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Return Lidia Yusupova

The night covered the city like the wings of a huge black bird. The empty, drowning in the darkness, he seemed extinct. Only lighting missiles, soaring upward, revived the picture, and immediately after their ups, a squall mortar shelling began. The air was filled with whistle and howl of shells. In the sky, a threatening rumble of aircraft with a deadly load inside increased.

In a small basement, clinging to each other, two girls were sitting. The faint light of the candle barely illuminated their faces, distorted by fear. The tremors from the explosions every now and then forced them to frantically contract. Both cried, but soundless. Suddenly the small door of the basement opened with a knock, the air stream extinguished the candle. The earth shuddered from the explosions of bombs. The children cried loudly, without hiding, and a trembling female voice whispered in response in vain words of comfort.
- Aunt, Aunt! - the girls called. The woman lit a candle, and they rushed to her. She began to put simple belongings in her bag.
- Aunt, will we leave?
A woman with a heavy sigh nodded. Having managed things, she sat down to rest, her nieces were attached nearby. Explosions became less often, silence came little by little. The children fell asleep, putting their heads on the woman's knees.

***
Rentifying a black ribbon, the road ran away from under the wheels of the car. The frozen houses, deserted streets shrouded in fog, flooded by fog. Seda turned around. The girls slept, leaning on a bag with belongings.

***
In an hour, we got to Ingushetia. We stopped at friends from Grozny. Nearby, on this and neighboring streets, other refugees lived. The owners of the houses huddled with them, shared everything that they had.
Every morning, the seda went to the tide. There, she became in a long queue at the wagons of the Federal Migration Service for permission to leave the republic. It seemed that this standing in the open air would not be the end. Nevertheless, the necessary certificates were received. The next day, she and her children came to the station. I managed to take a place in the compartment with great difficulty.
The girls clung to the wagon window. On the platform, cringing from a raw piercing wind, a neighbor stood. Tears flowed down her cheeks. The train started, and she ran along the platform, screaming something after them.
The composition gained speed. The conductor, an elderly woman with a swollen face, in a loud voice announced that there would be no stops to mineral waters.
A middle -aged man got hooked on Sede and the children. There was a girl with him, eight years old. She looked at fellow travelers for a long time, then introduced herself: she introduced herself:
My name is Heda.
And I Fatima, - Boyko reacted one of Seda's nieces.
I also have a head, ”said the second.

Having met, the children moved to a free shelf and spoke about something lively.
Seda silently looked out the window. Trees, houses, passers -by flickered. The knock of the wheels brought longing. A lump rolled up to his throat, burned in his chest. I recalled the stories of the mother of eviction, about the distant forties. Memory carried away in the past days. Winter evening, a room lit by a kerosene lamp, buzzing outside the window of a blizzard, a crack of firewood in a furnace. Here is my mother - leaning over knitting, fingers with knitting needles cleverly flickered ... For a moment, the movements of the agile mother’s hands slow down, it smoothes the woolen toe on the knees, levels the knitting needles. And, listening to the howl of wind in the chimney, he says: "Winters here, as in Kazakhstan." “Mom, tell me how you survived there,” Seda asks. - “What to tell? Only one and lived - a dream to return to his homeland, ”a woman responds with a sigh and, after a pause, continues:“ The soldiers came at dawn, they ordered to gather quickly. I woke my brother, he was 14 years old, and I was 16, but we were at home, they took my mother before, we did not know where she ... One of the soldiers began to scream at the brother, which was slowly dressing, he smears a rifle for him, but I can’t figure out what to take. Then an officer came in, an adult, he stopped the soldier, and told me: “Daughter, collect warm things, take food, the road will be long.” And he went out. I quickly gathered that I was able, then we, like many others, were put on carts and taken under the escort to the railway station, driven into wagons in which they transported cattle. They pushed, the tightness is not like sitting, it is impossible to stand. The train started. We soon lost the score of the days, so long we drove. Occasionally the train was stopped, sick, pulled out of the car. The dead, we saw through the gap, threw it into the snow from the embankment. They did not allow to go out. Men tore several boards from the floor in the corners of the car, they were curtained with a piece of fabric and could celebrate the need. Many could not stand it, died - both children and women ... That's it. Then we began to hide the bodies, did not show the soldiers, brought with us, thought: sooner or later they would bring somewhere, there we will bury ... "

Do we have water? - Fatima's plaintive voice forced to return to reality. Children have not eaten anything since yesterday. They refused dinner, and in the morning, going on the road, in a hurry they forgot about food.
Recolining, Seda smiled encouragingly at the girl:
I will buy something to you at the nearest station.
The composition was braked in cool.
- It is not supposed to go out! - the conductor barked with a commanding voice.
Seda silently pushed her away and jumped onto the platform. Soldiers with dogs, police officers, people in civilian clothes ran along the platform. The conductor screamed something to them, pointing to her. Paying attention to the bustle, the woman went to the station cafe and pushed the turn. She explained to the saleswoman that she was in a hurry. She quickly weighed the products, took the money, handed it out.

