Girl, Taken - A True Story of Abduction, Captivity, and Survival

by Elena Nikitina

  Laila brought me a lot of food, carefully wrapped in a linen towel. Her husband was taking them to a safer place. Finally, I knew that the Scarf was her husband. She spoke to me in broken Russian. She told me that the bombing would continue. Over the hill, on the right, there were Russian troops positioned to eradicate militants from the mountains. She was sorry to leave me. We survived the bombing together and we stayed alive. We felt incredibly close.

  That evening, they left. Laila was gone. The Scarf was gone too. I was locked in the pit.

  The next day, I sat in the dungeon all day, praying for the end of the war. In the afternoon, the shelling resumed – somewhere near – the deaden and monotonous sounds of explosions filled my tiny underground shelter. I was again falling into despair. The darkness around me was inexorably condensing.

  I was in the middle of the war by accident. I was not on anyone’s side – and could not accept either one. I was fighting my own war for survival, in the midst of someone else’s war. I was Russian and I was deeply sorry for the Russian soldiers who were in the war on the orders of people who would never see the fighting. In Russia, the soldiers were as expendable as live ammunition. One shot, and cast aside as junk. The Chechen fighters – they had been boys only yesterday, who believed in their ideology, and went to be killed to defend their country. In Chechnya, where the value of death had been steadily growing, everything was decided by the politicians, and by the leaders of the clans. Their independence was so important to them that the entire nation could die preserving it.

  I just wanted peace – for everyone.

  And I wanted to go home.

  June 7, 1995

  Valeroy, Chechnya

  Lately, I often had two similar dreams, with different meanings. Every time in these dreams there were the both of us – my mother and me. In the first one, we were standing on the opposite sides of a long bridge, each surrounded by a small number of people. We were separated by the bridge and looked across at each other standing as if we were frozen. We could not run to each other, as if some powerful force paralyzed us and pinned to the ground and would not let us budge. We could not even cry out to each other – our faces were petrified. We only could see each other in the distance, and I saw that the tears were dropping from my mother's eyes, full of pain and despair. And I was crying as well. I remember that a strong wind blew away our tears immediately, so that they were invisible to the people around us. The wind was violent, and the tears dried out instantly. So we stood facing each other, helpless and heartbroken.

  The second dream, on the contrary, was kind and warm. It was my mom and I, and we were just hugging each other without saying any words, like after a long separation, and we wept tears of joy. We could not be more happy.

  After these dreams, I usually woke up sobbing – sometimes my eyes were nearly glued shut from the dried tears. Even after I awoke, I felt heartache the rest of the day. Sometimes, right after I woke up, I could still physically feel the remnants of warmth from the touching and hugs.

  On this day, I felt that something had awakened me. Opening my eyes, I could not remember my dreams, but I could still feel the heat remaining from someone’s touch on my shoulder. I felt this distinctly – something had touched me on the shoulder and woken me up. My eyes were wide open – I was full of energy. I felt the high humidity in the pit this morning, inhaling it with my nostrils. Normally, on awakening, I could determine if it was morning or night by the strips of weak light, filtering through the loose planks above my head. This time, it was really dark – the sun had not yet thought to rise.

  I felt the desire to go outside, and it was not my usual morning desire to get out of the cave and go to the bathroom. My handkerchief hanging as a pioneer tie on the shoulders, had grown damp and unpleasant after the night underground. My woolen blue dress felt cold and heavy. I slid out from under the pile of blankets. In the dark, I found my canvas slippers and put them on. There was not much left of them – they were now worn-out flops with their backs hammered to the soles, torn at the seams. I groped for the ladder. Keeping one hand on the ladder’s step, I raised my hand in the familiar gesture to knock on the lid of my tomb. Surprisingly, my fist lifted the wooden square of the loose cellar door, making it clear that the door was not locked from the outside.

  That was strange. Last night, I had heard the painfully familiar sound of a key turning in the lock. No one had moved above my head since then.

