world news

Beslan remembered

Primary school teacher Marina Mikhailova survived the Beslan school siege that began on September 1, 2004, but lost her father in the attack. She describes the experience of being held hostage by terrorists and her recovery from injury
Beslan anniversary
A soft toy lies amid flowers in the burned-out gymnasium of Beslan's School No. 1. Photograph: Eduard Korniyenko/Reuters

I was very badly wounded. I had two gunshot wounds and the bone was broken. In the early stages when I got into hospital, they wanted to amputate my leg. The bone had ruptured an artery under my knee and I lost a lot of blood. I was taken to a hospital in Vladikavkaz where I met a wonderful doctor, Chermet Baskaev, who had the resolve to operate on my leg. He sewed in an implant for the broken artery, which was a very complex procedure, but it was successful.

However, the bones were not fixed in place. I was in a very bad condition so they decided to take me to Moscow where many doctors helped me. I was fitted with a device that looks like several rings strung together with wires to hold the leg straight while the bones healed. The bone marrow escaped from some of the fractures and got into my lungs. I couldn't breath so they put me on a respirator and cleaned my lungs in another successful operation.

Then I got infection where the incisions were made on my shins for the operations. Everything started rotting inside. Again, they cleaned me up and I spent three months in Moscow before returning to Beslan, where a doctor named Kazbek Kudzaev took care of me. He was monitoring the bone in my leg growing back, and I had to spend nine months wearing the "fixator". Then he removed it, straightened out my bone a little bit and I couldn't step on my foot for two months. He sent me to see a masseuse so I began having to get up very early to make the trip. Massage relaxes you, but when I came home each time, I was very tired from the therapy.

I hobbled around on crutches. You can say that I didn't walk at all for nine months. I spent a lot of the time lying in my bed and I was taken up and downstairs on a stretcher as I live in the fourth floor apartment and the building has no lift. In the eighth or ninth month after the attack I started learning how to use crutches. Little by little, I was able to tackle the stairs by myself. On the ninth month my leg was still in the device but I began moving slowly around the house, without the crutches. I am not standing on my own feet yet – I still use one crutch. I rarely go for walks, unless I have some business to attend to. I just sit on the bench outside my house.

The weather is good here, but you can feel autumn approaching. The winds are blowing. Our town is a peaceful, small place. You can see the mountains. It is a small town where everyone lived peacefully, everyone was friends, We loved each other, everyone knew everybody. The children were sweet, kind and decent. The old traditions, they are still here.

Girls don't smoke in the streets here. It's a poor city. But then they [the terrorists] came and did that awful thing. Today in Beslan people only have tears in their eyes; people only have grief. Children are children, and the children's laughter is the only thing that makes everyone better.

I am a teacher of the primary school. I have been teaching since I was 19 after graduating from a teacher training college. I didn't have a higher education degree when I started teaching. I did my degree through a correspondence course. I teach Russian, Maths, History, Science, Art, Craft Design and Technology and Sport. I used to teach everything besides music and the Ossetian language.

On 3 September 2005, exactly a year since all those people died, I thought I wouldn't get though the day. I was in it all over again, and it was like I was the only person in the world. As if it was night, and I was all alone. This is how I felt. And for some reason it seemed to me that they would all come back. Of course, I knew it was not possible.

So many children died that one thinks it's not possible they could be kept there. They must come back. They have a life to live here. When someone looks back...I realise that I need to get on with my life. But it is so hard for me. So hard. My world as I knew it stayed there [at the school]. A girlfriend of mine had died, many children had died, my dad had died.

He was also a teacher there. What we used to have, we no longer have. There were children from my class in the middle of it, other kids I knew, my girlfriends' children and so on. It is a small town. We all know each other here.

My father died there, while saving me from the explosions. When the explosions happened, he was next to me, he covered me with his body. He was still alive then, but later he was shot [by the terrorists]. It was scary. Very scary. There are people whom I hate. I hate the people who came and did this to us. I hate their countries. Any person would hate them if they had something like this happen to them. I wouldn't wish this on my enemy. I wouldn't wish this even on evil people.

It is so hard for my mother now. She gave up her job and didn't work for a year so she could look after me and fuss over me while I am recovered. I have an older brother, who lives in the same building as us with his family. He helps us a lot.

The love of my boyfriend and my mother, and the support from my brother helps me to cope with everything. There are many people who need me. When I was in the hospital in Moscow, I met some very nice people. They sympathised with me. My boyfriend's friends came to visit. They were all good people and gave me their support. Maybe because I met such nice people from the start, it has helped me a lot.

On the anniversary, I go to the cemetery, to the school. People just walk into the sports hall [where the hostages were held], lay down flowers, and cry.

* Marina Mikhailova was interviewed by freelance journalist Svetlana Graudt.

Most popular