Meanwhile, the train started, the gray ran along the platform, at the last moment she barely managed to cling to the handrail. I hung on one hand, in the other squeezed a bag of food. The conductor tried to help. Having gathered the last forces, Seda made a breakthrough and was able to climb the bandwagon. The package flew into the corner of the vestibule. Staggering, the exhausted woman entered the car. The whole body was buzzing with tension.
Fatima and Heda with crying rushed to meet her:
We were afraid that you would not have time!
Seda laid out the food on the table, cut meat and bread with a foam knife.
Hide! - Fatima pointed to the knife. - And then you will be taken away. Soldiers go here.

The girl stood at the door of the compartment, listening intensely. The second head, their new acquaintance intervened in the conversation:
Aunt, while you were not there, the police came here, asked who was with us from adults. I said that I was going with you. If I say that with Uncle Seryozha, they can take me, because I am nobody to him. He is Russian, and I am a Chechen.
"Uncle Seryozha," nervously looking around, stood in the corridor.
Tell me that the girl is with you, ”he asked in an undertone to her. “I take her to my Pyatigorsk, we are former neighbors.” Her parents were injured, her mother asked her to take her away.
He extended the girl’s birth certificate. Seda nodded. I returned to the children. They were waiting for her without touching food. She said she did not want to eat. Then the nieces set about food. Hed at first refused treats, but then she nevertheless accepted bread and meat from her fellow traveories.

Here the compartment entered the police major and the man in civilian clothes. The major asked to show documents for the children, rewrote Seda's passport data.
The man in civilian clothes squealed squealed:
Where is the power of attorney for children?
Sed looked at him, but said nothing.
What a power of attorney, they got out of hell! - objected the major.
But his companion did not lag behind:
If there is no power of attorney, we will pick up children from you.

The girls froze, looked at each other in fright
Do not pretend to take care of children. You bomb them day and night! Seda barely restrained anger.

Then the major, in order to avoid the conflict, slammed the folder, muttered “The topic is closed!”, Returned the documents and retired with his partner.
When their steps calmed down, Fatima slowly pulled out a penny knife from the sleeve of the jacket. She still hid him before checking. I was afraid: what if the aunt would be taken away from him?
Outside the window it got dark. Clutching each other, the girls slept on naked shelves. Sed, looking at their faces, thought: "What awaits you in life if it begins with such trials?" And the wheels tapped kilometers, and again the memory led to the stories of the elders about terrible hardships that fell to their lot. For what?..

***
In late night, the train arrived in the Ministry of Wheel. The police inspected things and documents.
In a taxi parking, she took a car. They moved on to where the relatives were waiting. Fatima asked in a sleepy voice:
And they will not shoot there?
No, what are you? - involuntarily shuddering, answered Seda.

Leaving the children in the care of Rodney, she returned to Ingushetia. There was still a difficult way home, to Grozny. And before my eyes, a farewell scene again and again came up: a deserted street, fog, at the house a lone figure of a crying sister, children who cling to the glass of a car.
The road to Chechnya was closed. Every morning, Seda got on foot to post on the exit from Nazran. Hundreds of people crowded here, trying to go to Grozny or at least learn about the fate of their relatives who remained in Chechnya.

Wasteful faces of hungry, erased for long hours of expectations of men and women. Crying of children. From all sides, moans or screams come from. But the track is tightly blocked by federal troops. So without waiting for anything, people later returned back to those who sheltered them in Ingushetia.
The unknown was darkened by the dumping, every step was with difficulty. Nevertheless, she, not a day, wandered to the post. Only after one and a half to two weeks, on the first day of November, several buses appeared here. A human mass got into them to failure. Mostly women. She miraculously squeezed to the bandwagon, picked up by a general stream. I had to stand on one leg. The door did not close immediately. To the left and right, the front and behind it squeezed someone's bodies. Some could not stand it. Choking, asked to stop.

Soon the first post of the Federal Migration Service appeared. All passengers were planted. Things remained on the seats. Soldiers with dogs began to check them. They took their passports from people and announced that they should get them back in the carriage of the trailer. The line was lined up. FMS officers required detailed information about each passenger. They searched for their names and surnames in the computer database. Those who went through Face Control are safely returned to the documents, only after that allowing them to return to the bus.
Such stops were repeated repeatedly. The checks each time detained buses for several hours. They reached the village of Assinovskaya only by seven in the evening. Together with the buses, two cars “Zhiguli” were driving. Subsequently, the shed found out from the conversation of the women that in one of these cars they brought an old man who asked him to be allowed to see the land of his ancestors before his death. When we reached Assinovskaya and the old man found out that he was in Chechnya, with sunrise, his soul had made his eternal peace.

