Outside, the night descended into jet-black darkness. Her apartment became dark, and she was left alone with her dark thoughts. She knew it now beyond doubt:
Lena will not be home tonight – something terrible has happened.
The woman sat up all night in her living room chair, watching the shadows and waiting, until the first light peeked inside her windows, bringing with it a bleak and dreary day. She rose from her chair with difficulty – it seemed as if a heavy weight pressed her down.
She walked the early morning city streets to the police station. They brought her to a detective with beefy hands and the swollen, bulbous nose of a man who had downed too much vodka. The officer listened, but didn’t seem concerned. He replied with an indifferent shrug of his shoulders:
“Don’t worry. I’m sure she’ll show up tomorrow. You know, we were all young once. If she doesn’t return in three days, then come and see us again. We only accept missing person applications after three days.”
Back home, the woman called Sergey. Maybe her daughter had stayed at her boyfriend's place, and they just fell asleep.
The woman’s intestines were tied in knots as she waited for Sergey to answer his telephone.
She barely let him speak.
“Is she there? Is Lena with you?”
“No,” he said. “I’m sorry. She’s not here. We had an argument at the restaurant, and she went home alone.”
The woman called all her daughter’s friends. Had they seen her? No. No one knew where she was.
The woman stared at the phone. Her mind was not working. It was impossible to come up with a plan for further action. It was hard to think at all. She was left, alone in a room, with the ruthless feeling of loss. She wanted to howl in grief and helplessness.
CHAPTER TWO
October 1994
Grozny, Chechnya
I woke up for a little bit into blurriness and then fell into a dream again. I was immersed in some other world – a world without pain or thoughts, without feelings or experiences. I drifted. I felt like an abandoned ship without a helmsman, floating with the tides and blown about by the wind.
They kept me in a small room now.
I was drifting in darkness. The waves of oblivion covered me for long periods of time, an infinity of time, and then they were replaced by a fleeting surge of conscious existence, but only for a moment. I floated in a black eternity. I passed out of time and space, and I was forgotten. I even forgot myself. Then I came back again.
This endless and emotionless chain repeated in a circle – I don't know for how long. Maybe it happened that way, or maybe it was just my sore brain playing evil tricks on me. My mind refused to work in the usual mode. What was the reason for this? Was I in shock, or was I still being drugged? I had no idea.
In those moments, I did not understand that I should enjoy this vegetable existence and these blunted feelings. Later in my captivity, I became so desperate I would have given almost anything to escape into the black world of dreams, at least for a few moments, and forget where I was. Such lost lucidity was a gift rather than a punishment. Being numb meant there was no chance for tears, and terror, and impotent fury at my helpless state. Brief glimpses of consciousness alternating with bottomless sleep left no room for painful emotions.
After a couple of hours or couple of weeks (or perhaps it was years, or decades or centuries - time had lost all meaning), new people came for me. Even through my dreams, I realized that they wanted to take me with them. They were alien to me – men with blurred faces, framed by dark hair and beards. I did not understand what they were saying, and I did not care – I was beyond caring. I felt myself floating in the air like a balloon – so light and indifferent.
I was broken.
I was no longer me, not a full person, a mere shadow of the Lena I had been very recently.
I could no longer feel my senses, and could not be left on my own. I did not belong to myself. I could not make decisions: my life was decided by strange and scary people. I did not even know what would happen to me from one minute to the next. I was heavily intoxicated, whether by drugs or by fear, I couldn’t tell. I could not resist anything. I could not say anything. I don’t remember speaking at all.
Who are they?
What do they want?
In my rare moments of enlightenment these questions were raised over and over in my mind. I could not find an answer.
One of the blurry faces spoke to me in Russian. In my memory, his voice seems to echo from afar.
“We’re moving,” he said.
Was I hallucinating? The men in that place all seemed to have the same facial features. They were just blank faces, washed out, pixilated, devoid of any specific characteristics, as if they did not have faces at all.
The dark framing of their hair and their thick beards made their heads seem disproportionately large. They were Bobblehead men, men with gigantic heads, and faces that all looked identical.
I was out of the bedroom now, and present in that strange place as an invisible observer.
It seemed like I was the victim of some kind of joke, or hoax, or absurd game. Suddenly, the darkness enveloped me again. But this new darkness was different. It was not the kind of darkness into which you fall instantly, and disappear into a deep abyss. It was not the kind of darkness which draws you away so suddenly that it does not give you a chance to get scared for even a split second. It was not the same kind of darkness that I had already experienced.
This time it was such a darkness that regardless the effect of the drugs, you still feel the excruciating fear deep inside your brain. It was a darkness where you realize that the worst is just moments or even seconds away. It was the kind of darkness the condemned man experiences when he is brought to the scaffold to be executed. It was that kind of darkness.
They had covered my head with a black hood or sack.
One of the men carried me. I felt myself become like some boneless deep sea creature, a jellyfish, but a jellyfish made of bread dough, malleable and light. My breathing slowed down, my heart was barely beating, my muscles became limp and formless, and my body was slung over someone's shoulder like a bag of rice.
