Aluminium Queen - Part 2 Prague based NGO Gender Studies has for several years been publishing books of memories of women of various ages and generations reflecting female points of view on historical events and milestones of communist and post-communist regimes. Apart from former Yugoslavia, one of the hotspots of the post-communist era since the early 1990’s has been the conflict in the North Caucasian republic of Chechnya.
Interviews with a few women whose lives have been drastically marked by war were recorded within several months of 2000 by Czech journalist Petra Procházková, who was staying in the Chechen capital on a short but very intensive work assignment. Petra later decided to quit her journalist career and turn to helping those who stayed in the ruins of the bombed-out capital.
The decision to collect interviews with six Chechen women into a book is an attempt to spread information through personal encounters with the victims of the war.
With the consent of the author and the editor, Prague Watchdog is republishing one of the interviews from the prepared book, which will be published in Czech and English this year. The interview with the “Aluminium Queen” is divided into two parts.
ALUMINIUM QUEEN
(Elza Duguyeva)
Part 2
(Click here to read Part 1).
You have been through physical suffering, fear, cold, you’ve lost all your property and the desire to have any more children, how else has the war changed your life?
I’ve aged twenty years. I used to be pretty, now I’ve turned into a monster. My sight is poor and I can’t remember anything. I was fit as a fiddle and now I just whinge and lick my wounds. We all have breathing problems. All around us oil wells are burning and I can feel my lungs filling up with tar. I’ve lost a cosy flat and any chance of having a happy family again. We live in a flat of one of my husband’s friends. We have nothing left of our own.
Even though this flat belongs to someone else and in Europe it would be hard really to call it a flat, you apparently try to make it cosy. If you had enough money, if somebody gave you the money and said: “You can only use it to buy something for your flat." - what is the first thing you’d buy? Curtains. Even though the wallpaper is hanging off all the walls and in the kitchen the ceiling is giving way, even though it’s impossible to keep this place clean, because I find it dreadfully exhausting to drag buckets of water up to the fifth floor, and even though there’s a hole in the wall big enough for a fairly large elephant to pass through – which we’ve patched with a bit of tin – I’d put up curtains. They’re the most important thing in a flat. They totally change the atmosphere. Except that the money for the aluminium isn’t even enough to buy bread, let alone curtains.
What is it like, a day collecting aluminium?
I get up at five-thirty. It’s still dark. I try to rustle up some breakfast if there’s a scrap of flour left. I heat water, do some washing, tidy up. Then I wake the children and dress them. The curfew ends at eight in the morning. At ten to eight, my elder son and I are ready to leave. We have the bottom half of an old cart and ropes in order to take as much scrap as possible. At eight o’clock we set out. All day long we rummage in trash heaps and ruins and crawl through bombed houses. We have already combed the immediate neighbourhood and thus we have to walk long. Around four o’clock we are already making our way home so as to get through all the Russian roadblocks. When the light is starting to fade it’s dangerous: they can shoot without warning. I expect they’re just as frightened as I am, so they’d sooner shoot me than take the risk that I might be a kamikaze guerrilla. I spend the whole day plodding through ruins and even though I no longer resemble a human being I crawl back happy at the thought I’ve brought home a couple of pans and a cooking pot with a hole.
And when you get home?
I still have to go and get water...
You say your husband spends the day meditating?
I suppose so. Our husbands aren’t allowed to go for water. It’s degrading. Since time immemorial it’s been strictly a woman’s job.
You fetch water and feed your children and husband? Exactly. Then we sort through the day’s finds by candle light. I gouge the plastic parts out of the pans. They wouldn’t take them from me otherwise.
Whom do you sell the metal to? There are middle men here who make big profits out of transporting the stuff to collection centres in Russia. Previously I sold it to Russian soldiers, who were only interested in aluminium. They didn’t want any other non-ferrous metals. I know that it is all taken out of the country. For a pittance. And fools that we are, we took apart an enormous oil refinery and exchanged it for bread. I’m ashamed of the fact that even the scrap that remained in this republic is being sold by us to foreigners for a few pennies. But we have to eat something. For a kilo of iron I get six roubles and that’s a loaf of bread. For that I slog for a whole day, along with both boys. I even take the older girl with me. My elder son doesn’t attend school because of that.
