"I returned to another country"

Diary of Zara Murtazalieva

The City Hall of Italian Bologna hosted the ceremony of presenting the International Prize Daniel PO “For Courage” Zare Murtazalieva, which spent eight and a half years in Putin's prison. Now she lives in France. NT more than once wrote about the Murtazalieva case, which reflected the realities of modern Russian justice.

Chechenka Zara Murtazalieva, arrested on fabricated charges on March 4, 2004, was released in 8.5 years. During this time, a lot of things happened in Russia: in February 2006, Ramzan Kadyrov was appointed President of Chechnya, in April 2009 the regime of a counter-terrorist operation in the republic was canceled, in March 2012, Vladimir Putin became the president of Russia for the third time ... Murtazalieva learned about the changes from television programs, in the recreation room of the IK-13 colony in the Mordovian village of Parza. Having served the term from the call to the call, she went to Moscow, and then home, to Chechnya. Zara wrote about her impressions of what she saw in a diary, which she kept specifically for The New Times all September 2012.

One of the colonies in Mordovia. September 2012

September 3, 2012. At 11:30, the door of the colony IK-13 clone, where I lived eight and a half years, closed behind me. I was serving a sentence under Art. 205 of the Criminal Code (attempt on a terrorist act) in Mordovia. This is the edge of the camps, fences, lost souls and broken fates. And - an infinitely beautiful sky.

Many do not know anything about Mordovia or do not want to know anything, and this is a small part of our common homeland, where, it seems, everything breathes with some kind of weight and hopelessness. Convicts, serving a sentence here, call Mordovia a damned land, and colonies consider themselves convicted. They, like prisoners, are doomed and for the most part unhappy, like us. Here, in the colonies, families work, and this work is inherited from generation to generation. Sometimes jailers tell fascinating stories that keep their memory and memory of their relatives. In the stories, the pain and remorse of the conscience, which they try to drown out: listen to them - they almost do not separate themselves from those prisoners.

September 4. At six in the morning, together with my mother, brother Ilyas and my friends - Zoya Sveta and her two sons - left the Saransk -Moscow train at the Kazan Station of Moscow. At the first moment, it seemed that everything was still: Moscow met with the same hum and a noise, a lively mood and rainbow fun. I smiled at this city, mentally welcoming it, I saw that a lot around changed: there were no houses that were not before, I heard words, the meanings of which I did not understand: Facebook, Twitter, Google, contact, iPhone, iPoz. These words were crazy. I did not understand what language the people around were speaking, I did not understand what kind of apparatus they were on the streets: for payment of services, then to buy newspapers ... From the abundance of incomprehensible objects, the head was spinning. At some point, it seemed that I could never enter the channel of this life. She pulled herself together and slowly began to master everything.

September 5. In Moscow, I met those people whom I knew in absentia for many, many years-by the letters and stories of my mother on a date: I was in the Memorial, in the Committee "Civil Promotion", met with Svetlana Gannushkina, which helped me all these years, with other people. In the Memorial they presented a laptop, and I began to get acquainted with Facebook, but the Internet did not drag me into my nets: I was very annoying in live communication.

“I still find very strange that you do not need to live according to the regime. It is strange that there are no checks and charges, an end to sleep and wakes. There is nothing from that life other than memory of it. This memory resists my desire to forget "

I still find very strange that you do not need to live according to the regime, get up at 6 in the morning and go to bed at 10 pm. It is strange that there are no checks and charges, an end to sleep and wakes. There is nothing from that life other than memory of it. This memory resists my desire to forget.

I would like to help the friends whom I left there, I really want to see them again. And another thought is constantly itchy: so many years, crossed out by someone's hand from my life.

Zara Murtazalieva in his own house with neighbors. Village of Naurskaya, September 2012

September 13th. I am in the Moscow -Grozny train with my mother and brother Ilyas. I remembered the old, dirty wagons from the past, embittered drives, which for several months were not paid salaries. Now I have been met by very cute and charming women in an ironed, pure uniform. They knew their job and forced me to be surprised every time when they approached and wondered if everything was fine, whether we needed an additional blanket, otherwise we can freeze at night, is it convenient for us to do something else.

