The Story of One Village

Archil Kikodze
photo by Gala Petri
From the collection of essays Exploring Torture published by the Georgian Centre for Psychosocial and Medical Rehabilitation of Torture Victims in 2004.
This essay is based on numerous interviews with eyewitnesses of the events described therein.

It’s September 16, 1993.At about 5 AM, the residents of one of the Georgian villages woke up to intense gunfire.The gunfire heard was coming from the Abkhazian villages.It can mean one thing only.The adversary has violated the peace treaty reached earlier through the mediation of Russia.On one hand, this treaty enabled the village to catch its breath for a month.On the other hand, it left the village totally unprepared for a surprise attack.All armored vehicles have already been removed from the village, while no one has kept watch with a gun in his hands at the approaches of the village in a month.The locals who have just woken up are unaware of what’s happening in reality.The men arm themselves and head toward their positions around the village.Uncertainty takes over the village.The only source of information is the national television which makes optimistic forecasts and predicts a swift victory of the Georgian side in the renewed war.

The adversary is nearing fast.The armament of the male villagers does not suffice to defend the village.It has been decided to start the only broken tank abandoned by the army.So they do, except that the repair of the tank takes the life of one person.The tank repaired for such a price alternately appears at the opposite ends of the village, depending on the intensity of gunfire.The defenders of the village attempt to create an illusion and make the adversary believe that the village is defended by several tanks instead of one.
In the meantime, gunfire is heard at an increasingly closer distance.Although television continues to predict a swift victory, many come to doubt it.Some consider leaving the village, while others laugh their fear to scorn.There is a dissent of opinions.Those who have decidedto flee, however, are having a hard time leaving at once their well-ordered households and farms.Many seem indecisive.While it’s being debated who’s leaving and who’s staying, the adversary’s bombs explode in the village.It has already become too dangerous for people to move around in groups.They may become an easy target for the adversary’s artillery.Somebody comes up with the idea of using the obsolete orchard irrigation canal that went dry a long time ago.The canal has gone wild, being fully covered with thorny bushes and shrubs for miles.This wild vegetation is penetrated by a two-mile tunnel, enabling those who wish to escape (who turn out to make up almost half of the village’s population) to reach safety place without being noticed by the adversary.
To the remaining half, the tunnel cut through wild vegetation is nothing but a laughing stock and the fellow villagers’ obsession.Although gunfire is near alright, they say on television that there’s nothing alarming.Things are changing rapidly.Gunfire is heard from all sides.The adversaries manage to cut through one of the defense lines, and although the village defenders quickly ward them off, they nonetheless manage to burn down up to ten homes.It becomes evident that the village is surrounded.The only escape route lies through the sea, and the village elders get in touch with Sokhumi, requesting a ship to evacuate them and promising to provide fuel, yet Sokhumi cannot make any promises.Those who have stayed now wish they were in the shoes of those who have fled.
When the bombing intensifies, those remaining in the village are seized with the desire to stick together and meet the advancing tribulation as one.About five hundred people gather in the biggest house in the village.This house was built to last.There are even safer buildings in the village (for example, the school bunker), but the most important thing is that this house fits everyone.Men leave their positions briefly to see their relatives here.Then they go back, not even knowing yet that for many of them this will be their last meeting.“I saw my husband for the last time in the morning before the village fell.He dropped by and said, ‘Things are pretty messy, so I’m on my way to the headquarters.’It was the last time I saw him.”
Even under such circumstances, many take a chance and attempt to take footpaths out of the villageto escape.Some perish while on their way.Nevertheless, some manage to reach safety.
“A sixteen-year-old girl, her husband (they were both fifteen when they got married), three-month-old son and brother-in-law were at her uncle’s home at the end of the village.It was the uncle who insisted on fleeing the village.The youths, however, refused as they didn’t know anything about their parents.The uncle eventually had it his way.
