Женщины и дети: право на жизнь

Woman and war, especially, children and war, these definitions, in my opinion, should not exist at all. I, as a woman, as a person, who experienced this war first hand, from inside, perfectly realize and understand it.

This war for me was more than horror, blood and death. It was also an internal protest against everything happened here. Today, recalling all these terrible days and 56 days spent in the cellar under ceaseless bombardments at the beginning of this war, I realize, that the events related to murders of people, bombardments, rocket impacts and artillery attacks are paled into insignificances. Only ennui, internal weariness has remained.

There were many people in the cellar where we hided. More than 20 people, basically women and children. I think, that it is more difficult for woman on the war than for man. In every respect. And it is very hard for children. I often observed the children who stayed with us in the basement. And I think that children of war - it is a special category of children. They think differently, they speak differently, they behave differently. They behaved very strange under bombardments. They did not complain, did not cry, but asked the only question - when will it finish?

There was our neighbor with her children with us, and her small son Shamilek regularly asked his mother: «Mum, mum, these planes will not return any more, will they»? This child had already known, that planes pose threat, bring harm. When he heard a sound of a flying plane, he ran to his mother and said: «Mum, mum, what will happen now? The plane is coming! When it will fly away for ever»? Then, approximately in a week, our Shamilek learned to define according to the sound when a bomber departs, and started to pester his mother: «Mum, mum, the plane has already departed! Can I leave the basement?» Once I asked him: «Shamilek, have you seen a plane?» He answered, that he had not seen it and even had not known, what it was. I asked him how he conceived a plane. He replied that it was a monster in a human appearance. In other words, it was not an iron thing, but a person who at present inspired horror. And it was very strange and terrible to hear these words from a small child.

It was one of November days of 1999. I do not remember, which day it was, but it was very terrifying. On that day the other three-year boy, who was in the basement with us, went out to the street. Suddenly a plane appeared in the sky. It flew very low. It seemed as if it would touch roofs of the houses and fail on the ground. I probably had remembered this pilot forever: his helmet, huge dark glasses, headphones, we saw it so clearly because he flew so low. And when this boy had jumped out of the basement, he saw a plane, which was approaching us with wild roar and rumble. And the child looked at it with huge, scared eyes and did not move from his place. He understood, that he should run, hide, but apparently at that moment he was simply paralyzed by fear. He just stood and looked with eyes, enlarged and frozen with terror, at the lethal machine flying in the sky. And when the bomber had passed by, he started shouting loudly: «Look, look! There is a man inside!» For him, as well as for small Shamil, the plane was a terrible monster. In several seconds a terrible explosion was heard in the area of the 12-th sector, there were many human victims, but I have remembered forever these huge, scared eyes of the three-year child and his shout.

The next day the parents of Shamil about whom I had spoken before decided to leave the republic. Apparently, they decided to leave for Bashkiria. Then I was told that when the family had arrived to the airport, the kid had refused to get on the plane. When he had heard a roar of turbines of the plane he had started crying, he had a hysterics and nothing could help. The stewardess tried to calm him, spoke that it was the ordinary plane and there was nothing terrible in it, but Shamilek did not wish to get on it. In my opinion, the flight was postponed for a short while because of it. Only when the boy was given a depressant and he fell asleep, he was taken aboard of this plane. And it is also, in my mind, very terrible consequence of the war, of that what this child had to go through.

In December of 1999, my neighbor Ruslan was killed. He got under the mortar bombardment. He was in blood when I saw him, he was dead, and I felt strange at that moment. And even today I remember that feeling. I thought why he did not have his head. And where was his head? But his head had been just cut by a splinter.

There were many of these cases, especially with psychological context, which I remembered well. January 12 of 2000 was one of the most nameable days for me. It was a day when I with my mother had got under the awful artillery bombardment. There were two of us in the basement, but several times a day we had to go out. Our relatives, who had left Grozny, left us their cattle, a cow, and my mother also had some hens that she did not want to part with. These hens did not profit us anything, they did not bring eggs, but for my mother they were, probably, as well as the cow, a symbol of a peaceful life. The mother believed, that she should look after them by all means, though certainly, sometimes it was very dangerous to leave the basement.

On that day we went again to water the cattle. When we came to the house of our relative, the strongest mortar bombardment started. Our house was a direct target of it. We were in the courtyard at that moment (the court yard was very big), and my mother and me appeared in its different ends. And my mother started shouting that I would not run to her and remain at the place behind a wall where I was. Apparently, I still remained a child for her. Despite the age we always remain children for our parents.

