Original subtitles

Downloaded from YTS.BZ

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.BZ

I remember when the USSR collapsed in 1991.

Fourteen countries, like Estonia, Moldova and Ukraine became independent.

Chechnya also declared independence.

In 1994,

Russia initiated a war against Chechnya. It lasted 10 years.

Approximately 450,000 people died or were injured

and 500,000 became refugees.

Grozny, the capital of the Chechen Republic,

was completely destroyed.

I was there at the time.

This film serves as an act of acknowledging my past

and attempt to comprehend the cycle of violence spanning generations.

Dedicated to the children who have been witnesses to dictatorships and wars.

I was born here.

The Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Ukraine, USSR.

Red fields.

Yellow fields.

Purple fields.

I'm standing in a train,

holding on to the handrail and looking at these fields.

They are very beautiful, colorful fields.

I came to Grozny.

At the train station, I am met by an old man.

"Meet your Grandfather."

He doesn't say anything.

One, two...

three fingers on one hand.

Four on the other.

We arrive at the house.

Grandfather says: "This is now your home."

6Why am I here without my Mom and Dad?

I want to be with them in Crimea.

I want to swim in the sea with Dad.

In Grozny I meet Anna, Yusup and Luiza,

my new neighbours.

"Where do you come from?", they ask.

I am from Feodosia, in Crimea.

There is a sea there, a big sea.

They don't know where that is.

It's my birthday. I'm seven years old.

My Grandparents and I went to the store

and bought a cake.

There are yellow ducklings on the cake.

I want to eat these little ducklings.

We hung fabrics on clotheslines in our yard.

We're having a concert.

I step out in front of everyone,

sing a song I made up and everybody claps.

My Grandparents gave me a schoolbag as a present.

But the ducklings on the cake don't taste good.

I dream about different kinds of monsters with big eyes.

Grandpa says I don't draw them properly.

He makes me hold the marker in my other hand.

He says I have to draw with my right hand.

But I can't draw with my right hand.

And I don't want the drawings to look ugly.

Grandpa hits me on the hand and calls me a dummy.

Grandma braids my hair and puts ribbons in it.

I'm going to school for the first time.

Everybody at school is dressed the same,

and the schoolbags are the same.

Since I got it for my birthday,

I thought I was the only one with this schoolbag.

Our teacher's name is Lidiya Alexandrovna.

She tells us we're going to learn to read

and write the words we cherish the most:

"Mother", "Motherland", and "Lenin".

Lidiya Alexandrovna hands out textbooks.

On the first page, there's a portrait.

It's our leader, Lenin.

She says, we all have to do our best to be like Lenin.

But I don't want to be like Lenin.

He's bald.

LENIN IS WITH US

Today at school, we're having a dictation.

Lidiya Alexandrovna hits me on the hand with her pointer.

She takes the belt from her dress and ties my left arm to my chair.

"Every child must write with their right hand."

But I can't write with my right hand.

LENIN IS EVERYONE

Lidiya Alexandrovna reads my mistake in front of the class.

Everybody laughs.

She gives me two marks out of five.

Grandpa punishes me for getting two.

He takes the belt from his pants and beats me with it.

The belt leaves stripes on my legs.

Across from the school is the Rainbow Cinema.

The Rainbow Cinema is interesting.

I find a piggy bank in my Grandma's wardrobe,

and empty all the money out of it.

Instead of going to school, I go to the Rainbow Cinema.

I watch King Kong and then King Kong Lives.

King Kong is good.

I cry when they kill him.

Grandpa found out that instead of going to school, I go to the cinema.

He beats me

and tells me I can't go out with friends for the whole year.

Grandpa told me I can address him formally,

as Mikhail Alexandrovich.

My friend Nadya Kalashnikova comes

and I talk with her through a gap under the fence.

But Mikhail Alexandrovich sees us,

and fills the whole gap up with bricks.

We have coypus living in our yard.

Mikhail Alexandrovich makes me help him kill the coypus.

He gives me a knife.

He hangs the dead coypus up where my swing was

and starts skinning it.

I hate Mikhail Alexandrovich.

Each morning through our window,

the sunlight comes.