“The escapees managed to take secret footpaths and reached Kindghi where, luckily for them, a rescue ship moored alongside the shore.Many wished to make it on the ship, yet there was but one boat.It had been decided to yield the boat to women and children, while men would try to swim to the ship.At the very last moment, amid mass hysteria and chaos, men also turned up on the boat.The boat couldn’t bear all the weight and sank before reaching the ship.The young woman and her child were drowning.They were both rescued by a male stranger.They reached the boat somehow.Similar to everyone else, the infant’s clothing was wet.The only piece of cloth the mother could find to wrap her child was a filthy rag used to mop the dock.After they had already reached safety, the infant developed the gravest form of infection because of the dirty swaddling clothes.”
In the meantime, people who have gathered in the biggest house in the village listen to gunfire and tremble at what will happen next.They’ve spent three days together in stale air and unbearable conditions.Toward the end of the third day, the village falls and the people sheltered in the housesee the adversary’s soldiers and tanks from their refuge.Someone says, “It’s better for one of us to go outside and meet them with a white flag.”Upon hearing these words, one of the ladies instinctively attaches a swaddling band to a stick without uttering a word and steps outside with no hesitation (“I felt no fear as though nothing really mattered”).She is accompanied by a male fellow villager, the school principal.The enemy soldiers hit the school principal with automatic rifle butts in front of the lady with the white flag, cursing at him, throwing and trampling him down with their feet for a long time.It’s only the beginning.People sheltered in the house are led outside, women and children are separated from men, and then they are all herded toward the school building.
There were also those who met the fall of the village separately from their fellow villagers, in their homes.
“Ms. N was in her home together with her bed-ridden and paralyzed mother.When the adversary entered the village, Ms. N and her mother found shelter in the basement.The adversary searched and then burned down all homes.Their home was next.The adversary couldn’t find the mother and her daughter in the basement and set the house on fire.Ms. N somehow managed to get her mother through a burning window and into the yard without the adversary noticing her.She remembered that there was a wide trench at the end of the yard.That’s where she hid together with her mother.They spent more than two weeks in that trench.They sustained themselves on whatever Ms. N was able to find in the vegetable patch at night.It was fall, so they made it somehow.
“Ms. N left seeking food or surviving fellow villagers every night.She went as far away as Ochamchire one night, hoping that the adversary had not entered this city.She soon became convinced, however, that Ochamchire too was occupied by the adversary, and went back to her mother.
“In the trench, they accidentally came across a female relative who had survived miraculously and stayed with them.
“The adversary eventually found them hiding in the trench, abusing them verbally and physically.A round of bullets was fired into the ground around Ms. N with an automatic rifle.The young relative was taken away immediately, while Ms. N and her mother were left at the site.However, they were frequently visited, tortured and terribly abused.
“Armenian women who had accidentally bumped into the mother and her daughter became their only tie with the outer world, bringing them food and news from the village several times.During one of such visits, Ms. N asked the Armenian women to send a telegram to her relatives in Tbilisi and let them know that Ms. N and her mother were alive.As it turned out later, the Armenian women indeed sent a telegram that reached the addressees.
“The same women informed Ms. N that the adversary gathered all surviving captives and seemingly intended to send them toward the territories controlled by the Georgians.Ms. N decided somehow to transfer her mother to the house where the captives were gathered.All Ms. N could dream about during the days spent in the trench and then in her burned down house was to be with her people.It seemed to her that it would be easier for her to endure abuse and torture if she were by her fellow villagers.However, after she and her mother eventually made it to the house and learned what her fellow villagers were forced to endure and see, she admitted, ‘I’m so lucky not to have been there.’”
The narrative by Ms. T, another resident of the village, reveals why Ms. N felt lucky.
“On the day when the village fell, Ms. T, her daughter and sister-in-law temporarily left the shelter but were forced to seek refuge in the school bunker after hearing severe gunfire.They found several of their fellow villagers there.While in the bunker, they were found by Ms. T’s husband who, similar to his wife, knew nothing about their son who had gone to take his position, only realizing that the battle had been lost.Ms. T’s husband was accompanied by two young fighters, both wounded.They required immediate medical aid.Ms. T’s sister-in-law was courageous enough to crawl out the house in the midst of a rain of bullets, crawling back with bandages and iodine.
