“Let me go, Aslan. Our family does not have the money. You will never get the ransom. It makes no sense to keep me here. Please, let me go.”
He comforted me as a big brother or a friend, but he was adamant. I begged him to help me to escape, but he always answered the same:
“You're not my prisoner. I don't have the power to decide.”
I was not the only one kidnapped and held in Chechnya. Aslan told me heart-rending stories about the other hostages. Brutal stories about how the Chechen militants cut off the heads of the hostages, skewered them on stakes and put them on public display to intimidate the others.
He told me about a concentration camp that was operating in one of the villages, a story which brought me to tears. Prisoners who no one gave a ransom for were forced to build roads. Many of them were tortured in front of the others to create a climate of fear. Some of the “unwanted” were simply shot.
Aslan told stories of the horrors of the war, and the fate of the prisoners of war and hostages – it plunged me into shock – I could expect the same fate for myself.
But according to him, the most inhuman and bloodthirsty villains of his stories were, of course, the Russian troops. He talked about the torture and mass killings of innocent Chechen civilians, abuse of detainees, and the burning of houses – all done by Russians. The outrages would begin immediately after they took a village. The murder of innocent people was swift and terrible – punishment for the continued resistance of the Chechen fighters.
A war – it was the cruelest thing in the world.
Their war was large-scaled, violent, and bloody, coupled with pain, misfortune and loneliness. They were fighting for freedom and ideology.
My war was the struggle of one soldier, and also coupled with pain, misfortune and loneliness. And I was fighting for freedom and survival.
I was no longer afraid of Aslan. The more I saw him, the more I brought up the topic of my escape. I jokingly tried to discuss a plan that I could carry out with his help, gently probing the soil.
“What if you left the gate unlocked? Do you think that would work? I could try to silently go out the gate unnoticed in the dark on the way back from the bathroom.”
I offered him humorous escape options, trying to catch his mood about it.
He brushed aside each of the options I offered him, but he didn’t reject the overall idea of an escape. He played along with me, and for each idea I gave him, he gave me a good reason why it would never work. Our game amused him.
“You wouldn’t get too far. Outside of these gates, there are a hundred more houses just like this one. You will be noticed immediately and caught. You will be sold to Wahhabis as a slave, or beheaded in the public square. There are a lot of people around here who would love to avenge their lost loved ones.”
I wanted to believe that Aslan wasn’t just trying to scare me, but was also trying to find the right way out. He wanted to help me, only he couldn’t admit it right now.
I didn’t know the location of the house, but I couldn’t hear the sound of the war. The front had not yet reached this village. The militants would leave the premises in small groups of three or four people, and then would come back. The gates opened manually – the sound was unpleasant and lingered in the air afterward. Aslan went to fight mostly in the daytime. I never knew if he would come back in the evening.
He always came back.
I finished reading the Dostoevsky. The book was a dark philosophical argument about the conscience, sin and redemption. The main point was that, for whatever reason, the offender has committed a crime (especially murder), and must be punished, serving life in prison to suffer and repent of their deeds.
* * *
The women of the house were everywhere and nowhere at the same time. They appeared suddenly and silently, like ghosts, and disappeared just as quietly. I felt their presence in everything, but I rarely saw their faces. I often saw them from the back, quickly scurrying around the yard – they were busy preparing food, doing household chores, and cleaning. They never sat at the dining table under the tent with the men.
Shorty’s mother was a little woman – nimble and plump. His sister was a thinner version of her mother – the way she walked and moved was the same, and her physique was the same, but she was more petite. Both wore long dresses and handkerchiefs tied around their heads, with their hair tucked underneath. I fleetingly encountered the mother in the kitchen a few times. I wanted to talk with one of the women and maybe ask for help, but I could not find an opportunity.
Since they were female, I thought I could find a way to appeal to reason. But they didn’t pay any attention to me – I was totally ignored. They showed neither pity nor interest. I could even understand it a bit – they had the fresh wound of losing a son and a brother at the hands of the Russian army.
Still, Shorty’s mother was an almost imperceptible, but undeniable, part of my life. Every day, she woke at dawn and immediately set to work. Through Aslan, I asked permission from her, as the mistress of the house, to have a chance to wash my hair and take a shower. My request was accepted. On the appointed evening, Shorty took me into the place - a small extension at the back of the house. Someone warmed the water for me and carefully brought it into the shower in a bucket. I filled another bucket with cold water from a huge rainwater barrel near the shower cabin, by myself.
I poured the warm and pleasant water from the bucket on my body, using a small can – very carefully and neatly, trying to enjoy the limited water a small amount at a time.
At such moments of simple human happiness, even if it’s fleeting, everything that was outside the thin shower walls ceased to exist. The lukewarm water flowed from the top of my head right through the goose bumps all over my body, down to my feet. The whole process was uncomfortable, but at the same time, it was beautiful. I exposed my body and I bared my soul, greedily gasping for water.
The water had the magical ability to wash the mental stress away, if only for a few moments.
