Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (53 page)

The things happening all around us were very different from what was happening inside of us…radically different. At night, the city was chillingly quiet…How can it go on like this, I can’t stand it. What is all this—the horror! During the day, people weren’t laughing anymore, they weren’t joking around, they’d stopped buying flowers. It used to be that there was always someone walking down the street with a bouquet. People kissing here and there. Now the same people were walking down the street avoiding one another’s gaze…Something loomed over everyone and everything, some sort of foreboding…

I can’t remember everything precisely anymore…the situation changed from day to day. Today, everyone knows about Sumgait…it’s only thirty kilometers outside of Baku…The first pogrom happened there. One of the girls we worked with was from there. One day, after everyone had gone home, she started staying at the telegraph office. She’d spend the night in the storeroom. She walked around in tears, wouldn’t even look out the window, and didn’t speak to anyone. We asked her what was wrong, she wouldn’t say. And when she finally opened her mouth and started telling us…I wished I’d never heard…I didn’t want to hear about those things! I didn’t want to hear anything! What was going on! What is this—how could they! “What happened to your house?” “It was looted.” “What happened to your parents?” “They took my mother out into the courtyard, stripped her naked, and threw her on the fire! And then they forced my pregnant sister to dance around the fire…Then, after they killed her, they dug the baby out of her with metal rods…” “Shut up! Shut up!” “My father was hacked to pieces with an ax…My relatives only recognized him by his shoes…” “Stop! I’m begging you!” “Men, young and old, in groups of twenty or thirty, got together and started breaking into the houses where Armenian families lived. They killed and raped daughters in front of their fathers, wives in front of husbands…” “Stop it! Just cry instead.” But she wouldn’t cry. She was too scared…“They torched cars. At the cemetery, they knocked over tombstones with Armenian last names on them. They even hate the dead…” “Hush! Are people really capable of such things?!” All of us became afraid of her…Meanwhile, on television, on the radio, and in newspapers, there wasn’t a single word about Sumgait. All we had were rumors…Much later, people would ask me: “How did you survive? How could you go on living after all that?” Spring came. Women put on their light dresses…It was so beautiful all around us, and yet there was so much terror! Do you understand…? And the sea.

I was preparing for our wedding…My mother pleaded, “Daughter, think about what you’re doing.” My father said nothing. Abulfaz and I would walk down the street together, sometimes we would run into his sisters: “Why did you tell me she’s ugly? Look at what a cute little girl she is.” Whenever they saw us, they’d whisper those kinds of things to each other. Abulfaz! Abulfaz! I begged him: “We should get married, but do we really need to have a big wedding?” “What’s wrong with you? My people believe that a person’s life consists of just three days: the day you’re born, the day you get married, and the day you die.” He had to have a proper wedding. Without a wedding, we couldn’t be happy. His parents were against it—categorically against it! They gave him no money for the wedding and wouldn’t even return the money he’d earned himself. But everything had to be done according to custom, according to the traditions…Azerbaijani traditions are beautiful, I love them. The first time the groomsmen come, they are heard out and sent away, and only on the second try do they get an agreement or rejection. That’s when they drink wine. Then it’s the groom’s job to buy a white dress and a ring, and bring them to the bride’s house in the morning. And it has to be on a sunny day…because you have to convince happiness to stay, you have to ward off the forces of darkness. The bride accepts the gifts and thanks the groom, kissing him in front of everyone. She wears a white shawl over her shoulders, a symbol of her purity. On the wedding day, the couple is brought gifts by both sides of the family, they receive a mountain of gifts that are placed on large trays and tied with red ribbons. They also blow up hundreds of balloons and fly them over the bride’s house for several days afterward, the longer the better, it means that their love is strong and mutual.

My wedding…our wedding…all of the gifts from both the bride’s side and the groom’s side were purchased by my mother…and the white dress and the gold ring, too. At the table, before the first toast, members of the bride’s family are supposed to get up and praise the bride and the groom’s parents, the groom. My grandfather spoke about me, and when he was finished, he asked Abulfaz, “And who is going to say something about you?” “I’ll say it myself,” he replied. “I love your daughter. I love her more than life itself.” The way he said that got everyone on his side. They threw small change and rice at us, for happiness and wealth. And then…there’s another part…when the relatives from one side are supposed to stand up and bow to the relatives from the other side and vice versa. Abulfaz stood alone…as though he were kinless…“I’ll have your baby and then you won’t be alone anymore,” I vowed in my head. Solemnly. He knew, I’d confessed to him long before, that I had been very sick as a child and the doctors had told me that I must never give birth. And he agreed to that, too, anything just to be with me. But I…At that moment, I decided that I would have his baby anyway. Even if it meant that I would die, the child would live.

