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A Chechen family finds refuge in the Netherlands yet yearns to return
BY NATASHA ROTSTEIN, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE
[A version of this story also appeared in The Moscow Times on Sept. 20, 2006]
[to the lead story, The Sound of Chechen music and related stories, A Chechen copes through Sambo fighting and Chechnya's war legacy]
Every night during the first war in Chechnya this family slept in the same bed. Mother and father separated by their daughter and son.
If a bomb hits the building, we'll die together, they reasoned.
Nine years have passed since those dark days when they witnessed dogs eating people and snow black from debris. They buried 23 family members.
The family - 56-year-old Kuri, his wife Nina, and their children, 26-year-old Kerim and 23-year-old Heda - moved to the Netherlands in November 1997.
For their safety, they asked that their last name and town of residence not be included in the story.
Their new home is in a country that attracts thousands of tourists who want to walk over canals on foot bridges, where the spring tulips open their bulbs to postcard-perfect pictures and towns smell like lavender. It is a place where bikers have the right-of-way and a local restaurateur won't mind if you leave the establishment to get cash if at the end of a meal you discover they don't take credit cards.
The family lives in a three-story town home. It has four bedrooms, so no one shares beds anymore, a spacious backyard and a fully remodeled kitchen. Outside, birds chirp all day long like gossiping grandmothers.
Maureen Lynch, director of research at Refugees International, said the Chechen diaspora has been has been steadily growing, but no one knows the exact number. It could be as high as 100,000 refugees. The largest numbers are in Poland, Australia, France, Belgium, Germany, Norway, Denmark and Holland, she said.
On a warm spring evening, the family gathers around the dining room table for mashed potatoes, vegetables and soup.
Everything appears peaceful, but the war in Chechnya is still in the family's soul. It islocked there..
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Kerim eats while his mother slowly speaks about their life since the war began. Her voice is low and she heaves after every word because an unknown illness has taken over her body. The doctors have run at least five tests, and know she has a Vitamin D deficiency that left her so weak she was unable to walk for months. Now, she can sit and speak, but still appearsfrail and pale as she rests her hand on her chest during deep breaths. Nina excused herself to lie down and take her medicine after speaking for about two hours.
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Before the first war began in Chechnya, Kuri and Nina had two apartments in Grozny and a house in a nearby village.
He was a chauffeur who had his own business and she was a pharmacist.
The sun woke up Kerim every morning in their apartment on the 8th floor and he recalled those years as the happiest of his life.
But on New Year's Eve 1994, tanks pulled into Grozny.
The first Chechen War began in December 1994 and ended Aug. 31, 1996. The second war began in September 1999 and is still ongoing. It is estimated that roughly 250,000 Chechen civilians died between 1994 and 2003.
"Look mom, tanks are coming," Nina remembers the children shouting.
In the following days it became so dark it was impossible to determine whether it was night or day. Even the snow was black.
'We hid in the basement," said Nina. "But after awhile we could not handle hiding in the basement anymore. We decided to live in the apartment."
That year, 1995, they spent days burying people who were killed at night.
"There were plenty of scary moments," said Nina.
"If we were not scared today, then we'd be scared tomorrow," said Kerim.
"But we never cried," recalled Kuri.
At the mercy of soldiers
Once, the family was taken hostage. Soldiers ate their food and drank their water, keeping them in the apartment as human shields in case there was an attack. Nina and her husband hid their neighbors' valuables in the elevator so the soldiers would not take the belongings. After two days the soldiers let them go.
Another time, soldiers came to shoot at cars parked near their apartment building.
"Why are you doing this? The cars have not been moved in months," said Kuri to the soldiers. They looked at him and shot in his direction, but missed. Nina came to her husband's side.
"What are you doing?" she yelled at the men.
She recalled one soldier walked in front of her and aimed his gun at her head. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Kerim crouching on the apartment's balcony, watching the scene. The soldier pulled the trigger. But there were no bullets left.
But through this they had no intention of leaving.
"We didn't want to leave," said Nina. "We never thought we would leave."
It was a tragedy so painful Nina still won't talk about what forced the family to rethink their position.
"You can ask Kerim to tell you about it," she said as her gaze settled on distant memories and tears appeared in her eyes.
Kerim was only a teenager at the time of the first war, and his parents forced him and his sister to spend most of their time indoors. His memories are vague on some events.
What tugs at his mother's heart is the death of her older sister. She, her husband, and their two sons were shot in 1996. The family suspects Chechen rebels killed them to create a conflict.
It was the first time Kerim and Heda saw their mother cry.
Shortly after the killing, a group of rebels came to Nina and Kuri's home, intending to kill the family, Kerim said. But there were too many guests in the apartment and the Chechens quickly left.
"The more time passed, the clearer it became we had to leave," Kerim said.
Leaving Chechnya
The family sold all their belongings and boarded a bus, giving the driver enough money to pay off border patrol personnel along the way. Four days later they arrived in the Netherlands.
"All that time we were stressed and felt like at any moment we could be taken away," said Kerim.
Once they obtained refugee status in the Netherlands, the family began working at a hotel. Kerim was an assistant cook, Kuri was the handyman and Nina worked at the front desk. They also took Dutch lessons together, as required by law to become citizens.
But they also remained victims of the war.
Kerim, Heda and Kuri developed bacteria in their stomachs that took six months to cure. Kerim's face was covered by red and blue patches of dead skin that periodically dried and peeled. Eventually shots helped stop the problem, but Kerim still has a few faint pink scars on his cheeks. They are certain the illnesses were a result of biological warfare used in Grozny, where they lived during the first war.
Now, they worry about Nina's deteriorating health.
A new home has been purchased so the garage can be converted into a master bedroom. This way Nina will not have to walk up stairs. Kerim spent his spring break working at a tulip farm to save enough money to take his mother to a healing center in the Czech Republic.
Even though life is better in the Netherlands, they hope to return to Grozny.
"It is more than a birth country. It is like my love," said Kerim. "When you love something, you desire nothing more than to return to it. The more I think I can't, the more I want to return."
June 2006
[to the lead story, The Sound of Chechen music and related stories, A Chechen copes through Sambo fighting and Chechnya's war legacy]
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