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  • Light and Dark in the Pankisi Gorge

    Transitions Online, Czech Republic
    Aug 5 2004

    Light and Dark in the Pankisi Gorge

    by Elvira Goryukhina


    The classroom is the only psychological haven where one person helps
    another to leave war behind, a Russian psychologist finds on a visit
    to Chechen schools in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge.

    Editor's note: This article is a short extract from an account by a
    Russian educational psychologist of a visit to the Pankisi Gorge in
    Georgia, home to several thousand Chechen refugees. Since its
    publication in mid-2003 in the human rights publication
    Pravozashchitnik, some things have changed. President Eduard
    Shevardnadze of Georgia has been removed and his successor, Mikheil
    Saakashvili, has been exerting greater pressure on the Chechen
    community. Russia is seeking the return of all refugees to Chechnya,
    arguing that the republic is now safe to return to. Many refugees
    have left the Pankisi Gorge, heading elsewhere but not north, into
    Chechnya. The experiences captured by Elvira Goryukhina, a professor
    of psychology at Novosibirsk Pedagogical University, will not have
    changed.

    For the past three years, schools in three villages in the Pankisi
    Gorge-Duisi, Omalo and Jokolo-have, as Georgian law requires,
    provided schooling in Russian as well as Georgian. For three years
    these schools in what is known as the Russian sector have been
    issuing school-leaving certificates enabling refugees to enter
    universities. In those three years, the teachers have not received a
    single kopeck.

    Who works in the Russian sector? Chechen refugees. Teachers who share
    a life of exile with their pupils.

    I have visited many schools in places of rubble and ash: Samashki,
    Grozny, Achkho-Martan, Orekhovo, [all of which are in Chechnya]
    Shusha, Mardakert, Stepanakert, Karintag [in Nagorno-Karabakh]... And
    there is one thing I know for sure: the classroom is the one area in
    our world where no one would let a child be broken. It is the only
    psychological haven where the world continues to function according
    to natural laws, where one person helps another to leave war behind.
    To return to life.

    I once asked Suren Nalbandyan from a school in Shusha, in
    Nagorno-Karabakh, how he could teach tangents and cotangents when he
    knew the burden of experience on the children's shoulders.

    `I beguile them,' Suren answered without a second's thought. `A
    teacher has no other option.'

    I entered the secondary school in Duisi relying on my experiences of
    establishing contact with teachers in other conflict areas. I thought
    I could trust those experiences. Reality proved otherwise.

    Very slowly, one by one, they filed into the teachers room, glancing
    mistrustfully toward us, fresh arrivals from Moscow. Beside me stood
    the deputy director of the Russian sector, Tuta Jabrailovna. A
    physicist. A blue-eyed beauty. It seemed as if tears were waiting to
    roll. No, she was not crying; it just seemed the tears would not go
    away. A sense of unspilled tears: that, it seemed, united all these
    teachers. It was the first time I had seen such a thing in my life.
    They had not been killed, but their wings had been clipped. They were
    caged-bird teachers. How can one enter a classroom in such a state?

    What made them different from other teachers, from teachers such as
    those in ransacked Samashki [in Chechnya]? The answer did not occur
    to me immediately: those teachers were at home, in their own country,
    near their ruined homes. One's native environment offers protection
    simply by being there.

    These teachers were exiles, in a strange land, away from home.

    There is something ambiguous in the very name, `the Russian sector.'
    The parents had not, I heard, initially wanted to send their children
    here. They preferred them to be taught in Georgian. But then they
    changed their minds. Every subject here is now in Russian.

    Madina Aldamova from Starye Atagy, a mother of three, teaches a
    third-form class with 22 refugees. Of the 17 boys, five are named
    Mohammed.

    Madina is a mover, a shaker. She deals with the distribution of
    humanitarian aid. A relative of Khizri Aldamov, who represents Aslan
    Maskhadov's government in Georgia, Madina speaks for many when she
    exclaims: `Going back to Chechnya is impossible! We don't need
    anything from Russia! We're not going anywhere! Where should we go
    back to? To filtration camps? To be mopped up [a reference to Russian
    troops' `mopping-up operations' within Chechnya]? There are people
    who went back and were dispatched to the next world. And we know
    their names.'

