Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [112]
I said as much, a bit of an argument started, and it was time to lower the temperature again since otherwise … Otherwise it was obvious what could happen.
The man with the ill-fitting mask went off into the depths of the darkened foyer, still muttering, “Why do you say you treat Chechen children too, doctor?” There was some further fairly incoherent nastiness which amounted to suggesting that mentioning that he also treated Chechen children showed he didn’t think they were the equal of other children, perhaps even that Chechens are not human beings.
It was a familiar tune and I interrupted it, not because that was a particularly clever thing to do but simply because I had had enough. I said, “All people are the same. They have the same skin, the same bones, the same blood.” This less than original thought unexpectedly had a conciliatory effect. I asked permission to sit on the only chair in the middle of the foyer, 5 metres or so from the bar, because my legs had turned to jelly.
Permission was immediately granted. My shoes slipped on some disgusting red mess trampled into the carpet. I looked down cautiously at this ghastliness, anxious not to seem to be taking too much of an interest, but even more anxious not to put my feet in congealed blood. Thank God, it was only some kind of dead dessert, possibly fruit and ice-cream. I trembled a little less.
We waited 20 minutes or so while the leader was sent for. While we waited there, heads in masks appeared over the balcony occasionally. Some of the masks covered their faces properly, others only did half the job.
“Was it you who helped the people in Khotuni against the paratroop regiment?” the heads ask.
“Yes.”
The heads are satisfied. Khotuni, a village in the Vedeno District, turns out to be my safe-conduct pass. If I have been there I am worth talking to.
“Where are you from?” I ask the man from the bar counter.
“Tovzeni,” he replies. “Many of us are from Tovzeni, and from Vedeno District generally.”
There follows a lot of confused coming and going by men in masks, the sign of a tragedy in the making. Time just passing by, disappearing into nowhere, fills me with idiotic foreboding. The leader still hasn’t appeared. Perhaps they are going to shoot us here and now.
Finally, a person in combat fatigues comes out, his face completely covered. He is stocky, and with exactly the deportment of Russian special operations officers who give serious attention to their physical fitness. He says, “Follow me.” My legs again turn to jelly, but I wobble after him. This is The Leader.
We end up in a dirty service room by a ransacked buffet, behind which is a water tap. Somebody walks behind me and I turn. I realize this looks nervous, but what can I do? I haven’t had much experience of talking to terrorists under conditions as tense as these. The leader brings me back to cold logic.
“Don’t look behind you! You are talking to me, so look at me.”
“Who are you? What should I call you?” I ask, not really expecting a reply.
“Bakar. Abubakar.”
By now he has pushed the mask up to his forehead. He has an open face with high cheekbones, also very typical of our military. He has a rifle on his knees which he puts behind him only at the very end of our talk, when he even apologizes. “I’ve got so used to it I no longer feel it there. I sleep with it, eat with it. It is always with me.” Even without this explanation I already understand everything.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Have you been fighting in both wars?”
“Yes.”
“Did you sit it out in Georgia?”
“No. I never left Chechnya.”
Bakar belongs to a new generation of Chechens who for the past 10 years have known nothing but a rifle and the forests. He left school, and life in the forests became his only option.