When we first met, it was cold and you and the children were in summer clothes. How do you survive the winter?
As soon as the first snow falls it’s almost impossible to find any iron. During the summer I collected just enough aluminium to by one jacket for the two boys. They share it and take turns to go outside. For the one it’s too big and for the other it’s too small. So far the girls have nothing, and the same goes for my husband and me. On the odd occasion my neighbour lends us an old sweater. All our things went up in flames in the old flat. We didn’t even find anything in the ruins underneath the concrete panels. Maybe some of it was saved but there are hundreds of women like me roaming the city. In the same way that I find things in the ruins that I can make use of or get a few pennies for, it could well be that someone found something they could use in “my” ruins. And by now some other ragamuffin has my things at home.
Women trudge through the ruins, dragging their children with them while the husbands sit meditating? Or did the rest take machine guns and go off to the mountains to play guerrilla? Most of the husbands sit at home. I’m also frightened to let mine out into the street on his own. When he has no choice but to go, I prefer to accompany him. I protect him, not him me. My husband is tall and well-built, which is the type that has most to fear from the Russians. They could pick him up at any moment without any reason and I wouldn’t see him again, or he’d come back crippled. It’s better for him to stay at home.
Doesn’t he find it embarrassing to sit at home while his wife is out running between mines searching for aluminium so that he can eat? He finds it terribly degrading and he’s more and more desperate. No one in your country can imagine what a Chechen feels like having a woman feed him. There is no greater humiliation. It has never happened here before. My husband and I have lived together for 13 years and for the first time we scarcely exchange a word. He lies there for days on end with eyes open, and says nothing. He was never one to lie down during the day, even for a moment. He made sure the family had everything we needed and he took a pride in doing so. Admittedly our husbands never display affection in public or hold hands with us, but they worship the ground we walk on. Their main aim in life is to make sure their wife and children have plenty. They don’t even have to sleep with their wives or chat with them. They don’t even have to show their faces at home, but they always make sure the family has money. Rather, that is the way it used to be till recently. The war turned everything upside down. In the past if you couldn’t feed your family you weren’t considered a man. That’s why many women here didn’t have jobs. The husband wouldn’t allow it. He’d consider it a disgrace.
Could you always totally rely on your husband? Previously, yes. Not now. He’s more distraught than I am. There are suddenly lots of abandoned women in Chechnya. Many men have abandoned their families. I know women with nine children who have been deserted by their husbands. This is something new in your country. Aren’t you afraid too that your husband will get fed up with sitting at home all the time and will simply run away one day?
These days husbands desert their families much more often than in the past. I don’t blame them. I feel more sorry for them than anything else. It could be that they can’t face being confronted with their own helplessness and if they can’t help their families they prefer not to be around. Between you and me, it’s easier to feed nine children than nine children and a grown-up man who also gets on your nerves. He can’t feed you or protect you from bullets. I think my husband is struggling with those emotions too.
When humanitarian aid is being distributed women often come up and say: “Give us something for our neighbour. He’s too embarrassed to stand in line…” Don’t you find it unjust that you, as a woman, are not ashamed to beg for humanitarian assistance while your husband is prepared to desert his family on account of his own pride?
No. I’d cease to have respect for my husband if he were to line up with women.
I think that although women are generally regarded as the weaker sex, here in Chechnya they have proved themselves to have greater psychological and even physical stamina and strength than men…
They do. Our men have lost what they consider the most important thing in life – their own dignity, which in our country is to certain extent interconnected with their ability to ensure one’s family’s material security. They’ve been deprived of money and the opportunity to earn it. There’s nothing worse for a Chechen man than to be poor or to do humiliating work to earn money. And for women, what counts most of all are their children. They are prepared to do anything to protect them. Even to humiliate themselves. A man always thinks of himself first and then about others. And now our heads of families have realised that they are dependent on those they always used to lord it over. This is worse than a military defeat. It pains my husband, for instance, to see my hands ruined from the aluminium. In the past women here in Chechnya used to work but they never did dirty jobs. The Russian women specialised in that. Now we’re all in the same boat. We and the Russian women dig trenches.
