The results of the action were scattered around Samashki like so many new relics of war. Here were the blown-off turrets of the standard Soviet-style armored personnel carriers, known as BMPs and BTRs, stripped of their mounted machine guns, leaning crazily on edge in a parking lot, the body and the engine nowhere to be seen. There, a small battle tank with an anti-mine plough attached to the front, completely burnt out and stranded where it was stopped, wedged between two houses down a muddy lane.
Take on an armored column with shotguns and bottles filled with gasoline? It was difficult to imagine—and even more difficult attempting to understand why the Russians, after having effectively pacified Samashki through negotiations, had thrown away the loyalty of the town on the basis of needing another drink.
From the area of the battle, Muhammad and I continued on through the muddy streets of the town to the market. It consisted of six or seven (maybe it was a dozen) tacked-together stalls that sold L&M cigarettes, unwashed vegetables (mostly wild garlic greens), and Snickers bars. Perhaps the mohair shawls and socks being woven by the stoic women running said establishments were also on sale; I did not ask. I could not ask. As my personal minder in Isa’s absence, Muhammad consistently prevented me from making any contact with anyone. And he had forced me to leave my camera at home for reason of “security.”
“Folks here do not like foreigners,” he said. “Most think they are spies. Are you?”
“Ask your brother Isa, if he ever returns,” I shot back. “He brought me here.”
“There are many people here who wonder about Isa, too.”
Great, Isa’s own brother does not trust him… and certainly not me.
Where the hell was I? What the hell was I doing?
Making matters worse was Muhammad, or rather, his heavily accented Russian and tendency to babble on about subjects just inside my range of comprehension.
“Where are you from, really?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, my brother Isa girrt, said you were a Turk or from Turkey, girrt, and you do wear that skull cap that makes you look like an Uzbek, but your eyes are blue and your moustache is blonde or red and too long over the lip to be a Believer in the True Faith.”
“Actually, I am an American, from the state of Montana who lives in Istanbul and Baku, at least part of the time.”
“A friend of mine girrt that there was this American, girrt, who was a spy, girrt, CIA. Girrt that the spy spoke perfect Russian, had memorized Marx and had even learned to dress and eat like we do, girrt. So they parachuted him into the middle of Siberia, and he landed and stashed his military stuff in a hole, girrt, and then made his way into town. Girrt everyone: “Ho! Mister CIA!” And the agent, girrt, was confused. Girrt”haven’t I learned your language to perfection?“Girrt “don’t I dress like you? Girrt can’t I recite Marx like a commissar? Girrt how did you know?” Girrt everyone: “You are a Negro.”
Peals of laughter, followed by a hacking cough.
“You get it?” chortled Muhammad. “Girrt: ‘You are a Negro!’ Hahahaha!”
What I eventually got was that Muhammad had not been clearing his throat with each girrt, but saying “govariit,” as in “he said or says” in the sense of “you know what I mean.” The second thing that I understood was that Muhammad apparently believed I was some sort of fake-Muslim spy.
After a bachelor-style Ramadan iftar, or evening breakfast, of boiled garlic stems, potatoes fried in animal fat, and stewed tomatoes, Muhammad started chain-smoking some execrable brand of Soviet-style cigarette and suggested we get serious.
“Let’s play some chess,” suggested Muhammad, by which he really meant checkers. There being nothing much better to do, and my brain reeling from having spoken (or thought in) nothing but Russian for the past few days, I agreed and allowed the numbing stupidity of the game to dictate its terms. Hopefully, the third or fourth loss would allow me to curl up and collapse and ponder how to get out of this tedious town and stultifying situation in which I found myself.
“Oh!” chuckled Muhammad. “You left yourself open for a double take here…. (and after another move)… and a triple there!”
He was collecting the pieces and positioning them for the next round when the lights went out and the first bombs began to fall. The shelling was distant but audible, then palpable. A thin scream followed by a thud; then the windowpanes would shudder.
We were getting bombed.
Action!
I grabbed my camera and tripod and lurched toward the door.
“What are you doing?” gasped Muhammad.
“I have to work,” I shouted back over my shoulder.
“Isa said you were not to leave the compound without me!” shouted Muhammad.
“Then follow,” I snapped. The last thing I wanted was to return to the miniature living-room and be asphyxiated by bad cigarette smoke, discourse in a rambling Russian that left my brain gasping for breath, and face the prospect of playing checkers with the village idiot savant.
Flash, thud, shudder, a missile streaked directly overhead and exploded, I was sure, somewhere nearby.
“That shell landed five kilometers away!”
It was Muhammad, pulling on his mud shoes and coat. I was already lifting the bar to the gate to free myself from his domain and was soon in the street, which would be better described as a darkened village lane. Aside from a few candles reflecting and distorting through neighborhood windows, there was no light at all, and progress through the tractor-and-truck-gouged lanes was tough. No light at all, save for the distant flash of the explosions of artillery shells falling on some distant site, and the beam of the flashlight on my head, as I tried to determine where I was going.
Out, away—anywhere!
“Stoi!” cried a voice, and I froze on command. “Stop!”
I was looking down the barrel of a double-barrel shotgun in the hands of some under-aged village guard tasked with guarding shadows.
“He’s just a maybe-Turkish, maybe-American, maybe-something spy, only here because my brother Isa brought him!”
It was Muhammad, now at my side and panting heavily. Actually, I can only paraphrase what he said, as he was speaking Chechen and the only words I understood were “Turk,” “American,” and “Isa,” although the context of the conversation made the likely dialogue sufficiently clear.
“Hmmmph,” said the gunman in the shadows. And then in Russian, “Davai!”
I had just been released, and Muhammad begged me to return to the safety and security of his abode.
“Isa told me, girrt, not to let you out of my sight and not to allow you to wander around aimlessly with your camera and get yourself in trouble,” he pleaded.
“Then go home; I am okay.”
“You do not understand!” hissed Muhammad. “Isa is your guard! And because I am his brother and he is not here, I am your guard! This is the Law of the Mountains!”
Our confrontational conversation had the potential to turn ugly.
Then it began to rain or sleet or something, and with a flash of insight that bordered on epiphany, I very suddenly understood the situation. I was an illegal alien standing in a dank, dark village lane in an unfriendly little town in a country at war without a phone or friend in the world, and absolutely nowhere to go. I was furious, outraged, impotent.