbours and school-mates in the Soviet Union. They expected to grow-up together and live similar lives, but this all changed with the collapse of the USSR in the early '90s.

Instead they were plunged into a long-standing conflict as one made her home in Lebanon, the other in Israel.

Separated by war, a firmly sealed border and ideology, they cook the same food, read the same books and tell the same stories to their children. They still remember their native city and their old school vividly.

Can the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the two schoolmates, be narrowed by their common past? Or have the more recent memories of shelling, evacuation and suicide bombers erased everything they have in common?

Alexander Koliandre meets these two women and attempts to reignite their childhood memories.

 Listen to the programme

This programme is available as a podcast/download.

This programme was first broadcast in July 2007 and was produced by Alexander Koliandre of BBC's Russian Service.