Rita Plotnikova and Medea Mitrophanova
The village of Zilgi sits just outside the suburbs of Beslan. The village streets are clean and quiet, just like the Margoev's house. Marina Margoev kindly shows us through her house to a bright room. Only one thing distinguishes it from hundreds of other such rooms – the pictures of a ten-year-old boy set in black frames. Every detail here is kept as it was two years ago when Tamik was alive. His six-year-old sister Dzera sometimes comes in, but she is not allowed to touch anything. She tried to ask relatives about her brother, but stopped when she noticed that her questions made her mother cry. Five-year-old Chermen still waits for his cousin to come back one day and play with him like he used to.
Marina was born in Vladikavkaz – a big city, capital of North Ossetia. She moved to her husband’s village after the marriage. When her elder son was seven she insisted that he go to the best school in Beslan, in spite of the fact it was far from home. Marina, a pediatrician, found a job in another school in Beslan, to be able to accompany Tamik every day. "School was the only place where I knew he was safe," Marina recalls with irony, bringing back the awful scenes of the siege that she lived through together with Tamik. Tamik died in that turmoil. Now Marina stays home most of the time and doesn’t even think of working with children. "It is impossible. If I have not saved my own son how can I help others! I’ve become nervous, quick-tempered, irritable. And I do not want to see anybody," she says.
According to psychologists, irritation is a consequence of exhausting psychological processes. They also say that one must learn how to live with the loss and with the good memories of those who have passed away. Galina Makieva, a Russian Red Cross visiting nurse comes to visit Marina every week. “I try to help Marina develop good memories of her son and share them with the younger children in the family,” Galina explains. “We speak a lot about the boy, who he was and how much joy he brought to the family. Marina, his mother, is the one who has to carry this light for other children in the family and we must help her do that. Who, if not the mother, will tell the little ones of their brother?”
“A new child? Why? He can’t replace my son.” Marina echoes familiar words, common in Beslan after the tragedy. A new pregnancy is a difficult decision for a young woman who has recently lost her child. Some manage to cope with the pain, others, like Marina, wait for long months and even years. During the past two years there were newborns in some families which have gone through the siege. Some 33 mothers of former hostages wish to have a baby and are awaiting assistance from Moscow hospitals. But there are those who still fear to sadden the memory of the lost children.
“When I worked as a doctor,” recalls Marina, “I happened to witness a child’s death. I couldn’t understand then how people could go through it and how it was possible to live after that! God showed me how,” she concludes.
Now she does not communicate much with people. “Even when I returned from a Moscow hospital after a long treatment, I didn’t go to our hospital. And nobody came to see me or to see the medical conclusions.” But Marina has no complaints. “I can cope on my own,” she says. “Usually I feel good... only when I remember Tamik, I cannot help crying. I think of him all the time,” she admits.
Marina was badly wounded during the storming of the school. Her left hand, even after an operation in Germany, where she went with the support of the Red Cross, has not recovered and she can hardly move it. In February this year she underwent another operation in Moscow. Rehabilitation is now necessary.
Galina, who visits Marina Margoev every week is one of the 18 visiting nurses from the Russian Red Cross rehabilitation Center working in Beslan since April 2005. Most of the nurses are from Beslan. Some of them are medical nurses, others teachers or social workers – they all came to work with the Red Cross in their desperate wish to help and support their neighbours. “We did some of this rehabilitation work in the families before we joined the Red Cross programme,” says Lumila Kargieva, “but that help was based on intuition and our own life experience and was not always correct. After the Red Cross courses on psychosocial rehabilitation we feel more confident and know how to help people who are in grief,” she said.
Two years of experience have added to their skills in their therapeutic work with the affected families. In 2005, they screened every one of the 578 affected families, to identify their needs. Some of them are under their permanent care now. In 2006, more emphasis is given to developing resilience through the involvement of the affected population in social and community work. Some of the former hostages come to volunteer for the Red Cross at the community events. Galina Makieva hopes that one day Marina Margoev will be among them.
Apart from visiting people at their homes, the Russian Red Cross attracts people to various sports, artistic or language sessions given at its rehabilitation centre in Beslan, and also organizes events for the town community that help to restore social ties, activity and normal life in Beslan. The international programme is supplemented by Russian Red Cross rehabilitation trips for the former hostages and their relatives and additional education for children with disabilities. Some 4,500 beneficiaries have received Red Cross assistance since April 2005.