  I climbed another step up and lifted the door of the cellar. The metal loop was loose and free. It took a little effort to get out of the dungeon. I had never come out like this, as one of the captors always unlocked the door and threw it back. The door was not heavy, just thin wooden boards, fastened together – it was not that difficult to raise it. I climbed out and sat on the wooden floor looking around. It was not very dark out. The twilight time. The hinge lock had been placed on the floor. Outside the windows, covered with mosquito nets, there was dead silence. It was unusual not to see a single living being and not to hear a single sound. More than unusual – it was happening for the first time.

  For a moment I thought that the bombing would start in a second. Nature seemed frozen in silence. Like the last time, for a fraction of a second just before the shelling started, as if the earth was getting ready to take the pain. The birds stopped singing, no insects made a sound, the wind stopped howling – everything froze for half of a moment.

  The silence was piercing – like in one of those moments, except, this time the silence lasted much longer than usual. No explosions followed. And still there was no one around. I felt as if I was the only survivor on the planet after a nuclear explosion. Night was turning into dawn slowly. I stood up to my full height, walked over to the sink, and grabbed an empty vessel, trying to figure out what was going on. I did not need to go to the bathroom. Not knowing why I did it, I slowly poured water into the pitcher. There was not a single creature around.

  Through the sheer mesh I observed the great darkness of the sky and slowly approaching dawn. It was so strange. Also, my feelings were strange. I felt like I was that same endless sky – I had been filled with some hitherto unknown sixth sense. Just like a new day was born inside that huge sky, and a great sun was slowly rising, I had a new feeling inside of me that grew into a stunning and powerful thought. The thought inside my head was growing and developing with the greatest speed, illuminating my mind as the rising sun lights up everything around it. I shuddered when I realized and understood what kind of thought it was.

  I no longer felt the same.

  I went out towards the bathroom, passing the weeds, through the ranks of the wild growing plants, up the hill, with the pitcher in my hand. There was no one but me. Where were all the militants who should return with the dawn? Where were the guards? Who had opened the lock?

  My new thought reached the top of my head and was now screaming in my mind:

  THIS IS YOUR CHANCE.

  It was the moment I had been waiting for the whole long eight months, that I had planned a hundred times in my dreams, this was it. Although this did not look like any of the escapes from my imagination, I knew for sure - this was it.

  The earth was waking up, the sun had not yet appeared, but its rays had already touched the sky as if it was coming up from out of the ground, as if it lived under the ground, as I did. I went into the bathroom, and looked around, through the narrow slits between the planks, and even then I did not see any movement. I could not lose a second. I quickly went outside, leaving the pitcher on the bathroom floor.

  Then I walked away.

  I walked towards where all the recent shellings had come from. To the mountains. Adrenaline was about to explode inside of my body, and my heart wanted to jump out of my chest. I kept going forward. I forced myself not to turn around. I was afraid to turn and see someone’s eyes watching me and realize that my chance had failed. I was afraid to find out that I was visible. I moved in a hurry. I felt like I was not walking on the ground anymore,
but was floating above it. I was afraid that if I stopped for a second or if I turned around, I would immediately wake up. Everything that I was experiencing at the moment would collapse into ruins and turn back into endless fear and misery. I was so afraid it was just a dream.

  I kept walking forward. The sky became lighter and the sun spread its rays to the ground. I finally began to distinguish the sounds of the earth. Somewhere near I heard the cows mooing; and the wind resumed. I crunched and broke the dried mud under my feet. I realized I was barefoot then, but I did not feel any discomfort. I was blown away by the ultimate glee. I just moved forward without knowing where I was going. I was carried by excitement along the dry and drought-parched surface.

  I kept walking up the hill. I was in a hurry to meet my life, taken from me eight months ago.

  June 7, 1995

  Astrakhan, Russia

  The woman was starting a new day, which would again be filled with pain and empty hopes. After eight long months of tragedy, severe pain dulled and faded and gave way to grief. It was like a cancer that would not heal but bled and oozed relentlessly. Looking up to the blue sky, the woman as always asked the Almighty for help and prayed to give her the strength to survive another day. Her savings were almost gone, and it was necessary to go back to work, see people, talk and smile. At the first opportunity, when the government allowed it, she would go to Chechnya and find her daughter herself.