I knew it was the end.
Then there was a car, the road, and I was sprawled on the back seat with my face uncovered. And we were driving once again, driving through the night.
* * *
I woke up after a dream with the feeling that I had slept for ages.
Just before I opened my eyes, a thought flashed in my brain, like lightning. For a fraction of a second, it seemed like I had the answer. None of this was real. None of it had happened. There were no kidnappers. There was no rickety car. I had fallen asleep and it was all some kind of strange nightmare. In another second I would open my eyes and find myself right where I belonged - snug in my bed in the cozy apartment I shared with my mom.
I was wrong. My eyes popped open and confirmed the horrible truth. Everything that I hoped was a nightmare was in fact reality. Surprisingly, and sadly, my mind was crystal clear and in no way clouded...
I found myself in an unfamiliar room immersed in twilight. On one dark wall, I could make out a slightly lighter square where there was a window, tightly draped with something dark. But even through the gloom I could clearly discern its shape, because of a small amount of daylight penetrating along the edges of the window. In here, it was night. Outside, it was daytime.
To my right there was a wall with a carpet hung on it. This is a typically Eastern tradition. People hang thick, beautiful, colorful Turkish wool rugs on their walls. But this rug wasn’t thick, and it wasn’t beautiful. It was a cruel mockery of the tradition. The rug was thin, shabby, threadbare, hanging on nails hammered into the wall, a piece of woven fabric. It was like the flag of a ruined nation. A carpet maker would weep to see it, and my face was so close to the wall that I could see the rug's braids.
The room was like a loud scream in my face. Everything in it told me that the fright
ening episodes I remembered were not a dream. The memories treacherously started to arise, one after another, like shards of glass from a broken mirror, sharp painful pieces of the things that had happened to me. I could see it all. The moments marched through my head, one by one, like fascist shock troops. A lump formed in my throat, and each memory caused that lump to swell. Soon the lump was so fat, so thick, it would not let me to breathe.
This was not a dream. This was not a nightmare. It had all really happened, and it was still going on! For the first time, I was of sound mind and I finally realized the depth of my predicament.
I lay motionless, paralyzed with despair. Tears flowed from my eyes, across the cheeks and slipping like cool jets all the way down my neck. Fear and helplessness tied me down. I felt choked, like big strong hands were on my throat. My heart was torn apart. I lay on the bed and I could not move. Most of all, in that moment, I wanted to go back to sleep and never wake up.
I did not know how much time has passed since I was stripped of my former life, and now it seemed that it was a long time ago.
What's next? What could possibly be next?
I lay there and sobbed silently. I did not know why I was there, and I did not know what would happen to me. In my mind, I howled in agony, like a wounded animal. I shrieked in despair. But in the real world, I did not utter a sound. I wanted to be quiet, so as not to bring attention to myself. It was terrible to be here, but I suspected that by making noise, I could bring something even worse.
After some time, I got up slowly and sat on the bed. In the dim light I could see the poor interior of the premises. In the 1950s and 1960s, Nikita Khrushchev had sought to reform and improve housing across the Soviet Union. This room was the result – a small drab square, a utilitarian box. It won zero points for style. It was a standard room, one of millions like it, in millions of standard compact apartments, in hundreds of thousands of five-story buildings spread across the largest country on Earth. It was a triumph of function over form. It was ruthlessly efficient. Draw one box, then build it again and again and again.
I was on a wooden bed, and the bed was pushed up against the same wall that was curtained with that incomprehensible colored scrap of rug, that embarrassment to carpet makers and carpet traders everywhere. Under the only light spot – the window – there was a bedside table with an old cassette player. And that was the room – bed, window, table.
I sat up in bed. I was barefoot and my feet made contact with the cold floor. On the ground, a few feet away, I spotted a carelessly dropped pair of thin flat shoes, pink with white trim.
Hmmm, I’ve seen those before.
They were like an uncovered clue. A piece of my dream, a small detail which I had forgotten, had just been recalled. It made the nightmare even more real. I knew these slippers. I had already worn them in the previous place.
I slipped my feet into the cool insides of the shoes and got out of bed. My mouth was dry, my head was spinning, and I felt myself light and empty inside.
When was the last time I ate?
I’ve always been skinny, and I would constantly watch my diet and starve myself from time to time to stay fit. I still had my black dress on, rolled up high to the hips, almost to my waist line, showing the black lace panties I wore underneath. I stood up and dress easily dropped down my hips. Our relationship had changed. It seemed to me that it was no longer fitted to my body, as it had been before. Once it had hugged my curves, and now it was just hanging down, a black tube to cover myself with.
I lose weight quickly, and I obviously had not eaten for at least a couple of days. The little black dress had always been my favorite – it was like a sleeveless turtleneck, and it came to the mid-thigh. It fit me perfectly in all the right places. When I wore it with my black patent-leather high heeled shoes it looked… impressive, let’s say. Impressive is a word, and so is sexy.
And that’s how it looked. In my previous life, anyway.
