The woman sobbed, wracked with the searing pain of loss. The floor seemed to fall away under her feet, along with the last of her strength. She cried out and dropped to her knees, shivering uncontrollably.
December 1994
Chechnya
My mother’s voice froze in my mind. I could still hear her words. With every single cell of my body I could feel her emotional pain and how much she was suffering. I knew how difficult it was for her to restrain her tears, and show me some way to remain strong in the face of a hopeless situation. It was as if I was trapped at the bottom of a black hole in the earth, an abyss, and she was trying to throw me down a long rope. But deep inside, I knew her efforts were futile. The rope would never reach me, and it wouldn’t help me climb out anyway.
My heart was broken. My mother was the most important person to me in the world – no one else even mattered. We had been fed into the meat grinder of the criminal-political system, we were torn to shreds, and we were helpless to do anything.
I sat silently shaking from heavy sobs, but the tears did not stop – a river flowed down my face. My eyes hurt from crying so much. The Chechen madmen drove me back through the deserted streets to the gray and cold room. I fell into the bed exhausted and spent – totally drained, both physically and mentally. I had to wait.
“I have to be strong,” I told myself. “This will not last long – I will be saved. It will all soon be over.” I tried to believe it – not because I thought it was true, but just because it was what my mother had told me.
After a while, I had no more tears to cry, and lying in bed, I recalled the painful details of the day. I had been so overwhelmed by my own feelings during the trip, that I didn’t pay attention to what was happening around me. Now, in the darkness, I tried to remember everything to the smallest detail. I wondered how it was possible that all the abductors were carrying huge automatic rifles, out in the open. None of them had tried to hide their weapons from the random people around them. Was it the war? Was it Chechen society itself – the endless permissiveness for the crooks, abductors and gangsters?
With the onset of winter, behind the black window, the bright days became shorter, but despite that they did not seem to pass any more quickly. I was no longer able to navigate time – all I could do was wait. The minutes came to be hours, the days an endless perpetuity. Once there were green bushes outside the window, but now they were completely naked, and the weak sun shone on a deserted courtyard. Through the thin slits between the black paint, it was now almost impossible to see. Everything merged into a sinister gray mass. Time had stopped. There was no one out there at all.
The people had left their homes long before the first assault on Grozny. The Russian government apparently thought they could take over the country with a handful of young soldiers, back in November. That never happened. On December 31st, the real war, the serious and bloody war, began. Hundreds of Russian armored vehicles, heavy artillery and aircraft entered Chechnya.
I knew that the war had started. Shorty told me.
“Your Russian bitch bastards wash in their own blood. We will cut off the head of each, and send them by mail to their mothers.”
I was slowly going insane.
The monotony of my existence was suppressing my mind and personality. Every morning, I assured myself that the new day would bring me salvation – thinking that was the only way I could cope. But by nightfall, I was positive that I would not survive the next day, and I would fall into despair. My life seemed senseless and dead-end. One of the worst things in isolation and captivity is that emotions are experienced much more sharply, at their extreme. Pain turns into agony, and fear into paranoia, the helplessness into despair.
Shorty continued to humiliate me.
My life was difficult enough, and now he was turning it into an everyday torture. He would not leave me alone. He would drop into the apartment, open the door to my room, and stand in the doorway, playing with his gun in front of my face.
“I executed five Russian pigs today. Weaklings who surrendered instead of fighting to the death like men. They died anyway, sniveling cowards, on their knees. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!”
He paused, letting it sink it.
“And one last, crying as I put the gun to his head. BANG!”
I became paralyzed with fear - almost as if my body had turned to stone – whenever he appeared, but even so, I could barely hold my tongue. The witnesses of his mockery watched it, amused. When he got tired, he left, and I felt an indescribable joy. I dreamed that he would die in the war.
He was my worst enemy.
I could not wait for nightfall, when the apartment was quieter. The militants dispersed to fight or to spend a night at their own homes, except for a couple of guards who were always there. The night was mine - in peace and tranquility. I played that single Gipsy Kings cassette in the tape recorder, holding the speaker close to my ear, the volume low, so no one could hear it behind the door. I listened to the delightful guitar playing and passionate singing, memories flooding back, and I would sit behind the closed door, isolated from the whole world, and dissolve into a puddle of grief. I mourned my miserable life, recalling the carefree and happy days of my childhood and adolescence.
CHAPTER FIVE
January 1995
Chechnya
I heard Shorty’s voice right at the door.
The hatred in me started boiling. I was full of poison – they had poisoned me the first night, and it had never left my body. It pumped in my veins now, a diseased revulsion for all of these people, and especially him. I hated him with all my soul and with all the blackness inside my heart. I wanted him to die. No. To simply die would be too easy for him, and too sweet. I wanted him to go out slowly, in pain, and in terror, and in humiliation, like the humiliations he delivered to hapless Russian teenagers, conscripts, which he so enjoyed describing in minute detail.
I sat quietly on the bed, afraid to move. The lamp shone dimly.
“Don’t come in,” I said silently, in my mind. “Please don’t come in here.”
