At the police station Aelita was informed that she had been dismissed from her job. The prosecutor said that the café owner had been ordered to fire her if he didn’t want his business to be closed down. The authorities released Aelita only because her mother, Makka, a Russian-language teacher, was a born defender of civil rights. According to the police officers at the Mariino Park station, she “trumpeted the case all over Moscow.” Makka called the Echo of Moscow radio station, mobilized the lawyer Abdullah Hamzaev and many others, and, despite police insistence that Aelita was not at the station, eventually pressured the officers into releasing her.
Aelita is no longer in shock. She fully understands the situation and says she just wants to get out of Moscow.
“Back to Chechnya?”
“No, abroad.”
Makka opposes the idea. She is not against her daughter taking her granddaughter elsewhere: Hadizhat needs to go to school, in spite of what Movsar Baraev and his supporters did at the Dubrovka theater and in spite of the special interest the Moscow police take in young Chechen girls. Makka herself is reluctant to leave. She cannot imagine living anywhere else than Russia, but neither can she imagine what it is that Russia wants from Aelita, from herself, and from Hadizhat. One is an adult who spent the greater part of her life in the Soviet Union. Another is a young woman who has never lived a full life, who has known only the urgency of fleeing from one place to another, from one war to the next. The third is a young girl who is attentively watching and listening to the world around her and saying nothing, for the time being.
Hadizhat’s teacher has just phoned Aelita, painfully embarrassed, to say she must bring in a form confirming her status as a single mother. Who issues such forms? Her other documents are perfectly in order, but if she doesn’t produce this form, then she, the teacher, “just does not know what to do.” They want to expel Hadizhat. After October 26, 2002, there is no place in the fifth grade of No. 931 School, Moscow, for a Chechen girl brought here by her family to study.
“I can’t even work out,” Aelita says, “whether my being a single mother is counted in favor of Hadizhat or against her. Who can you trust?”[12]
ABUBAKAR BAKRIEV ONCE held a modest technical position in one of the big Moscow banks. Now, however, he is free of any such ties. It all happened very simply and undramatically. Abubakar was called in by the company’s deputy chairman for security, who said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but we are going to have problems because of you. Write a voluntary letter of resignation.”
At first, Abubakar could not believe his ears, but then the deputy chairman added that “they” wanted him to backdate the letter—for example, to October 16—so that the resignation would look quite proper and nobody could accuse the bank of sacking him as part of an anti-Chechen cull after the Nord-Ost incident.
So there we have it: the executioners put you to death (and for any Chechen to be sacked today is the end: there is no way he or she is going to find another job), but they do hope you’ll understand their predicament. It is a peculiarity of our times that a murderer approaches the victim and says straight out, “I am going to kill you, not because I am a bad person but because I am being compelled to do so. But I would ask you to make it look as if you haven’t been murdered.”
On that day, a Dagestani employee was “voluntarily fired” from the same bank, his “personal decision,” too, being backdated. He occupied a modest position but was also ethnically cleansed, to avoid any further unwelcome questions regarding people of Caucasian origin working at the bank.
“The bank has been cleansed,” Abubakar says. “The security services can sleep at night. I am fifty-four. I don’t know where to go. The police have to come to my home three times to see how I live with my three children. You are turning us into enemies. You need to understand that we have no alternative now but to demand independence, because we do need a land, somewhere we can live in peace. Give us any place on earth you choose, and we will go and live there.”
ISITA CHIRGIZOVA AND Natasha Umatgarieva are Chechen women who live in a temporary center for refugees in the village of Serebryaniki, in Tver Province. We met in No. 14 Police Station in Moscow. Isita was wiping off the ink after being fingerprinted. Natasha was crying inconsolably. They had just been released, a miracle in today’s climate. The police had taken pity on them.
On the morning of November 13, 2002, the women were subjected to typical treatment. They had come to Moscow on an early train to collect aid from one of the civil-rights organizations. They were arrested at the station, a couple of meters from the organization’s entrance, because Natasha was limping. Because she has an open sore on her leg from diabetes, she was suspected of being a wounded fighter. Isita is in the seventh month of pregnancy; she has an evident bulge under her jacket, just where suicide bombers wear their grenade belts. This, at least, is how Major Lyubeznov, who was on duty at No. 14 Police Station, explained the reason for their arrest. Lynbeznyi means “amiable” in Russian, but the major proved far from amiable. Indeed, to safeguard Russia from the terrorist threat, he felt obliged to personally grope Isita’s Chechen bulge, to ensure that it was caused by pregnancy.
The story of Isita and Natasha ended well. The police officers just gave the women some bluster to the effect of, “If you kill us, we’ll kill you.” Major Lyubeznov didn’t have time to disgrace himself any further, and, in addition, I was able to be of some assistance. First, I managed to intercept the women in the police station before they were carted off to the isolation and interrogation unit. Second, I persuaded Vladimir Mashkin, the superintendent of No. 14 Police Station (and he was perfectly open to persuasion) that people sometimes come to collect humanitarian aid just because they are poor, having no opportunity to get a job and no home of their own.
ZARA WORKED As a vegetable seller by the underground station. The owner of the little market came to her and said, “Don’t come to work here tomorrow, because you are Chechen.” Zara provides the only support for a family consisting of three children and her husband, who has tuberculosis. What need is there for the police to involve themselves in a situation like this one?
ASLAN KURBANOV SPENT the first Chechen war in a tented refugee camp in Ingushetia. In the summer he left to enter a college in Saratov, then moved to Moscow to live with his aunt, Zura Movsarova, a postgraduate student at the Moscow Aviation Technical Institute. He found a job and was officially registered as having the right to live in the capital.
On October 28, 2002, CID officers from No. 172 Police District (Brateevo) came to his home. The day before, Zura had been fingerprinted at the request of the local police, so when the CID authorities said they wanted Aslan to come with them only to have his fingerprints taken, nobody suspected anything. Aslan put on his coat and went off in the police car.
Three hours later, Zura became anxious. Her nephew still had not returned, so she went to the police station herself. There she was informed that Aslan had been arrested for possession of drugs. What sort of story was that? He had gotten up, put his coat on, put some drugs in his pocket, and gone to give himself up to the police? Aslan managed to shout to Zura that he had been taken to a room, some cannabis had been produced from under the table, and he had been told, “This must be yours. We are not going to give Chechens an inch. We’re going to shake all of you up like this.”
12
An inquiry into the arrest of Aelita Shidaeva was conducted by the Moscow prosecutor’s office after she lodged a complaint. None of the police officers involved were disciplined.