Тюлин Дмитрий Юрьевич. Travel to Russia

From teenage memories. 1996 year. To visit relatives, our family is making an attempt to escape from Azerbaijan to Russia through Chechnya. An Armenian woman with children accompanies us. What this means in connection with the Karabakh conflict must be understood. It is still difficult and scary to talk about this trip.

In 1996, in front of me and my brother, the hope loomed again to be in the village of my grandmother. Much has passed since the last time a train carried us in a day from Baku city to Kropotkin town, from where it is a stone's throw to Geimanovskaya. I dreamed of seeing Dimka Furmanov. We recorded the voice on compact cassettes, took the spools out of them, put them in an envelope and sent them by mail. And I knew that we might not get there, turn back at the very beginning of the journey.

My brother and I did not sleep all night before that trip. It was such a romantic entertainment. Mom made me go to bed at 21.00 Baku time, at 20.00 Moscow time, and we secretly listened to the radio, recorded the music we liked on cassettes. And so, we decided to celebrate the upcoming journey at night without sleep.

I don't remember how we got to the bus that took us to Guba in the morning. I wanted it to drive us to Geimanovka. The heat in the bus was terrible. A woman with two children set off with us. It seems she was on her way to Tbilisskaya.

In Guba we moved to the "goat" (such a Russian car) to Yalama. To the border. The driver, an Azerbaijani, consoled us that everything would be okay. A little, they say, wait, get nervous, and everything will be fine. "They have made wacky boundaries," he grumbled about something like that.

Realization began in Yalama. We got up at a rusty barrier covered with peeling green paint. An Azerbaijani soldier came out to us, picking a match in his rotten teeth. My mother begged him, said that she was teaching the same guys. He did not agree to any.

Then we like six gypsies sat on the grass, not far from the Samur River. The sun was hot. The locusts chirped in the grass on the bank of the stream. My brother and I caught them in transparent cigarette bags. I remembered children's games: we found "royal signs" and numbers in packs, played them like cards. I remember Marlboro's and Camel's insides were prized. And yes, locusts - " red feathers", with fiery red lower wings, soaring from under our feet like little lights, "blue feathers" locusts and "stupid ones" locusts. There, mostly, "stupid ones" jumped. The atmosphere was not at all the same when for the first time in my life I caught them in the vacant lot behind the stadium of the "Azerelectroterm" pool, where my father worked, together with the akrids, "doctor grasshoppers" among the common people. Then was an inspiration from a meeting with the inexhaustibility of the world of wildlife, now there was an oppressive longing for the Zelenchuk River, a birch tree near a spring with frogs, when there is a lot of green grass and flowers...

Sometimes we returned to my mother. Mom flatly refused to bribe border guards. The guide promised to lead us through the hazel, for a fee. We refused. Some curly-haired black-haired guy cooed that, nothing, nothing, a freight train will come soon, and then, I will leave for the country of freedom, he says, Russia, he cooed about the picturesque fields, forests and rivers of Russia, about how beautiful in Russia girls, and I was getting more and more melancholy.

Finally we got in line. The women were crying. From their words it became clear that Lezgins live on both sides of the Samur River, but they installed this stupid barrier, dividing their people in half. It was amazing how easily the white butterflies fly over it. Someone cannot get to their relatives in a neighboring village for a commemoration, someone can't visit her son. Then it dawned on me that the song "Destructive Union was hit by a car!", which was sung by children at school, was not at all funny. And the story "Demons", with which I wrote a notebook, about how "demons" flew in from another planet, with tentacles and trunks instead of faces, to avenge Joker U and Rat and destroy the USSR is some kind of idiotic. But it seemed to me: the height of originality: who else, besides me, would have thought that the Soviet Union could be destroyed? Then it really seemed indestructible. I gave that story with drawings to my classmate Sergei. Then he returned it to me. Read the text written by a child in the late Soviet years... He accurately predicted, didn't he?

***

Translation of a page from a children's notebook

Chapter 18. Conquered republics of the former USSR

The USSR fell apart into pieces-republics, which the demons began to smash one by one from Russia. One car was blown up, the other was hit. But each republic became a small state and, as is always the case in history, they were quickly conquered. The enemies were stronger, there were millions of them.

Chapter 19. War in Russia

No! The demons weren't that stupid. They knew: the place of conquest must be encircled from the outskirts to the center. And so it happened. They conquered small places and cities, and then went to Odessa. As soon as they got there, they were immediately rebuffed. Cannons, lasers, beam pistols and rifles were firing from everywhere. Six demon machines were destroyed here. Demons moved to Leningrad. They were met there. In Odessa, hundreds of them were killed, but Leningrad was taken. But in Moscow they were crushed to the ground. But it happened because a robot was directed at them, a kilometer high. But the demons were cunning. They turned into robots and defeated Moscow. Now they have refueled with a billion and went to Africa.

Chapter 20. Difficult battle of demons

Demons conquered Africa quickly, then England, Poland and others

***

In general, we crossed the Azerbaijani border, moreover, for free. A new line was waiting for us on the other side. Our fellow traveler had a different conversation with the Russian border guards. She told them directly that she was a secret Armenian who had changed her last name and lied about the fact that she was going to flee from Azerbaijan.

After the events in Sumgait, the surname with the ending "an" or "yan" was considered unsafe for life. I remembered well how I came to the second grade and discovered that all the Armenians, who were not less than Azerbaijanis in the class, had disappeared somewhere, every single one. And the parents forbade to pronounce in the society such words as "Karabakh", "Armenians" and "YerAz" (Yerevan Azerbaijanis who fled from Armenia). And we children obeyed. I remember that once a boy ran along the corridors at school with a stick, which he imagined to be a machine gun, directed everyone and shouted: "Bang-bang, Karabakh!" I went home and repeated. What started here...