I went to the restroom ... For many it is absolutely natural: to find soap, paper towels, toilet paper in the toilet, but nine years ago it was impossible to think about this on the Moscow -Grozny trains.

Everything else. Other passengers. I remember tired, exhausted, fat women with checkered bauls, stuffed with cheap Chinese goods, which they sold in Chechnya more expensive. And on the proceeds, miserable pennies tried to feed their family.

September 14th. I looked out the window. A conductor appeared and began to offer various products. "The market on wheels?" - I ask. She told how her commerce was arranged. I turned on the recorder on the iPhone presented in Moscow. This is a very interesting story about gatherings, about bribes, about trading in trains, about who needs it. Maybe once I write about it.

September 15. At 4:30 in the morning we arrived in the Chechen Republic. At the station, close, relatives of their hearts meet. What could a person who has been deprived of communication with relatives for many years? Longing, curiosity, but the most fear is that we will not have common that I could be incomprehensible, unheated that I have not been in their life for many, many years, they could wean from me, because a whole generation has grown, which knows about me only from the stories. I’m going off the train and find myself in my uncle’s arms. His tears mix with mine. This is a moment when a man is not ashamed to cry, but I no longer need to be strong. And then everything is like in a fog - they give me in a circle: the arms of aunts, sisters, again sisters, hugs of the older cousin and tears again. I feel the legs become cotton.

People turn around, no one understands what is happening, my relatives look around me from head to toe. Everything is as if not with me, everything is like in a dream. It seems that now I will wake up from the scream "Rise".

But no, the miracle continues: everyone behaves as if I were only two days away.

We sit down on cars, they tell me about changes in Chechnya, about what happened without me. I don’t care, I know little people that they are talking about, I just enjoy the fact that I am among my relatives, that I feel protected.

We are going to the Naursky district, and I will not recognize it. Everywhere - huge photos of two presidents - Russia and Chechnya, even roads, playgrounds, a new mosque, the center of the district sparkles with lights. On the square there is a fountain, repaired administrative buildings, a stadium, around cleanliness. New, identical fences of many houses, I ask: why? It turns out that there was a district day, and under the President’s program they put fences to poor families, changed the roofs.

We are going to my grandfathers and grandmothers, they waited, prayed, were afraid not to survive until this day. Waited. I hug my old old people, again I am very sharply aware of how long I have been deprived of their love, care, themselves.

Ahmad Murtazaliev, grandfather Zara. Village of Naurskaya, September 2012

We are going home to us, I already know that there youth set the table, heating food. I calculate how much the smallest of my relatives was and how much they are now. I am horrified: they should be 19–20 years old. Panic: They will come, and I will get to know them again. At the house, the crowd is my brothers, sister and again - hugs, hugs, hugs and tears.

It seems that this is a dream, but here we are going into a house that I dreamed of for so many years. The house where childhood passed, where there was so much laughter, joy, holidays. Then no one could imagine that there would be so many tears that everyone would forget about the fun and joy that we will be separated, my father would die, they will put me in.

Three days of feast. This is not a dream, this is a reality. I breathe it, I love everyone. I love the whole world.

September 19. I'm going to Grozny. I have not been there for more than nine years. The last thing I remember is a broken and destroyed city, thrown to the feet of those gods who were revered and who were worshiped then. Where are these gods now?

I went out in Grozny near the beautiful mosque. In front of me is a city that rebelled from ash and ash. Around the skyscrapers, Grozny-City, beautiful avenues, streets. Walking youth. The most important thing I see is life. Looking at the children playing in playgrounds, I was happy: they see a peaceful sky and do not see military equipment, people in uniform, checkpoints, explosions. I hope they will appreciate the world, love other kings, live according to other rules, will never be deprived of childhood again. I wanted to ask passing people: what has changed in their lives, are they happy, what is it, this is the happiness of people who have known so many misfortunes? I wanted to ask if they had changed with this city.

