by Bibish
I said to him:
“We don’t have a permanent residence permit.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, go to some rural district and arrange life for yourself there. By the way, you came from Turkmenia, but if you’d come from Uzbekistan, we could have helped you.”
“Why’s that, what difference does it make where we came from? The fact is that we’re Russian citizens too, here are our documents.”
He stuck to his line:
“Your president and Putin have an agreement,” and he began to explain. But in the end I still didn’t understand a thing, and we went back to the apartment.
You see, a state is an abstraction, but the people living in it are real individuals. Different concepts. It can be hard for the two to reach an agreement.
Two weeks went by.
After their main school the children went to the music school—piano, grade two. Both of them could already play four pieces. I always went with them, we used to ride to the music school on a trolley, and I waited for them there, because they didn’t know the town very well yet, even I didn’t. I had heaps of time to fuss over them, as you can understand, I didn’t have any work to do.
The children were doing well at the main school and at the music school. I thought everything was going well, although a few times Aibek—he was ten—complained that they called him names at school—“black face,” “black ass,” “black sheep,” “tramp,” “beggar,” “nigger” (he’s not anything like a black man, although he has a dark complexion)—and hit him hard in the head.
One day he came home all beaten up.
“Mom, dye my hair brown so I won’t be different from all the others, so that they won’t notice me. Mom, do something. Why did you have me so dark, couldn’t you have had me light-colored?”
And my second son, Nadirbek, told me:
“Mom, everyone in school talks about how they gave my brother”—and he pointed at Aibek—“a real good beating. I’m sick of it all. The kids laugh because my brother’s weak and he can’t defend himself.”
My husband and I scolded our children:
“Be quiet, it’s not all that simple. They’ll soon get used to you. It’s not so terrible. Be patient. We’ve got loads of problems as it is, you can see, we can’t find any work at all! And if they call you names or hit you, you complain to the teachers!”
The children told us:
“We did complain to the teachers, they listened to our complaints, then they gave the boys a telling off, but it was useless, they still beat us up.”
“Then when they beat you, try to lie on the floor and don’t get up until the teacher comes. Maybe then the boys will start to feel a little bit sorry for you!” Those were the terrible words I said to them.
And again they told us:
“We tried that, we fell on the ground and didn’t get up, but they just kicked Aibek, he can never fight back.”
Sometimes three or four boys, sometimes just two, one day from one class, the next day from another, would attack my older son. Every day there were insults, name-callings, or beatings. When he complained, I told him, like a fool:
“Listen, I’m not going to go looking round the classrooms every day to find the boys who beat you. It’s impossible to find them, just you be patient, some time it will all stop.”
And then our patience was rewarded.
The Story of What Happened to Aibek
I thought there could be nothing more terrible than what had happened to me in my childhood. I was wrong. This time the victim was my little ten-year-old son.
It happened on September 14.
My children came home from school. I fed them and we set off to the music school. All the way Aibek walked very slowly, and I scolded him:
“Can’t you walk any faster, we’re late for the class.”
He answered in a faint voice:
“Mom, my legs are tired, my head’s spinning, and it hurts real bad.”
But I didn’t look at him, I only scolded him:
“You’re pretending, you just don’t want to do your class, come on, get a move on!”
Then Nadirbek couldn’t stand it anymore:
“Mom, are you blind or something? They strangled him in school today, take a good look at his neck—they almost killed him.”
I stopped and looked and saw the bluish-pink marks of fingers on my son’s neck! I froze. I felt as awful as if he was already dead. We were standing in the road, and I was thinking feverishly about what I should do.
It was the end of the working day, about four o’clock. But we went back to their school and just happened to meet Aibek’s grade teacher. I couldn’t help myself, my tears were flowing down. I explained everything to her as well as I could. She looked at his neck straightaway and kept saying:
“How terrible! How terrible!”
Then she took us to the home of that boy, the “sadistic monster.” His grandmother, grandfather, and sister were there.
It turned out that the boy’s mother had been deprived of her parental rights and his father was in prison. Yes, the boy admitted to us that he really had strangled Aibek. I began sobbing and I said to that boy:
“If you hate him, if you really don’t like him, call him any names you like, even ‘black ass,’ even ‘nigger,’ only don’t kill my son.” And I screamed and cried.
Now that everything was clear, I felt sorry for the old people: there was no way they could control this child, he already had a police record although he was only ten.
After the painful explanation we went back home and Aibek said:
“Mom, my hands are shaking and my head hurts real bad.”
I put him to bed. He didn’t sleep properly, he raved and coughed terribly and tossed about all night long and cried out in his sleep.
In the morning I looked at his neck again. I could clearly see the marks of little fingers on it. We had breakfast and my older son didn’t go to school, but my second one did.
I stayed with Aibek. I began asking him how it had happened.