Now, on top of my dress I wore a huge floor-length robe. I had no idea where it came from. It was one of those heavy velour robes that flooded the street markets and were sold by Vietnamese street vendors. It seemed that the robe was bright pink once, made of thick plush fabric and embroidered with various colors. Now it was old, and even in the dim light I could see that it was faded and frayed. Some unknown person had taken pity on me and draped me in the robe at some point.
When had that happened? While I was sleeping in the bed? In the car? In the other apartment? I didn’t know.
Why am I here?
I couldn’t understand it. Most of my life I had been a nice person. I had never done anything wrong. I didn’t deserve to be punished like this. I tried to think of the worst thing I had done, something that might bring this terrible fate upon me.
One day, in the 6th grade, my girlfriend and I stole two bananas from the grocery store. It was the only store in the neighborhood that sold vegetables and fruits, and it was a place where once a year they sold bananas.
Bananas! They were the dream of every Soviet child – ripe, with little brown spots on their bright yellow skin, and a tropical fragrance, so foreign and sensual and so totally intoxicating. People would wait for them to arrive at the store for a full year, and then stand in a long line to buy just a few of them. I enjoyed that unusual exotic flavor, savoring every bite.
In Soviet times, bananas were not just some regular imported fruit – they were messages sent from another world, a place which the Soviet people were forbidden to enter. People would stand all afternoon in a long line not necessarily because they liked the taste of bananas. They would patiently wait just to get a small taste of the outside world.
That evening, my friend and I went to the vegetable shop to buy, as we often did, two glasses of delicious birch juice. We had a couple coins in our pockets that were given to us by parents. And there we were, standing in the tiny store, two sixth graders, in front of the huge glass showcase where the sellers displayed the grim, wilted and uninviting fruits and vegetables that were usually on offer.
But this day, things were different. On top of the showcase there were a few trays loaded with bright yellow bananas. It seemed like they must have been delivered to the store just a few moments before. No one was around. There was no line of people. In fact, there was not a single creature in the whole store – only us, two small children, staring up at that big bunch of long-awaited fruit and inhaling that smell, a smell that would drive a child mad.
We had a few coins in our pockets. But the money was not enough to buy the bananas. The money wasn’t enough to buy even half of a single banana. But the bananas were right there. Their beauty beckoned to us, and that smell! It was the scent of mystery and adventure, of overseas and unknown countries.
We could just about reach up and touch them with our hands...
I think, by nature, the man is a very rotten creature. We are thieves and liars and murderers. We are con artists. We are dishonest with everyone, and most of all with ourselves. If there were not the harsh limits of the law and the threat of subsequent punishment, the world would quickly turn into a bloody mess. It would become chaos literally overnight, with people killing and hurting each other everywhere you look.
We were never taught to steal, and we knew that you are not supposed to take what is not your own. I don’t remember saying a word to my friend, or she to me. There was a tray of individual bananas, which had been torn from the bunches in the process of transportation. Our hands reached out with lightning speed. We grabbed one banana each and instantly disappeared from the store. We ran away as fast as we could, holding our sweet trophies.
We ran until we couldn’t breathe. We hid inside a construction site, and after our wind came back, we ate the bananas. Mine was the sweetest and the most delicious banana I had ever tasted. I knew what it could cost me – a trip to the child’s room at police station, a stark light shining in my face, and half a dozen stern-faced KGB men surrounding me.
Now, the banana fade
d from memory. The dark walls of the room, the gray and cold floor, the wooden bed, that improbable piece of old rug on the wall, the bedside table with a tape recorder on it – this was the dismal theater set of my surroundings. If I were in an existential play, one which took place entirely in a grim and unhappy room, they couldn’t have designed it any better.
The door to the connected room was closed, and I did not want to open this Pandora’s box. That door filled me with dread. It loomed there, threatening to open at any moment. I decided not to go out of the room voluntarily – I wanted to prolong my safe existence in this room.
I had been gone from home for some time. A day, two days, two weeks, it could have been any of these. And I realized now that the search for me had already begun. My mom would be pulling all the strings she had.
I just needed to sit tight and not to show my captors that I woke up, and just wait. I did not know where I was and what exactly had happened. I tried to restore the chain of events: a night out at the restaurant, then a fight with my boyfriend. Right now, from this room, the fight seemed so pointless, so dumb. After that, the rest was a blur – a car driving through the long night, the evil face of the Italian, foreign people talking in strange language, and then another car. Now this place.
It seemed like an eternity had passed since I last saw my loved ones.
* * *
I looked at the door again.
It was an ordinary door, painted gray.
I absolutely did not know what to do. Should I knock on the closed door and beg for mercy, cry and have a fit of hysterics?
Or should I just sit quietly and wait? Wait for what? Waiting is always the worst, but it still seemed better than the alternative. This strange prison cell of a room was bad enough. I was afraid to find something even more horrible behind that door.
I was exhausted from all the stress, overwhelmed with endless fear – I could not adequately think. I just sat quietly on the bed and looked around the room.
Girl, Taken - A True Story of Abduction, Captivity, and Survival Page 2