You say that it’s not so dangerous for a woman to move around a city full of Russian soldiers, but what about good-looking young women? I know what you are getting at, but that’s something we don’t talk about here. Only a handful of cases received publicity, the rest were hushed up. There are cases of girls going out and not coming home. A lot of our young women are in prisons all over Russia. If they come home, they’d be better off shooting themselves. If anyone laid a hand on them they’d be written off for good here in Chechnya. It’s a kind of law. A sullied daughter is worse than a dead one to her father. It’s a terrible disgrace. She’ll never get married and no one will say a kind word to her, even though it’s not her own fault she was dishonoured. So you see the war has dishonoured us too, not just our menfolk. But we don’t go on about it the way they do.
Did you ever beg? Is this a taboo for you? Would you rather die of hunger than stand in the street with your hand out? I could never stand and beg in Grozny even if it meant my children dying of hunger. That’s something only Russian women can allow themselves to do. But when we were refugees in Dagestan, I used to go secretly from house to house, without my husband knowing, and ask for food. Never in my dreams did it ever occur to me that one day I would have to knock on someone’s door and ask for ordinary water.
You say you led a normal life until the war broke out. Do you think “normal times” will ever return? I think I’ll still be a collector of aluminium when I die. Maybe my children will live to see something normal. So that they don’t think it’s a holiday when they have macaroni. They are growing thin before my eyes. Most of all I’d love to take them to the real seaside. At present the possibility of assuring them even a slightly decent future is beyond my wildest dreams.
Apart from the real seaside, what’s the most important thing for them now? I expect you think I’ll say warmth and full stomachs. That too, of course, but what I’d really like is for them to have at least an average education. So that they can have their own little corner to feel good in.
And what about you? After all, your life isn’t over yet.
No, it isn’t, but I’m aware that I’ve reached a new stage in my life and there is no turning the clock back. I used to enjoy wearing fashionable clothes, now I literally put on old rags just to keep from freezing. Now the most primitive things are what matters to me. Building a home of some kind, fixing it up, finding work for my husband and myself and getting paid for it. Watching my children study, taking them to the theatre the way I used to go when I was small. That’s what happiness means for me.
Do you mean you still think about your children learning to read and write at a time when you are suffering from hunger? You’d be surprised. I agonise over the fact that they can’t go to school. It’s very important for me how they’ll study. Proper education will help them find a place in this world. Before the war my elder son was doing well at English and Arabic. I know it matters more to him than a warm winter jacket.
When the whole family comes together in the evening, do you chat, do you tell the children stories? What do you do, in fact, when there’s no electricity, water...
Nothing. We listen to the bombing. The children creep into bed, I cook something by candlelight and my husband says nothing. The only “intimate” conversation with my husband tends to be on the theme: when will I get round to patching his ragged underwear?
Is there any chance at all that warmth and a full stomach will become something taken for granted in Chechnya?
That’s not up to me to answer. There are only two things I think about now: food and Russian soldiers. I worry about them hitting our house. As soon as it gets dark they start firing every kind of weapon like mad. I sit here with the children like rabbits in a burrow, hoping it won’t fall in on our heads. I say to myself selfishly: “Let them hit anyone in this damned city, just as long as it’s not me or my children. Then I’m ashamed. I’m terribly frightened and yet I’m ashamed of it. I imagine my girl friends sitting in the ruins with their children, just like me. We’re a herd of terrified rabbits, a couple of which cop it every day. Only a few people like me have stayed in the city. Either they haven’t any other possibility of leaving or they’ve decided to put up with it just so they can be at home and not abroad. Some have stayed because their ageing parents refuse to leave the city; they haven’t the strength to run away and want to die at home. My parents are dead but my brother, my sister and my old grandmother live in Grozny. I don’t want to leave them either.
How much longer can this strange state of “neither peace nor war” last?
