Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [178]
For all that, the frenetic pace did not dissipate the emotional charge. Everywhere kind words cascaded down, love, warmth, admiration, respect – a positive tsunami. Life was suddenly something to enjoy, surrounded by interested people. These were feelings long unfamiliar in Russia where people do not love you for your articles. On the contrary, most hate you for them.
The French intellectuals involved in promoting the book were clearly puzzled by my increasingly obvious embarrassment as this carousel of kindness continued. “Isn’t it just the same in Russia when somebody has written and published a book?” “It is not at all the same in Russia.” “What do you mean? Has your book not been published in Russia?” “Of course not!”
They were amazed. They shrugged their shoulders. For the first time they looked at me uncertainly, unable to believe it. I did not try to explain. What would be the point? These were trivial details. I looked about me instead, taking in what really mattered – how the Parisiennes were dressed.
You have only to stand in the bustle of Place de la Madeleine for ten minutes to understand that there is no answer to this question. The essence of Paris is that the women dress as they please. The men too. And they think as they choose to, and put on their make-up in the morning as they see fit. This kind of life is called freedom. Liberty. You live as you please, however you like.
Moscow had been only a transit airport on my flight to Paris. The starting point of the journey which brought me to the capital of France was Ingushetia and Chechnya: refugee camps; foothills; forests; soldiers desperate to go home; hungry people crying; the routine horror of life in our homeland where everybody lives as best they can, just trying to survive. That is why “my” Paris seemed such a sweet, heavenly treat. It was like the taste in your mouth after wormwood, when a single chocolate has the impact of kilograms of honey.
“ ‘Why are you not sleeping?’ ‘Paris will not let me sleep.’ ” Sometimes we hum that song to ourselves as we struggle towards the light through the routine austerity of life in Russia. And do you know what? It wasn’t true! I slept very soundly in Paris, for the first time in all the months of the war, without sleeping pills, without shivering. Nobody was yelling at me, goading me, telling me I was a traitor. Everybody liked me. Everybody admired me. May you enjoy the same experience.
That was the joy of Paris, the private property of one Russian journalist who dares to testify to it. It was a joy all the more poignant because immediately before it I had to dare to do quite different things. My book will go on sale in the bookshops of Paris on June 4, 2000. Its publishers have decided to call it Journey to Hell: A Chechen Diary. The Daring Testimony of a Russian Journalist.
A Lighter Postscript
Simultaneously with the collection of articles from Novaya gazeta about Russia during the Chechen War, another book on the same topic will be published in France in early June.
It has the eye-catching title of Chienne de Guerre, A Bitch of a War. Its author is a Parisian journalist, Anne Nivat. Our books are not thought too similar, although they tell the same tale. But now, let’s consider some parallels. Is it mere chance that the books are appearing together? The French emotionally assured me that it was a complete coincidence. That might seem hard to believe, but to confirm it, here is a story.
Anne Nivat is not just a brave French journalist, she is also the daughter of Georges Nivat, today a professor at the