    We mumble something about guarantees. But our words, said with
    conviction, lose their strength, become emptied of meaning, become
    nothing. Our partners in conversation have different criteria. The
    experience of false words in war zones makes it a torture for anyone
    who attempts to use words to bring change. They can puncture your
    phrases with the only weapon that cannot be disarmed-their
    experience, their burden of suffering. They peel away from words all
    approximations, all looseness of phrasing.

    The atmosphere in the teachers room is becoming tense. My
    professional experience suggests no way out of this deadlock.

    I tell them about pupils of mine who are reading Hadji-Murat by Leo
    Tolstoy.

    `I'd be interested to know how Russian children look on events here.'
    Madina, the teacher with the harshest words about Russia, has taken a
    little step toward dialogue.

    I tell them about Samashki, Grozny, Bamut, Orekhovo, Davydenko ...

    `One would think you were born in Chechnya,' says the same voice. One
    more step toward us ...

    I ask them how the children like Russian books. Again Madina takes
    the floor:

    `What does the language have to do with it? The language committed no
    crime. If I said bad words about Russia, do you really think that I
    meant you, personally? I make no claims about you as a person.'

    I seized the opportunity and asked to sit in on a lesson.

    `Tomorrow at 10 o'clock I will be waiting for you in the teachers
    room,' she said.

    And from that point on, I was dealing with a different Madina. Not a
    soapbox speaker, not a provocateur (as we had thought of her), but a
    master opening the door for us into a sanctuary-her classroom.

    Madina is waiting for us in the teachers room. We did not come to the
    school with empty hands. We give Madina our gift-a beautiful edition
    of a Chechen language textbook. She slowly leafs through the book,
    now and again stopping to linger on a particular phrase. Her
    appearance, her voice, her movements change completely. Without
    taking her eyes from the book, she says in a trembling voice the
    words for which we had come to the Gorge, for which we had cleared
    every hurdle:

    `You have already brought us back to Chechnya. ...'

    Our former iron conviction that no one would ever go back to Chechnya
    begins to melt. They could go back! They want to go back. What is
    needed is not a public relations campaign, but a support system for
    those who have become refugees.

    Just consider: one book, just one book, had suddenly transformed the
    teacher's entire state of mind. The book was passed from hand to
    hand. It reached the physicist Tuta Jabrailovna. Her ultramarine eyes
    again seem full of unspilled tears.

    The lesson. I ask the children something through their teacher.
    Madina talks to them in Russian and suddenly senses the absurdity of
    the situation: she is translating from Russian into Russian. She
    makes a gesture inviting me to the blackboard and steps aside. The
    classroom falls silent. I am the first Russian they have seen in
    three years.

    On the teacher's desk I spot an open book. Nekrasov's poems.

    In war zones, one can bear a lot. Only not this-to stand face to face
    with children who have plumbed the depths of misfortune in war.

    I will never forget my baptism as a teacher in 3-a.

    When I ask about returning to Chechnya, they answer readily and
    swiftly. `We will go back when there are no Russians left.'

    `Imagine that I live in Grozny. I'm a Russian. For you to be able to
    live in Grozny, would you need to kill me?' I ask the Mohammed
    sitting at the front desk.

    The boy falls silent, embarrassed. God, forgive me. Why does a child
    need to solve a problem like that, a question thought up by imbecilic
    grown-ups? Why?

    I cannot remember now how I found a way out. We began to read poems,
    poems we know and love. Pushkin took the victor's laurels.

    Another Mohammed takes the floor. He solemnly recites the very long
    name of The Fairytale about Tsar Saltan, His Son Gvidon etc.

    `The crescent moon is wan at night and, through the mist, pours
    silver upon the field. ...' The poem proves hard to pronounce, but a
    third Mohammed masters the difficulties.

