Today's Beslan photos and stories of the survivors (in Russian), on Natasha Mozgovaya's LiveJournal. Also there, photos from the Beslan cemetery where the victims are buried.

***

Six Reuters photos on Gazeta.ru.

A New York Times piece on an HBO documentary about Beslan children, to be aired in the States tonight - The Horror of Beslan, Through Its Youngest Survivors...

[...]

A small boy recounts how one terrorist's grenades exploded, and "he blew up and his brains hit me in the face." Another wished that Harry Potter would arrive with his invisibility cloak and wrap him up, and together they would escape.

[...]

The filmmakers' questions to the survivors went beyond the details of the siege, including, for example: "Did the events affect your belief in God?" One boy, Mr. Woodhead said, told them: " 'I don't believe in God. I believe in the Russian military.' "

Only one parent refused to allow a child to be interviewed. The filmmakers were welcomed into the homes of Beslan, with tea, cakes, vodka and often entire meals spread out for them.

[...]

Here, NTV is showing a documentary of their own on Saturday, also about the kids. I'm not sure I'll be watching it.

From the Guardian:

[...]

A group of the victims' relatives delivered a symbolic public rebuke to the Russian government today, releasing a petition signed by more than 400 people requesting political asylum "in any country where human rights are respected".

The petition states: "We, the parents and relatives ... have lost all hope for a just investigation of the reasons and the guilty parties in our tragedy, and we do not wish to live anymore in this country, where a human life means nothing." [...]

And from the Russian state-funded Ria Novosti news agency:

The Mothers of Beslan committee, a group of women who lost their children in the hostage-taking tragedy last September, has denied any role in an appeal for political asylum that was disseminated this morning in the name of the committee, the chairman told a news conference.

"It is an opinion expressed by several members of the committee rather than a collective decision," Zhulieta Basiyeva said.

"We have seen the statement and considered it, but we never intended to distribute it," she added.

The statement, which was distributed among foreign journalists during mourning ceremonies in Beslan, contained an appeal for political asylum "in any country where human rights are upheld." The statement said 500 signatures had been gathered in support of it, but nobody has actually seen them.

***

The full text of the petition, published in Gazeta.ru (in Russian), is rough, not too coherent at times, and reads like screaming:

[...]

We've been waiting patiently for almost a year to be told the truth about the cruel killing of our relatives, and for those responsible for it to be held accountable. But time and the officials' behavior have shown us that we'll never be told the absurd and horrible truth. Many of us were held hostage inside the school and we witnessed the extermination of the people. We were present at the trial of the terrorist [Nurpasha] Kulaev, and the state prosecution has been trying to put all the blame on the terrorists only. Yes, a terrorist act took place, the rebels shot 21 men inside the school. They were not killing women and children. And who was it then that shot the rest, more than 300 people, mainly women and children? Whole families were being killed. Why?!

They do not want to tell the obvious truth to us. But we know it now. We know who did it, we know who used our children and relatives in their own dirty politics. We know who chose not to negotiate with terrorists and sacrificed the lives of our relatives for the sake of their ugly political image. Yes, on September 1-3, 2004, the federal authorities have achieved a cynical and bloody victory over a bunch of terrorists, the victory that was both a military and an informational one. After this, terrorists would think twice before taking children hostage, because they've been shown that nothing can stop the federal authorities. But why were they liberating us so cruelly?

It is obvious that for the federal authorities of Russia we're nothing but "persons of Caucasian ethnicity." The hostages were treated like cattle at a slaughterhouse. [...] The federal authorities justify their actions by the lofty ideals of Russia's integrity. And what are we supposed to do? What are our children guilty of? Such a mass slaughter of hostages may be repeated anywhere anytime.

We think that the primary reason for the spread of terror in Russia is the cruel war against our own people in Chechnya. Corruption and bribery have turned into a cancer on the body of the Russian state structures. This tumor has affected the whole society and serves as rich soil for crime and terrorism.

We, mothers, fathers, relatives and close ones of the hostages who were cruelly tortured by the terrorists, have been betrayed by our politicians, officials, law enforcement, and our "president," we are desperate and we've lost all hope to hear the truth about the main culprits guilty of extermination of our relatives; we are asking you to accept us in your country where we would be law-abiding citizens, respecting your laws.

Finally, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to you and your peoples for sharing our pain during the September 2004 tragedy. We hope that this time you will treat our appeal with sympathy and understanding. We will be grateful for your response.

[...]

Desperate and sincere, naive - that's what I think of it, even though I've read some people's opinions that it's a well-prepared move by Garry Kasparov and other opposition activists, blah-blah-blah.

I do hope there'll be a country that will have the guts to grant these people and their children asylum.