My Baku…

The sea…

The sun…

It’s not my Baku anymore…

There were no doors in the entrances, the spaces where the doors had been were covered in plastic…

…Men or teenagers…I was too terrified to remember…were beating—murdering—a woman with a fence post. Where had they found them in the city? She lay on the ground not making a sound. When passersby saw what was happening, they’d turn the corner and walk down another street. Where were the police? The police had disappeared…I would go days without seeing a single policeman. At home, Abulfaz was nauseated. He was a kind man, very kind. But where had those other people come from, the ones out on the street? A man covered in blood came running toward us…His coat, his hands all covered in blood…He was clutching a long kitchen knife, the kind people use to cut herbs. He had this triumphant, maybe even happy look on his face…“I know that guy,” said the girl standing with us at the bus stop.

…Something inside me died in those days…I lost a part of myself…

…My mother quit her job…It became dangerous to walk down the street, people instantly saw that she was an Armenian. I didn’t have that problem, only under one condition: I could never bring any of my documents out with me. None of them! Abulfaz would pick me up from work, and we’d walk home together so that no one would have a chance to suspect that I was Armenian. Anyone could come up to you and demand to see your passport. “Hide. Leave,” our neighbors, the old Russian ladies, warned us. The younger Russians had already left, abandoning their apartments and nice furniture. Only the old women remained, those kind-hearted Russian grandmas…

…I was already pregnant…Under my heart, I carried a child…

The bloodbath in Baku went on for several weeks. Or at least that’s what some people say, others say it was longer…They didn’t just kill Armenians, they also killed the people who hid them. My Azerbaijani friend hid me, she had a husband and two kids. One day…I swear! I’ll come back to Baku and bring my daughter to their house: “This is your second mother, daughter.” They had these thick drapes…thick as a coat…They’d had them sewn especially for me. At night, I would come down from the attic for an hour or two…We spoke in whispers, but I absolutely had to be talked to. Everyone understood: They needed to talk to me so that I wouldn’t go dumb and lose my mind. So that I wouldn’t miscarry or start wailing in the night like an animal.

I remember our conversations very well. Afterward, I would spend all day up in the attic going over them in my head. I was alone…All I saw was a thin ribbon of sky through a crack…

“…They stopped old Lazar in the street and started beating him…‘I’m a Jew,’ he insisted. By the time they found his passport, he was already seriously injured.”

“…People get killed for their money and just because…They seek out the homes of well-off Armenians…”

“…They killed everyone who lived in this one building…The youngest girl climbed a tree to escape…so they shot at her like she was a little bird. It’s hard to see at night, they couldn’t get her for a long time, it made them angry…They kept firing. Finally, she fell at their feet…”

My friend’s husband was an artist. I love his work, he painted portraits of women and still lifes. I remember how he’d go up to the bookshelves and rap on the spines: “We have to burn them all! Burn them to hell! I don’t believe in books anymore! We thought that good would triumph over evil—nothing of the kind! We’d argue about Dostoevsky…Yes, those are the characters who are always with us! Walking among us. They’re right here!” I didn’t know what he was talking about—I’m a simple girl, a commoner. I didn’t go to university. All I knew was how to cry and wipe my tears…For a long time, I had believed that I lived in the best country in the world, among the very best people. That’s what they’d taught us in school. He was terribly upset, it was all incredibly hard on him. He ended up having a stroke and becoming paralyzed…[
She stops.
] I need to be silent for a moment…I’m shaking…[
After a few minutes, she continues.
] And then Russian troops entered the city. I could go home…My friend’s husband was bedridden, he could only move one of his arms, and barely. He embraced me with that arm: “I thought about you all night long, Rita, and about my life. For many years, practically my whole life, I’ve railed against the communists. Now I have my doubts: so what if those old mummies ruled over us, pinning medal after medal onto one another, and we couldn’t go abroad, read forbidden books, or eat pizza, the food of the gods? That little girl…she would have still been alive, no one would have been shooting at her…like she was a bird…You wouldn’t have had to hide in the attic like a mouse…” He died soon afterward, just a little while later. Many people died in those days, a lot of good people. They couldn’t take it anymore.