“Ms. T’s husband was convinced that defeat was inevitable.He put their identifications in his Svanetian cap and stashed in the niche in the wall.Ms. T is convinced that the documents are still in that niche.Her husband was Svanetian and he would be inevitably killed if his origin were to be made known.However, nothing good awaited him anyway, which he understood well.
“He gently bids farewell to his wife, child and sister, assuring them, ‘Do not fear the inevitable and meet possible death with dignity.’Then he leaves the bunker to resume fighting but soon returns, opting to spend the last minutes of his life with his family.
“The adversaries have already entered the village.Soon they unlock the bunker and lead the refugees outside.The men are separated from the women and shot to death on the spot.The young wounded fighters and Ms. T’s husband, a schoolteacher, are shot to death the latter’sformer student right before Ms. T’s eyes.
“At first, the captives are taken to the biggest house in the village to join their fellow villagers.From there women, children and up to twenty-five men who had escaped being executed by a firing squad are herded through the main village street toward the Abkhazian villages.On their way there, they are placed in the home of one of their fellow villagers, and it seems that the adversaries intend to burn down the house.They pour fuel on all sides of the house, yet, for some reason, opt against fulfilling their initial plan and lead the captives back into the yard only to find the bodies of their killed fellow villagers, the owner of the house and his wife, while their severed heads are placed on the table.
“The captives spend the first night in abandoned houses n one of the Abkhazian villages.Violence against the women ensues immediately.Ms. T is haunted to this day by the wailing of one elderly woman who spent all night calling her fourteen-year-old granddaughter who had been led outside by enemy soldiers.The godparent of Ms. T’s daughter notices an Abkhaz acquaintance among the fighters and calls his name.This Abkhazian is offered jewelry concealed in the women’s clothing in exchange for which he stands at the door to their room and guards it from entrants.
“On the following day, the captives and their guards continue their path.However, many, including Ms. T’s daughter and several of her friends, manage to avoid the worst, thanks to their acquaintances or a certain amount of ransom.They are transferred into Abkhazian families where they are kept in more or less bearable conditions and no violence is committed against them.For example, a Greek woman, a daughter-in-law in an Abkhazian family, stands up for Ms. T and her friends, for which Ms. T is grateful to the family where the girls were sheltered.The remaining captives (up to three hundred people in all) are led to one of the Abkhazian villages and placed in the school building, in the classrooms, from forty to eighty people in each room.By this time, almost all male captives have been executed by a firing squad right before the women’s eyes.”
And that’s where the worst part starts… The captive women are lying on the floor or desks in crowded rooms, starved and tortured.They are being selected.The adversaries select the youngest and most beautiful women and lead them outside.The women try to hide such girls and cover them with their own bodies.They hide ten to twelve-year-old girls in sacks, pretending them to be full of their belongings, and even sit down on them in an attempt to deceive the guards.A married mother of many children goes outside in place of her unmarried sisters.Everyone knew what happened to those who went outside and in what condition they were led back.
An elderly mother-in-law who covered her young daughter-in-law with her body is killed by a Cossack on the spot…
A mother hears how her eleven-year-old son is being beaten and abused all night…
A fierce struggle and havoc ensues over bread and water distributed by the guards.Some fight for themselves, some for their children, and some for grandchildren…
They are all led to the restroom together, several times a day.It’s not enough sometimes, however, and disturbing uncleanness takes over the classrooms…
About forty surviving captive men are kept separately.The women can see them only when in the corridors, when they are led to the restroom, yet the men are so severely beaten that it’s impossible to recognize them.It’s no longer possible to tell who is who…
Time will pass and many of these people who have gone through this hell will not be able to find it in their hearts to forgive the others for witnessing their humiliation and the violence committed against them.They will never forgive the filth they have been through together.After reaching safety, many will tell on others in front of their husbands, or fiancés, or even total strangers.Ten years have passed since these events, yet the trauma suffered remains heavy.It’s still hard to remember and fathom these things even today.