Now I felt like I was able to breathe again, and go on living.
I was grateful for the opportunity to take a shower and also, a scarf that Shorty’s mother passed to me through Shorty. I did not know this woman, but I wanted to believe that she was sorry for me in her heart. I was trying to convince myself there are no people without compassion.
* * *
Outside my window, it rained for a few days in a row. The gray dust of the yard turned into brown mud.
Early morning, Mirza brought me back into the house after my usual trip the bathroom. I was in my dress, soaked by the torrential downpour outside. His mother was in the kitchen, preparing food. She said a couple of words to Shorty in Chechen, and he said something to her in response.
She glanced at me. For the second time I met her eyes – the first time was when I thought her evil eyes burned me through the glass of the car window, on the day when they brought me here.
“You can sit here,” she said.
She spoke Russian. I was surprised by the timbre of her voice – it was low, masculine, and with a thick accent. She spoke quietly and pointed to a stool in the corner. Shorty went out into the corridor, leaving wet footprints from his boots on the wooden kitchen floor.
I took her words as an invitation to stay in the kitchen with her, in the place that was her kingdom. I sat down very gingerly on the stool, and stared at her in the gray light coming from the window on this wet and nasty morning.
Her tired and weathered face was lined with deep wrinkles. A bright kerchief was tied around her head very low, almost covering her dark and bushy eyebrows. She quickly sifted flour through a sieve. She did everything so fast that it seemed she was born with these skills or had done it all a million times. Her strong, work-worn hands quickly kneaded the dough with habitual gestures.
She covered the entire table with white flour, and her face a mask of concentration, started to roll out thin layers of dough. She placed them on each other, smudging butter b
etween each layer. As if by magic, before my eyes she turned the dough into a big round layered pita, ready to bake. It was not simple cooking. What I observed was an art at which she was a master.
Shorty came back for me and took me out of the kitchen.
* * *
The kerosene lamp slowly smoked the room, illuminating a space around itself in yellow and warm light. At nightfall, all human feelings are more intense. The world outside the window became silent and lived its mysterious life.
I looked at the man sitting in front of me. With time, during our brief meetings, I began to understand Aslan – he was cruel, uncompromising, and strong. He was wild, with medieval manners. But he was also somehow merciful. His language was economical. Even while telling a story, he used few words. He spoke in the simplest possible language, without flourishes of any kind. Was it because he didn’t have enough of the Russian language, or because of the peculiarities of the Chechen character?
It was time for the night prayer. Aslan left the room and returned in a few minutes later, his trouser legs rolled up to his mid-calves, barefoot, with the prayer rug under his arm. He did not say a word to me, but I knew what he was going to do.
He spread the mat on the floor, then directed his attention toward Mecca, in adoration of Allah, and began to pray in front of me. In the twilight of the kerosene lamp, his movements fascinated me. He began standing, then bowed, straightened up again, and then fell to his knees in prostration, with his forehead touching the ground. He produced mysterious hands movements, and then touched his face.
He whispered delightfully in prayer, and it seemed that this was the highest level of
intimacy – he was revealing himself to me. Either he thought I was a close friend, or he wanted me to become one. I did not share his faith in this being Allah – I no longer knew what I believed in. But I could see the profound splendor in his relationship with this god, or demon, or figment of his own imagination – it ennobled him, and perhaps was the source of his undeniable courage. I watched him in awe, silently sitting on the bed, soaking in his peace and enjoying the simple grace of his movements and the beauty of what was happening.
What are you showing me, Aslan? Why are you inviting me to witness this?
* * *
It had been more than six months since I was last home. Six long months.
I was cut off from the familiar world so long ago that I had begun to get used to the local way of life. The existence of a captive gradually dominated my consciousness – my life was determined by my environment. I had to somehow organize my life, even being in the prison. A person is able to endure all that she faces except death. My consciousness built a barricade around itself and no longer let fear or any emotion get through it. The will to live, the strongest human instinct, adapted to any conditions. The constant feeling of despair eventually dulled and blocked the stress and forced me to live in spite of everything. I was carried on the waves of my worthless life like a ship without sails, driven by the wind, with no resistance. Day after day and month after month – so passed my life – in chains and shackles.
Aslan told me a little about the war. Both sides were suffering heavy casualties. Russian forces were seizing the large settlements – town by town. The militants were not appeased – they retreated to the mountains and fought a guerrilla war. The Russian heavy artillery had moved to the foothills, trying to get militants out of mountains.
In Chechnya, there were two bosses now. During the daylight, Russian troops controlled the country. Their numbers were vast, and they enjoyed the full might of the Red Army – airplanes, bombs, tanks, missiles, radar. Their dominance could hardly be challenged. And yet, when darkness came, the Chechen fighters crawled from their holes in the ground, and took up their weapons.
