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

There is no other course for the Empire and us. We know each other too well to stay together. Our people know the true meaning and value of all the ideals proclaimed by the Empire: ‘democracy’ and ‘equality of nations’, while the Empire understands the depth of our people’s loyalty and obedience. And that mutual knowledge ruins any chance of us staying together as one country. Only by bleeding and crushing us can they keep us within the boundaries of the Empire. Even those Chechens who serve Russia faithfully would rise up against her at the drop of a hat if they believed victory would be theirs. They are loyal not from love, but from a lust for money and power. And some of them out of fear too, of course. But all hate the Empire. No, they don’t hate the Russian people, who suffer at the hands of the Empire no less than the rest. Just the Empire itself and its ambitions. And in this hatred lies the spectre of the Empire’s defeat.

My life now does not compare with the stormy adventures and risks of my past. Here I can plan my time as much as a week or – amazing! – a month in advance. Back then I could not be sure what would happen even an hour ahead. Here people feel confidence in the future. They even feel confidence in life. Their safety is granted and guaranteed by the state; that’s the true role of the state. I know here nobody will come for me in the night and I won’t disappear without trace. Nobody will discriminate against me on any grounds. Nobody thinks I’m a potential murderer or terrorist just because my small homeland was attacked by an empire and we had to defend ourselves. And here nobody shows me any condescending, mawkish pity. I am one of the many free people who live in this wonderful country. Any person of any colour can live in and travel around whatever part of the country they like.

Yet my entire present life – and future life – is set against the backdrop of my past. My memories refuse to follow the rules of chronology. All I can do is receive them in the order in which they are revealed. When I come here to the rocks, to the deserted shore, I begin long conversations with myself, with my memories and the ghosts of those who fell undefeated. What is missing here is that love of life, that desperate joy from the sensation of life that I once had there. I am learning how to smile again. How to smile just like that, without any particular reason. I’m getting used to living in a world where the air isn’t poisoned by danger. I realize that I’ll never truly come out into the world, but I’ll try. I am fated to long, endless conversations with the ghosts of my memories. And these ghosts will only die when I die. Unlike the characters in so many films and books, I don’t want to forget the past. For there is nothing degrading in it, and it deserves to be remembered. This is not only my past: it is also the past of those who will never be able to talk about it or return to it in their memories. Their pains and hopes are reflected in me as in a mirror. Since it was my lot to survive, I have a duty to remember the past of those who burned in the nation’s sacrificial fire. And not just to remember, but to tell their story as best I can. That’s what I have tried to do in this chronologically messy, stylistically imperfect but true and honest account. I have tried to recount the war without recounting the fighting. To describe the transformation that a man undergoes in such an inhuman situation. My experience has convinced me that in war there are no heroes in the clichéd sense. In war a man becomes the person he truly is. War, this hell incarnate, mercilessly reveals the essence of each person who finds himself there. That is why war is terrible and wonderful at the same time. It is only there that you can see with your own eyes the depths of man’s fall and the heights of his nobility both at once. War is the concentration of all man’s animal passions and all his noble yearnings. Those who dream of being a hero don’t last long in a real war. Heroes are created merely for the parades. And this flawed story is not about heroic war, or high-flown war, but real war. War seen through the eyes of an ordinary civilian. It is a fragment from my never-ending conversations with the ghosts of my memories.

I wish to express my special gratitude to the following people: Kjell Olaf Jensen, Moris Farhi, Ros Schwartz, Apti Bisultanov, Eliza Musaeva, Aage Borchgrevink, Ekaterina Sokirianskaya, Arve Solbakken, Terje Hellesen, Britt Vårvik, Gry Elise Albrektsen, Alexander Gunin, and I’d particularly like to thank my talented translator Anna Gunin and publisher Philip Gwyn Jones.

I thank you with all my heart!

MIKAIL ELDIN worked as a journalist before taking up arms in the conflict with Russia. He eventually left Chechnya in fear for his life and secured political asylum in Norway, where he now lives.

ANNA GUNIN read Russian at Bristol University. She has translated stories for anthologies, plays for the Royal Court Theatre, German Sadulaev’s novel I Am a Chechen! and film scripts by Denis Osokin and Yuri Arabov. Her translations of Pavel Bazhov’s folk tales are included in Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov (Penguin Classics).

Published by Portobello Books 2013

Portobello Books

12 Addison Avenue London

W11 4QR

Copyright © Mikail Eldin, 2013

English translation copyright © Anna Gunin, 2013

The moral right of Mikail Eldin to be identified as the author of this work and of Anna Gunin to be identified as the translator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Lines from Chechnya: A Small Victorious War , by Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal.

Copyright © 1997 by Picador. Used with permission of Macmillan Publishers.

Map on pp. viii–ix copyright © Vera Brice and Leslie Robinson, 2013

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The publication was effected under the auspices of the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation TRANSCRIPT Programme to Support Translations of Russian Literature

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Ruslan Labazanov was a colonel in the Russian security services. Following a mass breakout which he organized from a detention facility in November 1991, he infiltrated Dudayev’s entourage. Labazanov was responsible for the deaths of a considerable number of innocent civilians. He styled himself as a ‘Chechen Robin Hood’. Later he openly switched sides, joining the opposition. His armed group was defeated by Chechen government forces in the summer of 1994. Labazanov was killed by his own bodyguard in the summer of 1996.