“I realized that my old beloved city of Terrible is erased from the face of the earth, the city that felt and suffered with us remained only in old photographs, in our memory and in our heart. I loved him, I knew that I could never change him "

I walked and thought: when I could love this city, when I feel that it is my city, that it is alive, that it is breathing and this is not an illusion. I did not recognize a single street, not a single avenue. This city did not have the past. There was only the present and the future. This is the city of a new younger generation.

I realized that my old beloved city of Terrible is erased from the face of the earth, the city that felt and suffered with us, it remained only in old photographs, in our memory and in our heart. I loved him, I knew that I could never change him.

Then there was a meeting in the editorial office of Dosh magazine. There they presented the book of Zoe Light "to recognize the innocent guilty." In this book, she wrote about my story. There were many people, local media, human rights activists. Everyone spoke kind words, someone made excuses that he did not provide me with support, they still said something, but I did not hear: the excursion in the Terrible knocked me out of the rut. I revived only when they showed me a young guy, saying that he was working in local organs. He came to the presentation, sat in the corner and tried so that no one would pay attention to him. I understand everything: this is his work - because I returned from the colony, where I was sitting on a terrorist article.

But somehow ineptly, clumsily work, ineptly listening to the phone, they are ineptly watching. As ineptly as they planted. But by the way, I am already used to them.

Later there was a meeting of the Umar Dzhumaliev from the apparatus of the Commissioner for Human Rights of Chechnya. They talked for a long time, discussed problems. Umar promised to restore my relatives dismissed after my arrest. He also assured that he would help two Chechens who remained to sit in IK-13, who are very difficult there.

I didn’t ask for anything, I was just happy that I was free. My mother spoke, she told how difficult it is to be the mother of the prisoner. While she was talking with Umar, I thought about how often we were talking about prisoners of conscience, political prisoners, about ordinary prisoners, but how little we talk about mothers, fathers who have difficulty. Which of us is more prisoner? Those who are behind bars, or their relatives who do not sleep at night, pray and cry in the pillow. Are they more prisoners?

I’m going to visit a familiar journalist. We sit in a small kitchen and in a dim light recall the old Grozny. We are talking about what we can talk about only in the circle of close friends, not afraid that they will report to you. Then the journalists of REN TV come, and we are going home, to Naur. Everything is as always-a feast, tears, laughter, and-some kind of awkwardness in all this. I realized where the tension comes from: my relatives who were waiting for me wanted to get that 20-year-old Zara. And they returned to them with a matured 29-year-old woman with a story that strangers want to know, to tell about her on television. We go to each other to each other, we talk very carefully about mutual problems, very carefully share the secrets with each other. But I know that part of myself left there, in distant and alien Mordovia.

The Central Mosque named after Akhmat-Khadzhi Kadyrov and the complex of high-rise buildings "Grozny-City". Grozny, September 2012

September 21. I decided to leave Chechnya. At 8 in the morning I loaded my suitcases in a taxi and went to the airport. Registered, handed over the luggage. A woman with children cries nearby. I remembered my grandmother’s words that you should not cry before the road. I had a ticket for 14th place, and when I climbed aboard the aircraft, it turned out that there were only 13 seats in the plane. And the 13th-just mine.

This number pursues me. I arrived on April 13 in the 13th region-to Mordovia. In IK-13. I was distributed to the 13th brigade. I'm not superstitious. But I do not like this number.

I sit down in my place, I hope for a successful flight. But an hour later they announce: a forced landing in Volgograd. How to not be superstitious after that?

After a couple of hours, with a battle, we are transplanted to another plane. And here I am again in Moscow. I flew to where my long way of wandering began nine years ago ...

First published in NT No. 32 (259) of October 8, 2012 .