    After that, dainty, doll-like Asya took the floor in front of the
    blackboard and recited a poem about old Babarikha [a character in
    Pushkin's fairy tale The Tale of Tsar Saltan]. It was not quite a
    poem. The poetic rhythm was interrupted by a prosaic element. It
    seemed as if Asya was retelling the fairy tale. There was a magic to
    it, though. The rhythm was different, but it was a rhythm. This
    rhythm, this intonation, so unexpected to everyone, so intoxicated
    Asya that it was impossible to interrupt her.

    In the middle of this poetic `recital,' it became clear that it had
    become a form of dialogue. And sitting behind a desk at the back my
    friend Tamara Duishvili let the tears roll; she knew what the
    children are talking about. ...

    But we talked directly as well. About the war. It all started with
    making wishes. I am pretending to be a golden fish that the children
    have netted. `So, what are your three wishes?' Dead silence. Not a
    single hand goes up. They don't know what it is-to wish for
    something. I suggest some kind of food. Some children limply mention
    Snickers. Finally the whole class settles on a collective desire-for
    a bicycle.

    Our tiresome wishing game comes to an end when Ibrahim from the third
    desk utters, `I wish there were no war.' This is where the core of
    these children's emotions is-the war. One word blocks the children's
    wishes and drags behind it a gloomy train of memories.

    They recount how they had needed to shelter from the bombers. They
    are 8 or 9 years old.

    `When they bomb, one should run to a trench,' says blond-haired
    Aminat, the smallest girl in the class. She says it as a soldier
    would, in a running rhythm. The rhythm of running to a trench.

    My throat is parched. Aminat continues in a businesslike voice:

    `Of course, it is better to run to a basement. But we had no
    basement. We dug out a trench.'

    They recount that they had flown over Shatili by helicopter.

    `Did you like that?' I ask stupidly. The class cries out in one voice
    `No!'

    They hate helicopters. They hate planes. Nobody wants to be a pilot.
    Or a soldier. Musa says he'd like to have a gun and immediately adds
    in a frightened voice:

    `A toy gun, you understand? I only want a toy gun.'

    And at this, the children break. They remember what it is to have
    wishes. The talk is all about toys. Girls talk about dolls. Boys,
    about cars.

    These are children who have not had enough time to play. Any
    psychologist would tell you that is a dangerous portent for
    adulthood.

    Through a broken window, the mountains of Georgia are visible, but
    the children are homesick for their own mountains, back in Chechnya.
    They want to go home.

    Putin's name crops up in our class.

    `Who's he?' I ask.

    `The Russian president,' Musa answers.

    `And your president is Shevardnadze now?'

    `Our president is Maskhadov [the elected president of Chechnya before
    the second Chechen war began in 1999 and now a rebel leader].'

    The bell had already rung long ago. Children from other classes kept
    bursting into the classroom. 3-a did not want to leave. I aid goodbye
    to the children in Chechen. They answered in Russian.

    Mohammed from the front desk rose to his feet. He straightened his
    back and pronounced distinctly, `Thank you for coming.'

    The intonation of the phrase came from a different life. Not from a
    life where wars are waged and children hide in trenches. It is from
    the world where the ethics of how one person treats another are
    taught in childhood.

    His words felled me.

    I would like to know how the habits and rules that make us human are
    preserved (or born) in a human being. There, in class 3-a in the
    Pankisi Gorge, I remember Josef Brodsky's words: `A life without
    standards is second-rate and not worth the labor.'

    Our lesson had begun with a phrase, `when there are no Russians.' One
    can only guess what mental labor had gone into that `Thank you!'
    Mohammed had brought us all up to the standard there ought to be.

    `Come back again! Please come back sometime!' I left the school
    accompanied by a chorus of children's voices.

    I would like to go back to 3-a. With a bicycle.

    AM NOT AFRAID!

    In the evening when a single kerosene lamp burns and a stove crackles
    in the middle of the kitchen, the children and I gather together. Our
    favorite game is a word game, a language game.

    Unlike me, the children speak three languages-Russian, Chechen, and
    Georgian. Those who came to the gorge from Chechnya a year ago speak
    Georgian fluently and willingly.

