45th parallel

“Such things” publish the chapter from the new book by Polina Zherebtsova “45 Parallel”, which today is published in the publishing house “Folio”

The publishing house "Folio" is published by the new book of journalist Polina Zherebtsova "45 parallel". There are Chechen refugees who have passed the war; representatives of LGBT; Children looking for metal with parents on landfills to buy bread; Old people.

Events occur in Stavropol, on the forty -fifth parallel of the Earth. The Roman-Document is based on the personal diaries of the author of 2005-2006.

***

The shadows from yellow -eyed lanterns lay on the road, and we drove another checkpoint to be in Stavropol, in a private house, which was rented in advance on a pike.

The Stavropol Piglet is a place in the Lower Market area, there there are maclers and invasions offer rent and sale of housing.

We have never been inside a rented house. They paid for two months and received the key to the old barn castle.

- Is there warm? I asked the hostess.

The hostess, a large woman of about fifty, answered with a tongue twister:

- The floor is concrete. There is a stove. You will not be lost.

She did not find time to show the dwelling from the inside.

I remembered that the house is located in the lower market, not far from the shops selling alcohol, and the Intourist hotels. Housing in these places was like barracks for the prisoners of the Gulag. For some private houses, several centuries hit, and probably the brownie lived in each of them. It was pleased that from eight neighboring buildings we were separated by a grid, and a lazy spruce grew next to the rented house. It could be decorated on New Year's Eve.

- We will come soon! - Mom rejoiced.

- Give Allah! - Askhab sighed.

“Stay to spend the night,” she suggested.

“It is inconvenient,” our driver was embarrassed.

- I'm a grandmother. Where will you go at night? Tomorrow we spend you before Budennovsk.

The last phrase of Askhab was encouraging. He asked:

- Exactly spend? They will see that the Chechen will grab. Relatives will not even find a corpse ... The war turned many into animals. Here, on the territory of Russians, I am defenseless.

- We will come, boil the pasta! There is canned food. - Mom was absorbed in unpretentious thoughts about a delicious dinner.

The sky turned black, became heavy, like the sole of the boot. I thought about the book read into the second Chechen: who is more powerful - a person or his shadow?

Once I went to look for food in the ruins of a high -rise building. The walls of the house were punched through and formed a kind of “corridors” on the surviving floors. Carefully, trying not to step on the silver thread of stretch marks, I wandered inside.

She recalled how, in twelve years, she fell in love with a neighboring boy named Eric. I could not admit to him in feelings and regretted that I did not have a single photograph ... Eric's family managed to escape from Grozny, and the Chechens captured their apartment during the Time of Troubles. They, a strange thing, did not throw other people's photos, as if they wanted to know from whom they took away the housing.

On that day, I found Eric’s photograph and attached it to the pages of the diary, like a flower of war, torn on ruins.

In broken houses, it was always useful: medicines, bandages, cereals or flour. I was attracted to books. Swearing them, I found out that many inhabitants in the city trained in black magic. And when they introduced Sharia, each hypocrite beat himself in the chest and shouted about true Islam ...

The book on magic somewhere was discovered by mom.

-Come here! She called.

Neither the tone of her voice, nor the book itself caused me pleasant emotions.

“Uh, no,” my mother said, seeing that I was backed up to the door. - Acknowled!

Children in the Caucasus are impeccably obeyed by adults. This is our distinguishing feature.

Anticipating that home utensils will fly now, I bowed my head according to Chechen custom.

- I found a conspiracy. You will read it!

The sky turned black, became heavy like a boot sole

- For nothing! This is a sin!

- God will forgive! You cannot disobey your mother, otherwise I will curse.

I must say that she often cursed me. The war made a woman given to me in a mother, harsh and imperious, not receiving negative answers.

- You go and read! She ordered. - Nobody in my life has shifted me, and I will not let you!

Oblast, in a dressing gown and a scarf, my mother herself looked like a witch, about whom she loved to talk.