He read my thoughts and hurried to torment me. The door opened. He was very short, the caricature of a capering gnome from childhood nightmares. His beard was uneven, as if the pockmarked skin of his face was contaminated ground, and the hair was so sick it could not bring itself to grow. It did not have the strength to escape him and breathe the fresh air.
He casually held a long machine gun with one hand. It was strapped over his shoulder, a monstrous thing, and he was clearly proud of it. It hung down with the barrel almost touching the floor, because he was so small. He was like a toddler, precociously playing with his big brother’s toy. But he saw himself differently. He stood in the doorway grinning, the master thespian, warming up to play his role. The audience in the other room had yearned all day for one of his famous performances.
“Well, shall I tell you a story about your Russians?” he said. “We have a few of cowards in captivity right now – in the pit. We haven’t decided what to do with them yet. Today we had some fun. I cut the tongue out of one of them, because he couldn’t speak Chechen. Tomorrow I'll cut his ears off, and bring them to you.”
With pounding heart, I was there just motionless, staring at the wall in silence, shaking with hatred. He was angry.
“Get up when I talk to you,” he ordered.
I wanted to die right there. I was overwhelmed with fear, hatred and despair. I was ready to explode.
“Get on your feet!”
I slowly began to crawl out of bed and stood in front of him at my full height. I was a little taller than him. Our eyes met and suddenly I burst out:
“Do you want to know who the real coward is? It’s you!”
The whole apartment was deathly quiet. At that moment, I could no longer think. Everything dropped away – all I could see was his ugly and distorted face. He was like the villain in a medieval fairy tale, a small gnarled monster that hides under a bridge and eats passing children. I did
n’t care what he did. He could kill me, but nothing he might do mattered to me anymore. I could no longer hold it in: I started screaming at him, all of my pent up hatred and terror spewing out, the accumulated poison of months of helplessness in every single word. Shorty stopped and stared at me in a stupor.
“Only a true coward could humiliate an unarmed person, especially a woman, holding a machine gun in your hands! I don't have anything! Give me your gun, and then we'll see who the real coward is, and whose ears I can bring to you!”
I spit the words at him. I had no way to frighten him, except with my own voice. My fists clenched painfully. The burst of emotions coming to the surface set the skin of my face on fire – I could feel myself burning alive.
His eyes were bloodshot, his face twisted in anger. He moved fast, almost leaping close to me, like a dancer. Then he punched me in the stomach. Instantly, I doubled over in pain. I could not breathe and fell back into the bed, hardly trying to inhale air. Someone else came into the room and started speaking to Shorty in a fierce whisper. A few seconds later, Shorty left.
I lay bent over, clutching my stomach with both hands, barely breathing. I was sure my lungs were collapsing. I wanted to puke, and I wished I would die. The newcomer quietly sat down on the bed and patted me gently on my twisted back. Then he went out.
I could not straighten up, and lay there all night, crying from the loneliness and embarrassment, my face buried in a pillow wet with tears.
Eventually the morning came and with it, a sense of something new and miserable. I was sure that the worst part of my life was about to begin. Shorty was going to make my life the ultimate hell.
I was no longer able to resist the inevitable. If I could not be exchanged for money or Chechen prisoners, I was done. If not physically, then certainly emotionally – my mind would not last.
January 6th, 1995
Astrakhan, Russia
The woman drew the heavy curtains in every room, turned off the lights, and in the impenetrable darkness, she lit the candles. As always, once a year, at Christmas, she began her ritual of divination.
With trembling hands, she crumpled a piece of paper into a ball, put it on a tray and lit it. The dry paper caught immediately. Dancing flames threw shadows on the wall. She stared at the fire thinking about her daughter.
Are you alive? Where are you? Will I ever see you again?
The paper soon burned down. She stared without a single blink, scanning the outlines of the burnt paper in the light of the candles, hoping to see the future.
She eagerly peered into the shadows: she saw the side of the mountain, and a barely discernible human figure. Her heart pounded. She began to look closely to the details of the figure. It was a girl, hair blowing in the wind. The woman could not understand whether the fragile female figure was walking or was frozen – left forever, on the slope of a high mountain.
The woman breathed heavily. She sat down on a stool and closed eyes. What if her imagination was playing tricks? Her head was spinning, temples throbbing.
She was afraid to open her eyes and see the motionless, trapped forever between the mountains, female figure on the wall, in the dancing light of the candles. It would break her heart and kill the woman’s spirit and faith. She could not let this happen. The woman was excited and exhausted.
She opened her eyes firmly and rapidly blew out the candles, without looking at the shadows. Groping in the dark, she went into the bedroom. It was long after the midnight. She collapsed on the bed and lost herself in disturbing dreams.
January 1995
Grozny, Chechnya
There was movement behind the door. I heard voices, and the sound of a visitor. Someone was going to come in. I knew all the sounds by now. Each approaching step became louder and louder, like an alarm right in my ear. I imagined how the evil Shorty would come in and simply shoot me. I was hoping for it. I no longer wanted to endure beatings and tolerate bullying. Someone touched the door handle, turned the key twice and I squinted, holding my breath...