    I wondered which of three phrases the children would choose:

    So kier-I am afraid (in Chechen).

    So tsakier-I am not afraid.

    Ma kier-Don't be afraid!

    Me meshinia-I am afraid (in Georgian).

    Me ar meshinia-I am not afraid.

    Nu geshinia-Don't be afraid!

    The children immediately crossed out `I am afraid' in all languages.
    Ten-year-old Ruslan, a refugee from Grozny, makes his choice at once:
    `I am not afraid!'

    We tried out the word war, for its taste, for its color. In Chechen
    and in Kistini [the language of Chechen Georgians] it is tom. In
    Georgian it is omi. The children squeal with joy: the Georgian word
    is as short as the Chechen.

    Malika is 11. She is Ruslan's sister.

    `Our languages are alike. Only the Georgians make their sounds last.
    They probably like them. We Chechens have already pronounced a word
    and the Georgians will still be dragging it out.'

    Somewhere in the middle of the game a most banal thing occurs to me.
    My God! This is the Caucasus. Peoples of the Caucasus. Languages of
    the Caucasus. This is a family.

    Puri, bepig, korzhum mean bread in the three languages. The children
    are truly convinced that the words sound the same, and what happiness
    there is that the word father sounds in Kistini like mother in
    Georgian.

    We are not just pronouncing words. We are communicating. This is a
    special kind of a conversation I first came across in
    Nagorno-Karabakh. A language offers protection against a horror once
    experienced. It refuses to call things their proper names. But the
    necessity to share one's experience with others remains. So people
    choose the best option available: they take neutral words, give them
    a different intonation, a different rhythm-and a conversation will
    inevitably begin about one's inmost feelings, without one word about
    them being pronounced.

    Perhaps we are subconsciously sparing our psyche, perhaps the tongue,
    perhaps language resists sheer hell. Which is most important, I don't
    know. In our game even the word war is stripped of its fearsome
    meaning. We control that word.

    We devote the second evening to the proverbs and sayings of the three
    peoples. We come across a Chechen proverb: He who answers evil with
    good becomes a blood enemy.

    Is this `an eye for eye'? Even if one answers evil with good? What
    does it mean, this talk of `becomes a blood enemy'?

    We chose this proverb from a book published specially for refugees.
    The book is in three languages, Russian, Chechen, and Georgian. The
    publisher is Kavkazskii dom (House of the Caucasus). The Russian part
    of the book is the weakest. The Wahhabites [followers of the austere
    form of Islam particularly widely practiced in Saudi Arabia and only
    recently introduced in Chechnya] were unhappy with the book, because
    they found the pagan aspects of the folklore blasphemous. They had
    apparently burnt some of the books.

    The book has a foreword, written in keeping with the Chechens'
    deepest spiritual and cultural traditions. There is not one bad word
    about the country these children have had to flee as refugees. There
    are no accusations. It expresses compassion for and a sense of guilt
    toward children whose fate it is to live outside their homeland.

    `In the world created by God only a spiritual victory is a real
    victory and a spiritual defeat is a real defeat. Please forgive us
    for your fate.'

    I leaf through a textbook for the Russian sector photocopied by a
    Norwegian refugee center. I leaf through the book published by
    Kavkazskii dom, and I am filled with shame. Where have we been all
    this time? If we could not spare these children from bombings, what
    at least have we written for them?

    Malika and I are preparing a lesson in Russian literature. A strange
    selection of texts. There is barely a lighthearted page in them. How
    can one go through the desert of puberty with such a textbook? As if
    on purpose the authors selected the gloomiest pages from Bunin,
    Andreev, Kazakov, Abramov. The final sentence of the textbook reads,
    `At dawn a policeman ran into his corpse lying in the snow.'

    I wonder: What concept of childhood is it that lies at the heart of
    this textbook of literature?

    The youngest member of the family, Zarema, decides to take a serious
    step: she gives a book as a gift. I resist. The book is already in my
    bag. Zarema throws up her arms as she would in a Chechen dance and
    says solemnly:

    `I gave her a book that has all the languages in the world!'
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