Mikail Eldin - The Sky Wept Fire - My Life as a Chechen Freedom Fighter

Today one of the groups went to a nearby farm hoping to buy some animals. The watchman refused to sell them a couple of bulls and they ended up taking them by force. As the group left, they ran into some armed men who were out hunting. The men turned out to be police and FSB agents. The guerrillas proposed they hand over their weapons and leave in peace, but instead the men tried to open fire. As a result, three of them were killed and two were captured. But when it emerged that the men they’d taken prisoner were Ossetian hunting guides rather than secret-service officers, and they hadn’t tried to shoot, they were released on the spot.

As soon as the group returned with the animals, you slaughtered the two bulls but you could not cook them, for you had been discovered. You were listening in on the enemy radio channel and heard all their communications. They didn’t know the size of your group or who you were. But some modest police and army units, far too small for you to bother with, were sent out to the forest. They thought there must be a dozen of you at most. You left an ambush along their path and moved on ahead. They were about to give up and turn back when one of the fighters fell into their hands. He had not wanted to eat his chunk of meat raw, so he’d decided to grill it a little. To do this, he slipped back from the unit and began making a fire – and that’s when an enemy search team stumbled across him. Of course, there was nothing he could do and they took him. They soon got him to speak – at the first high-speed interrogation he told them everything he knew. To be fair, it was his only way to avoid an agonizing death and it would be heartless to reproach him for it. In no time they’d surrounded the forest with a huge mass of troops. Just like before, you knew how many men they’d deployed and where they were heading. To give credit where it is due, they acted with skill and professionalism. They began expertly blocking all the routes out of the forest, trying their best to cut off your route, which they had learnt of from their prisoner. But Angel would not have been Angel if he hadn’t foreseen this. Without a word, he simply adjusted the route and the unit again veered to the side. Of course, you are unlikely to find a clear path out of the sealed-off section of the forest, but the most poorly controlled sector has been identified. The enemy are zealously assisting you with the heavy use of their radios. Helicopters are circling the forest like a murder of crows on the scent of carnage – they’re disturbing you badly and so you decide to give them a fright. A shot from one of the Strela MANPADS has proved fatal for one of them. And now the others become so wary that you can continue your journey safely. You can even light campfires. They don’t dare come in close enough to fire their rockets at the smoking fires. And their artillery doesn’t work all that accurately. You come to the edge of a fairly sizeable village and stop to rest for the day. The hunger is agonizing. You eat all the old nettles growing on the bank of the brook where you’ve stopped. You’re constantly chewing on twigs. But you dispose of the chewed twigs carefully so as not to leave traces. Out of reflex. Angel calls you over. He has grown gaunt, but he’s as composed as ever.

‘Do you have any civilian clothes?’ he asks.

‘Yes. I always carry a set.’

‘And what about your passport?’

‘I’ve got it.’

‘Today we’re going to get out of the encirclement. If we can, we’ll leave without firing. If not, we’ll fight our way out.’

‘OK. My camera batteries still have plenty of life. I’ll film it.’

‘No, you won’t be filming this time.’ He half-smiles. ‘I’ve got another job for you. Today, just before we go, a group of five fighters are leaving the forest. They have a mission, which you don’t need to know about. They’re armed. You need to change into civilian clothes and leave with them.’

‘But I can’t leave when there’s going to be a breakout. How can I abandon my comrades at a time like this? Without knowing what will happen to you.’

‘You’re not leaving to save yourself. You’ll have a mission of your own. But your comrades aren’t to know that. Part of their mission is to help get you out. I’ve already spoken to them.’

‘But they can do the mission instead of me. Let me stay one more night with you. I’ll go tomorrow if you need me to.’

‘Tomorrow the group won’t be here. And in any case, we don’t know what will happen to you once you’re out. You’ve got to break out of the encirclement too, after all. And if you’re discovered, none of you will have any chance of surviving. So it’s hard to say who’s taking more of a risk. To say nothing of how important your mission is. So hand over your weapons and get changed. You can take the video camera with you but leave the cassettes and films here. Just in case you’re killed or fall into their hands.’

‘Can I at least keep the knife? It’s a gift from a friend.’

‘OK. But no other weapons.’

‘So what’s my mission?’

‘It’s to do what you do best. You’ve been with us all this time. Seen everything and been through it yourself. Your mission now is to tell our story. Not right away, of course, but you have to tell it. And it must be the truth. You can do that.’ He pauses.

How strange… Why has Angel started speaking like this to me today? For the first time in the many years we’ve known each other, and in all the time I’ve spent in the war and with his people.

Angel breaks your chain of thought: ‘But the main thing is you must meet a certain person – and this is very important – someone you know quite well, and pass on a message from me. You must make sure no one else hears what you tell him. You’re the only person here who knows him. So you can safely meet him and talk with him. He’s waiting to hear from me so it’s important. And you must not, under any circumstances, ever mention this to anyone.’

‘OK. And how will I find you afterwards?’

‘We’ll get in contact. Soon. Do you have a reliable channel we can communicate through?’

‘Yes. I’ll give you a phone number. You can call this number any time of day or night, and when you hear “hello”, say a phrase which we’ll agree on now, then hang up. It’ll take half an hour at most for me to get your message. Let’s say that two hours from your call a contact will wait for me at some place which we’ll decide on now. We can pick a number of places just in case. The contact will repeat the phrase that was used on the phone. It should be someone I know by sight.’

‘All right.’ He smiles. ‘You choose the places and tell me the phrase for me to memorize. We’ll do it that way. I knew I could rely on you to come up with something good. We don’t know what we’ll be facing next, so I can’t even give you a rough idea of when we’ll make contact. But I promise we’ll get in touch. Just go about your business and wait for us. You need to get ready now.’

You join the group which is preparing to leave. It hasn’t occurred to you that you are seeing Angel for the last time. You’re not familiar with this village and you don’t know anyone in it. Everyone else in the group has friends or relatives here. You watch the movements of the enemy soldiers from your hiding place on the edge of the forest and wait for dusk. On the outskirts of the village lives a friend of one of the men and your goal is to reach his house. Leading up to the village is an open field with mown grass which you need to cross. Ahead of you, where the field meets the road, there are enemy armoured vehicles and checkpoints. You will have to pass between them. This is the only option that offers some small hope of success. At nightfall, you run out of the forest and make a headlong dash straight for the enemy vehicles. When you get five or six metres from the vehicles, you fall to the ground and freeze. The soldiers are listening to pop music on a stereo in one of the armoured personnel carriers and they don’t notice you. They don’t have any night vision goggles. Your main advantage is that they aren’t expecting you to get so close. They cannot imagine such audacity, and this plays to your advantage. You cannot run any further – they’d be sure to see you. All you can do is crawl. On your stomachs. So that’s what you’re doing. You’re crawling and crawling. Sometimes you switch to lizard crawls. You crawl for a kilometre and a half, hidden by the neat rows of freshly mown grass. You crawl right past the enemy and you’re out of the ring. Coming through the back gardens, we approach the house and one of you goes into it. Soon he returns with the owner. The first thing his wife does is bring out food. It feels a little strange to be eating normal human food, but you manage to polish off a big pan of rice. Then your comrades hide their weapons and change into civilian clothes. You go to stay the night with the relatives of one of the men. Tomorrow you need to travel on. If all goes well…