Before the War I Had Toys
Before the War I Had Toys
Children of Grozny
Ghabrail (2 years old), Zalina (11 years old) and Zarina (9 years old) Ibragimov
Live at: Staroprumyslovski rayon,Zhigilyovskaya 12, Grozny
The history of these three children is not clear. No one knows exactly what happened to them and to their closest relatives during the war. Everything here is conjecture.
The girls’ ideas about their parent’s death is also confused. Ghabrail is too small to remember it. It is possible that he is a cousin rather than their brother. All three live under terrible conditions in a bombed out apartment building that is empty except for one other family.
Markha, a twenty two year old girl who says she is Zalina and Zarina’s sister, looks after the kids. However, Markha is rarely home, and when she is, she is never sober or alone.
The ceiling in the room where the children sleep is likely to fall down soon; the roof and the apartment above theirs are missing. Zalina and Zarina say that they remember their parents. Both say that their mother and father were shot along with other people when the Russian army took over Grozny. Their parents were hiding in a cellar of a building in the Staropromyslovskiy district...
Ghabrail’s mother was killed too. His older brother brought him to Zalina and Zarina not long after their parent’s death. He said that somebody had stabbed his mother with a knife and that she was lying in a pool of blood back at her apartment. Markha, Zalina and Zarina rushed to the apartment. They buried her.
Ghabrail stayed with the girls and his older brother went away. Ghabrail’s father disappeared too and no one knows where he is.
Zalina and Zarina are very calm girls despite their experiences. Ghabrail is a normally developed boy but he suffers from chronic bronchitis. He has a terrible cough that tortures him all the time.
Zarina and her sister like school, they like painting and drawing. Neither of them likes Sundays, ”because our school is closed”.
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