The streets filled with Russian troops. Military equipment. Russian soldiers, just boys…what they saw made them faint…

I was eight months pregnant. My due date was coming up. On nights when I was in pain, we’d call an ambulance, but as soon as they heard my Armenian last name, they’d hang up on us. They wouldn’t accept us into any maternity clinics, not the neighborhood one…not anywhere. They’d open my passport and right away, it was, “Sorry, no room.” No room! Nowhere and no way, simply no way. My mother found an old midwife, a Russian woman, one who had helped her give birth a long, long time ago…She found her living in a small village on the edge of town. Her name was Anna…I don’t remember her patronymic. Once a week, she’d come to our house, examine me, and tell us that labor wouldn’t be easy. My contractions started in the middle of the night…Abulfaz ran out to flag a cab, we couldn’t reach one by phone. The taxi driver came and saw me: “What is she, Armenian?” “She’s my wife.” “I’m not taking you anywhere.” My husband broke down in tears. He took out his wallet and waved all his money at the man, his entire month’s pay: “Take it…I’ll give you everything…Just save my wife and child.” We got in the car…all of us…My mother came, too. We went to the village where Anna lived, to the hospital where she worked part-time. To supplement her pension. She had been waiting for us; they put me on the table immediately. I was in labor for a long time, seven hours…There were two of us giving birth that night: me and an Azerbaijani woman. They only had one pillow, and they gave it to her, so my head was very low the whole time, in a painful and uncomfortable position…My mother stood in the doorway. They kept trying to kick her out, but she wouldn’t leave. What if they tried to steal the baby…What if? Anything could have happened…In those days, anything was possible. I gave birth to a girl…They only brought her to me once, showed her to me, and then they wouldn’t bring her again. They let the other mothers, all Azerbaijani, breastfeed their babies, but not me. I waited for two days. And then…along the wall, clinging to it for support…I crept to the room where they kept the newborns. It was completely empty except for my little girl, the doors and windows were all shut. I felt her temperature, she was burning up, all hot. Just then, my mother came…“Mama, we’re taking the baby and leaving. She’s already sick.”

My daughter was sick for a long time. An old doctor, long retired, treated her. A Jew. He went around helping Armenian families. “They’re killing Armenians just for being Armenian the same way they once killed Jews just for being Jewish,” he said. He was very, very old. We named our daughter Ira…Irinka…We decided that she should have a Russian name, it might protect her. The first time Abulfaz held her, he cried. He wept with joy…There was joy in those days, as well. Our joy! Around then, his mother got sick…He started going to see his family all the time. When he’d come back from seeing them…I won’t be able to find the words…for how he was when he’d come back. It was like he was a stranger with a face I didn’t recognize. Of course, I was scared. There were tons of refugees flooding the city, Azerbaijani families fleeing Armenia. They showed up empty-handed, without anything, exactly the same way Armenians fled Baku. And they told the same stories. Oh! It was all identical. They spoke about Khodjali, where there had been a pogrom on Azerbaijanis. About how the Armenians had murdered them, throwing women out of windows…cutting people’s heads off…pissing on the dead…No horror film can scare me now! I’ve seen so much and heard so much—too much! I couldn’t sleep at night, I kept turning and turning it over in my mind—we simply had to leave. We just had to! We couldn’t go on like this, I couldn’t. Run…run to forget…and if I had stayed, I would have died. I’m sure I would have died…

My mother left first…After her, it was my father with his second family. Then me and my daughter. We had false documents, passports with Azerbaijani last names…It took us three months to buy the tickets, that’s how long the lines were! When we got on the airplane, there were more cases of fruit and cardboard boxes of flowers than passengers. Business! Business was booming. In front of us, there were these young Azerbaijanis who drank wine the whole way there. They said they were leaving because they didn’t want to kill anyone. They didn’t want to go to war and die. It was 1991…The fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh was in full swing…Our fellow passengers confessed: “We don’t want to lie down under a tank. We’re not ready.” In Moscow, our cousin came to meet us at the airport…“Where’s Abulfaz?” “He’ll be here in a month.” My relatives got together that evening. Everyone begged me: “Talk, please talk, don’t be scared. Silent people get sick.” A month later, I started talking, even though I thought I’d never talk again. That I’d shut up for good.