  The telephone rang. She quickly walked over to the phone and picked up the handle.

  “Hello.”

  On the other end, an official-sounding man pronounced her name and asked to speak with her.

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  “This morning in Chechnya a girl pretending to be your daughter walked out of the wilderness into one of our troop encampments. Could you tell us any distinctive features of your daughter: scars, birthmarks...”

  The voice kept talking, but the woman no longer heard him. She was swept away by a wave of ecstatic joy. She was sure that this girl was not just pretending to be her daughter. This was her daughter!

  She screamed into the phone with a stuttering voice, as if she was afraid of being late with an answer. She was afraid that if she hesitated even a moment, the officer would hang up and this conversation would disappear as if it never happened. Tears streamed from her eyes, and she did not try to restrain them.

  She screamed instead:

  “Yes, yes, this is her! This is my daughter! She has two birthmarks…”

  The woman was ready to rush to the meeting. Emotions overwhelmed her. Feelings of happiness and joy, which seemed to have left her eight months ago forever, were coming back. They came rushing at her and swallowed her.

  Immediately she went to the train station and bought the next ticket to Dagestan, where a government officer would meet her at the train station and take her to see her daughter.

  Nine hours of travel seemed like an eternity. She did not want to suppress her excitement - she wanted to hug the whole world and to share happiness with everyone. The sweetness of the euphoria overwhelmed her. She came out of the train compartment and stood at the half-open window in the corridor. A warm wind blew hard and did not let her eyes open. So she stood with her eyes closed, blown by the wind, holding on to the handrails and breathing the fresh air of freedom, remembering the sweet and heart-melting moments of the day.

  Finally, they announced her station. She jumped out of the train onto the platform, almost on the fly and immediately found the officer in the loose crowd. She ran up to him and together they sat in a parked car nearby.

  The officer was a pleasant young man with the interesting name of Venjamin. He beamed and slowly told her the story of her daughter. Despite her inner excitement, a pleasant languor enveloped the woman and she eagerly listened to every word uttered by the officer.

  He told her a happy story about how her daughter went to the federal troops, located near the border of Dagestan. She walked barefoot, in a long blue dress, waving a white handkerchief as a flag of surrender. She was, of course, at first mistaken for a suicide bomber and seized. But it soon became clear who she was. Inside a military tank, she was brought to the border, to a safe area, and the General of the Army took her to his home. His wife and children were happy to offer her shower, food and clothes. She had spent the night peacefully and was now waiting to come home.

  The woman was filled with the excitement and overwhelmed with the happiness. With the officer, she climbed to the second floor and entered the flat of the General.

  The woman stepped into a modest apartment and immediately saw the most very dear person on earth, and her favorite green eyes that glowed with excitement. They rushed into each other’s arms, and without a word stood huddled together after their long separation, and silently wept tears of joy.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Elena Nikitina was born in the city of Astrakhan, Russia, during the time of the Soviet Union. In 1994, she was abducted by a Chechen gang, and taken to Grozny, the capital city of Chechnya. She survived the First Russian-Chechen War, eventually escaping an abandoned mountain village, and walking into the middle of a Russian army encampment while waving a white handkerchief. She immigrated to the United States and received political asylum. GIRL, TAKEN is Elena’s story.

  Elena loves to hear from you. You can contact her through her website:

  www.girltaken.com

  ABOUT THE CO-AUTHOR

  Patrick Quinlan is the critically-acclaimed and bestselling author of numerous novels, including Smoked, The Drop Off, The Falling Man, The Hit, and Sexbot. Under the pen name Jack Mars, he writes the Luke Stone series of political thrillers. He is also the co-author, with film legend Rutger Hauer, of Rutger’s autobiography, All Those Moments.

  Contact Patrick, give him all your money, and read about his other books, all at his website, www.patrickquinlan.com.