After breakfast, we continued our journey by taxi. Soon the landscape changed again. Near Nazran we arrived at a makeshift road block and a mass of men. No one wore a uniform or had a gun, at least not one that was visible. The checkpoint consisted of rocks heaped in a large mound and a metal bar across part of the road. About a hundred men and boys stood on or near this barricade. They formed an additional human barrier that prevented passage. Cars pulled up alongside the road. The only visible women sat as occasional passengers in these cars.
Our taxi driver stopped. Stephen and I got out of the car and approached the barricade. I smelled the rank scent of oily smoke; black plumes rose from fires that burned in the centre of old tires. Sombre men — their mouths straight slashes, no smiles here — stood at the barricade. They all wore fedoras or square fur hats. Some dark-haired boys, hatless and in sweaters, shouted and waved sticks in the air. Others ran along ditches. They watched as more cars reached the barricade and stopped. The crowd of stuck travellers swelled.
We could not tell who controlled this roadblock. Men and boys seemingly drifted here from places nearby. No one appeared to hold an official position.
“Good afternoon,” Stephen said as he approached one large, middle-aged man. “We’re foreign journalists.”
“Where are you from?” the man asked.
“Britain,” Stephen replied. Suspicious, the man asked Stephen more questions. When we showed him our accreditation cards, he relaxed and shouted “foreign journalists.”
A younger man, small and with a bushy moustache, stepped out from the crowd. He told us that he lived in Grozny: “I can take you there,” he said. We paid our taxi driver and collected our bags.
I felt nervous as I slammed the trunk of the taxi shut. This was the point of no return. The driver started his engine and disappeared in a cloud of dust. The men raised the barrier. Stephen and I passed through and set foot in what these men called the independent Chechen-Ingush Republic; however, Russians still called it part of Russia. I could not imagine Russia would allow Chechnya to just slip away quietly. Bill and Stephen had already worked in conflict zones. I had not. I realized that maybe I only visited one now because I felt competitive with my friends. I caught up with Stephen, who was already standing by the car. When I reached it, our new driver introduced himself.
“Vakha,” he said. A smile broke out from under his moustache.
Stephen and I asked Vakha whether the barricade had been there for long.
“Already for several days.”
“Have Russian troops arrived?” I asked and hoped that my voice betrayed none of the anxiety that I felt. Stephen seemed so calm.
“Yes,” he said. “But we trapped them at the airport. They’re leaving.” When we asked for details, Vakha told us that Russian troops had landed in Grozny. Chechen fighters immediately surrounded the planes and refused to let any soldiers out. I felt quite worried by this development. I could not imagine that the Russian military would tolerate such humiliation for long and wondered about conditions the soldiers had endured on board. I imagined an interior clouded with smoke, bored, stressed soldiers who puffed on cigarettes, the smell of in-demand toilets, guns and ammunition everywhere and wondered whether the Chechens had given the soldiers any food or water.
“We will defeat the enemy,” Vakha said as an almost casual afterthought. We got into the car and headed for Grozny. After travelling for some time, we stopped by a small house on a residential street in the suburbs.
“Is the hotel nearby?” I asked.
“We’ll eat now,” Vakha said. “Then I’ll take you to the hotel.” He led us to the back door of the house. He took Stephen through to the living room. When Stephen had passed, two women appeared at the kitchen door. Their heads were covered in brightly patterned scarves. They smiled and said hello. They introduced themselves as our host’s wife and daughter. They wanted to talk (I did too), but Vakha reappeared and insisted that I join Stephen in the front room. I did not know whether to feel pleased that he treated me as an honorary man and let me sit there or offended that he rushed me away, as if I might somehow corrupt his wife and daughter.
Stephen and I sat on a sofa while Vakha walked back and forth between the kitchen door and the living room. His wife and daughter handed him various objects for the table, which he carried back — knives and forks, glasses, plates and then finally steaming bowls of meat.
Then Vakha arranged chairs at the table and invited Stephen and me to eat. He remained standing by the table. I felt uncomfortable with this arrangement, a burden on our host. Stephen asked, “Won’t you join us?”
Vakha explained that as the youngest brother in a Muslim family, his male siblings cared for him and in exchange he served them. He waited on his elder brothers when they visited as he did with us now. Nothing we said could persuade Vakha to sit with us for long at the table. Once or twice he briefly did but then sprang to his feet again.
With Vakha shuttling back and forth to the kitchen, Stephen and I had time to look at our surroundings and could not help but notice a large gun that hung on the wall. When Vakha returned after one kitchen trip, Stephen glanced at the gun and asked, “Does it work?”
“Of course,” Vakha replied. “A house is not a Chechen house without a gun.” On the wall the gun looked harmless, a quaint relic of days gone by. We chatted about local politics and then later, about more personal matters, a topic that I had learned to dread.
“Are you married?” Vakha asked me.
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“How old are you?” I mumbled that I was in my twenties. “And still not married? Find her a husband,” he ordered Stephen. I asked Vakha how he and his wife met.
“I kidnapped her.” I wasn’t sure that I understood, so I checked with Stephen, who confirmed that is what Vahka had said.
“Why did you kidnap your wife?” Stephen asked.
“It’s our custom. When a man sees a woman that he likes, he and his friends will kidnap her. If her family does not free her, then she’s his to keep.” I felt so shocked by this custom that I did not know what to say. I understood a little better now why Vakha kept his daughter locked in the kitchen but wondered how she felt about the arrangement. I guessed she was about seventeen. By that age I had already travelled through Europe alone. I did not think my freedom would be impinged upon here. Already an old maid by local standards, who would want to kidnap me?
Stephen and Vakha chatted more. I wanted to talk to the women in the kitchen but stayed put. Eventually Stephen and I smiled and tapped our watches — time for hotel check-in.
“I’ll drive you there,” Vakha said. I appreciated his hospitality but felt a bit ashamed as well. I doubted such kindness would be reciprocated at home. Who would pick up two strangers there, chauffer them between cities and then take them home for an impromptu meal? I wondered if Vakha’s wife and daughter kept extra supplies in the fridge, or whether we had just eaten food that was supposed to have been their dinner. The women remained cloistered in the kitchen. We could not thank them directly; we asked Vakha to do so on our behalf.
As we approached the city centre, we saw men on the streets with guns. The first armed man that I spotted wore high-topped soft leather boots with his trouser bottoms tucked inside. A black leather jacket similar to Stephen’s hung loosely over his torso; a tall astrakhan hat sat tower-like on his head. He slung a rifle over his shoulder. He ambled down the street with his gun through a crowd of women who carried bags of shopping home, clusters of small children, and the occasional straight-backed man in military dress. As we entered the streets adjacent to the central square, the number of men with guns increased and the city acquired the look of one on the brink of conflict. Déjà vu strikes at the most unexpected moment.