Voices from Chernobyl. Светлана Алексиевич

there, right outside the door, they shoot them. They don’t even take them aside. I would never have believed it. But I saw it. I saw how they took out two men, one was so young, handsome, and he was yelling something at them. In Tajik, in Russian. He was yelling that his wife just gave birth, he has three little kids at home. But they just laughed, they were young, too, very young. Just regular people, except with automatic weapons. He fell. He kissed their sneakers. Everyone was quiet, the whole bus. Then we drove off, and we heard: ta-ta-ta. I was afraid to look back. [Starts crying.]

      I’m not supposed to be talking about this. I’m expecting a baby. But I’ll tell you. Just one thing, though: don’t write my last name. I’m Svetlana. We still have relatives there. They’ll kill them. I used to think we’d never have any more wars. Such a big country, I thought, my beloved country. The biggest! During Soviet times they’d tell us that we were living poorly and humbly because there had been a big war, and the people suffered, but now that we have a mighty army, no one will ever touch us again. No one will defeat us! But then we started shooting one another. It’s not a war like there used to be, like my grandfather remembered, he marched all the way to Germany. Now it’s a neighbor shooting his neighbor, boys who went to school together, and now they kill each other, and rape girls that they sat next to in school. Everyone’s gone crazy.

      Our husbands are silent. The men here are silent. They won’t say anything to you. People yelled at them as they were leaving, that they were running away just like women. That they were cowards, betraying their motherland. But is that bad? Is it a bad thing not to be able to shoot? My husband is a Tajik, he was supposed to go and kill people. But he said: “Let’s leave. I don’t want to go to war. I don’t need an automatic.” That’s his land, but he left, because he doesn’t want to kill another Tajik, the same kind of Tajik as he is. But he’s lonely here, his brothers are all still there, fighting. One already got killed. His mother lives there. His sisters. We rode here on the Dushanbe train, the windows were broken, it was cold and unheated. No one was shooting, but they threw rocks at the train, broke the windows. “Russians, get out! Occupiers! Quit robbing us!” But he’s a Tajik, and he had to listen to all this. And our kids heard it. Our daughter was in first grade, she was in love with a boy, a Tajik. She came home from school: “Mom, what am I, a Tajik or Russian?” How do you explain?

      I’m not supposed to be talking about this . . . but I’ll tell you. The Pamir Tajiks are fighting the Kulyab Tajiks. They’re all Tajiks, they have the same Koran, the same faith, but the Kulyabs kill the Pamirs, and the Pamirs kill the Kulyabs. First they’d go out into the city square, yelling, praying. I wanted to understand what was happening, so I went too. I asked one of the old men: “What are you protesting against?” They said: “Against the Parliament. They told us this was a very bad person, this Parliament.” Then the square emptied and they started shooting. All of a sudden it became a different country, an unrecognizable country. The East! And before that we thought we were living on our own land. By Soviet laws. There are so many Russian graves there, but there’s no one to cry at them. They graze livestock on the Russian cemeteries. And goats. Old Russian men wander around, going through trash cans . . .

      I worked in a maternity ward as a nurse. I had night duty. This woman is giving birth, it’s a difficult birth, and she’s yelling—suddenly an orderly runs in, she’s not wearing gloves, no robe. What’s going on? To come into the maternity ward like that? “Girls, there are people! They’re wearing masks, they have guns.” Then they come in: “Give us the drugs! And the alcohol!” “There aren’t any drugs or alcohol.” They put the doctor up against the wall—give it here! And then the woman who’s giving birth yells with relief, happily. And the baby starts crying, it’s just-just come out. I lean over it to look, I can’t even remember now whether it was a boy or a girl. It didn’t have a name or anything yet. And these robbers say to us: what is it, a Kulyab or a Pamir? Not, boy or girl, but Kulyab or Pamiri? We don’t say anything. They start yelling: “What is it?” We don’t say anything. So they grab the little baby, it’s been on this earth for maybe five, ten minutes, and they throw it out the window. I’m a nurse, I’d never seen a baby die before. And here—I’m not supposed to remember this now. [Starts crying.] How are you supposed to live after that? How are you supposed to give birth? [Cries.]

      After that, in the maternity ward, the skin started coming off my hands. My veins swelled up. And I was so indifferent to everything. I didn’t want to get out of bed. [Cries.] I’d get to the hospital and then turn around. By then I was pregnant myself. I couldn’t give birth there. So we came here. To Belarus. To Narovlya. Small, quiet town. And don’t ask me anything else. I’ve told you everything. [Cries.] Wait. I want you to know. I’m not afraid of God. I’m afraid of man. At first we asked people: “Where is the radiation?” “See where you’re standing? That’s where it is.” So it’s everywhere? [Cries.] There are many empty houses. People left. They were scared.

      But I’m not scared here the way I was there. We were left without a homeland, we’re no-one’s. The Germans all went back to Germany, the Tatars to the Crimea, when they were allowed to, but no one needs Russians. What are we supposed to hope for? What do we wait for? Russia never saved its people, because it’s so big, it’s endless. And to be honest, I don’t feel like Russia is my homeland. We were raised differently, our homeland is the Soviet Union. Now it’s impossible to know how you’re supposed to save yourself. At least here no one’s playing with guns, and that’s good. Here they gave us a house, and they gave my husband a job. We wrote a letter to our friends back home, and they came yesterday. For good. They came at night and they were afraid to come out of the train station, they stayed there all night, sitting on their suitcases, not letting their kids out. And then they see: people are walking down the street, laughing, smoking. They showed them our street, escorted them right to our house. They couldn’t believe it, because back there we stopped living normal lives. Here they got up in the morning and went to the store, they saw butter, and cream—and right there, in the store, they told us this themselves, they bought five bottles of cream and drank them right there. People were looking at them like they were crazy. But they hadn’t seen cream or butter in two years. You can’t buy bread in Tajikistan. There’s a war. It’s impossible to explain to someone who hasn’t seen what it’s like.