(Could Ukraine be this country? Would they agree to move there? Somehow, I doubt it...)

A six-year-old, Sept. 1999 Kyiv Post piece on anti-Semitism in Ukraine - and a recent picture of the Mandarin Plaza underground pass - at Abdymok...

According to Radio Echo Moskvy (in Russian), relatives of those who died in Beslan have addressed leaders of foreign states through foreign journalists present in Beslan today, asking for political asylum.

This is one of the photos from the Ayvacik Friday Market selection, and the little girl in it is wearing a t-shirt with a Russian cartoon character Masyanya, wildly popular here just a few years ago - and still very fondly remembered.

I almost dropped my camera when I saw this girl: the market seemed like such a beautifully rural affair, so foreign, so distant from what I'm used to, and Ayvacik, unlike other parts of Turkey, isn't full of Russians at all - but here it was, part of our world, right in my face. I wouldn't have really paid attention to an I Love NY! t-shirt, or one featuring Walt Disney characters, but Masyanya!..

***

Masyanya is a tongue-in-cheek St. Petersburg girl, "a decent girl living in an indecent society." When I came to St. Pete for the first time in fall 2002, I expected all women there to be like her.

You can download and watch Masyanya archives here (in Russian, of course), at the site of Masyanya's creators, the Mult.ru studio.

There's also plenty of Masyanya-related stuff out there: screensavers and wallpaper for your desktops - here, and t-shirts, mugs, stickers and other merchandise - here.

And here's a St. Petersburg Times story on a copyright battle between Masyanya's creator, Oleg Kuvayev, and Muz-TV, "Russia’s home-grown clone of MTV." Among other things, the story says that Masyanya is "frequently described as Russia’s answer to 'Beavis and Butthead.'" I've never thought about her this way, somehow...

When I was walking in Istanbul's poor neighborhoods on July 1, I realized that if it hadn't been for the kids there, I'd have been walking somewhere else. Without the kids, it would've been too depressing.

The kids are everywhere there, playing football, obviously having fun, posing for photographs. And only sometimes asking for money. Very rarely.

In May, two boys led us to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchy that we wouldn't have bothered to look for on our own - and we gave them some cash in the end, even though they didn't ask for it. They must've expected us to give them something, but somehow it seemed that they were as interested in practicing their English on us as they were in our money. When we told them we were from Ukraine, they immediately responded: "Andriy Shevchenko!"

This time, when I was back at the hotel, I suddenly remembered myself as a kid: how much I loved it when foreigners smiled at me or gave me chewing gum. That didn't happen often, as foreigners didn't walk around Kyiv just like that then. There were too few of them. (In Yalta, there were plenty, though, and we used to go there twice a year, to play tennis, so I did have some exposure...)

Their smiles probably made me feel more special somehow - it's a nice memory, blurry but nice.

Chewing gum I remember much better - we were told at school to never take it from the evil foreigners because they put needles inside to kill the innocent Soviet kids. But we gladly took gum and candies and little souvenirs - and survived.

(Actually, I shouldn't speak for anyone but myself: I loved the foreigners' attention, but Mishah, for example, says he never really cared.)

Back at our Istanbul hotel, I promised myself that I'd buy a kilo of candies and take them with me next time I went for a walk to the ugly neighborhoods full of wonderful kids. Then I thought about the needles-in-chewing-gum Soviet paranoia, and asked our dear Istanbul friend if he thought it'd be okay if I gave the kids some candies every time I took a picture of them: would their parents get mad at me or something?

No, don't worry, everyone would be happy, he said.

And I myself was so happy for a while, imagining how some sweet little kid from Istanbul would vaguely remember me years later, just as I still remember one or two of those foreigners from my own childhood. And this was one of the reasons I couldn't wait for September, when we thought we'd go to Istanbul. But now we aren't going anywhere, and, if all goes well, there won't be Istanbul for us for at least another year... And even though I shouldn't, I do feel sad about it...

***

A selection of kids pictures from our spring trip to Istanbul is here.

A bunch of Kyiv skinheads beat up a yeshiva student yesterday night - in an underground pass near the relatively fancy and relatively new mall, Mandarin Plaza, three minutes away from the synagogue and as close to my Bessarabka home.

The Jewish guy is in critical condition.

When I read about stuff like this, I can't help thinking of the 9-year-old Tajik girl killed by skinheads around the corner from where we lived in St. Pete, back in 2004. I still can't get over it.

I hate them so much.

***

The Haaretz reports that our police do not think the attack was motivated by anti-Semitism - and this, too, reminds me so much of Russia. The irony, of course, is that we Ukrainians like to believe that we are so different, so incomparably better than the Russians... Right.

***

In the Haaretz Talkback section, someone calls the Israelis to boycott Chicken Kiev.

