Fall 2007
Malik marks time by the deaths of those he loves. At 83, his joints crackle when he gestures, and tears trickle from his aging eyes. “I want to die,” the grizzled Chechen says, “but God won’t take me. Maybe he’s forgotten me.”
He nurses a teacup of vodka—his medicine, he calls it. The liquor is strong enough to eat the paint from the porcelain and to dull the hurts of his long life. And he’s had plenty.
Sixty-one years ago Malik Suleimanov was crammed into a box-car and deported from his home in Chechnya to the empty steppes of Kazakhstan. Nearly half of the 500,000 deported Chechens died of starvation or sickness, including Malik’s mother and wife. Later one of his sons would commit suicide. With death’s shadow cast across so many years, the old man wonders, Why hasn’t God taken me, too?
Farisa Mamakayeva likewise survived the deportation from Chechnya. And while she, too, could claim a right to hatred and bitterness, she points to the deportation as the Chechen people’s salvation rather than their decimation:
“Did you see the movie? Lenin was swimming with Stalin, and Stalin rescued Lenin from drowning, so Lenin returned the favor by allowing the Chechens to be deported to Kazakhstan,” she explains.
She believes if they had not been deported, they would have all been killed. So Stalin is the hero in the great drama, though in Farisa’s telling, God gets credit for the plan.
“You see, it was God’s help that Stalin made that man (Lenin) deport the people, to take them away; otherwise they would be destroyed. That’s why the Chechens survived.”
Call it Soviet propaganda, or call it faith. Either way, God’s presence is intertwined in the lives and stories of these old people. They undoubtedly fear God. But when they finally meet him face-to-face, will they recognize him?
Who is going to tell old Soviet deportees like Malik and Farisa that Jesus is a home, a refuge for them? Who will tell the villagers in Dagestan or the immigrants in Moscow? Who will tell the government officials in Kyrgyzstan and the professors in Uzbekistan? From students to grandfathers, bankers to fruit sellers—all across the former Soviet Union, people continue to look for truth that will outlast governments and wars, poverty and wealth, life and death.
God has not forgotten Malik and Farisa. He has not forgotten the former USSR. Will you?
Learn more about the peoples of the former Soviet Union
Kazakhs :: Kyrgyz :: Muslims of Moscow :: Tatar :: Turkmen :: Uzbek