If our people and the Russian government are going to go on squabbling like they have done so far, we simple mortals will go on suffering. Those fat, bald men sitting in their ministerial and presidential offices are full of complexes and making heaps of money on the war and all they know of the actual bombing is what they see on the TV screen. It’s a war about money, we all know that. Even our Chechen bigwigs are mixed up in it. During the first war I still supported our men because most of them really went to the front with some romantic notions about freedom and independence. Now I don’t believe either side. They sacrificed us, the ordinary people, to line their own pockets or they went around shooting like street urchins and playing at real war. Let them die if they like but they have no right to force people like me to do heroic deeds. I don’t want to be a hero. I want to die of influenza in an old age instead of copping a bullet in my head now.
Did this long drawn-out war have an effect on the morals, ideals and traditions of the Chechens?
We’re quickly turning into a backward and uneducated nation, without the chance of any progress and most importantly, without any joy or sense of humour. I’m uneducated too. But not long ago I found a book in the ruins about how Stalin sent all of us, the Chechens and Ingushes, into exile in 1944. It’s interesting how, even though it was the end of World War II, we Caucasians were very well off. We were a fairly developed society and our standard of living was quite high compared with the Russia of those days. If the Russians hadn’t launched some dreadful campaign against us every 50 years, wiping out part of the nation, we’d have been a second Switzerland by now.
In 1944, all Chechens were cruelly deported. They lost all their property and some of them were carted off in railway trucks to Kazakhstan just in their underwear. In spite of that you soon became the dominant minority in the Kazakh steppes and had a better living standard than the native population, sometimes even at their expense...
We really do have some special ability to survive in almost any situation. We also manage to cope better than those who theoretically have more opportunities. It is said that a Chechen can build a house from a single stone. I think that the main thing is our community spirit. If a Chechen meets another Chechen anywhere in the world they will help each other as if they were brothers from the same family. Apparently that is what it was like in Kazakhstan. When the Chechen were allowed to return home in 1957, they were left empty-handed once more. They found none of their former property, of course. Russians had made themselves at home in our houses. Even though we started again from scratch, before long we reached far better living standards than them. The Russians here used to do the dirty jobs and often they were literally our servants, and we proudly started to build enormous houses. They always used to live in grubby little dwellings with dirty backyards or in tiny flats with smelly bathrooms. Although they regard us as an inferior people, we build castles. I find it strange too.
It seems as if someone was always cutting the ground from under the Chechens’ feet and yet they overcome every obstacle and have resisted all oppression. Aren’t these actually excuses in a way? Don’t you bear some of the blame for the recent conflicts with the Russians? I wouldn’t say it was our fault we were resettled. And it wasn’t us who unleashed the last war either. First Stalin repressed us and in the end it was Yeltsin… Our ancestors used to say that the Chechens would face some catastrophe every fifty years. Now that gap is getting even narrower. After the first war that ended in 1996 we were starting to find our ground again. Lots of people had repaired their houses or flats. And then we got another knock-out blow. They didn’t give us fifty years to get over it but struck again three years later. So it doesn’t look like we’re fated to become a Switzerland.
Have you ever been to Switzerland? No, and I never will get to see Europe. But I’ve read a lot about it in the recent period. When we were refugees in Dagestan I had plenty of free time. I read every book on the bookshelves there. I found out a lot of things about the world and about ourselves too.
Is it a blessing or a curse to be born a Chechen? I’m naturally proud. But nowadays it can actually be a curse to have Chechen nationality marked in your passport. Just try to travel from Dagestan to Grozny with Chechen documents. At every Russian checkpoint – and there are scores of them on the road – they look in your passport. If it says you’re Russian or even Chukchi you’ll pass with no problem. But if you’re a Chechen you can expect humiliation, insults and rough treatment. They say it’s the same in Moscow and all over Russia. Why doesn’t a Chechen have the same rights as a Russian if they all claim we live in a single state?