… Days go by as the number of captives gradually decreases in the village school.The adversaries, especially the Abkhazians, avoid killing women and children.Many captives prove to have protectors and defenders.They are removed from the school building in secret and kept in safety, with the families of their Abkhazian acquaintances.Many are exchanged for captives or ransomed.There are incidents when an adversary becomes so touched by the misery of a captive that he helps such a person sneak out of the school building and frees him/her.In many cases, even harsher torture and abuse await those freed in this manner.For example, an eleven-year-old girl accidentally bumps into enemy soldiers who seize her and dash her head against a tree right before her sister’s eyes.The suffered injury is so severe that it subsequently causes a mental disorder…
The image of an outlander deliverer, a Kabarday[the Kabardin North Caucasus people mainly live in the Kabardino-Balkar Republic, Russian Federation] fighting on the other side, appears in stories concerning those days as related by various people.The Kabarday saves captive women unconditionally and with self-sacrifice.He leads one of them out of the school building and, in spite of many tribulations, delivers her to Sokhumi where licentiousness is no as intense.The woman cannot remember her saviors name or outward appearance.She only remembers that he resembled Christ… That’s the answer she gives Abkhazians in Sokhumi when they ask, “Who brought you here?”The answer has an enchanting effect on them and from now on no one dares touching or abusing her.
The narratives by others, however, provide the Kabarday’s name.We learn that he is small in stature, stocky and gloomy.He allegedly rescues four women, including one six-month pregnant woman, and delivered them out of the village on the very day it falls.He warns them in advance, “I may curse you out and insult you on our way out in order to deceive others.Don’t be afraid or surprised at what I may do.”So he does.When alone with the women, however, he is politeness incarnate.He digs out barbwire fence poles with his bare hands in order to ease the path for the captives, and carries the pregnant woman through the forest in his arms…
The women know nothing about their deliverer’s motivation.They think that the Kabarday fighter is helping them out of avarice.The captives have jewelry taken from home and concealed in their clothing, so they offer it to him in exchange for help.He is insulted by such an offer and adamantly turns it down.Later on, the women draw closer to their guide and learn that he, together with twenty-six of his kinsmen, has come to fight on the Abkhazian side as a mercenary.However, he became disturbed by witnessing the cruelty of the Abkhazians who, among others, killed some of his kinsmen in order to avoid paying them.Appalled at what he has seen, the Kabarday intends to go back home.Before leaving, however, he wants to do a good deed.In his own words [in Russian], “I want to do something good before I leave.”
The Kabardayfinds accommodation for the women in the house of his acquaintances, in one of the Abkhazian villages.He places all four of them in one room, while having the hosts set up a bed for him at the door to that room.He sleeps with an automatic rifle in his hands.Although he is forced to leave the women the following morning, he frequently checks on them in the course of the following few days to make sure they’re safe.Two weeks later, through the mediation of Georgian relatives and Abkhaz acquaintances, the women are freed.
Let’s return to the village school where the number of locked-up captives gradually decreases.Finally, only eighty people remain from the initial five hundred.No one has turned up to be the protector of the eighty.They are neither exchanged nor ransomed.Their torture continues.Those who have retained the patriotic spirit are abused with special diligence.The captives are eventually transported to a high-mountainous Abkhazian village where they manage to take a breatheras they’re guarded there by women and elderly people only.
Finally, all eighty captives are packed in a bus and transported toward the Georgian positions by the Enguri River.The captives themselves have no clue where the bus is headed.It’s unbearable for eighty people to be in one bus.They all think that they’re being transported to be slaughtered, executed by a firing squad.At last, the bus stops by the Enguri River where, at the other end of the bridge, relatives and acquaintances await the freed captives.For someone this is the last liberation in life.The bus door is opened from the outside, and a woman who has suffocated to death is first to fall out of the bus.
The fate of the surviving male villagers is very dramatic.Many of them stood at their positions with guns in their hands when the village fell.Mr. D is one of them.
“He had never participated in a war.The sight of dead bodies and blood had always disturbed him.He first picked up a gun only a few days before the village fell, after the village was surrounded.
