‘What’s your rank in Dudayev’s army?’ they laugh. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter. We hereby promote you to the rank of general. Your president said that each one of you Chechens is a general, didn’t he? Well, as you don’t have the uniform, we’ll give you the shoulder straps, direct to your shoulders. You don’t mind, do you?’ They say this as they do something to your shoulders. Of course, you don’t answer back. And then you feel intense pain. This pain is nothing, though, compared to what you were feeling before, and you enjoy the brief rest it brings. You even ask yourself whether you’re turning into a masochist in this place. But right now that can only be a good thing. In any case, it won’t be for much longer.
6
You are tired. Your executioners are also tired. Once again they are taking you somewhere. You’ve come to a halt. They tear the blindfold from your eyes and shove you into a tiny room. It is dark inside. But your eyes adapt, and you see yourself and your guide sitting on the concrete floor of the anteroom to a bomb shelter. Rather, it is a huge rail tank car buried in the earth in case of war, and you are sitting in its ‘lobby’. Your hands are still tied. A number of arrested soldiers are sitting here too. From the soldiers you find out that you are in Chechnya’s main Russian military base, Khankala.[29] After questioning your friend, you are pleased to learn that your initial stories match up and you quickly smooth out with him some minor discrepancies. You also discover that despite the vicious beatings and torture including electric shocks, he has stuck to his initial story. You are grateful for this and proud of him. He has stayed the course, and you know you could go anywhere with this guy. Only you’re not likely to be going anywhere soon – not with him nor with anyone. A quarter of an hour later, the heavy armour-plated door of the shelter opens up and you are led outside. It is evening. The sun has set. Some officers are standing in a circle, and you’ve been placed in the middle. You feel like Konstantin Balmont’s scorpion: ‘My enemies watch me from all sides. A tragic, haunting nightmare.’[30] You read on the faces of all these officers nothing but icy enmity. They lob difficult questions at you from all directions. This is a psychological technique: if you force someone to answer a stream of rapidly fired questions, he will automatically start telling the truth. Because you cannot come up with lies at that speed, and nor can you stay silent. But you know about this technique and so far you’ve been coping. When you begin to feel yourself struggling to keep it up, you interrupt their questions to ask for some water. They toss a bucket of cold water over your head, suggesting you drink that.
At this point a tall lean officer with a grey crew cut walks up to you. ‘Well, I don’t know what you think…’ he says to someone, ‘but I’m removing him. He’s a pulpy mess!’ He orders them to untie your hands and he helps you up. You are wary. You know that in this place gentle words mean only more pain to come. He senses this. He tries to allay your fears. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t be asking you questions,’ he says, sitting you on a stool under a camouflage canopy. There’s a truck with a red cross nearby. So you are in the field hospital. You look at your hands. They have turned into stumps of dark-violet. That’s from the stagnant blood. The belt tied around the wrists was stopping the blood from circulating, and so they’ve swollen up and turned blue. All sensation is gone. If someone were to break a finger or chop one off, you wouldn’t even feel it.
‘You must be thirsty?’ The officer’s voice brings you back from your thoughts. You nod warily. ‘Don’t worry, I am a doctor,’ he says by way of introduction. ‘Sergeant, bring him some water! And I’ll get everything ready in the meantime.’ You are given an almost full three-litre canister of water and you drink the lot. Straightaway you start shivering violently. Seeing you shake, the doctor tells you that it’s a normal response for the body to shiver if you drink water after what you’ve been through. He takes you into the back of a truck, lays you down on a bed and starts to busy himself with his medicines. You slowly drift off… But you are brought back suddenly from your half-conscious state by the voices of some officers standing under the canopy: ‘Cut his lip off, Doctor! He can be a harelip!’ they shout.
You quickly raise yourself up on your elbows and say, ‘Doctor, listen. Don’t cut my lip off. They’re going to kill me tomorrow anyway. Well, I’d like to die looking like myself…’ You notice tears in the eyes of the grey-haired officer. ‘I can’t save your life, son. But I promise I’ll save your foot and your lip. My God, how can they do this to a living person?’ he adds quietly.
‘Why waste your medicines on him, Doc!’ someone shouts. ‘Just leave him. He’ll be dead by the morning.’
‘Whoever he is, he’s still a human being. I feel sorry for him, in any case,’ the doctor replies. He fills a syringe for an injection, but you don’t want one. You are afraid of being given a hypnotic such as barbitone. The doctor guesses your thoughts and says, ‘It’s novocaine, for pain relief.’
‘No, I’ll manage without. The pain surely can’t get any worse.’ He shakes his head and silently puts down the syringe. Once he has sewn up your lip – you later learn from him it was split in two and required thirteen stitches – and tended to your foot, the doctor gives you a shirt, a pair of trousers – yours are in shreds and resemble a grass skirt – and some old sandals of his. They are far too big for you, but in any case it’s an improvement on being barefoot. And he also gives you a blanket to lie on, telling you, ‘No matter what, you mustn’t go to the lower end of the tank car. Lie on the concrete by the door. If you go in deeper, we’ll need to amputate your foot. It’s very damp down there. And the damp can bring on gangrene. It might be cramped at the door, but you’ll be able to bear it. Use the blanket to lie on. It’ll give some protection from the cold concrete.’ The guard supports you as you hobble with difficulty to your dungeon. There you lie down on the blanket, near your friend, who has also been taken there. You are quite sure he’ll be released. So you say goodbye to him now. In case they come for you tonight. He refuses to reconcile himself to the thought that you will be killed, but for you it is the logical end to this interminably long day.
Death is a leap over the threshold of existence into a better world. Only it’s not like that for everyone. For some it means negotiating a soaring mountain pass rather than a threshold. Not everyone is lucky enough to take a little leap and find himself in the next world. You feel as if you’ve clambered to the peak of your pass. So you talk with your God. It is only when talking with Him that you can speak freely: He already knows everything, and He will understand you. And so you open up only to Him. You’re rushing. You don’t want to leave anything out. But your life has been brief, and so your speech does not in fact take long. You begin your conversation by forgiving all your friends and enemies. You forgive everyone who at some point might have harboured bad thoughts towards you, and in doing so has sinned. You even forgive your torturers and executioners. No, not out of neighbourly love, but in the name of God, who created each one of us. You beg the Creator to forgive them too, lest a single one of His creatures remain guilty before Him on account of you. You’ve thrown off the heavy weight of all worldly affairs and worries, all thoughts of life, and with a light soul, purified of love and hate, of joy and grief, you are ready for your meeting with God. There is only sadness, an endless, vast sadness. You slowly drift into a twilight zone between the two worlds. You are infinitely alone on your path to God and this loneliness will never quit your soul. You will remain lonely inside for evermore. You feel that you’ve reached the summit of the pass. And you are yearning to cross to the other, better world. But you cannot. A force stronger than your yearning will not allow you in. You struggle for an eternity for the right to depart from this life. And you give in, realizing that you haven’t yet come to the end of your path here. You still have a little further to go. You still have to crawl your way through hell. And so you return.
30
Konstantin Balmont (1867–1942) was a Russian Symbolist poet. These lines are from his sonnet, ‘The Scorpion’.