It warmly...

caresses...

his portrait.

That hangs on the wall in a beautiful...

frame.

And everyone knows him.

This is Lenin.

Our dear beloved.

In our classroom hang two portraits of Lenin.

Lidiya Alexandrovna says that after the school year is over,

we can become Little Octobrists.

To do this,

we have to behave well and study hard too.

She also tells me that my name, Vladlena,

means Vladimir Lenin.

It's what my Dad called me.

It was him who chose that name.

VLADIMIR + LENIN = VLADLENA

But Mikhail Alexandrovich says my name is stupid.

That only a drug addict could call his child that.

What's a drug addict?

Grandma and I have come to meet Mom.

I see Mom coming down the steps from the plane.

She's wearing a white dress.

Back at home, Grandma sets the table.

Aunt Valya and Uncle Vitya visit us

to celebrate Mom's arrival.

Mikhail Alexandrovich doesn't greet Mom.

He gets drunk and shouts at her:

"Get out of my house, you slut!"

He swings his fist at her.

Mikhail Alexandrovich says that all actresses are sluts and prostitutes.

What are prostitutes?

My Mom is an actress.

She ran away from Mikhail Alexandrovich

and started studying at a theater school.

With the theater, my Mom went to Feodosia, in Crimea.

She met my Dad there.

My Dad loves music.

He's a DJ.

Mikhail Alexandrovich says if they don't accept me into the Little Octobrists,

I'll be an antisocial element.

Nobody wants an antisocial element.

Why doesn't anybody want an antisocial element?

In the assembly hall, we're reading poems about Lenin.

Each of us has been given two lines.

We've been rehearsing for days.

My lines are:

"We'll be the firmest of friends and serve our land to the end!"

The older pupils pin a badge on each of us.

It's a red star.

There's a little Vladimir Lenin in the middle.

The principal tells us:

"Now, you are the future of our Motherland."

Later, in the classroom, we eat cake with our teacher.

The cake is delicious.

Lidia Alexandrovna says

that without the badge with Lenin, we can't come to school.

Our dear guests are here

Thankfully, we didn't bake these pies for nothing

A raspberry pie, a pie with cabbage

And the pie without filling is the tastiest of them all

Mikhail Alexandrovich Orlov

graduated from the University of Marxism and Leninism

of the Grozny Committee of the Communist Party.

He received his political education in the party training system.

During his studies at the Division of Economic Managers

Mikhail Alexandrovich passed exams in the following subjects:

"Actual questions of the Theory and Policy of the Communist Party".

"Current issues in the Ideological work of the Communist Party".

"Issues in Political Economy".

"The Labor of the Manager".

"Perfection of the Economic Framework".

"Foundations of Soviet Legislation".

Mom is taking me to audition at the music school.

The music teacher sings notes, and I repeat after her.

The music teacher also claps her hands, and I mimic her.

The teacher says that I have a good ear.

I like music, just like my Dad.

I haven't seen my Dad in two years.

I miss him.

Mom said they got divorced.

I got accepted into the music school.

Now on TV, they are showing the hypnotist Alan Chumak.

From the TV, Chumak can charge water and people with his hands.

Grandma places many jars of water in front of the TV.

"If you drink charged water,

"all illnesses disappear", she says.

Grandma and Mikhail Alexandrovich

sit by the TV with their eyes closed.

Our neighbors, my teacher Lydia Alexandrovna,

and the parents of my friend Luiza also charge water.

We watch the sessions twice a day,

morning and evening.

But I don't believe in it

and keep my eyes open.

Grandma and Mikhail Alexandrovich

haven't received their pensions in four months.

They're showing American cartoons on TV.

I like Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers.

A little mouse says "cheeeze".

"Cheeeze" means cheese in English.

I want cheese too.

Mom's selling our things at the market

so she can buy groceries.

Mom sells her red shoes

and brings back a piece of cheese.

The cheese tastes really good.

Two days ago I had my 9th birthday.

The TV doesn't show Alan Chumak anymore.

TV channels only show the Swan Lake ballet.

Mikhail Alexandrovitch says

there are tanks surrounding the Moscow Kremlin.