The highway was clogged by transport, and nearby, on both sides of it, the Grad installations uninterruptedly worked on the fields. Their volleys shook the ground.
Seda mechanically moved in a human stream. Wet snow fell, and it froze to the thread.
I ended up on some street. People burned bonfires everywhere. In some places they cooked food. A flock of children about five to six years old surrounded an old woman, a baking cake over the fire. She took off a thin cake, broke and gave them. Each child did not carefully take his share carefully, bite slowly, little by little, trying to extend pleasure ...

***
Seda shook, not understanding what she was looking for. She was trembling, although she did not feel the cold. I went to someone's house. Scattered things were visible everywhere, candles and kerosene lamps burned. Many people sat and lay along the walls, as if not noticing each other.

How good that I met you! - called out to Maryam, a neighbor from Grozny. - Are you home? Let's go together.
We agreed to move on the next morning. The transport was not foreseen, we must walk.
At night they settled in an empty house. The owners in a hurry left him, fleeing the bombs. Now refugees from the column crawling along the highway were sleeping in the rooms. Seda sat down on the edge of the bed, where a young mother with a crying infants and a girl with a high temperature, who was delirious, tried to get up and go somewhere.

Without closing her eye, Seda waited. The morning turned out to be gloomy, foggy. Together with Maryam, we went to the track. An endless stream of passenger and truck vehicles loaded with household utensils, birds, animals dragged by. It was expected that someone will merge and allow access to Ingushetia.
On the gray faces of refugees, she read flour, bitter sadness, doom. She walked, as if in some dream. Oncoming acquaintances convinced not to go to the city. They said that they were bombing there day and night, all the inhabitants left Grozny.
And the women, stubbornly, continued their way. And seda ... The thought of the proximity of her home warmed his soul.
Suddenly she stopped. A small hollow stretched along the highway, covered with a veil of fog, through which the rays of the rising sun pierced. At the burning fire, a white -bearded old Chechen sat in a shaggy white papaha and a black buckthorn thrown over his shoulders. Having folded his hands on the staff and rested on them with a chin, he looked with an invisible look somewhere into the distance. Nearby, bowing his head to the shoulder of the old man, stood a crown under the saddle, and a little at a distance from the fire stomped, straying into a heap, with a dozen sheep. It was sharply pinched in the chest, it became so difficult to breathe that the seda froze without taking her eyes off ... When the pain slowly released, she, moving off the road, with difficulty pulling her legs out of the viscous earth, went to the old man. He did not see her. A booing tear rolled along a wrinkled cheek. Seda called out: “Yours!” The old man did not respond, but then, after a pause, he suddenly exclaimed: “Va, Allah-Dladla, how many times you need to get up ... and leave!” A hot lump swelled in her throat again, her gray slowly turned and wandered back to the road where a fellow traveler was waiting for her. They walked silently, and the mother’s stories about eviction again came to mind in memory
... When people were brought to the steppe and began to be unloaded from the wagons, many legs were not held. Sometimes, some soldier, reveling in his power over them, adjusted the rifle exhausted by the butt. People tried to hold together, supporting each other. They settled them, hungry, in cold dugouts, many of those who carried a terrible road were doomed to death here. On the second day after arrival, they were determined for hard work. Mom, she thought, was lucky: she worked in a bakery, ritting huge cast -iron vats with a dough, you could secretly tear off a piece, quench hunger. We worked 10-12 hours a day. Not knowing where the brother, his seda prayed God for his salvation with long winter nights, falling asleep in tears. Six months later, I found out that he was working at the mine.
From heavy memories, she woke up, hearing a nearby brakes. Then Maryam called her, they together got into the stopped car, which was heading to the city.

***
November was surprisingly warm. The days stood sunny.
Under the roar of shelling and air raids, the remaining citizens who remained in a formidable citizens were inhabited. At the beginning of winter, the bombing became more often, they did not give rest and ground guns. Often their fluid fire was hit at the time of prayer. The lull came for half an hour, then it all started again.
In December, the frost broke out. The military blew up the gas lines, and the heat disappeared from the houses. To keep warm, people disassembled and burned wooden fences, chopped trees. Once, taking advantage of a brief lull, Seda headed for the old neighboring people. I opened the gate, saw a courtyard restored in front of me - there, under the snowfall, a neighbor stood a neighbor, his white furry dad hid his face, he slowly drove a saw on a raw trunk with a saw, one end of the saw bending all the time, stuck it all the time, and the old man quietly hummed something. Seda listened: the words of the song burned the soul with sadness about the years in exile, about those who forever remained in the cold steppes of Kazakhstan, about the joy of returning ... Seda could not stand it - and the old man immediately fell silent, smiling embarrassedly. The guest took up the second handle of the saw and they began to saw silently. Suddenly her hand trembled: she remembered the face of the old shepherd. She saw the same tear on the neighbor’s face, slowly sliding along the cheek.

