No news, just a few corrections and stuff...

25 people were released, not 26. One woman, mother of three children, was allowed to go with one child but she chose to return and stay with the remaining two.

Five citizens of Armenia and two of the Republic of Georgia (a woman and her 7-year-old daughter) are among the hostages.

Two Turkish citizens were released - an Osetian woman married to a Turk and one of her daughters. Her other daughter is still there, inside the school, as a hostage.

Someone trustworthy - a doctor, Leonid Roshal, who became known during the 2002 Moscow theater siege when he assisted and negotiated and acted as a saint in general - said that if it all doesn't end well, there might be a war between the brotherly peoples, the Chechens, Ingush and Osetians...

A Russian TV reporter in Beslan says there are no signs whatsoever that the special forces are intending to storm the school - and then he spent about five minutes telling us how he is saying less than he knows because the terrorists allegedly have TV sets and are following all that's being said about the situation. This is so fucking scary. There's always a temptation "to read between the lines" in this country - and what he said may mean that there are actually some plans to do something that would piss the terrorists off. I'm sure there are - but no one knows when they decide to actually do something decisive and, possibly, fatal. Or maybe I'm just too paranoid. Still, I hope the terrorists are too dumb or haven't been paying attention to the news. God, please, let it end quickly and bloodlessly...

On the news now they're saying that the infants were naked because the weather's very hot and it was even more unbearable inside the gym where the hostages are being held, so the mothers took the clothes off their kids. The reason why the special forces guys, not mothers, were carrying most of the kids out is because many of the mothers are still inside as hostages - many of the mothers were there with both their younger and older kids.

There are allegedly four or five Armenian nationals inside, and maybe a few Turks; there are demonstrations in Chechnya and Ingushetia - people there are demanding the release of the hostages; the terrorists refuse to take medicines, food and water for the hostages; the population of Beslan is about 30,000 - everyone outside knows someone inside.

This is so unbearably heartbreaking.

(Photo: Reuters)

26 children and women out of 350 or so have been released...

(I didn't have access to the news for quite a while again - but today is different from yesterday, thank God, and there is some good news. Not much but I do hope they'll let more people go soon.)

Another beautiful quote, from the same source, Gazeta.ru (I read them in Russian, they are really good; but I have no idea how different their English version is):

We are used to calling what's going on in Chechnya a counterterrorism operation [not "war"]. What's been happening in Russia in the past few days is a terrorist counteroperation.

CORRECTION:

Sorry - the hospital siege happened in June 1995 in Budyonnovsk, Southern Russia. And in Daghestan, in 1999, they took over seven villages. Sorry. I can't be trusted now.

Grozny looks like shit - I've seen photos and footage. They don't show much of it here (or anywhere) - but in the little that you get to see there're way too many ruined buildings and men in uniform. There is some imitation of life there - not just the election but even a university with some totally charming guys studying there.

Much of Russia looks like shit, too. The difference between war-torn Grozny and certain small towns elsewhere in Russia wouldn't be as striking as, say, between Baghdad and a town in the U.S. Midwest.

There are many Chechens living in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia, and in the West. A few are very very rich but most live quietly and poorly, just like most other people. If you ask me, the rich ones should go back to their homeland and kick some asses: it's all about money, not independence.

The newly-elected Chechen president looks and sounds a lot nicer than the recently murdered Kadyrov: I'll feel genuinely sorry for him when they blow him up, too. I didn't feel sorry for Kadyrov, he was a thug. His son is even worse: thank God he's only 27 and couldn't run for president after his father died. I did feel terribly sorry for all those people who gathered on May 9 at that stadium to watch the Victory parade and ended up nearly killed: all those beautiful skinny mamas, dressed up and made up, who came to show off their beautiful teenage daughters. For them it wasn't imitation of life - it was life, a holiday, and some schmucks made a mess of it. Fuck independence.

Now, North Osetia isn't populated by Russians. Daghestan (where they seized a hospital in 1999 - was it 1999?) has too many ethnicities and languages to count and most people there aren't Russian either. It's like killing those 12 Nepali construction workers in Iraq. What for? Why?

Many Russians think there's no war going on in Chechnya. That's what they are being told - and they are either too dumb or too tired and underfed (or overfed and drunk) to bother to think. Many Russians think Daghestan is some foreign country, populated by all those Muslims. A cab driver yesterday said: "Fucking Muslims." And I had to go into explaining the complexity of it all to him: the Cohen plus Hamas kind of equation.

There's some oil in Chechnya. There's money that's allocated for reconstruction but gets stolen by the fat assholes, never reaching Chechnya. Read Anna Politkovskaya's book for that. Also, there's been only one precedent so far when part of the country proclaimed independence and was recognized by the rest of the world: Bangladesh in 1971. Maybe I'm wrong here, though.

Mishah's home from work - maybe I'll write more later - but now I need a hug real bad.