There's even a fire at the Government House.

Mikhail Alexandrovich says they took Gorbachev away

and now Yeltsin is president.

Yeltsin is a drunkard.

They don't charge water on TV anymore.

And we drank all the water that we charged before.

Grandma is sad.

Tanks surround the Kremlin.

Gorbachev is removed.

Now Yeltsin is president.

Yeltsin is a drunkard.

Tanks surround the Kremlin.

Yeltsin is a drunkard.

There's a fire at the Government House.

Tanks surround the Kremlin.

They don't charge water anymore.

At assembly,

the principal calls me out of the line.

He pulls my Lenin badge off my apron

and throws it to his feet.

"Lenin's gone."

"Lenin's gone."

"Lenin's gone."

"Lenin's gone."

What does "Lenin's gone" mean?

Lidia Alexandrovna always said that we lived in the USSR.

Now she says that the USSR has ended.

How can we live in the USSR if it ended?

On TV they are saying that Grozny isn't in Russia anymore.

It's in Ichkeria (Chechnya).

Ichkeria has its own president,

not Yeltsin, like in Russia.

His name is Dudayev.

The school has new textbooks

where it is written that the Russians enslaved the people of the Caucasus.

IN THE CITY OF GROZNY.

-"Are you Russian?" -"Yes."

"Russians are evil."

Classmates and neighbors say that in 1944,

the Russians deported all Chechens from Chechnya to Kazakhstan.

In the winter, in the cold.

On Stalin's orders,

they loaded the Chechens into wagons.

They loaded 500,000 people in a few days

and deported them to the steppes of Kazakhstan.

120 000 were killed.

My friend Luiza says

that her family were sent away too.

And that's why her Mom was born in Kazakhstan.

She says, my Grandma and Grandpa

sent the Chechens away too.

At home, I ask Mikhail Alexandrovich:

"Did you send the Chechens away too?"

He answers, "No, I fought in the War then."

After the Second World War,

Mikhail Alexandrovich ended up in Grozny.

He was wounded, and taken to the hospital.

He lost a few fingers.

In Grozny, Mikhail Alexandrovich met my Grandmother.

He invited her to see a movie at the cinema.

Grandmother liked the movie,

but she did not remember what it was about.

After the film, Mikhail Alexandrovich said:

"Why just go to the movies? Let's get married."

Grandma sewed her own wedding dress,

and a suit for Mikhail Alexandrovich.

They got married and built our house.

Someone killed a Russian family on the next street over.

They cut the woman's breasts off,

and stuck an axe in the man's head.

He died in the street, with the axe still in his head.

They're rationing bread.

Each person gets a quarter of a loaf per day.

Mikhail Alexandrovich, Grandma, Mom and me

get one whole loaf.

They're bringing bread in once a day.

There's less bread than there are people.

We have to stand in line for four or five hours each time.

They hand the bread out through a little window.

Everybody pushes and fights.

My dress was torn.

I don't want to go for bread anymore.

Grandma says: "We won't have any bread at all."

"You've got dark eyes,

"they can't tell right away that you're Russian."

FREEDOM OR DEATH (in Ukrainian)

FREEDOM OR DEATH (in Moldovan)

FREEDOM OR DEATH (in Chechen)

There's a new channel on TV.

It is called Ichkeria.

On Ichkeria they always say: "Freedom or Death".

My best friend, Nadya Kalashnikova,

left Grozny forever.

Her father said

it's too dangerous to stay in Grozny.

Nadya gave me a photograph and a postcard saying:

"For my best friend Vlada".

I cry. What am I supposed to do without Nadya?

At home I ask: "Maybe we should also leave?"

But Mikhail Alexandrovich says: "We've got nowhere to go."

"We will die here."

One night, men wearing masks and carrying machine guns

broke into my relatives' house.

They put duct tape over their mouths and hands.

Auntie Valya is still alive, but they beat Uncle Vitya to death.

I saw Auntie Valya. Her head was all black and swollen.

And her eyes were full of blood.

She gave them all of their money and all of her jewelry.

They didn't rape Auntie Valya,

maybe because she's old.