They owned the night, making sniper attacks on Russian patrols, firing rocket-propelled grenades at Russian positions, killing sentries silently in hand-to-hand combat, laying mines, sabotaging bridges and roads. They knew all the secret trails in the mountains where they were raised. They struck where they were least expected. They knocked helicopters from the sky; they destroyed entire troop convoys - small groups of men did this, most often on foot, moving stealthily and without a sound, dancing with death - their own and that of the Russians. Just before the sun rose, they would arrive in villages like this one, disappear into the cabins, and descend back down into the bowels of the Earth.
The Chechen people had long ago chosen the wolf as their symbol. To them, the wolf stands for independence and freedom. But the wolf has other meanings as well. The wolf is a nocturnal animal, and it hunts under cover of darkness. It is cunning, it is sly, and it is well-known to work the herd with senseless cruelty - wolves will slaughter all of the cattle in a field, consume what they can, then leave the rest to rot, a feast for the crows and the vultures. Wolves will murder like this again and again, until men with guns come and put a stop to it.
* * *
The darkness of the night came down, and Aslan appeared in a new military vest, an improved version made by his mother. It was the conventional military vest of Russian troops, that she perfected by sewing on a lot of pockets and added details. Now he could hold a lot more grenades and rounds on it – Aslan enthusiastically showed me the advantages of the vest in the soft light of the kerosene burner.
He spoke rapidly, in the excitement, describing to me his extraordinary waistcoat, as if to distract me from what was more important. We stood close to each other, considering all the convenient pockets for combat grenades.
He tried not to look me in the eye and his face was very serious in the dim lamplight. I already knew that he wanted to say something important.
Suddenly he stopped talking and picked up the lamp, lighting my face. His shining black eyes stared right into my own eyes, with their usual ability to drill down to my soul. But this time they were not cruel. He raised his other hand to my face, and held it against my cheek with a long touch. There was grief in his face.
“You will never go home.”
My heart stopped beating.
“You are going on a mission.”
The words sounded like a death sentence. I did not want to know anything about this mission. I was afraid to ask – I did not want to hear the answer. I would go insane with misery. The tears fell from my eyes. I couldn’t hide them.
Aslan softly grabbed me by the neck and put my head on his shoulder. He hugged me with his hand and held me close. I was crying and could not stop. He patted me on the back, soothing me.
He whispered in my ear:
“I will come tomorrow, and we will figure out how to get you home.”
He loosened his arms from me, and quietly left me alone.
But the next day he did not come. And for a few days after that, he also did not appear. I hadn’t seen Mirza, either. Something had happened. Their sudden disappearance gave me a premonition of trouble - the feeling would not leave me.
Mission... mission? What did he mean? I had been thinking about it all the time since he left. I was panicking because of his absence.
He promised to help me. Tomorrow I may not be here anymore.
But now, knowing that he would help me, I could finally think how to implement a plan to escape. As soon as he reappeared, I would not waste any more time, and run away at the first opportunity – a suitably dark night.
Aslan will distract the fighters and leave the gate unlocked.
The gates need to be well lubricated – the scraping sound they make is loud and terrible. I will have to open the gates silently, and quietly get out of the house.
I’ll have to go through the village quietly to no one else pays attention me. I need a dark handkerchief.
I need money to get out of the village on a passing car.
I could pretend to be deaf and dumb, and show a note to the driver that Aslan would write in advance.
When Aslan came, I would tell him about my plan and together we would work out the details.
>
I did not know what was going on behind the iron fence. He would tell me what to do. Maybe he would take me out of the village, by himself, and bring me closer to the Russian encampments.
Aslan was still the enemy, but he was also my only way out, my only friend. I knew that the war and his ideology were everything to him - a matter of honor. But I was sure that together we could come up with a suitable plan, and do it before I had to fulfill my mission, which I was afraid to ask about. I was sure he would not allow anything bad to happen to me.
I was sure that he had intense feelings about me. These long months had brought us closer together.
I waited for his return. I listened to all the sounds wafting through the door, trying to catch the hissing sound of his voice. I kept looking out the window. The creaking of the opening gates made me hold my breath, waiting to see his face.
I needed him.
Late at night, someone knocked on the door. Instantly, I woke up in alarm. The door was unlocked from the outside and there was the Shorty’s mother in the doorway, holding the lantern, illuminating her face. She looked evil in the dim light. She stared at me, her eyes gleaming, her eyes shooting sparks, eyes that made me want to shrink away from her.
“You’re leaving right now,” she said. “Get up. You’re being taken to another place.”
I was still half asleep – I did not quite understand what she was talking about. She had a strong accent, but she was noticeably happy to say these words. I saw it and I felt it with the gooseflesh on my own skin. Aslan? He must be somewhere near.
“Where is Aslan? Is he here?”
“No more Aslan,” she said. “He’s gone! The Russians killed him!”
They killed him…
My vision blacked out for a second. I nearly fainted from dizziness.
I was numb, in a stupor. I could not understand what I had to do at that moment.
Girl, Taken - A True Story of Abduction, Captivity, and Survival Page 12