We also stood at the Russian border for some hours, until, finally, we were allowed to go where the tricolor was flying. And I was happy about this tricolor, the country of freedom, and at the same time there was a sediment in my soul, a feeling that something very wrong had happened: here the scarlet banner of the Soviet Union was supposed to fly.

Evening came. We hired a car, something like an UAZ, which took us across Samur. The driver also grumbled about the collapse of the country. We arrived at the settlement of the same name. There, in Samur, the Dagestanis put us to bed in a stable with mosquitoes, hay and the smell of manure. We burned mosquito coils. The hosts who served tea sympathized with us and said that they did not want the collapse of the USSR.

The next morning we went by train to Makhachkala. A guy, half-breed, told us on the way about the nationalities of Dagestan.

In Makhachkala, we had to wait half a day for the train. The inscription on the concrete fence was painted with white paint: "Vote for Zyuganov (the head of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation), who is sober, not drunk (a hint of Yeltsin)!" I really wanted everyone to vote for Zyuganov to return everything.

And finally, we go by train to Minvody city through Chechnya. A military helicopter cruised over it. It did not prevent the bearded Chechen fighters from getting on the train with the aim of robbery, and this robbery had some official name. Believe me, for the one who is required to pay for moving around the country, which is perceived by inertia as a single and dear one, it is all the same: upon presentation of a recognized document, it happens, as on the borders of Azerbaijan and Russia, or unrecognized document, as in Chechnya. ... Representatives of the unrecognized Ichkeria opened the door of our compartment, saw a mother with children and ordered not to touch anyone, because the mother was with the children.

We stayed in the burnt-out Gudermes. Through the window we saw how Russian soldiers exchanged weapons for vodka from Chechen fighters. It is strange to remember that here the walls, formed a landscape, not charred before, not destroyed by shells before, and dad bought here tarragon. And in Grozny, dad once bought a children's book about an owl. My brother in Gudermes listened to a cassette with the "Mirage" group, an instrumental composition for the song "Where am I" in the player, if memory serves.

The people on the train were talking that the (communist) party might come back, and all the bandits would be jailed. The fact that people did not want the collapse of the Soviet Union, the people above decided everything, instead of them.

And I remembered. I recalled 1990 in Baku. Bright tracer bullets in the dark blue sky in the rectangle of the window in the parent's bedroom. This sound of shooting. We hid with my brother under the bed out of fear. Tanks entered the city. A criminal neighbor with furious eyes came running from the rally. Peoples shouted on the street "Azadlig!" - "Liberty!"

One of those days, the neighbors brought us a girl, an Azerbaijani. We often sat with her in the summer on folding chairs on the wooden staircase of the courtyard-well. We painted with watercolors, as it should be for Soviet children, "Peace - Labor - May!" And here we are again with paints, in our gallery, together, and the sticky boundless fear of death takes possession of me. I suddenly realize that death will come for everyone one by one. Earlier it seemed that we are all together - she, me, my mom, my dad, her mom, her dad. But a tank will arrive, or a man with a machine gun will run into the yard, and at the moment of death no one will be around, even if your parents hold you by the hand, even if they hug you. It was Gorbachev who sent here the Red Army, "Uncle Misha, the most worthy man in the country," as my father once introduced him to me on TV before the May Day demonstration, and I played cubes that folded into animals on the bed next to him and laughed at the wool like a monkey on his father's chest. In those days, the scarlet flower of the Soviet Union was shot between us there, in Baku.

And then they blew up the TV tower. Oh, how happy we were, when either for 20 or 40 minutes, I don't remember exactly, they started showing the program "Curfew" on the "Baku" channel - this is a feeling of the return of civilization! The whole family gathered in front of the Yantar television set with a switch, and the uncle was chatting something incomprehensible on the screen. And then they started showing cartoons again. At first, only in Azerbaijani, I looked eagerly, understanding little, then in Russian...

Do you know how strange it is to realize one day that you haven't heard automatic shots for a long time?

And then - 90s, banana paste, diluted with water, spread on bread. Some bank paid it, they grew like mushrooms after rain in those years...

Finally, Minvody. Someone plays cards at the station, the game is called "Fool". I caught a speckled butterfly, terribly proud that I was not afraid of the hydrocyanic acid it contains. We waited in Minvody until evening.

Then everything is fast.

Kropotkin. We met the dawn. Bus to Tbilisskaya. Native carved shutters on wooden village houses, tiles of small squares on the paths and colorful fences. Uncle Zhora arrived and took us to Geimanovka.

First of all, having breakfast and kissing my grandmother, I rushed to Dimka Furmanov. He has speakers connected to a tape recorder. He recorded specially for me from radio Russia the song of the group "Secret" "In hot countries". I really liked this group as a teenager: first love, all that ... Ahead of me were many hot summer days, fishing, friends, games, insects, books from the library, science fiction and about animals, a whole little life ...

It is still difficult and scary to talk about this trip to Russia.

Mirage. Where I am. Listen

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Аннотация: Для тех кто говорит на русском - простите, что запостил на английском, для тех, кто говорит на английском - простите за мой плохой перевод. For those who speak Russian: sorry for posting in English, for those who speak English: sorry for my poor translation.

Тюлин Дмитрий Юрьевич : другие произведения.

Travel to Russia