Polina Zherebtsova and her mother Elena in Stavropol, 2005 Photo: From Personal Archive

I obeyed, as is customary in the Caucasus, when the elders are ordered by the younger: to marry a stranger, to marry a girl who was seen and approved by the old family, to catch a ram or something else.

Mom slipped a book to me. After reading the name of the author on the cover, I calmed down: this is an inventor who wants to earn money, I thought. If you say a conspiracy, nothing will happen. The essence was as follows: it was necessary to stay alone; Then stand at noon in such a way as to see your shadow, and ask her about the service.

“I ask you,” I said the shadows, “so that we leave here!”

When it was all over, I went home, throwing a book into the nearest bushes.

- Read?! - my mother asked sternly, Karaul at the entrance, where a massive log propagated the plate from the second floor.

“Yes,” I answered. - But I will not! I threw the book, because the fortune -telling and conspiracies are haram!

- Ugh for you! -Mom got angry, but did not scandal: after all, I completed her task.

Two years have passed since then, and we have the opportunity to leave.

- Stavropol! Stavropol! - Time returned me to the Salon of Gazelle. Mom had fun, despite the fact that the military stood in front and checked trucks.

We were missed quickly enough, and, entering the city, we fell under the fireworks. The night sky was illuminated by bright peacock tails.

“You see,” said Mom, “this is a sign!” We will live well! Everything will work out!

I said nothing: I was not admired by the fireworks, I could not hear pops and explosions, my hands cold cold and my heart knocked frantically. So for me it was unkind signs.

Mom, on the contrary, loved the fingertips.

We rode along the lively streets of someone else's city, and I tried to make out the faces of people, guess how they live here in the Russian world.

Askhab turned out to be an experienced driver. He quickly found our new home, and after a long road we began to drag our simple belongings inside.

There was no time to consider the house. Everyone is tired. And what do you see in the light of Ilyich's light?

In the wall we found a gas burner and chimney. This is a rather dangerous old method to focus on the house. Askhab helped to open the valve, otherwise we would have freezed immediately. The stove was buzzing in the wall, growled and heated.

Having calculated with the driver and eating pasta, we went to bed. My mother and I in the same room on the cot, and the driver was located in an eight -meter bedroom on the chest, which, as the hostess managed to warn, belonged to her ancestors from the eighteenth century.

The new morning seemed to me a bustle. The small windows with rotten wooden frames and peeling paint were distorted from old age, so the room was not ventilated. Through the dilapidated walls, ice flows penetrated inside.

It seemed inconvenient to change in the evening. My mother and I did not even take off the scarves. The guest also slept, what he arrived in. They decided to walk around the house in street shoes: saving on slippers.

The warriors for Ichkeria captured the hospital, and before that they boasted that they would reach Moscow

Two rooms were only part of a strange house, divided into different owners. The hostess warned: “Do not stick to other residents! They are drug addicts! " We did not get acquainted with those who live through the wall, but looked into the common courtyard. At the gate, a man in a camouflage uniform swore loudly.

I warmed up the water on the gas stove, and my mother brought dumplings with potatoes, perfectly preserved on the windowsill, like in the refrigerator.

“You promised to spend me to Budennovsk,” Askhab recalled at breakfast.

Budennovsk is a city in which Shamil Basayev once captured the hospital. The intentions, as the militants themselves said, were good for them: they demanded to withdraw Russian troops from the Chechen land and recognize the independence of Ichkeria. Nobody fulfilled their requirements, and about the newspaper Budennovsk wrote that there was a terrorist attack. Women and newborn children died. And it turned out - absolutely everything can be bought: Shamil Basayev with an armed detachment at each checkpoint distributed foreign currency to be missed! How many of them, these checkpoints, was during the war at Stavropol, the devil himself will get away from the account. Only in Budennovsk did the Chechen fighters resist. The warriors for Ichkeria captured the hospital, and before that they boasted that they would reach Moscow.

