“I do not need to see any more pictures of bombed buildings or refugees,” said the commander. “And to speak frankly, there is nothing in this community to conceal, from you or the KGB. We are farmers, and only defending our homes.”
A farmer defending his home.
With a jolt, I understood that the man standing in front of me was exactly the sort of vessel I needed to explain the essence and nature of the Chechen spirit—and I had known him for all of half a minute. But how to broach this subject without getting laughed out of the room? The idea of asking the commander to allow me to tag along with him and his men seemed so utterly ridiculous that it bordered on the criminal. Anyone who truly exemplified the Chechen spirit would likewise have better things to do than burden himself with a stumblebum solo cameraman. The only type of individual who would agree to be my subject was precisely the type of person I did not want.
“Have a chair,” said the commander, sort of suggesting that the formal interrogation that had never really begun was already over. “I’m starving, and so are my boys.”
It was, after all, a Ramadan evening—and none of the men in the room (with the exception of myself) had had a drop to drink or a bite to eat all day.
The commander broke his fast by wetting the little finger of his right hand with his tongue, and then dipping it in a bowl of salt. Dabbing it on his tongue, he then drank a glass of water. The half dozen hard-eyed men in the room did the same. For someone who had lived in the Muslim world for almost twenty years and who had seen many an iftar (or Ramadan breakfast), this was all very strange. While drinking water was normal, ending the daily fast with salt was almost like ending it with chewing on an onion.
Meanwhile, the womenfolk brought out pickled tomatoes, boiled beef soup, and bread. The commander commanded, and I joined his unit squatting on the floor, slurping through two bowls of beef bouillon before cutting the fat on my lips with hot tea.
“Better get down in the cellar,” said my host and captor after a pleasant belch. “Ivan will be starting his symphony in about ten or fifteen minutes.”
I did not at first understand.
Symphony?
“Bombs,” he said, helpfully. “They start at exactly nine every night, and it is now a quarter to the hour.”
I was being sent to the basement with the women and children.
It was too humiliating for words.
“I would rather stay here with you and your men,” I blurted.
An awkward silence descended, and the commander narrowed his eyes.
“I do not understand.”
“I told you my mission was to make a film about the Chechen spirit.”
“Yes…”
“I need someone to embody that—spirit,” I said, picking my way around words. “I want to do a portrait of you and your group of—warriors. But to do so, I need your cooperation—so I can capture moments on camera.”
Silence. Utter silence, save for a radio voice in the adjacent room spewing out Moscow propaganda about events in the war that day.
“I see,” he said, taking a sip of tea. “You want to build a career on this experience.”
“No, not exactly,” I hastened to say. “It is just that an American audience needs a—”
“We do not care what the Americans need or do not need,” said the commander, cutting me off. “We have only one question: What is in this for us?”
I could have lied and said that the impact of my program being seen by millions of American viewers would lead to such immediate and visceral understanding of the present situation that the public would demand of the world’s sole remaining superpower to threaten Moscow with nuclear blitz if the Russian military did not immediately desist from all actions in Chechnya, and just go home. I could have lied and said “five hundred bucks a piece, for everyone, once I get that expense through the bean counters at ABC.” I could have fallen back on the need for “historical accuracy” or “freedom of reporting” or a variety of other press-related clichés. I knew that all such reasons would fail, because what the commander was asking concerned the value his cooperation with me might have for Chechnya.
“I do not know,” I replied.
“Hmmm,” said the commander.
And then the sky began to fall.
BoomBoomBoom
It was nine o’clock, I guess, and the first of the incoming rockets had started to hit the outskirts of the town. My interview or interrogation, such as it was, was over.
“Podval!” barked the commander, “Basement!”
He was already in his camouflage jacket and out the door with his five or six men behind him, leaving Isa and me to join the women and children huddling among the pickle jars in the cellar.
“Look at me!” cried one woman, demanding I focus my lens on her despite the bad light. “I am a teacher, a human being—but here I am, reduced to huddling among the garlic and tomatoes! Look at me!!”
How much bombing was there?
I don’t know.
Everything that happened in Samashki eventually became relative. What seemed like a tremendous nocturnal bombardment at the time was probably nothing more than a few shells lobbed over the town. The earth shuddered and crept with each incoming blast, and then, almost as suddenly as it had begun, the shelling was over and the embarrassment began. Murmurs shifted around the basement sanctuary, and then a decision to send some brave soul upstairs to check the scene in the nontroglodyte world. That world was declared safe, safe!
As people emerged from the basement, the intensity of the moment was lost with the fresh air, and everyone seemed to feel just a little bit ridiculous for having gone down to the cellar in the first place. At least I felt that way, oscillating between utter terror and near embarrassment for having been afraid.
“Let’s go,” said Isa, and we trudged through the mud back to his house, listening to distant gunfire from the forest.
I slept with my glasses on, although I was obliged to leave my boots by the door.
6
CONTACT
I am hijacking an aircraft carrier, careful to conceal my identity and the fact that mine is really an inside job. I will keep the stuff I know the value of and already own, such as sleeping bags, sleeping pads, knives, and mess kits, but destroy everything else, because I do not know what they are worth. I am getting ready to scuttle the ship when somebody grabs me by the collar to shake some sense back into me and tell me to get up and go.
“They are shelling again! We have to go to Martan!”
The screech and boom of renewed incoming rounds had somehow become integrated into a dream, but now I was very much awake and very much interested in what Muhammad was saying. It did not really make much difference whether he meant we had to evacuate ourselves to Achkoi or Urus Martan. It was just time to go, and get out of this place called Samashki that seemed to be getting bombed long-distance every day just because some locals had denied some Russian soldiers a good, old-fashioned drunk. I scraped my kit together fast and made for the door, scattering a convey of tame turkeys on my way. When we got to the main road, it was awash with terrified humanity, with people much more frightened now during random daylight bombing than during the on-the-hour barrage of the night.
“Where’s Isa?” I panted.
“He left at dawn for Martan,” said Muhammad. “We have to get there, now!”