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The Aluminum Queen
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I met her on Moscow Street. She was walking along nimbly, or as nimbly as her shabby
rubber galoshes permitted. Two even shabbier children trailed behind her dragging a
cart with three and a half wheels, full of old iron. Elza would collect scrap in the
ruins and gouge the aluminium components out of it. To look at her hands and teeth you'd
think she was around 60, but her eyes and face betrayed that she must be under 30, which she was.
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What did you do before the war?
I was born in Chechnya, here in this city. I attended school for eight years -- primary and
vocational school. Only I couldn't find a job in my field after I left school. I'm a specialist
cake baker. Confectioner and baker. Unfortunately, I completed school just when our country was
starting to fall apart like rotten meat. I tried my hand at everything -- plastering, selling at
the market. . . In the end, I managed to find a regular job as a kindergarten assistant.
Do you receive humanitarian aid?
No. It seems that I'm supposed to register somewhere, but I don't know where. I don't
know where to go to ask or what I'm supposed to do. The places where they give things
out always have terrible queues and people fight to the death in them. Old women tear
each other's hair out and old men kick each other and beat each other with sticks.
And all on account of a bottle of oil, half a kilo of sugar and ten kilos of flour.
A hungry horde is worse than a pack of wolves. I'm not on any lists. I'd go and fight over a
bit of dry crust and when my turn comes they'd tell me I won't get anything. So I prefer to collect
aluminium.
And for the money . . .
At most, I manage to bake a loaf of bread or some pita.
A loaf costs five roubles, oil costs 20. Everything is terribly dear at the market.
When the first war started in 1994, I was so well stocked that I managed to bake cakes
for the next six months. Now I haven't a thing. And every day my children ask me:
"Mommy, why don't you bake anything?"
You're still young and it's the custom in your country to have big families. Do you want to have more children?
Definitely not. I've no strength left. In the evening when I crawl in after rummaging for aluminium, I sit down. It's
dark and I know I have to go for water. I say to myself: "We'll just have to die of thirst, I'm too tired to go." It's
three kilometres to the nearest pump and the water is horrible and stinks. In the end I go because I have to give the
children some tea, at least. But I know that one day I might simply decide not to go. I'll just let the children scream
with hunger and thirst. I would never have believed it in the past, but now I know I'm capable of just that.
Apart from physical suffering, fear, cold and the fact that you've lost all your property and the desire
to have any more children -- which in your country is a woman's main mission -- how has war changed your life?
I've aged 20 years. I was pretty, now I've turned into a monster. My sight is poor and I can't remember anything.
I was fit as a fiddle and now I just whine and lick my wounds. We all have breathing problems. All around us, oil wells are
burning and I can feel my lungs filling up with tar. I've lost a cosy flat and any chance of having a happy family again.
We live in the flat of one of my husband's friends. We have nothing left of our own.
Even though this flat belongs to someone else and in Europe it would be hard to describe it as a dwelling, it's clear that you
try to make it cosy. If you had enough money, if somebody gave you the money and said, "You can only use it to buy something for
your flat", what is the first thing you'd buy?
Curtains. Even though the wallpaper is hanging off all the walls and in the kitchen the ceiling is giving way, even though it's
impossible to keep this place clean, because I find it dreadfully exhausting to drag buckets of water up to the fifth floor, and
even though there's a hole in the wall big enough for a fairly large elephant to pass through -- which we've patched with a bit
of tin -- I'd put up curtains. They're the most important things in a flat. They totally change the atmosphere.
Except that the money for the aluminium isn't even enough to buy bread, let alone curtains.
What's it like, a day collecting aluminium?
I get up at 5:30. It's still dark. I try to rustle up some breakfast if there's a scrap of flour left.
I heat water, do some washing, tidy up. Then I wake the children and dress them. The curfew ends at eight in
the morning. At ten to eight, my elder son and I are ready to leave. We have the bottom half of an old cart and
ropes in order to take as much scrap as possible. At eight o'clock, we set out. All day long, we rummage in trash
heaps and ruins and crawl through bombed houses. We have already combed the immediately neighbourhood so it means a long walk.
Around four o'clock, we are already making our way home so as to get through all the Russian roadblocks. When the light is
starting to fade, it's dangerous: they can shoot without warning. I expect they're just as frightened as I am, so they'd
sooner shoot me than take the risk that I might be a kamikaze partisan. I spend the whole day plodding through ruins and,
even though I no longer resemble a human being, I crawl back happy at the thought I've brought home a couple of pans and a
cooking pot with a hole.
And when you get home?
I still have to go for water. ...
You say your husband spends the day meditating?
I suppose so. Our husbands aren't allowed to go for water. It's degrading. Since time immemorial, it's been strictly a woman's
job.
You fetch water and feed your children and husband?
Exactly. Then we sort through the day's finds by candle light. I gouge the plastic parts out of the pans.
They wouldn't take them from me otherwise.
Who do you sell the metal to?
There are middle men here who make big profits out of transporting the stuff to collection centers in Russia.
Previously, I sold it to Russian soldiers, who were only interested in aluminium. They didn't want any other colored metals.
I know that it is probably all taken out of the country. For a pittance. And fools that we are, we took apart an enormous oil
refinery and exchanged it for bread. I'm ashamed of the fact that even the scrap that remained in this republic is being sold
by us to foreigners for a few pence. But we have to eat something. For a kilo of iron, I get six roubles and that's a loaf of
bread. For that, I slog for a whole day, along with both boys. I even take the older girl with me. On account of it, my elder
son doesn't go to school.
Women trudge through the ruins, dragging their children with them while the husbands sit meditating?
Or did the rest take machine guns and go off to the mountains to play at partisans?
Most of the husbands sit at home. I'm also frightened to let mine out into the street on his own. When he has no choice but to go,
I prefer to accompany him. I protect him, not him me. My husband is tall and well-built, which is the type that has most to fear
from the Russians. They could pick him up at any moment without any reason and wouldn't see him again, or he'd come back
crippled. It's better for him to stay home.
Doesn't he find it embarrassing to sit at home while his wife is out running between mines searching for
aluminium so that he can eat?
He finds it terribly degrading and he's more and more desperate. No one in your country can appreciate what a Chechen feels
like having a woman feed him. There is no greater humiliation. It has never happened here before. My husband and I have lived
together for 13 years and for the first time we scarcely exchange a word. He lies there for days on end with eyes open,
and says nothing. He was never one to lie down during the day, even for a moment. He made sure the family had everything
we needed and he took pride in doing so. Admittedly, our husbands never display affection in public or hold hands with us,
but they worship the ground we walk on. Their main aim in life is to make sure their wife and children have plenty.
They don't even have to sleep with their wives or chat with them. They don't even have to show their faces at home,
but they always make sure the family has money. Rather, that was the way it was till now. The war turned everything upside down.
In the past, if you couldn't feed your family you weren't considered a man. That's why many women here didn't have jobs.
The husband wouldn't allow it. He'd consider it a disgrace.
Could you always totally rely on your husband?
Previously, yes. Not now. He's more distraught than I am.
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Photo Essay - Take a walk through Chechnya's bombed-out capital, Grozny.
Timeline - Explore Chechnya's turbulent past.
Interactive Challenge - How much do you know about WTO-era China?
Interactive Map - Plot the Kurdish "problem" and Saddam's ultimate solution.
Photo Essay - See how chemical weapons killed the future of one Kurdish town.
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Elza Duguyeva
