‘Yes. If custodial detention can ever be called acceptable.’
‘Are you fed well enough here?’
‘We get fed three times a day. The food’s OK.’ In reality we were fed only twice a day, and we got some watery swill with a few peas floating in it that bore a vague resemblance to soup. We were hardly ever given bread, and bread was considered the most exquisite delicacy in the filter camp. Just plain old rye bread or white, stale or fresh.
‘Do they beat you here?’
‘In this filter camp they haven’t been beating me.’
‘What happened to your foot?’
‘It’s self-inflicted… I was careless with my weapon…’
‘And when did you last have it bandaged?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘And what about your lip?’
‘I fell…’
‘Do you have any complaints?’
‘None.’
George, of course, understood the extent of my sincerity, but he pretended to believe me. The unbearable smell of dirt wafting from me clearly undermined my words. He left and I went back to the cell. Around ten minutes later the guard commander came with some rice porridge and an entire loaf of bread.
‘When did you last have your bandage changed?’ he asked. ‘Come on, be honest.’
‘If I’m being honest, then three days ago…’
He said nothing and left, but he was back a few minutes later with the doctor. He called me into the medical room and ordered the doctor: ‘Dress his wound properly!’
‘I don’t have any bandages,’ the doctor replied.
‘You can take one of my first-aid dressing packages. Only do a decent job.’
‘To what do I owe the honour, Commander?’ I asked in astonishment.
‘See, you can always count on a decent guy no matter where he is. We know who said what. If there’s anything you need, let me know, I’ll do what I can.’
That evening I was transferred to a new, relatively comfortable cell. Its comfort consisted in the plank floor put in for the workers who’d fitted out the filter camp, and the curtain to screen off the corner where there was a milk churn for a toilet. The hardest psychological torment came in having to answer the call of nature in the same room you lived in. Almost in full view of the other cellmates. They would tactfully look the other way. The only way to reduce your psychological anguish was to eat less and go less often. Compared with concrete floors and uncurtained corners, this cell seemed a world apart.
A few days later my friend, whom I’d last seen in Khankala, joined me in the cell; other than that, life in the camp flowed on monotonously. I was convinced that they’d already released him and it came as a surprise when he appeared in our cell. I’d just returned from one of my ‘talks’ with the polite FSB officer. He told me that after I was transferred to the filter camp, they left him alone. In fact, they’d stopped using physical force on him after the first day of our stay in Khankala, but I’d been deeply worried they’d force him to ‘fly’ or give him a ‘jab’. Fortunately, that was not what happened.
11
You met all sorts in the filter camp. From genuine supporters of Chechen independence, who had landed there through denunciations or during a ‘cleansing op’, to supporters of the pro-Moscow opposition, arrested for picnicking in a prohibited place or for some other such nonsense. There were also activists from the Japanese Hare Krishna humanitarian organization, and each day at a certain hour they would perform their prayers, loudly chanting their mantras. The Hare Krishna activists were released a week later. I’d shared my first cell with three Russian soldiers who’d been arrested for desertion and a young Chechen guy called Alvi, who’d been detained by the OMON at a checkpoint. Before his arrival at the filter camp, the OMON had put Alvi through the full works of torture in Assinovsky, a village in western Chechnya, but here in the filter camp they didn’t beat him. What’s more, a few days after my arrival they let him go. For money, of course. Once he’d been released from the filter camp, he went off to fight in the war, and six months later he fell defending the legendary Bamut.[33] He was released the night I moved to the new cell. In the new cell there was a Russian guy supposedly there for looting and a Chechen in his mid-twenties whose right-hand thumb was missing. They’d shot it off straight after arresting him. Both of my new cellmates had previous convictions and they’d done time before, which was responsible for some rather odd behaviour. They loved brewing chifir – ridiculously concentrated tea drunk in small sips. The camp regulations did not allow the making of chifir, but they somehow managed to light a fire with scraps of paper and rags and they brewed up their tea in an empty tin. Earlier, they hadn’t a hope of making chifir, as tea was not issued to the prisoners. But when I appeared in the cell, everything changed.
The day after his release, Alvi posted a big parcel addressed to me. The camp allowed unlimited quantities of food to be sent to the inmates. And so Alvi sent an entire sack of goodies: bread, fruit, vegetables, sweets and several items of clothing for me. There was enough to share with all the prisoners in all the cells. At my request the guards distributed the food to everyone. Among these goodies was tea. And this tea served the noble and lofty purpose of chifir-brewing for the poor prisoners. A day later I was found by my relatives, who’d been searching for me all this time without success, and the problem of hunger was over.
Once a week the inmates were taken to wash. Strictly five minutes were allocated to bathing; if you managed to wash in time, all was well. If you didn’t, then so much the worse for you. But I was denied even that privilege. The explanation offered was that my wounds needed to be protected from moisture. The constant sweating in the stuffy cell did not count: apparently that was not ‘moisture’. The upshot was that in no time I had become the dirtiest prisoner in the filter camp. I realized that this was yet another method of psychological torture, but the knowledge did not make me feel any better or cleaner. All the detainees had lice. But the lice chose to give me a wide berth. I must have been too dirty even for those unsqueamish creatures. Before long our cell became crowded, as new prisoners arrived and old ones were transferred from other cells. Among the newcomers to the cell was the prefect of a highland area in Chechnya who had been denounced and arrested. We had known each other since before the war. So I immediately took him to a corner of the cell and instead of the usual story about how to survive in the filter camp, I had a different talk with him. We needed to sort out the details of what I’d tell them about him. They would be asking me about him, of that I was sure. Of course, in a situation where any newcomer to the cell, or even any of the old cellmates, could be a stool pigeon working for the enemy, you had to have a brave head on your shoulders to make contact like that. Only those who’ve been through a filter camp will understand. Distrust of your fellow sufferers was one of the rules of survival there. But things could hardly get worse for me than they already were. What’s more, he didn’t fall into the category of suspicious prisoner. He was completely beyond suspicion. We had barely started our talk when I was called out for an interrogation. A brilliant expert on the Quran and the son and grandson of peacemakers among blood-feud enemies, renowned throughout the land, he brought optimism and life into our cell. He banished everyone’s sad thoughts about their fate, and their idle chat, and instead made them all recite holy surahs from the Quran by repeating after him. Strong in spirit and never despondent, he spent much of his time reciting surahs with us. And in doing so, he enabled the new prisoners to preserve a state of mental equilibrium in the face of their profound shock at what had befallen them. In the brief time he was with us, he taught the prisoners many surahs.
33
Situated in the high mountains near the border with Ingushetia, the village of Bamut became the site of a battle that lasted for fourteen months. Chechen singers wrote songs celebrating the Battle of Bamut.