They took Uncle Vitya's wedding ring from his finger as well.

Where are you wandering with your head down, my sunshine?

Give me an answer, so I know that you haven't forgotten me

There haven't been any letters from you for four days

Dear, don't sin, write to me

I live without you like in a slumber

I burn without you like in a fire

Please, give me an update

Write at least one line

My bright sunshine, write to me

With a rain's tear on a wet window

My bright sunshine, write to me

With a spring ray on a white wall

It's not easy for me, only who's fault is it?

You are far away, I'm alone in the entire world

Only up in the sky there is a sad moon

Hear the sigh of my soul, write to me

I live without you like in a slumber

I burn without you like in a fire

Please, give me an update

Write at least one line

My bright sunshine, write to me

With a rain's tear on a wet window

My bright sunshine, write to me

With a spring ray on a white wall

Today I stood in line for beef bones.

My number is 340.

People are very angry. They are arguing and swearing.

Mom finds me in the queue.

She sold her earrings and bought buckwheat.

My legs are frozen, my hands too.

I need to dance a bit to warm up,

that's what Mom says, but it doesn't help.

After spending another 3 hours in the line,

our number is called but there is no more food.

People in front of us are fighting for the leftovers.

In the music school, I enjoy singing in the choir the most.

I was promoted to a soloist.

At home, I love listening to the opera.

I have a favorite song:

The Queen of the Night from The Magic Flute .

I like it when there's no one at home.

I turn the radio up loud and sing.

I don't understand the words. They're in German.

But I still sing.

During the lessons, there are constant gunshots outside the windows.

A teacher enters the classroom

and says they are releasing us for an extended vacation.

Everyone is happy.

On the way home, I get caught in crossfire.

There is no one home.

In my Grandmother's room, I take an icon,

hidden on the top shelf of her wardrobe.

My Grandmother sometimes secretly prays to this icon.

I place the icon on the windowsill and pray for everything to be okay.

But outside, the shooting continues.

Grandmother says

that during Stalin's time, you could be shot for having an icon.

Even though Stalin is gone,

and Lenin is gone too,

Grandmother is still afraid.

Today is Mikhail Alexandrovich's birthday.

I am baking a cake.

The power goes out.

Tanks are moving down our street:

One, two, five, ten, twenty...

Young soldiers sit on the tanks.

I look at them.

I'm 12 years old,

and they might be 18 years old.

They look at me and smile.

Mikhail Alexandrovich says,

"Russia has invaded Chechnya."

The war has begun.

Military ID n°0337793:

Orlov Mikhail Alexandrovich.

He was called up for active service

and sent to a military unit on September 9, 1941.

Active military service in wartime:

July 1941 - August 1941:

Militiaman of the Kirov division, Leningrad.

September 1941 - October 1942:

193rd Artillery Regiment.

October 1942 - January 1943:

37th Infantry Regiment.

January 1943 - January 1944:

Krasnodar Artillery and Mortar School.

January 1944 - November 1946:

256th Howitzer Artillery Regiment.

On November 15, 1946,

he was dismissed

by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

Mikhail Alexandrovich got drunk again

and there is no one else at home.

When he gets drunk, it starts.

He sees me and calls me a devil child.

He takes an axe and runs after me.

I hide in Mom's room and close the door.

But he starts chopping the door with the axe.

And shouts,

"Go away, devil child! Go away, devil child!"

He used to chase after my Mom and Grandma with the axe.

Mom told me about it.

The electricity is often cut off.

Mikhail Alexandrovich brought a kerosene lamp from the shed.

We fill it with gasoline from the car.

Mom cut up her beautiful hat.

She says...

that it burns easily.

Through the battery-powered receiver, they broadcast

that Yeltsin has given Dudayev 48 hours to disarm.

If there is no disarmament

Russia will start bombing Chechnya.

Our neighbors celebrate the New Year in the basement.

Mikhail Alexandrovich said we shouldn't go to the basement.

It'll collapse and bury us.

Who are these people bombing here?

Do they bomb in Moscow and Russia too?

What if I get hit, and I die?

And Mom will die? And Grandma?

And Mikhail Alexandrovich will die too?

