Masha Gessen: The Brothers

The pain inflicted by the Boston Marathon bombing was one of the few aspects of that act of terror that were immediately evident and certain. Such is the nature of the crime that hundreds of individuals and families will suffer loss and trauma for many years to come. This book, however, is not about that pain. It is about something that, whatever evidence is unearthed, will never be entirely certain: it is about the tragedy that preceded the bombing, the reasons that led to it, and its invisible victims.

THE TSARNAEV FAMILY

The Brothers: Tamerlan, wife Karima (formerly Katherine Russell), daughter Zahira; and Dzhokhar (later Jahar)

Parents: Anzor and Zubeidat

Paternal grandparents: Zayndy and Liza

Paternal uncles, aunts, and cousins: Ayndy; Malkan and son Husein; Maret; Alvi, wife Zhanar, children Aindy and Luiza; Ruslan, first wife Samantha Fuller, father-in-law Graham Fuller

Sisters: Bella, husband Rizvan, son Ramzan; Ailina, husband Elmirza, son Ziaudy

Cousin: Jamal Tsarnaev

KYRGYZSTAN

Friends and neighbors: Semyon and Alladin Abaev, Anzor’s closest friends; Badrudi and Zina Tsokaev, neighbors and advisors; Alaudin and Aziz Batukaev, organized-crime bosses; Raisa Batukaeva, next-door neighbor and unofficial Chechen community leader; Ruslan Zakriev, owner of amusement park and official leader of Chechen community; Yakha Tsokaeva and Madina, friends in Bishkek, the capital

School personnel: Lubov Shulzhenko, Tamerlan’s principal; Natalya Kurochkina, Tamerlan’s grade-school teacher

DAGESTAN

Gasan Gasanaliyev, imam of Makhachkala’s Kotrov Street mosque

Magomed Kartashov, Tamerlan’s second cousin, head of Union of the Just

Mohammed Gadzhiev, Kartashov’s deputy

Kheda Saratova, human rights advocate

BOSTON AREA

Other Chechen immigrant families: Khassan Baiev (sambo champion, plastic surgeon, author), wife Zara Tokaeva, children Islam and Maryam; Makhmud (Max) Mazaev (owner of an elder-care center), wife Anna, son Baudy (Boston University student); Hamzat Umarov, wife Raisa

Joanna Herlihy, the Tsarnaevs’ landlady

Nadine Ascencao, Tamerlan’s girlfriend

Brendan Mess, Tamerlan’s best friend, murdered in 2011 along with Erik Weissman and Raphael Teken

Donald Larking, home-care client of Zubeidat and later Karima

Norfolk Street neighbors: Rinat Harel, Chris LaRoche

At Cambridge Rindge and Latin: Larry Aaronson, retired history teacher and photographer; Steve Matteo, English teacher; Lulu Emmons, former classmate of Jahar’s; Luis Vasquez, Tamerlan’s friend

Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi, marathon bombing victim who was an early suspect

Other early suspects: Sunil Tripathi, Salaheddin Barhoum, Yassine Zaimi

Boston-area law enforcement: Sean Collier, murdered MIT campus security officer; Richard Donohue, wounded transit cop; Jeff Pugliese, Watertown policeman; David Earle, Essex County police detective also on the Joint Terrorism Task Force; Timothy Alben, Massachusetts State Police superintendent; Farbod Azad, Kenneth Benton, Scott Cieplik, Michael Delapena, Richard DesLauriers, Dwight Schwader, John Walker, Sara Wood, all FBI; Douglas Woodlock, federal judge; Carmen Ortiz, U.S. Attorney; Scott Riley and Stephanie Siegmann, Assistant U.S. Attorneys

“Danny,” owner of the SUV hijacked by Tamerlan and Dzhokhar

Khairullozhon “Kair” Matanov, taxi driver, refugee from Kyrgyzstan, friend of Tamerlan; attorney Edward Hayden

Michael Dukakis, former governor of Massachusetts

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS DARTMOUTH AND NEW BEDFORD

Robel Phillipos, Jahar’s friend, also from Cambridge Rindge and Latin; friend Elohe Dereje (Maryland); attorney Derege Demissie

Dias Kadyrbayev, from Kazakhstan; girlfriend Bayan Kumiskali

Azamat Tazhayakov, from Kazakhstan; father Amir Ismagulov; attorneys Nicholas Wooldridge and Arkady Bukh (New York)

Andrew Dwinells, Jahar’s roommate

Other friends and classmates of Jahar’s: Pamela Rolon; Alexa Guevara; Tiffany Evora; Lino Rosas; Quan Le Phan, Robel’s former roommate; Jim Li, Quan’s roommate

Brian Williams, teacher of class on Chechnya

OTHERS

Almut Rochowanski, founder of legal aid organization for Chechen refugees (New York)

Musa Khadzhimuratov, Max Mazaev’s paralyzed cousin; wife Madina, son Ibragim (later Abraham), daughter Malika (Manchester, New Hampshire)

Ibragim Todashev, Chechen immigrant killed during questioning by FBI agents and Boston police in 2013 (Orlando, Florida); wife Reni Manukyan, born Evgenia (Nyusha) Nazarenko (Atlanta), her mother, Elena Teyer (Savannah, Georgia), and her brother, Alex (Atlanta); girlfriend Tatiana Gruzdeva (Orlando); father Abdulbaki Todashev (Chechnya); best friend Khusein Taramov (Orlando; later Russia); lawyer Zuarbek Sadokhanov

Yerlan Kubashev, with the consulate of Kazakhstan in New York

YOU CAN BE PROUD OF BEING A DAGESTANI, proclaim the billboards lining the highway from the airport to Makhachkala. It is the spring of 2013. The billboards picture, by way of argument, the recently appointed head of Dagestan, Ramazan Abdulatipov, speaking with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Both look unhappy, but the photo op, apparently a one-time occurrence, seems not to have generated a better option.

The highway to the capital, like so much of Dagestan, is an object of pride and an embarrassment at the same time. It was built recently, and well; it is by far the best road in Dagestan, so good that at night young men race their souped-up Lada Priora sedans here. The Lada Priora is a bad, Russian-made car, but its twentieth-century technology lends itself to quick fixes. Which is a good thing, because as the road enters the city, turning into the main avenue, the smooth surface gives way to potholes that can cost you your tire or your life.

Outside the city, the highway is lined with unfinished houses, scores of them. They betray modest ambition—small two-story structures along a highway—and yet even this dream has gone unfulfilled. Rectangular openings stare at the highway where windows should be. Cows graze in between these carcasses and wander lazily onto the highway.

People you meet in Dagestan will tell you where else they have been. They have rarely ventured very far, but they have invariably found any other place to be remarkably different. Several drivers tell me that in Moscow or Saint Petersburg or even provincial Astrakhan, three hundred miles to the north of Makhachkala, people do not drive into natural-gas fueling stations (almost everyone in Dagestan seems to drive a car retrofitted for natural gas) with a lit cigarette in their mouths. In Astrakhan, one man tells me, they get all the passengers out of the car before refueling. This kind of regard for human life awes and baffles him. Astrakhan is no hub of bourgeois humanitarianism, but then, compared with Dagestan, almost anyplace is.