It turned out that what had happened was this:
Five boys from his class had called him into the English classroom and started taunting him. They said:
“Let’s fight!”
Aibek answered:
“There’s one of me and five of you, I’m not going to fight you,” and he tried to walk away.
Then the “boy hero” shouted:
“Coward!” and he wouldn’t let him go, he hit him and started strangling him. The other pupils stood there and watched as if it was some kind of exciting game, and they helped the “hero” and kicked Aibek. One boy even counted:
“One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . .” like in a boxing ring. They were curious to see how long Aibek could hold out without any air.
My son went on with his story:
“When I tried to shout ‘Help, save me!’ I didn’t have any voice and nobody heard me.”
Everything went black, and his head started to spin, but the “hero” went completely wild and squeezed even harder. My son had already lost consciousness and fallen on the floor, but the “boy hero” strangled him again and shouted:
“Die, black ass! I won’t let you go until I kill you.”
At that moment by chance, completely by chance, some senior students opened the door of the classroom . . . It was only then that the boy let Aibek go, and by a miracle he was still alive. If there hadn’t been any more lessons in that English classroom and the senior students hadn’t come in, my son wouldn’t be alive now, he would have been dead long ago.
“Mom,” he said, “I didn’t have any air at all. Now I understand how bad the sailors felt on the Kursk submarine without any air.”
I put my son to bed and covered him so that he could have a rest. I went out into the kitchen. My husband attacked me there:
“I don’t want a dead child! We don’t even have anywhere to bury a dead child! We’d have to put him in a hole some
where, like a dead dog! I didn’t come here so that my children could be killed for nothing! Go where you like, but I won’t let the child go to school. What guarantee is there, tell me, that everything will be all right with him from now on? They’ve only been at school for fourteen days! Just think! . . . And all that time they’ve called him names and beaten him almost every day. How much can he put up with? You’re the one to blame! What did we come here for? To cripple our children, was that it?”
He shouted so terribly, but you can understand the state he was in!
What could I do then?
I phoned the police. They told us to come in, and I went to them with my son. We went into an office. There was a young inspector sitting there. He asked:
“What happened?”
“Yesterday in school my son was strangled.”
“What’s that? Where is he?”
“Here he is, sitting bedside me. I want you to do something about it.”
The officer said, “So he’s not dead, then?”
An answer like that made my jaw drop and I asked myself: Does that mean he had to die for the police to do anything? Very funny. Then what did I come here for? It turns out the police won’t do anything unless someone dies!
“Write a complaint!” said the policeman. “Write how it all happened, and go to the forensic medical expert.”
We went for a forensic medical examination. There were a lot of people there. Alcoholics standing there with black eyes and some students who were beaten up, too.
Finally our turn came. We went into the office where they did the examinations.
An elderly woman doctor met us. She checked everything very carefully and began scolding me:
“Why didn’t you come sooner, strangulation means death, your son didn’t have much chance left. You say yourself they were calling him names and beating him. Why did you put up with it for so long? You ought to have done something about it straightaway, the school has a director after all, there’s a class teacher. If things go on like this, you won’t have a child! And you,” she said to my son, “need to play sports, you must defend yourself, sports will help you, do you understand?”
I said to her:
“I have two of them, they both do music lessons, they play the piano, they’re already in the second grade.”
The doctor dismissed that out of hand:
“Music and the piano will always be there. Just at the moment the children need to play sports. Sports will always be useful to them in life. Here’s a forensic medical examination certificate for you. All the best to you, look after the children!”
After that happened, the district education committee came to the school, held a parents’ meeting and a teachers’ meeting, and the local police came. Some meetings were about my son.
Soon the director of the school sent for me and began saying to me:
“It’s the first time this has happened in our school, there’s never been anything like it before. I’ve already moved your son into the very best class. If he doesn’t like it there, we’ll move him to a different class, only please, take back your complaint to the police. You can see we’ve taken measures, called in the parents and the teachers, held a meeting about your son. Of course, I sympathize with you, but at least he’s still alive. Please, take back your complaint.”
I couldn’t hold myself back at that:
“Listen, you think that I’m a newcomer, that I don’t know the language, I don’t know the laws, but there’s one thing I’m a hundred percent sure of—if instead of me it was some Chechen woman and her son who’d been treated the way my son has, not only would she kill the boy who did it, she’d put a bomb under the entire school. I’m absolutely sure of that, their revenge is very cruel, and they have no pity for anyone.”
The director said:
“Yes, yes, of course. But you know, I’m a migrant too. We’re from the Far East. My husband was a military man, he retired. So ten years ago we came here. I heard that you’re renting an apartment, I know all about that. My husband and I lived in various apartments for a long time before we were given our own. I worked in the summer, I wanted to go on leave in September. Because of this business my superiors won’t give me any leave, and my sick mother’s back there . . . Perhaps you will take back your complaint?”
I felt sorry for her and I agreed. I went to the precinct and I took back my complaint.