Love,
Veronica

P.S. I forgot to mention the Chechen soccer team, Terek - those guys rock! They've had some very unlikely victories lately and are becoming quite famous. The fans who accompany the team - to Moscow and to Poland, among other places - are very sweet, too. Not the types who'd take hostages or blow themselves up.

I spent five or six hours away from the news and I really hoped it'd all be over by the time I get home. But nothing has changed. No "happy end" yet.

I wanted to write something "clever" about Chechnya - but I can't. It's as crazy and complicated as a Cohen lawyer defending a Hamas guy in the States - a Cohen helping Hamas and Hamas trusting a Cohen, a Hamas guy with a house in Virginia and $1 million to spare for a bail.

Fuck them all, as I said yesterday. All except the hostages.

"Nord-Osetia"

This is from a headline in one of the Russian online papers. Refers to the "Nord-Ost" theater hostage crisis in Moscow some two years ago.

Severnaya Osetiya... North Osetia... Nord-Osetia... Nord-Ost...

Very creative. I envy people who are able to come up with puns and stuff when something as horrible happens. I would give the guy a Pulitzer for this headline.

Some sources say there are 400 hostages being held in that school - kids, parents, teachers - and some say there are 150-200... Some say 15 kids have managed to escape, others say 50.

We've just had another explosion - in Moscow, near a subway station, at least ten people dead, though I don't know whether this includes the woman who blew herself up or not. What a day. Full moon. It normally takes me about three to four days to recover - but then it happens again. The 12 Nepalese hostages were kind of too far away and I decided not to pay too much attention, so then it happened in Ber-Sheba - and as if that wasn't enough, they decided to do it in Moscow, too. I know it's not about me, not at all (alhamdulillah), but I'm a spoiled only child, so I do feel like it's all happening to me. Fuck them all. I'm exhausted.

It doesn't look like they are trying very hard to hide... Though if one assumes that some terrorists are terrorists and others are freedom fighters, then it's different, of course (and I don't just mean Hamas here; there's also Mr. Zakayev living very comfortably in London and pretending to speak for the thousands of displaced Chechens)...

Bail at $1M in Videotaped Bridge Case

by Brian Witte
Associated Press

BALTIMORE — A man described as a high-ranking Hamas operative was freed Monday on a $1 million bond, but must appear before a federal grand jury in Chicago probing the Palestinian militant group's financing.

Ismael Selim Elbarasse was released during a closed-door detention hearing in federal court in Baltimore, said Vickie LeDuc, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office. His attorney said he was traveling to his home in Annandale, Va.

Elbarasse had been arrested after officers pulled him over Aug. 20 just west of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge after spotting his wife filming the structure with a video camera.

Neither Elbarasse nor his wife was charged with any wrongdoing. However, Maryland authorities held him after discovering a material witness warrant had been issued for him in Illinois the same day.

Federal officials in Chicago want Elbarasse to appear before a grand jury probing the financing of Hamas, which the government has designated a terrorist organization.

"He's going home, and I suspect what he and his family will do is stop keeping photo albums of their vacations," said Elbarasse's attorney, Stanley Cohen. A phone call to Elbarasse's home was unanswered Monday afternoon.

Cohen said Elbarasse's friends put up property to post the bond.

No date has been announced for Elbarasse to appear.

Court documents allege Elbarasse and defendant Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook — considered one of the highest-ranking leaders internationally of the Palestinian extremist group — shared a Virginia bank account used to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars for Hamas. [...]

What's really cute about it is that the name of this guy's lawyer is Stanley Cohen.

***

Meanwhile, I'm waiting to hear from my former classmate who lives in Ber-Sheba with his beautiful wife and a sweet little baby daughter. I hope they are alive, healthy and not too upset about today's bus explosions, for which Hamas has claimed responsibility and which killed at least 15 people.

Yesterday, I saw this name on the list of the dead: V. Meglinskaya. I wanted to call Mishah at work because this is the last name of one of his colleagues in Moscow - she's Irina, but it could have been her relative. But then I got too upset to call him.

He told me in the evening that he had also noticed this name. He talked to Irochka on the phone about some work issues that day and at some point he said he hoped that was just a namesake of hers.

She hadn't seen the list yet. She said, "You know, we don't have any namesakes in this country - all Meglinskys are in some way related. My mother is V. Meglinskaya - but she's not flying any planes, she's at home, in Southern Russia. I'd know if she all of a sudden decided to fly to Volgograd from Moscow, right?" Then Irochka thought for a while, trying to remember any other of her numerous relatives whose first name starts with a "V" - "Venera," she finally said, a relative she hadn't seen or heard from in a very long time. She hung up right after that, and Mishah didn't have the guts to call her later to find out if that was indeed her relative Venera. He felt guilty for making Irochka worry - but I told him he shouldn't be.

Today, I checked the list again and noticed a correction: it's V. Miglenskaya - not Meglinskaya - now.

They haven't determined yet whether the planes went down because of terrorist attacks - but if they do, the relatives of the victims won’t get a cent because, even though all the passengers were insured, the insurance doesn’t cover death as the result of a terrorist act. If these were "just" accidents, they’ll get some $3,500 for each of their dead.