Another guy doesn't have the brains to read past the headline and accuses the Haaretz of being anti-Semitic:

Your heading to this attack in the Ukraine is a joke - yes?????? If not anti semitism than what do you bright sparks at Haaretz call it - I would really like to know. Your paper gets more and more unbelievable. Your hatred of your fellow Jew is so rotten, and you go on and on and on ....................................

The headline, of course, reflects the view of our glorious police, not that of the newspaper (Ukraine: Attack on yeshiva men not motivated by anti-Semitism).

Finally, at least one person over there seems to think that the drunk skinhead jerks have been following the news of the disengagement drama:

These skinheads are just following Sharons example.

If Jews expel Jews from their homes why can`t we?

If Jews can destroy Jewish synagogues why can`t we?

If Jews can remove Jewish graves why can`t we graffiti them?

If Jews can arrest 13 year old girls for months without charges, why can`t we beat them?

These are questions we must think about before blaming the Ukranians.

I don't know why I'm reading this trash...

I'm totally not in the writing mood now.

But I'm done with my Turkey photo backlog: the last two installments are from my two days of binge walking in Istanbul, which I briefly wrote about here.

Back then, I sort of hoped to be able to return to Istanbul in September, but now I don't have this hope anymore, so sorting through these pictures was both too sweet and too painful.

I know I'm repeating myself a lot in my Istanbul photos, but somehow it's not making me feel bad...

- Friday, July 1, 2005 - from Sultanahmet to Eyüp (56 photos):




- Saturday, July 2, 2005 - from Sultanahmet to Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge (63 photos):

I want to keep all my "promo pictures" here - but I still sort of remember what a pain slow internet connection is - so I'll leave only two days of entries for a while, until I'm done with the photo backlog and ready to get back to writing.

A lot more stuff on my photo page - pictures from our trip to Turkey (June 20 - July 3) - way too many of them, as usual...

- A bus/ferry trip from Istanbul to Ayvacik (17 photos):






- Kayalar, the village we stayed in - or, to be more precise, we stayed above the village and walked through it on our way to the beach. Very friendly people, amazing air, we wish we had a house there... (27 photos):




- Lesbos, just across a little gulf from us (3 photos):




- Assos - as anywhere else in Turkey, there's lots of history and lots of life here (23 photos):








- Ayvacik, a town nearby, the final destination of our bus from Istanbul, a place to buy groceries - and a site of an awesome Friday market (16 photos):




- Friday market in Ayvacik (20 photos):




- Kucukkuyu - I keep misspelling some of the names and words because I don't know how to make those Turkish umlauts work here... Here, can any of you read it like this: Küçükkuyu?

Küçükkuyu is another place we drove to to buy stuff and eat (28 photos):




- An antiques market near Edremit, not in Küçükkuyu, as I wrote earlier: Mishah has corrected me (6 photos):




- Neighboring villages, etc. (18 photos):

Masha Gessen's column on Beslan in the Moscow Times - Beslan Demands Words, Not Silence (via A Step at a Time):

[...]

This is also what we are all invited to do next week, on the first anniversary of Beslan, when the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi is organizing a silent rally. "No Words" says the white-on-black poster advertising the event. It looks beautiful. But here is the thing. When it comes to the memory of Beslan, the right things to do are to listen -- or read the transcripts of the trial online -- remember and tell others. Silence, when it comes to Beslan, is not dignified. Silence is the opposite of truth.

But I can't read the trial transcripts - I tried but that's too much pain. I can't bear to watch the kids testify, either - this boy on the news today, he broke down mid-sentence...

I've just learned that it's up to the parents to decide whether to allow their kids to testify or not.

It shocked me, somehow: isn't it cruel enough that the children who survived this horror a year ago have to continue living in Beslan, have nowhere else to go? And now some of them have to live through it all again, during their testimonies?

That's another side of talking vs. staying silent.

And it's heartbreaking to know that after this circus - the trial - is over, only one person will go to jail: Nurpasha Kulaev. And no one from the government will be held responsible, all the officials will keep their chairs...

- Moscow State University (10 photos):




- Moscow (19 photos):




- A nameless boulevard in Moscow; one side of it is called Krasnokholmskaya Naberezhnaya (which is at least a 5-minute walk away), the other - Narodnaya Ulitsa (8 photos):




- Red Square and St. Basil's Cathedral (6 photos):




- A boat trip down the Moscow River (14 photos):

Kyiv, May 2005: Stuck in 2004...

Yanukovych supporters and their tents in Mariinsky Park (12 photos)...

I'll write more about them as soon as I find the notebook in which I was taking notes on that walk.

Kyiv, Trukhaniv Island, May 2005 (33 photos):