But meanwhile, it turned out that the local officer had been to the apartment, and the class supervisor had come as well.
Aunty Nina couldn’t stand any more. I could see her patience was exhausted.
“I have enough problems of my own,” she said. “I don’t need any more headaches. Please don’t be offended, but find yourself another apartment.”
Well how do you like that, that was all we needed! No job, our child had almost been killed, and now we were going to be out in the street.
I went to Aunty Lida straightaway:
“Help me find another apartment, please.”
Aunty Lida was surprised:
“What’s bitten Nina? All right, what difference does it make now? We’ll have to look for an apartment.”
I didn’t just sit around with my arms folded either, I started going round the agencies and calling the numbers in the announcements, but it was the same answer everywhere:
“They don’t take non-Russians, the landladies won’t agree to it. And especially with children.”
Poor Aunty Lida walked round the houses until ten o’clock in the evening, looking for an apartment for us. It was hard, but she found one. She phoned in the evening:
“I’ve got a friend here, he’s living on his own just now, his son’s staying with some woman. I persuaded him, and he’s agreed. You know yourself, a bit of extra money never hurts. I’ll take you there tomorrow, and you can settle up with Nina later, when she comes back from her dacha, and you can move to the new apartment, all right? By the way, your landlord won’t be there for a long time, he’s going into the hospital tomorrow for an operation. While he’s there, you’ll be on your own. Listen, I wanted to ask you something, Bibish. You said you were in the municipal offices, didn’t you? And they didn’t give you a license there, and since then you’ve been sitting at home and doing nothing? You shouldn’t be sitting at home, you’ve got children, a family. You know it yourself, money runs away like water—if you don’t work, your reserves are soon gone. Always remember: if they refuse you in one office or they won’t listen to you, you go and knock on another door!”
I laughed and said to her:
“As soon as we move to the other apartment, I’ll go round knocking at office doors, all right.”
Aunty Lida helped me a lot: She looked after my children, took them to the forest and to swim and showed them the town. While we were looking for work, she took the children to her place and fed them, because Aunty Nina was at the dacha all the time. We even went to help her harvest the potatoes. That year she had a good harvest. She was very fond of her vegetable garden. At the town show she exhibited her own sorts of tomatoes, potatoes, onions, and pumpkins, and she won first place.
In the autumn I settled up with Aunty Nina and we said good-bye. I was grateful to her; after all, she did register us for six months.
At our new place we got on with the landlord immediately. He showed us everything, told us what we could do and what we couldn’t, and said:
“Tomorrow morning I’m going into the hospital. I’ll come out fit and well, God willing, and we’ll get to know each other a bit better. Here’s the key, make yourselves at home, good night!”
He was called Alexander Ivanovich, or Uncle Sasha. Before he went to bed he came out of his room again:
“Another thing I wanted to tell you: You should move the children to our school, it’s very close, only a couple of steps away, we can even hear the bell. Otherwise you’ll have to wait for the trolley in winter, and anything could happen on the way. Here you don’t have to take a briefcas
e anywhere, or a change of shoes. Oh, all the things your children have to carry around, and they’re still so little. Think about it, think about what I told you, all right?”
He had a urological illness: his urine dripped out through a tube into a bottle. That was why he was going into the hospital, so that they could operate and remove the tube.
And another thing he said was:
“I won’t lock my room. If you like, I have an accordion in there, the children can practice on it. If you like to read, there are books. So go in, I haven’t got any money lying around, I don’t need to lock anybody out of the room.”
In the morning he left for the hospital. We got up. I tidied up everywhere and aired the apartment because it smelled of urine. I bought an air freshener and sprayed everywhere. And I went into his room, intending to change his bed. When I looked the sheet and the quilt cover were saturated with urine. Probably when Uncle Sasha was lying down, urine ran onto the bed from the tube. I stripped the bed, put the mattress on the balcony, and soaked the bedsheets, then washed them and ironed them. My husband dealt with the bathroom and the toilet, cleaned them and disinfected them. We tidied and cleaned everywhere, put everything in order. And we swept the stairs down to the entrance with a twig broom.
By the way, when I was living with Aunty Nina, I always swept the entrance for everyone and wiped down the stairs. Because all the people there were old, and I felt sorry for them. We got on well, we were friends. We used to visit each other almost every day.
But there were all sorts of people living on that staircase too. One elderly woman spent her free time walking round the streets collecting empty bottles. Then she handed them in. And that woman didn’t acknowledge anyone who wasn’t Russian. When she saw me, she always used to ask:
“Do you know what day it is today?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Today’s a big holiday. Don’t do the washing, don’t sweep the floor.”
“Why?”
“That’s the custom here. If you live in Russia, you have to observe our customs.”
“Well, I respect all customs, but when I have a holiday, I don’t try to tell other people what to do or what not to do.”
