Of the weekly news magazines, I normally buy Kommersant Vlast, but yesterday I bought this week's Russian Newsweek as well, because of its cover:



"Beslan, a year after" - and a Reuters photo that I posted on this blog exactly a year ago, of Elbrus Gogichaev carrying the 6-month-old Alyona Tskaeva, one of the 26 kids released with their mothers that day. Alyona's mother, however, stayed with her two other children inside the school and died there the next day. Alyona is being raised by her grandmother, and Elbrus, the special forces guy, is now a friend of what remains of that family.

There's a bunch of other photos of survivors - a year ago and now - and a text (in Russian), which I can't bring myself to read - here.

***

But before you reach that "now and then" section in the print issue of the Newsweek, there are four and a half pages of small portraits of everyone who died in Beslan a year ago.

The photos have been gathered by the Mothers of Beslan committee.

Faces and names, nothing graphic whatsoever.

Smiling faces, most of them.

Arranged alphabetically, but I only realized that at the end.

Made me weep for I don't know how long.

You can download a .pdf file with these portraits here (33 MB), though they have not been scanned in too carefully...