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War Stories
My great grandmother told me a story she heard from her grandmother: “The Russians would come after 2 in the morning hoping to get to the village while it was still asleep, and kill everyone. But our animals would alert us of their coming & we’d run and hide in the mountains…
“For a long time we did not know why all the animals in the village, cows, horses, gods, even gees would simultaneously start screaming like in horror. We even believed it was a sign from above that the gods were protecting us… 2
Later, we learned from our scouts, that the Russians always had a few carts with them filled with severed heads and body parts of Circassians. And that the stench of death coming from those carts was what made our animas scream.” 3 #CircassianGenocide
Every time I’d ask my grandma why did the Russians collect the body parts? She would say, that nobody knew, but rumors were they were sending these as a gift to the Russian tsar. After I grew up I learned of the Circassian heads still kept in Kunstkamera. dailykos.com
Russia erased Circassia not only from the world map but from the world memory. But not from its own archives and from the Circassian oral history (not for the lack of trying). Aubekir Gukemukh, Circassian professor perished from Josef Stalin’s repression, left behind a collection
…of Circassian folklore that was hidden away from his other more than 2,000 transcripts the Russian NKVD took out into his front yard and burned during his arrest. One short poem from that small book is about that mountain village my great grandmother story came from…
That poem translates:
What a spring
A spring of despair
A spring of horrors
Blood runs
At my doorsteps
In this spring of sorrow
I am thirsty
But my heart rejects this water
The Ingzhigh River
Runs blood
Even dogs don’t drink it.
The original Circassian is in a tweet below
What a spring
A spring of despair
A spring of horrors
Blood runs
At my doorsteps
In this spring of sorrow
I am thirsty
But my heart rejects this water
The Ingzhigh River
Runs blood
Even dogs don’t drink it.
The original Circassian is in a tweet below
Original Circassian:
My sit gatkhe, gatkhe mygue, gatkhe zhague. Si bzheshkhayum tli shygazhe gatkhe guae. Psy sykhole, psy sefanut sigu irihkym. Inzhidgipsyr tlyue mazhe khem irifkym.
My sit gatkhe, gatkhe mygue, gatkhe zhague. Si bzheshkhayum tli shygazhe gatkhe guae. Psy sykhole, psy sefanut sigu irihkym. Inzhidgipsyr tlyue mazhe khem irifkym.
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