But an instinct had woken up in me. It was not an instinct of fear. I would say it was an instinct of the childhood. I was an adult woman, I was far thirty at that time, but at that moment I would like to cuddle up to my mother and, as a small child, to hide the head. And now, despite of mother’s request, I run to her. The courtyard was huge, splinters were whining, they were flying so close bouncing from walls of the house, but I was running. And I reached. I embraced my mother and hided behind her shoulder.

Then, when everything had ended, she asked me: «Why had you run, I had asked you not to do it!?» I answered: «You know, at that very moment I thought that I could not be without you, or you - without me. But I wanted so much that we would either live together or die together. The rest was senseless». The horror experienced on that day and the fear to lose the mother I remembered very well and I had understood that at that time I found myself in a role, in which the children from our basement were. I had felt myself like a small, defenseless child who was seeking salvation from the mother.

And, curiously enough, I remembered the moments of lull. For example, the day of January 16, 2000. I remember the clear-clear sky. There was no shot, no plane, and no bombardment. I left the basement and as a mad person looked at the sky.

Then, at the beginning of February the fighters left the city. On that day it was also a strange lull. The sun was shining brightly, it seemed, that there was no war at all, and, I do not know why, but I started to declaim Belmont: «I have come to this world to see the sun. And if the world extinguished, I will sing. I will sing about the sun at my death hour!» Then this silence, of course, ended and the sensation of the war returned. Federal troops entered the city. And the women accepted the certain share of commitments. Each time we went, asked not to shoot men, not to touch people, not to take them away. At that time I understood my significance, understood that it was good to be a woman. Today I can do more, than, for example, the man of my age could succeed. On one hand, it is, certainly, abnormal, but it happened this way.

The other case, which I have remembered, occurred on July 1, 2005, when our neighbor Ali was taken away from our house. It was a terrible show when at eight o’clock in the morning the militaries, armed up to teeth, came, surrounded the whole house, and then burst to the neighbor with terrible shouts: «Lay down on the floor!». Then they took him to somewhere, and we still do not know, what had happened to him and where he is now. And now, it is very hard to look at his wife. We are friends with her. And sometimes I catch myself at the idea that I think on how she feels when I say her at parting: «All right, I shall go, my husband is waiting for me». But her husband is not at home and no one knows whether he is alive or not.

In the great scheme of things, probably, the woman is an embodiment of goods on the earth. In fact, wars were mainly started and are still being started by men. And woman’s assignment is absolutely different. To make goods, even during war time. And this old Chechen custom when the woman removed the scarf from her head and threw it between battling men in order to stop the bloodshed, in fact, means a lot.

During the war I often observed, how women behaved during danger as well as tragedy. I recollect August of 1996. It was in the city of Grozny, at the intersection of Lenin -avenue and Dzerzhinski-street. A car was burning there, and there was a young man in it. Probably, he had been killed during bombardment. And I remember a terrible shout of the woman (I do not know who she was to this man: the mother, the wife or the sister), and I do not know how she had learned that there was her relative in this car. But I still hear her screaming cry: «What shall I do without you?!!». In other words, he was everything to her. The whole meaning of the life, if it is possible to say, has ended for her. And this is, probably, a woman as she is.

In 2000 year I started to work. It was very restless time; militaries constantly blew up something in the area of Lenin-avenue, conducted special actions, all possible «sweep up operations». And when these «sweep up operations» began, my female instinct was automatically turned on. I gathered all my readers, basically, they were students, in the hall and then myself came forward and spoke to the militaries. I explained that that we had only readers here, our visitors, and there were no fighters, especially, armed people here. It became an internal feeling for me, I felt, that I should protect someone if I was able to do it. And this is, in my opinion, woman’s assignment. If she can do something for the sake of saving someone’s life, she must do it.

Another terrible fact is that during wars neither women, no children become kinder. On the contrary, they become a little bit malicious. I felt it. Sometimes I even was afraid, that if this horror would last for short while I risked losing my human shape, I ceased to be a normal person. After all experienced shocks and horrors, I began to see many things differently. With eyes of that war. When today many people live in other concepts, using mercantile measurements, frequently forgetting, that we are all mortal, it is not clear for me. I start recalling this war, any significant episodes, and catch myself on the idea, that it is impossible to enjoy this life very much. Sooner or later, we all have to die. But it seems to me, that we should hope, that this death would be natural, but not violent.

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