On one of the last days of December, massive shelling began at dawn. Everything around was buzzing, collapsing. Explosive waves knocked out window frames and doors. The tile with a bang flew off the roofs, the earth staggered underfoot.
Sede and his sister jumped out of the house and hid in a small cellar, which would not protect from direct hit, but could save from the fragments.
Suddenly silence came. The inner voice suggested that the worst thing would happen now.
Seda turned to her sister:
- Let's say goodbye and forgive each other, - she did not finish: there was a deafening explosion, then the second, even more powerful ...
It seemed that unknown forces were torn from the ground, tormenting it into pieces. The rumble of diving aircraft was heard, volleys of all ground guns struck again. It lasted several endless hours.

***
Seda left the basement. Everywhere, fragments of tiles, broken glass, pieces of destroyed walls and fallen trees were lying. Miserable scraps of wires dangled on electric poles. Exploded dwellings burned, animals roared, people shouted.

Soldiers walked along the street, the BTRs rolled. Looking at this, Seda recalled films about the Great Patriotic War. For a moment it seemed to her that everything that was happening, she sees from the side as a spectator.
The soldiers who were brutalized in dirty clothing broke into empty houses, dragged everything that came to hand. The residents responded to the protests by a loud obscenity. Their faces, skewed by anger, were covered with a soot of fires.

***
The military units are located behind the village, on the hill. Every morning, the column of armored vehicles drove along the street towards the city center.
There were daily battles. Toward evening, the column returned to the thinner.
Однажды, Седа решилась пойти в соседний поселок, где жили ее родственники. Пройдя несколько кварталов, добралась до улицы Девятая линия. Здесь в тупике стояла мечеть. У ворот разглядела труп мужчины, прикрытый железным листом.
Внутрь мечети все было изгажено. На коврах для совершения молитв солдаты устроили отхожее место. Повсюду пустые консервные банки, бутылки, гильзы. Тут и там чернели следы костров.

Обойдя мечеть, Седа стала переходить дорогу. Неподалеку, у гаражей, лежали несколько трупов - мужчины. Вдруг лицо обдало горячей волной. Мимо просвистело несколько пуль.
«Хотели бы убить - убили. Надо повернуть назад, пусть думают, что испугалась».

***
Через неделю Седа вновь предприняла вылазку, на сей раз вместе с Марьям. Им удалось благополучно миновать открытое пространство. На улице не было ни одного уцелевшего дома. В некоторых дворах виднелись могильные холмики. В переулке женщины приметили старушку, она пряталась за уцелевшим кирпичным забором.
- Не ходите дальше,- утирая слезы, предупредила она.
Там солдаты, они расстреливают и женщин, и мужчин. Вчера, вон в том доме, всех убили.
Седа вошла во двор, усеянный гильзами и какими-то окровавленными тряпками. Заглянула в одно из окон и похолодела.
Все стены забрызганы кровью. Вдоль стен лежат трупы. Она хотела войти, но остановилась. Там могли быть мины.
- Нас со стариком тоже хотели убить, - сообщила старушка, - но один солдат сказал, «хватит нам тех на сегодня». Ну, и ушли. Забрали наши вещи. А теперь другие военные ходят, грабят каждый день, но нас самих не трогают, - вздохнула и добавила: - Когда-то нас выселяли, мы умирали от голода, от холода, но хоть бомбы в нас не бросали.
Седа, помолчав, ответила:
- Тогда бомбы нужны были для фашистов, а сейчас их девать некуда. Вот решили на нас потратить...

До дома родственников Седа с Марьям все же добрались. Но улица была пустынна, все дома разрушены до основания.

Среди развалин они заметили инвалидную коляску. В ней сидела убитая женщина.
Хоронить сегодня была опасно. После 15 часов снайперы обстреливали все, что движется.
-Вернемся завтра.

На следующий день они вновь пришли к гаражам. Огромный полосатый кот с окровавленной мордой, рыча, отрывал зубами клочья от мертвого тела. Череп лежал отдельно, уже полуобглоданный. Седа отогнала животное. Вдвоем с Марьям они выкатили коляску из-за гаражей. а истерзанный труп предали земле.