Today, I walked to the warehouses, looking for food.

I found packets with the inscription "ICE CREAM".

It's dry ice cream.

I read the instructions:

mix the powder with milk,

beat with a mixer for 3-5 minutes,

then freeze.

There's no milk.

I mix the powder with water.

It turns into a sweet peach flavored foam.

I ate it.

There is a corpse lying in the street.

Part of the skull has been shattered by a shell,

and the eyes are wide open.

Where is it staring so intently?

This morning, I took the sled to get bread.

I go, go, go.

Along the snow-white road.

Yesterday, there were corpses here,

and now there are white mounds.

Everything became clean and beautiful.

Clean and beautiful.

Today, the "federals" were conducting a search.

That's what we call Russian soldiers.

They were looking for weapons.

They search our house too.

And I have a grenade.

I manage to throw it in the toilet.

Later, with my Mom, we go for bread.

The road is covered in snow, and there's nobody around.

I'm pulling the sled.

A red car is coming towards us, a Lada Six.

In the car, Chechen soldiers with green headbands,

they are suicide fighters.

They ask us if we saw federals.

We tell them that they were nearby.

They turn around and offer us a ride.

It's a 10km walk in the cold to the bread distribution point.

It's warm in the car. Good.

The red car is clearly visible on the white snow.

My ears hurt. I can't hear the music anymore.

I grab my Mom's hand and scream.

And my Mom shouts in my ear:

"No matter what happens, don't panic! "

"Never panic!"

Someday, lovely creature

I will become a memory for you

There, in the depths of your memory

Lost, so far away

You will forget my humpbacked profile

And the forehead in the apotheosis of a cigarette

And my eternal laughter, with which I fool everyone

On my working hand

A hundred silver rings, the attic-cabin

The divine confusion of my papers

Like in a dreadful year, elevated by misfortune

You were little, and I was young

Today Mikhail Alexandrovich sits next to me.

I get confused because I'm watching his fingers.

He can't manage pressing all the keys on time and laughs.

I like that he is smiling.

There has been no water for several months.

I go with a bucket for drinking water, over 5 kilometers.

Today my number is 30 in the line.

The earth is falling right on us.

My ears hurt so much.

Everyone is praying.

I fall into the mud.

I raise my head,

and my bucket got hit by a bomb fragment.

Next to me, a shard hits a person in the head.

He looks at me and doesn't blink.

Mikhail Alexandrovich will scold me because the bucket has a hole.

Music is playing through giant speakers.

I'm at a disco.

We were sent to Ukraine, Crimea

as part of the "Children of War" program,

for 21 days.

We are staying at The Planet camp in Feodosia.

I was born here.

Life is totally different here

and children from other cities...

They don't know that there is a war in Grozny.

In the dining room, they broadcast the news on TV.

Chechnya is being bombed again.

"It's a counter-terrorist operation", they say.

I remember myself here at this sea.

And my Mom nearby.

And my Father.

I have not seen him for 8 years.

Hello,

this is Vlada.

I need Oleg.

He's my Father.

Mom gave me a piece of paper with a phone number

so I could call my Father from Crimea.

I make the call.

Valya, his Mother, answers the call.

She comes to get me at the camp,

alone, in a white Volga taxi.

She says that my Father is hiding.

He is wanted by the police.

We go to an abandoned house made of concrete blocks.

A thin tanned man with shoulder-length hair comes out.

He is wearing blue shorts.

We hadn't seen each other for 8 years.

He has changed.

He used to be tall and always smiling.

Now,

he has few teeth.

We hug.

The house...

has concrete walls.

It's empty and poor.

In his room,

there's a black leather couch.

Hanging above it,

a crucifix with Jesus,

and a red banner...

with Lenin.

I don't know what to call you.

"Father."

"Or you can call me Oleg."

"How old are you now?"

Almost 14.

"And how are things?"

I'm here at the camp as part of the "children of war" program.

But he doesn't know that there is a war in Grozny.

I'm looking at his arms.

There are stripes along the veins, made of dots.

Many, many dots.

From injections.

Dad,

tell me why it turned out this way?

He lights a cigarette.