I know nothing about insurance; I've just heard this on the news. I think this is outrageously unfair: in a country at war, terrorism is as likely as accidents.

Some pretty disastrous things always happen in August here: it's become a cliche by now, and everyone's expecting the worst. The coup that brought the Soviet Union to its collapse took place on August 19, 1991 (which was a good thing for many, though; today - well, yesterday - is/was the Independence Day in Ukraine); the default happened on, I guess, August 17, 1996, and way too many people lost their jobs and savings; the Kursk submarine sank sometime around August 12, 2000. There could have been something else but I don't remember. And now this.

I'm so scared of flying - and to think of what all the relatives are going through now is horrible. There were about a hundred people on board of those two planes - or, hopefully, fewer: they keep confirming something and then there are some vague disclaimers. One plane's burning tail has been found, and the other one is still missing though it looks like they've almost found the place where it fell. It happened so late at night and Russia's countryside is very very dark.

Mishah flew to that airport just a week ago - it's a newly redesigned airport, Domodedovo, with really tight security. There's a commuter train service between the center of Moscow and the airport - the trains are brand new and comfortable - an incredible thing for Russia.

It can't be an accident. Two of them at the same time. They were at the stage of the flight that's the safest statistically.

Today, there was also a minor explosion at a bus stop in Moscow - in the area that's like a Bermuda Triangle: two apartment buildings were blown up there in 1999 and the theater hostage thing also happened nearby. But only two people are reported to have been hurt in today's explosion and no one took it seriously - it's Moscow, after all, a crazy city. But now they are beginning to panic - I've just read a piece that, among other things, mentions that the bomb had gone off roughly halfway from the center to the Domodedovo Airport.

Compared to what's going on in Iraq, this is nothing. Even though it is probably connected with the upcoming elections in Chechnya.

Only fools die for ideals.
(Bora Djordjevic, RIBLJA CORBA)

The Bosnian boy spoke reluctantly – either because he didn’t trust me, or because he was shy. Or both. He was reluctant to give me his full name, too. He was one year my junior.

When I was growing up in the Soviet Union, those of us who had a chance to visit his country, Yugoslavia, were considered lucky. It was almost like going to the West. Those lucky ones returned wearing absolutely enviable shoes. Even Italians used to buy Yugoslav-made footwear, cheap and of superb quality. The 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, broadcast on our black-and-white TV, was such a wonderful childhood memory, too.

I’ve never been to Yugoslavia. I met the Bosnian boy in Iowa, briefly, in 1998.

He went to war when he was 15. Four years later, in 1994, a landmine blew off his leg.

He started out with the Bosnian government troops. Then, he switched sides and joined the rebel forces of Fikret Abdic, a Bosnian businessman and politician. “The leader of the mosque would tell us: ‘You have to go there and fight, and you have to die, today. And you’ll be born again: in three months, you’ll be the same person.’ Stupid. In five years, I didn’t see anyone who woke up.”

After the landmine accident, he migrated from one refugee camp in Croatia to the next, and then all the way to the Midwest. In the refugee camps, he said, “seven years are like 100 years, and one night is like one year. Every day is the same. Every day is the same. You just think it’s your life.”

The war is about friends: “I am Muslim, but we fought each other because we wanted to be nice with Christian people. I fought for my city, home, friends. Not for religion or politics. For freedom. I couldn’t watch my friends leaving the city. When the war started, I still had friends who were Christian, but they had to leave because it was dangerous to stay in the city. Someone made them leave.”

War friends are different from peace friends: “You have a friend in the war and you share with him. Maybe he saved your life, maybe you saved his life – you know what I mean?”

Refugee camp friends are like war friends: “We helped each other. We had to say four times a day, ‘Take your pills. Take your pills.’”

One of his refugee camp friends, a tent-mate, had had a brain injury, and they all tried never to contradict him: “Whatever he said, we had to say, ‘Yes, that’s right.’ Like, ‘This is a chair,’ and it had to be a chair, not a sofa.”

Many people in the camp thought the Bosnian boy and his friends were the happiest among the refugees – because they always had something to laugh about: “We were so strong because we made jokes all the time. One year we spent in a joke. We didn’t even think of anything, just lived for today and tomorrow. We made jokes about politics. We made jokes about people without a leg, like myself. We made fun of each other because we could understand each other. We made jokes because refugee camp was hard.”

Once, the Bosnian boy’s mother made an attempt to leave the camp and return to their house – she found nothing there but holes in the walls. His friends made similar attempts, too, and some got killed: “It’s kind of like a gang. If you fought for my side and you went back, and if some people knew, they’d kill you or hurt you.”

But, if he ever did return, he said, he’d try not to miss the performance of his favorite Serbian band, Riblja Corba (Fish Stew). They played political songs, he said, and their lead singer always got arrested.

***

I have no idea whether the Bosnian boy has risked taking a trip to his homeland – but Riblja Corba made it to Waterloo, Iowa, this past Saturday!