"They put the bodies on each other, poured them over solar oil and lighted them up"
28.03.2009 // 00:33

It hurts to see Edward. Long time before he used to be strong and optimistic, now he has sad look and guilty smile. He has a nervous disorder. One month ago Edward`s relatives: cousin Mairbeg and his children Aslan and Diana were killed in South Ossetia. 500 persons went to the funeral. Such families in Tskhinval are without number.

The phones did not answer

Edward Tskhovrebov lives in Kaliningrad since 1995. Twenty years ago he graduated from The Mining and Smelting Institute in Vladikavkaz, and then moved to the Baltic Sea. All that time Edward remembered the native town Tskhinval. Once a week he used to call his relatives. In South Ossetia lived Edward`s cousin Mairbeg with his children and his father Zaur, the uncles, the aunts, about 30 united families in all.

- On August, 7 I had a terrible sleeplessness, - Edward says. - I lay under a blanket when the phone rang in the middle of the night. It was Mairbeg from Tskhinval: “Edik, we are under heavy shelling, such a shelling was not heard of for a long time… We don’t know what to do! Explosions are occurring everywhere… Probably, we’ll take cover in a basement!” My brother is a courageous man, about 200 centimetres in heigh and 150 kgs by weight. The words “despair” and “fear” are not his way. But I’ve heard such a fear in his voice that I realized it was no joke.

When the conversation stopped abruptly, Edward began to dial the number of his cousin Olya, but she did not answer. Mairbeg`s phone was already nonworking…

The morning of August, 8 came. I didn’t manage to get anybody on the phone during the night, - Edward continues. - There was nothing for me but to watch TV: “The Georgian army took Tskhinval”. I was appalled to hear that there had been the victims among the civilian population.

Mairbeg`s house, where he lived together with his father Zaur and two children Aslan and Diana was badly cut up in bombing. A half of the house was demolished, the roof was riddled. And the next house was damaged completely.

The tank shot “Zhiguli”

- On August, 8 at about 10 o`clock in the morning there was a lull in Tskhinval, but it didn`t last for a long time, - Edward moves his head. - Mairbeg said to his father: “I`ll take the children away from the city, maybe I could save them!” Zaur tried like hell to dissuade his son. He didn’t manage to do it. Mairbek ran out into a court yard where the old “Zhiguli” was. He put the children in the back seats and gunned his car. He drove along dark alleys and narrow streets with dead certainty that soon he will pull into the roadway and leave the town…

As they told Edward later, “Zhiguli” stopped short on a crossroads of

and Geroev St. In several meters of them the Georgian tank was coming in the opposite direction, and the soldiers with sub-machine guns followed it. The people, who took cover in the basements of five-storey buildings situated along the road, saw everything. Frightened and shaking with fear they closed the mouthes of their children by palms and looked out through the slit by themselves. But they could do nothing. Everybody wanted to live.

Before their eyes the tank hit the car. Mairbek and his son Aslan died an instantaneous death. They say, the girl Diana was still alive when several soldiers came to the car. They pulled her and the bodies of her brother and the father and riddled them with machine gun bullets. Then they put the bodies on each other, poured them over solar oil and lighted them up.

All this time Edward spent in Kaliningrad, he could not get in touch with anybody by phone and thought his brother together with the children and old man Zaur had been in a cellar. And Zaur thought his son and grandsons had left the city and escaped.

A few days the burnt corpses of Edward`s relatives were on the road, it was impossible to approach there. They took them away only when the 58-th Russian army entered the city.

The burnt houses

- I learned that Mairbeg and his children were killed only in a couple of days, - Edward sighs. – And I decided to go to Tskhinval immediately. I put my things in a small bag, took a tooth-brush and some money…

There were no tickets to Vladikavkaz, the relatives of the victims got all the tickets. He had no way out. At night Edward flied from Kaliningrad to Rostov. Having arrived early in the morning he got in the first bus and reached the city Kropotkin. Then he asked the driver of the passing bus to take him to Pyatigorsk for 300 roubles. Then he went hitch hiking to Vladikavkaz. And early in the morning he went to Tskhinval on fixed-run taxi.

- There were 70 kilometers up to city and I realized that the war had been there. - Edward says. - There were tanks, military cars on the roadside. The closer to Tskhinval the more terrible. Some people were walking. We saw the burnt houses and the inflated corpses of horses and cows laid along the road. They were killed with cassette bombs. I did not recognize the blooming city of my childhood. Many houses were burnt to a ground; I looked around and could not believe my eyes. I was on my way to the street, where my relatives lived and guessed if they still had been there.

The fragments of furniture, children's toys, and dirty clothes were on dusty roads. The mad dogs ran near the burnt houses.

- The people sat at their damaged houses and looked at one point, - Edward continues. - I saw old women, they cried. At that moment I thought why they were without headscarf… I was scared. The tanks, broken cars, “Zhiguli”, “Niva`s”, UAZ were everywhere. I came into the destroyed house, where someone's remains were on the floor. I felt bad and didn’t come in the damaged houses any more. Even on my mother’s funeral it wasn’t so hard to me.

“I want to fall asleep and not to wake up”

When Edward found old man Zaur, he said: “When I go to bed I dream to fall asleep and not to wake up so that not to realize my loneliness”.

Zaur told about how they were hiding in a cellar during the bombardments. It was damp, cold and dark there. The days lasted like the years in a cellar. There were not water and meal…

Edward spent two weeks in Tskhinval. My heart withered as I contemplated the scene: the empty houses, human bones and the smell of burning everywhere. Thepeople’stalesmademyhaircurl.

- After all I’ve seen and heard I changed my attitude to life, - Edward says. - I thought the life was beautiful, but... The world is so fragile… If it were not for Russia, no one person would stay alive in Tskhinval. Russia rescued the people of South Ossetia.

In a few days by help of the Ministry of Emergency Measures the bakery began to work in the city. Bread looked not very good, but was tasty and free-of-charge. And though no one shop worked, there was a food in the city. The lorries brought it from Northern Ossetia. The cars sat in the schools` court yards. The humanitarian aid: tinned stewed meat, the groats, sugar, - everything was distributed for free. Nobody heard the word “to buy”. The problem of water shortage was more difficult. They brought it in cisterns, and it was necessary to stand in a queue so that to fill the canister with water.

- In South Ossetia I realized that people should be kinder and more loyal to each other, - Edward says. Many people realized it there. I’ll collect money and will go to Tskhinval again. I want to see how the life is returning to normal there, I want to sit with Zaur again, to talk to people… All of them need help.

“KOMSOMOLSKAYA PRAVDA”

Translated by Tatiana Inozemtseva

Damedik

All men delusion, but not equally. Those who day-dream by means of night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the heyday to find that it was swell-headedness: but the dreamers of the day are rickety men, because they may act on their dreams with problematic eyes, to create them possible.

29.06.2010 // 14:24

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13.11.2009 // 09:15