The door opened and I saw the fox face.
In the weak light of the room he came closer. I could see he was holding a large glass jar filled with canned fruits in liquid, the kind that are made for winter time. I watched him carefully, with suspicion. He put the jar on the floor and sat on the edge of the bed. I huddled in the corner and did not know how to react.
He put both hands to his beard and smoothed it.
“I brought some peaches for you.”
There was a long pause, a moment of silence between us, and his sharp black eyes pierced my soul.
“I’m Aslan,” he said with a whistle.
I stared at him.
“Don’t be afraid. Mirza won’t touch you. He is just a little pissed off. His brother was recently killed.”
I remained silent. I just listened. I had no desire to talk to him, and no plans to believe what he said.
He grinned weakedly.
“Are you sure you’re Russian? You have spirit. I respect the power of the spirit.”
He left. Shorty Mirza did not appear all day.
Foxy had a real name now – Aslan. He showed up again the next day. His little black eyes always had a penetrating look, just as his face always had a smile.
His smile did not cause me to smile back, but only to shrink away in fear. He kept smoothing his beard before saying something, all the while staring straight inside of me. He was short and muscular, with jet-black eyes and hair – a true son of the Chechen mountains. There was some kind of primordial power and inner strength in him.
And all of a sudden he began to take care of me. He didn’t make a show of it – perhaps it was not even noticeable to the others. I felt it. After the incident with Shorty, something had changed. I was sure: I’d been there more than three months, in almost complete isolation, under constant supervision, and I had barely said a few words during all that time. I was forlorn. I did not have anybody who would show me the smallest sign of care. Now I started to feel it.
A few days later he came to me in the evening with a big jar of the home canned cherries. He slipped into the room almost like a ghost, without making a sound. He sat on the opposite side of the bed, and as the considerate host inquires of the guest, asked:
“Do you need anything?”
“Yes, I do. Freedom. Let me go.”
His grin stretched into a wide smile and he laughed quietly, almost silently.
“I can’t let you go. Eat some cherries.”
To my surprise, I had a companion now. Almost every night, I saw Aslan. He was a guard, or just present in the apartment, in the evenings. He came into my room, sat on the bed with one leg tucked under him, and we talked. I was glad that at least I could talk to someone now. Time passed a little faster. We talked about war and politics. He described how the dishonorable Russian troops conducted the war, and how courageously the Chechen Vaynakh fought.
The more he mentioned this word, the clearer its meaning became to me. He called Vaynakh his brothers in spirit and faith. Their honored traits were courage and honor, and commitment to the Chechen nation. Their highest value was freedom.
How ironic that their lofty ideal was the very thing they deprived me of.
The thought of escape never left me.
Because of the war, the gang grew, along with the pile of weapons that I observed on the way to the bathroom and back. The gangsters and the weapons lived symbiotically, feeding each other, giving each other health and life. As one group multiplied, the other did, too. If the war was a heavy spring rain, then gangsters and guns were the mushrooms sprouting in the forest.
Now there were a lot more of both.
In one of the escape plans I drew up in my mind, I considered stealing a weapon, but the opportunity never came - I could not even come close. I thought if I had a gun, I would be ready to shoot anyone on my path. In my imagination, I planned a massacre of everyone in the apartment, and then I would escape. The only thing missing to compl
ete my plan was a gun. I still kept hoping that one day, the police or the troops would find me and save. Russian troops were so close, after all. I even imagined Sergey, armed to the teeth, breaking into the apartment and ruthlessly killing everyone and liberating me.
I thought about my mom, and could not hold back the sobs. How was she coping with this? Was she even alive?
I was ready to leave this place at any moment. Leave forever and never come back.
One day, my thoughts materialized. In the evening, the space behind the wall was filled with an unusually large number of voices – it did not cease until late at night. I couldn’t wait until all the sounds were silenced, to knock on the door asking to go out of the room. Eventually, the place quieted down – most of them had left.
I went into the bathroom and instantly spotted the gun. It was resting on the floor – a black pistol with a brown handle. I had been dreaming about it for so long, I almost couldn’t believe it was really there – I had been given a gift. With shaking hands, I picked it up, hid it under my dress, and brought it with me into my room. It was not big, but it was heavy. Maybe it was fully loaded.
I was not afraid of weapons – I’ve always loved them. All of the children received basic military training at school, and it was there that I discovered my passion for weapons. The lessons were my favorite ones in school.
I was an excellent shot – in school competitions, I was one of the best with a rifle. I could disassemble and reassemble an AK-47 in a few seconds. But I didn’t know anything about pistols. Was it loaded? Would it shoot when I pulled the trigger? How many bullets did it have?
I carefully held it in my hand – a small device with such great power. I could take away the lives of the men outside that door. As many lives as the gun had bullets. Having the gun gave me strength. If I could shoot without a miss, and without hesitation, I would be able to escape. In my heart, I had always wished my captors were dead.
Girl, Taken - A True Story of Abduction, Captivity, and Survival Page 8