Do you bear a grudge against anyone in particular for what has happened to you and your family? Is there some person to blame, or is it an unhappy conjunction of circumstances and accidents? There is definitely someone responsible for it all. I don’t expect it’s one person, but there are various groups. Definitely people in the upper circles are to blame, in Moscow, in Grozny and around the world. Because everyone recklessly continues to trade with Russia and gives her millions in loans even though they know many crimes have been committed. I would never visit my neighbour if I knew she beat her children.
Would you like to leave Chechnya for good and settle abroad somewhere? It would never have come into my head before but now it occurs to me more and more often. I expect by now I wouldn’t give a damn if I didn’t live in Chechnya but thousands of kilometres from here. The main thing is that there should be no war there. Lots of rich Chechens have left for Germany, Holland or elsewhere. I envy them.
And what about homesickness?
I expect I’d be homesick. But I’d get over it if I knew my children were safe. I’d take any dirty jobs as long as I received regular salary and the children could attend a decent school. So I knew they’d come home healthy, that no one would pick up my husband without reason and shut him up in a concentration camp, so I could walk on the street after dusk. That is what I call freedom. You’re not free here?
Is a snared animal free? My only wish every evening is that I should live to see the morning. All night, grenades and bullets fly over my head. Then in the morning I wish with all my might that I might stay alive until the evening. When I know I can live through every night in peace I will feel free. This is no life – it’s a dog’s life.
But after all, the main military operations in Grozny are over. Do you still feel your life is directly at risk?
Yes. I sense danger at every step. I expect I’m nervy by now too. But I know this war hasn’t by far finished yet. The remaining guerrilla units are supposed to be paralysed and some of them have fled abroad. The population is tired and so are the troops...
Even if they agreed in Moscow that this was enough for now, people here wouldn’t forgive them just like that. Many men have gone missing; they are unburied and unavenged. You Europeans mustn’t forget that the law of the blood feud applies in the Caucasus. According to tradition, every man who lost someone in the war should become an avenger and go on seeking the culprit of his relative’s death and kill him. Vengeance is also inherited by his children. In this way vengeance becomes an unending process. Of course if one of your relatives dies in an air raid it is hard to distinguish which pilot dropped the bomb. And to take vengeance on the entire air force is a nonsense. So you spend your life repressing the hatred within yourself.
So the constant bomb attacks on Russian military convoys and checkpoints can also be revenge for lost relatives? Yes. And sometimes the Russians do it to each other. Either they get drunk or someone makes a mistake. The only way to put an end to it is for the troops to leave.
Do you feel like taking revenge on someone?
Yes. Not a long ago my son and I survived an explosion. In October 2000, we were creeping through some bombed flats on a look-out for scrap. From experience I know that something usually survives under the cooking stove. The stove is heavy and even when it is ruined and burnt out it protects the things under it, such as baking sheets, baking tins, etc. We went into the kitchen of the flat. It was in ruins but the cooking stove still stood in its place. I could see something reminding cake tins under it. Then all of a sudden my son yelled: “Mum, there’s a hand grenade lying there.” First of all I didn’t take any notice since I was so pleased with my discovery. And anyway I don’t know anything about weapons. And the boy shouted: “If you touch it, we’ll blow up!” I was terrified but I wanted to pull out those cake tins quickly and run. I bumped into the hand-grenade, of course. It was primed to go off. All you needed to do was touch it; someone had prepared it very cunningly. It was a nasty little green perisher. As soon as I touched it there was a strange sound. A sort of click. My son roared: “It’s going off! Run!” In the corner of my eye I could see him running away. I just managed to leap out and throw myself down behind a half-ruined wall. Then all I remember is a terrible explosion and black smoke. Then silence. I couldn’t hear anything. I expect it deafened me for a moment. Before I could collect my wits, a Russian helicopter came flying our way. It occurred to me that it would now start to fire at us. At that moment I would have happily cut the head off to the person who placed that grenade there.