Askhab was afraid to remember this episode. Any Chechen resembles a bearded shamil to Russians now.

We rode in the car to see the driver, and everyone was thinking about his own. I do not doze off unnoticed, and visions from Grozny made my way.

A young, cheerful mother chased after me and shouted: “Come here, a donkey breed!”, But I ran away, deftly jumping through flower beds with butterks and jellyfish.

- Budennovsk! - Mom's voice made me open my eyes. - We are shaking for a few hours on the Stavropol for several hours! Here we go out!

- No no! - Askhab prayed. - One hundred kilometers!

- I have to return with my daughter ...

- I conjure Allah, do not throw it! - Askhab almost sobbed.

I mortally wanted to sleep.

- OK! - Mom agreed.

Two hours later we went out at a small station. Mom hugged Askhab in Caucasian custom, wishing him good luck.

Snowflakes broke from the sky, I bought tickets in a kiosk, and the bus drove us back. Upon arrival, we bought food in the lower market and, staggering from fatigue, wandered into a removable dwelling. An unfamiliar elderly woman was already spinning near our gate, as it turned out, a neighbor.

Polina Zherebtsova with cats of Karina and strip at the side of the side, Stavropol, 2005 Photo: From Personal Archive

- I live in a real house with a foundation! She said. - And you settled in the former stable. Do you know that you removed the stable? After the war with the Nazis, she was converted into a dwelling, but it is still cold there ...

“Our surname is Zherebtsov,” Mom answered.

The neighbor laughed.

- Then everything is in order, to you at the address! - laughing, she said, and introduced herself: - My name is Claudia Petrovna. I am a former teacher, now retired.

Claudia Petrovna switched to a whisper:

- See that house and the other ... a little at a distance? - she asked, and, without waiting for our answer, she added: - A recidivist lives next to you, the whole yard is afraid, a policeman lives here, he fought in Chechnya and was damaged by his mind, and there is a seal: prostitutes are accepted by the mafia.

“The hostess of housing said that we have drug addicts behind the wall,” I inserted.

Claudia Petrovna waved her hand:

- These are harmless drunks! They can only take the money or squeeze the phone! Do not be afraid, they are not a killer. But those three houses are bad. I warned you.

The pensioner sniffed vigorously at her door.

After drinking tea with sandwiches, I opened a notebook and wrote the following:

Hello Diary!

It seems that we fell to the bottom, settling in the beggarly quarter. This is a place where the scum of society live.

We can’t remove other housing. Two tiny rooms, which were once part of the stable, are old iron beds (the beginning of the twentieth century) and the same age cabinet. Small windows-cells, through which the sky is barely visible, do not open. Gas-beam heating in housing, i.e. This is a gas tube in the wall. No batteries. The floor is a thin layer of concrete, spilled to the ground. There is no foundation. The suspended retro-lamp from orange fabric has long tried mol.

Renting an apartment with the bathroom and normal heating is much more expensive.

There is no hot water. Miniature heater continuous props.

How do we get out of this alteration?

P.

A blizzard broke out on the street. Evergenous spruce, decorating a courtyard, tried on snow -white outfits. If you look from the windows of the former stable, standing by the Old Wall, you can see how the clouds rush across the sky, like waves. The clouds hid the stars from us, who saw the history of the Caucasus.

It seems that we fell to the very bottom, settling in the beggarly quarter

Stavropol was founded in 1777 by order of Catherine II, among the people of the Great. The city served as one of the ten fortresses of the Azovo-Mozdok defensive line created to protect the southern borders of the Russian Empire. At first, the fortress was an incorrect polygon scattered on the hills. My Terrible is located in the lowland, among the blue mountains, as if in a cup, therefore the wind rarely penetrates there. The Stavropol envelop you.

There are three districts in the city - Leninsky, October and Industrial. However, the Stavropol residents practically do not use these names, replacing them with informal ones: “204-quarter”, “Chapaevka”, “Thala”, the north-west and southwest regions.

