I want to tell you about my life in Tajikistan during the 1991-1997 civil war that broke there, which ended with the signing of a ceasefire. The ceasefire, of course, did not mean the immediate end of the war. Combat operations and all kinds of military operations continued until the beginning of the 2000s. During the war about 100,000 were killed. People (mostly men from 14 to 50 years old).



By the beginning of the war, I was 12 years old and I was the eldest child in a family of 5 (parents and two younger sisters). My parents worked and tried every way to find money for food, and I was obliged to buy bread. Now I realize that the task that was assigned to me was too difficult and sometimes dangerous for the child of my age. In the rows for bread, at the time, there were adult men who arranged tricks and pressures that were not as dangerous for them - as for the ugly and small 12-year-old boy. The longest and most dangerous queues were at the BKK (Bulo-Candy Combinate) on the outskirts of the city. Bread was sold there "all day", but in batches: they baked a batch - they started selling from one window. Everything was washed up in 15-30 minutes. Then, again waiting at 2-3 hours - until the next batch. The "order" in the rows was brought by militants-Pamyrs (the outsiders of GBAO - the Mountain-Badakhshan Autonomous Region), who occupied that area of the city for a short period of time. The ranks “controlled” with rubber shells and shots over the heads. By the way, the Pamirs were the first to introduce their armed forces into the capital (in fact, starting the war) and untouched worse than all the other sides combined. Responsibility for most of the murders and robbery of civilians in 1992-1993. It lies on the palm trees. The rest of the Tajiks still don’t like them for that.

Civil War by the Eyes of a Teenager Civil War, Tajikistan, Leningrad, 90s



The artillery in the city did not surprise anyone.



In order not to be distracted by the thought of the extensive period of my life during the war, I will tell you about two instances when I was almost dead.



In 1994 (I was already 13 years old) I and two of my cousins, who were 1 and 2 years older than me, went to Kuibyshevsky district (about 100 km). from the capital) to my grandmother to take some flour and medicine for my grandfather. I was in a bus, filled with women and children. There were six men on the bus (including me and my brothers). We drove 40 kilometers from the city, as we were stopped at the “block-post”, which represented 1 BTR, a couple of cars (cross the road) and a person 10-15 militants (different degrees of smoke).



Two militants entered the bus and asked for documents from three men. They showed passports and took them out of the bus. Then came the turn of me and my brothers. We did not have any documents. We thought of ourselves as children (and we were wrong). We also started to get out of the bus and at that moment there were shots. Three men, quietly and quietly, were shot at the BTR. They were not interrogated, they were not beaten – they were just taken out and shot. We were also put to the BTR, but on the other hand from the bodies.



It should be noted that shortly before this one of my brothers, a rap fan, looking at the clips, decided to shave the patterns on his head. I wanted something like this:

Civil War by the Eyes of a Teenager Civil War, Tajikistan, Leningrad, 90s



True, it was done at home and therefore it turned out to be very curly, dull and terrible, but the brother, for some reason, decided not to clean up this "beauty", but just walked on people in a cap.



We are standing at the BTR, we are already waiting for the shooting, and here the wind from the brother shakes the cap, and the militants saw his hair. They cried very long and loudly. He called his brother a fool and joked. Three minutes later, laughing, they just let us back into the bus and we left. I don’t know whether they wanted us to be shot seriously or “shocked,” but it seems to me that my brother’s stupid hair and the drug intoxication of the militants saved us from shooting. By the way, the block-post was government.





The second case was in 1997, and I was already in 11th grade. I had a classmate, Tola (a painfully thick boy with a curved leg), whose older brother served in the 201th Russian Division. Tolik once pulled a F-1 grenade into the school that his brother gave him (well, or he just sprayed it from his brother). Here is this:

Civil War by the Eyes of a Teenager Civil War, Tajikistan, Leningrad, 90s



And he was amused by pulling out the check, and pressing the trigger, he walked with it, showing us how "hard and fearless" he was. He then returned the check.



The check consists of a ring and a double wire, which is inserted into a special hole in the incinerator and bends in different directions (type "sic"). Accordingly, with each pulling out of the cheque, these "sicks" were bended, and with each squeezing in place, they were bended to the previous position. After the second check was pulled out, we (the classmates) advised Tolik to put a grenade in his ass until we put it there. He calmed down and we went to a history lesson.



All the boys in the class were sitting on the back seats and nothing predicted trouble. Tolik was sitting in a row next to me at a distance of extended arm. He pulled out the grenade again and pulled out the check under the rope and pulled the lever. Smiling, he showed me a ring, and I saw that one of the "sicles" had fallen. Tolik panicked, pushed the check back and tried to bend the second "sack". He also fell. The wire on the check became short, and we were afraid that it would not hold the lever. Tolik carefully handed over the grenade to a classmate, raised his hand and asked the teacher to the toilet - escaped from the classroom. The classmate pulled his hand with a grenade into the pocket of his jacket and also asked to go to the toilet. The teacher said he could go as soon as Tolik returned. But he never returned. The classmate was sitting with a grenade in his pocket for 30 minutes, pressing, tight enough, the lever.



We understood that the grenade might explode, but nobody even tried to go out or tell the teacher. After the call, we ran into the labor office with the crowd, found a hard wire and pushed it to the place of the check. They left the school, entered the entrance of an empty dormitory, and the classmate stretched his hand. The grenade did not explode, but those few seconds, while my classmate slowly pushed his fingers, were the longest in my life. We twisted the fire from the grenade, and materialed Tolick for a long time. He was saved by his illness.