But you escaped, otherwise we wouldn’t be talking together now. At that moment did you think more about yourself or your son? I don’t know. It wasn’t clear either way. Of course a mother also fears for her own life, not just her child’s. But I remember precisely the sense of relief I felt when I saw my child running away. I knew he stood a chance of surviving. And at that very moment I started to think about myself. Something similar had already happened to me during the first war in 1995. I was in a bus going along Lenin Avenue and a Russian APC suddenly appeared near the school No. 18. I can still remember its registration number – 650. I almost lost my son that time too. It drove into us and crushed half of the bus even though it could have easily avoid it – the street was completely empty. It deliberately rammed us. The moment it happened, two things occurred to me at the same instant. To put my arms around my son and protect him with my body or to put my head down between my knees and protect myself. At the end I grabbed my son and held his head in my lap. Nothing happened to us.
You keep saying “Russians” and “Russia” and not in a very friendly way. Do you hate the Russian army and the Russians as a nation? I hate the people who came here to kill us. And most of them are of Russian nationality. Even though there are plenty of normal guys among them who are even sorry for us. Sometimes I am amazed at the way Russian soldiers behave towards me. Not long ago one of them came and helped me with the hand cart when I was unable to drag it across a bomb crater. I know lots of Russians who lived with us in Chechnya before the war and have still stayed here. Many of them are my friends. But I regard a Russian in a uniform as first and foremost an enemy, a beast with a human face. No one else would be capable of arming himself to the teeth and attacking people who don’t even have a penknife in their pockets. Our people are frightened to carry even a can-opener in their pockets in case they get in trouble for that. So we’re totally unarmed.
But the partisans aren’t unarmed…
So let them fight them. But they take it out on us because they still can’t catch them.
Do you believe in God? Yes. All my children have sacred names. We chose them according to the holy scriptures. We all believe in God.
Why did he send down on you such misery and suffering if, as you say, you did nothing very terrible apart from a few minor sins? God doesn’t want to force people to take the right way. There are many people with dark souls, who do evil. We suffer on account of those people, not because of God. So God does not have the power or will to save you and punish those with dark souls?
We cannot say that God doesn’t have enough power, because his power is immeasurable. He simply made the world that way. He created people of every kind. He made free people and they have to pay for that freedom somehow, such as by not all being ideal. God doesn’t want to interfere in everything. He probably says: “Well, you foolish people, you’d better sort it out among yourselves.” He knows that one bad sheep will spoil a whole flock. The same applies to the human race. A couple of individuals can make life hell for others. God knows this, but he doesn’t want to control us like robots. He gave us reason so we could decide for ourselves and deal with the bad individuals. When we don’t manage to, we have to suffer.
So you don’t find it unjust that for the past ten years you have lived in poverty and fear just because God created people with dark souls? It seems terribly unjust to me but I don’t blame it on God. After all, you can’t be angry with your mother because your brother is a stinker. You have to sort it out with your brother, not with your mother. It is not God but we and we alone who are to blame for our misfortunes. Maybe I also failed to do something I could have done to prevent myself and my children from suffering like this. God is now making it plain to us that we oughtn’t to be indifferent to others’ misfortunes, that we must be meek and not cruel.
Has the war helped people realise this? Are they meeker now? Has violence turned wolves into lambs?
On the contrary. Something terrible has happened to people. Even my friends have changed. I expect I have changed too. We’re not like we were before the war.
What are you like? We think about ourselves and no one else. Me too. The main thing for me is that nothing should happen to me or my children. When something bad happens to my neighbour I don’t turn a hair. Maybe somewhere deep inside me I might even rejoice. That the grenade fell into his window, because if it hadn’t been him it might have been me. Besides that, a neighbour’s misfortune could mean that we might be able to retrieve something from his bombed home. This is animal-like thinking. Your neighbour dies and without shedding a single tear you start to wonder whether he left behind the blanket he was still keeping himself warm with the previous day.
And doesn’t Allah punish you for that sort of selfishness?
I fight it. In spite of all our misfortunes I tell myself that Allah loves me. Because he sent me this flat of our friend, because we found a couple of blankets and mattresses and none of my children have died. They have not even been wounded. I’ve always told myself that worse than my child dying would be if her or she lost an arm or leg through shrapnel and remained a cripple. God has spared me that. Allah is good.
The end of the excerpt from the prepared book.
Translated by Gender Studies.
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