I looked at the floating clouds and remembered the dream. We believe: everything that will be held at dawn, before the morning prayer, is God's craft. A stranger in an embroidered camisole and a felt triangle came to our removable house-adhesive and said:

“Don't you remember me at all?”

“No,” I answered.

- You don't need these books!

He pointed his hand to decrepit book regiments, surviving all the Chechen wars with us. On the shelves stood geography textbooks, fiction and cognitive books about Tibet. The Qur'an was adjacent to Solzhenitsyn’s “cancer building”.

- Who are you? - I was surprised.

- I am called a captain or intergalactic demon.

- Take everything you want, but I will not give you this book! - I pointed to the Qur'an.

- And I'll take it! Cried the daring captain and grabbed a book with Arabic scribble predatoryly.

I clung to the Qur'an on the other side:

- Try!

We began to fight, pulling out of each other the scripture sent by the Prophet Magomeda.

At some point, I grabbed the Qur'an, and the intergalactic demon was left with nothing. The mysterious guest waved his hands menacingly, but did not dare to approach and dissolved in the night.

At the beginning of the third millennium, those who had funds were feasted for glory

For long centuries, the territory of the Stavropol Territory was a kind of crossroads of civilizations. Since antiquity, the peoples living on these lands professed Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. This symbiosis is reflected in history and culture.

Borey, the northern wanderer, visited the city at their discretion, and the townspeople hid their faces behind wide scarves, going to hunchbacked streets.

New Year was nearing, a holiday that brings joy both poor and rich.

During perestroika, people dreamed of a bank of sprat or sweets. Now, at the beginning of the third millennium, those who had funds were feasted for glory.

Polina Zherebtsova in the editorial office, Chechnya, 2004 Photo: From Personal Archive

Sighing bitterly because we could not afford fruits for the holiday, I decided to look for work. Without work, the problem was to rent a house where drunks lived before us, and horses before them. After breakfast from a couple of potatoes, I went to the editorial offices of Stavropol newspapers. The editor -in -chief of one of the publications, looking at my articles, said: “You write smart texts. But we need citizens to think less, have a rest and caress beer more! You, having survived the war, are unlikely to be able to joke and get fun. ”

Hello, Stavropol! A huge energy funnel that takes everything and gives nothing.

I politely said goodbye and left the office of the chief editor.

While descending the stairs, suffocated. Tachycardia. The guard, learning that I was from Chechnya, asked for something to read. I had to give him a magazine with a story about the war.

A visit to the city hall of the city of Stavropol also did not bring results. The chairman, after listening to our history, said: “You are not local! No one is obliged to sympathize with you! Just think, they were injured in the Chechen war! Off from here! "

Every day we met those who ate from garbage tanks

With a similar attitude I have encountered in many places. We could never find the Minister of Education at the workplace, and his assistant shook his hands helplessly.

The second cousin Julia, whom we met quite by accident, did not particularly want to be related, but regretted and gave the old duveters and pillowcases. We rejoiced, like children, because there were no benefits for refugees, no centers where things would be distributed. Nothing.

Every day we met those who ate from garbage tanks. These were homeless young women with children, the elderly who found themselves on the street after their apartments were taken by black realtors. No one needed people wandered around the landfills in search of food.

To receive unemployment benefits, it was necessary to have housing (and be registered in it) or funds for its purchase. In monetary equivalent, the help of such an unemployed was so small that it would hardly be enough for three days. But even none of the wanderers could get this allowance.

The police patrolling the city, without hesitation, demanded a bribe, collected tribute from shops and stalls. Seeing a police car, the frightened citizens tried to hide behind the fences, abruptly turn off the road so as not to get into the clutches of the laws of the law.

I and my mother, having heard about torture and beatings, did everything so as not to encounter the police, fearing it like fire. Our situation was complicated by the fact that we did not have a residence permit in Stavropol. Strangers without rights and freedoms - that’s who we were.

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