He tells me,

"Baby girl,

"you just don't know what it's like to be high."

Red, red fields.

My Dad and I lay in the poppies

and gaze at the sky.

I run away from him.

He catches me.

He lifts me up.

Everything inside me freezes.

We collect poppies.

He shows me how to pick them properly.

Sandu Oleg Yakovlevich,

has been convicted by the Feodosia City Court

under Article 309 Part 2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

He has committed a crime again.

Sandu Oleg Yakovlevich

noticed an opium poppy plant in his garden.

Subsequently, while caring for it, he grew 1,600 opium poppy plants.

In the presence of witnesses and police officers,

1,600 poppy plants as well as narcotics were found and seized.

As well as, poppy straw, weighing 552 grams.

In light of the foregoing, it has been decided:

1: To charge Sandu, Oleg Yakovlevich,

born August 31, 1956,

for having committed a crime under Article 309, paragraph 2

and Article 310 Part 2, of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

2: To transfer a copy of this decision to the prosecutor.

The 21 days at the sea have passed quickly.

I met with my Dad several times.

He gave me sunglasses.

Grandma Valya gave me a letter for my mother, in Grozny.

In the letter, she wrote that I couldn't live with her in Feodosia.

Because they have no money and a lot of personal problems.

And my father is hiding from the police.

It took us 2 days to travel back to Grozny.

Mom meets me at the station in Grozny.

Mom is shouting, "Run! Run!"

Snipers are targeting us.

I run into a metal hangar.

I look back. Mom is not there.

My heart is pounding.

There is an unpleasant smell.

My eyes adjust to the darkness.

In front of me, there are stacks of corpses.

A head lies next to a corpse,

the spinal bone sticking out from the neck.

A severed leg nearby.

Grandma always said,

"Fear the living, not the dead."

Some of the corpses have their documents on their chests.

The face of a woman is torn apart.

I take her passport,

she looks beautiful in the photo.

And there's a note about a child.

A boy, of about five years old,

lies next to her.

They are Chechens.

An old man's passport has an address.

He lived on the street next to us.

"Vlada! Vlada! Vlada!",

shouts Mom.

I get home,

everything is open, but there's no one.

Mom used to say,

"Never, never! No matter what happens, don't panic!"

On a finger, there's a ring with a pink ruby.

It's gold.

My Father gave it to my Mother.

In the photo Dad is holding Mom.

She's smiling.

The sea is behind them, and there are ships sailing past.

It's in Crimea,

in Feodosia.

I'm invisible,

but I'm there too.

In Mom's belly.

That's the only photo...

with the three of us together.

They transported Mom by plane to Moscow.

To the hospital.

And I broke my arm.

In the hospital, they put a cast on my arm.

When I come home, Mikhail Alexandrovich is sitting at the table in the kitchen.

He looks at my cast and starts shouting...

"You brainless fool, just like your Mother!"

And he tells me to cook for him.

He is hungry.

I prepare soup from humanitarian aid: canned meat.

I hate Mikhail Alexandrovich.

Mikhail Alexandrovich is drinking vodka and crying.

I've never seen him like this before.

He shows me an old photograph.

The photograph shows a man in a black robe

and holding a book.

It's the Bible.

Mikhail Alexandrovich says that this is his Father

Sergey Pavlov.

My Great-Grandfather.

He tells me that my Great-Grandfather was proclaimed an enemy of the state.

He was sent to a GULAG

in Khakassia, Siberia, in the early 1920's.

One day, in Siberia, several men in military uniform came to his hut,

red army soldiers,

and interrogated him on whether he still believed in God, or not.

Great-Grandfather answered that he still believed in God.

After this,

the soldiers shot him,

right in front of eight-year-old Mikhail Alexandrovich.

I ask him:

"Why are you called Orlov

"when your Father is called Pavlov?"

He tells me that at 14,

he escaped from Siberia,

hiding in a freight train, to St. Petersburg.

In St. Petersburg,

he lied that he'd lost his documents

and called himself Orlov Mikhail Alexandrovich.

He says, he wanted to be normal,

like everyone, and not the son of an enemy of the state.

Mikhail Alexandrovich taught me how to make candles.

I sell candles at the market.

Trading or selling them for bread or canned meat.

A truck with Russian soldiers approaches.

They were all in uniform, but one wears a knitted magenta sweater

with a collar and buttons.

Like a woman's sweater.

He comes up to me and asks for my name.

He says my name is beautiful.

He introduces himself as Sergey,

says he is 18.

I laugh at him:

"Nice feminine sweater, Sergey."

He explains his Mom knitted it,

to keep him warm here.

We agree he would come tomorrow, and we would chat.

I put on lipstick and wait for him.

But he never comes.

I see his fellow soldier,

who says Sergey was killed that night.

And there I was, laughing at his sweater.

Mom has returned from the hospital in Moscow.

Electricity was restored today too.

There was no power for several months.

I plug in my Mom's curling iron.

It heats up.

I curl my hair.

Today, a bullet flew past my temple.

The sound was barely noticeable, a faint whistle.

The bullet hit the fence and ricocheted.

I found it.

Black, black smoke.

Oil is burning in Grozny,

you can't see anything at all.

The bus driver stops

and says he won't go any further.

There is shelling.

No transportation.

The city is dead.

I walk home for a long time.

Grandma and Mom say that Mikhail Alexandrovich has died.

Before his death, he called for me.

Repeating my name.

"Vlada! Vlada! Vladochka!"

I go into his room and sit on his bed.

He has never called me by my name before.

Nighttime. Screaming.

I look through the doorway across the room,

and there are masked men in military uniforms

carrying machine guns.

One of them hits my friend Ira, who was staying with us,

on the head with a butt, and she falls.

My first thoughts are that women's breasts are cut off

and that they are raped before being murdered.

And I'm standing naked.

I need to get dressed so they don't see me naked.

My robe is on the chair next to the window.

The window is open.

I jump out of this window,

into the darkness.

There are screams in the house.

I jump over the fence.

I'm running down the street at night.

A car is in the street.

I hide in the bushes.

I think that my Grandmother, Mother and Ira have already been killed.

I'm running again.

I run to my friend Deni.

I knock and knock.

Silence.

I knock again.

Deni opens the door.

He has a gun in his hand.

He gives me a key.

"Lock yourself up with this key and wait for me."

Deni makes it.

He fires into the air.

Grandmother, Mother and Ira

had their mouths taped shut with duct tape and their hands tied.

The soldiers hear Deni's shots and run away.

That's how we survived.

My Mother saw me leave Grozny.

The bus leaves.

I look at her through the window and think:

"What if they kill her?"

Check-points.

Inspections.

At every check-point, I get off the bus.

Soldiers check my documentation.

My birth certificate says my place of birth is Crimea, Ukraine.

The soldiers ask me: "You're from Ukraine.

"What were you doing in Chechnya?"

I lived there.

We leave Chechnya.

Outside my window,

I see houses,

people, all busy doing something...

Children are running...

Fields...

Yellow fields...

Warm fields.

And I only have one thought:

if they kill my Mother,

then I'll find a box of grenades

and throw one at every house.

And I don't care what happens next.

Come you masters of war

You that build the big guns

You that build the death planes

You that build all the bombs

You that hide behind walls

You that hide behind desks

I just want you to know I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin '

But build to destroy

You play with my world

Like it's your little toy

You put a gun in my hand

And you hide from my eyes

And you turn and run farther When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old

You lie and deceive

A world war can be won

You want me to believe

But I see through your eyes

And I see through your brain

Like I see through the water That runs down my drain

You fasten all the triggers

For the others to fire

Then you sit back and watch

When the death count gets higher

You hide in your mansion

While the young people's blood

Flows out of their bodies And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear

That can ever be hurled

Fear to bring children

Into the world

For threatening my baby

Unborn and unnamed

You ain't worth the blood That runs in your veins

How much do I know

To talk out of turn

You might say that I'm young

You might say I'm unlearned

But there's one thing I know

Though I'm younger than you

That even Jesus would never Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question

Is your money that good?

Will it buy you forgiveness

Do you think that it could?

I think you will find

When your death takes its toll

All the money you made Will never buy back your soul