“After three days of fighting, the adversary occupies the village, and Mr. D tries to make his way home in secret where, as he hopes, his wife, two daughters and son await him.On his way home, he notices a number of bodies, ‘whom he eventually gets used to seeing…’”
His home is desolate.It’s almost time for the dawn.The village is full of adversaries.Mr. D hides in the attic from where he sees his neighbors’ homes being set on fire one by one.It’s his home’s turn now.Mr. D can clearly hear from the attic how the invaders debate.Some feel that it would be a waste to burn a house with “so many valuables”, demanding to take some of the items outside.It has been finally decided that “an order is an order”, thus deciding the fate of the house as well.The adversaries (about fifteen people) leave the house for a while.They don’t go too far away though.Mr. D can see them standing at the gate of his yard.That’s when intense gunfire ensues, which Mr. D believes to be an assault undertaken by his people.Encouraged by the thought that the fight has resumed, he leaves the attic and goes down to the room.He hopes that he can sneak outside.The gunfire, however, ceases shortly thereafter, while two fighters approach the house.All that Mr. D manages is hiding behind the door.The invaders start piling up the furniture in the middle of the room to set it on fire.Gunfire resumes outside, and Mr. D also fires from behind the door.Both adversaries fall down.The next thought of Mr. D is to set the place on fire on his own in order to deceive those outside and try to sneak out without being noticed.When bending over to start a fire, he hears a moan.One of the two is still alive, begging Mr. D to finish him off and this way deliver from being burned alive.Mr. D does not specify whether he killed the wounded man or left him to be burned alive.
“Mr. D manages to sneak out of the house without being noticed.However, he will not make it too far in the village full of adversaries.His tangerine orchard is not the best place to hide either.The trees have sparse and thinly vegetated branches, while only one of them has pumpkin ivy wrapped around it, its beauty being the only reason why Mr. D never trimmed the ivy.He hides in this very tree, in the pumpkin leaves.In the meantime, the adversaries become suspicious.Indeed, the house is burning, yet the two men who have been sent to start a fire are nowhere to be seen.The adversaries start to inspect the tangerine orchard.Resumed gunfire, however, would not let them do it with due diligence.
“Mr. D hides in the tree until it gets dark.It’s only after dark that he summons all his courage to descend and look around, hoping to find any of his people.He hides in the village for five more days, looking for his family members for five nights.He never finds anyone alive in these five nights though, instead discovering the dead in abundance, his neighbors and fellow villagers.He is forced to leave them unattended and unburied, in the open air, which breaks his heart even more.
“On the fifth night, Mr. D leaves the village and makes his way toward the sea where, fortunately for him, he bumps into Georgian fighters, accompanying them on their way to the Kodori Gorge, crossing the river and meeting there with his fellow villagers, and most importantly, his son.Upon seeing his son, Mr. D’s knees become weak and he kneels.His son cheers him up. They have yet to find his mother and sister.
“The fellow villagers intend to go back to the village in order to rescue their people.So they do, yet to no avail.They wind up amid the adversary’s intense gunfire, some of them being killed during the assault, and three of Mr. D’s fellow villagers drown in the Kodori Riverwhile retreating.
“Finally, unlike the majority of the fugitives who retreated from Abkhazia toward Svaneti via the Kodori Gorge, Mr. D, his son, and several of their fellow villagers make their way toward the sea via Zugdidi.They travel only at night, making it to Zugdidi in three days.That’s where Mr. D meets with his wife and daughter in a few days.”
Other men too find their female family members, men who, similar to Mr. D, have done their best to rescue them, including crossing the frontline, capturing hostages and trying to exchange them for their family members.This meeting was not an easy one.Many have never spoken with their wives and children about what happened in the village occupied by the enemy.Many a family has been destroyed and many a family has never been created because of this reservation and uncertainty.
Life in new places, far away from the ancestral lands, life in a strange land, amid need, and the status of refugees await the people gathered at the Enguri Bridge [Georgian-Abkhazian administrative border].There will be new families and children who will be born later and brought up so that they will learn about their homeland only from the narratives of their parents… It will take strength to face a new and even harder life after what these people have been through, strength and probably love too.One of the young women notices her husband at the other end of the Enguri Bridge.He is waiting for her.She covers her face with her hands, passes by him, and says weeping, “I am no longer yours!”The husband catches up with her, turns her around, embraces her and says, “You are a saint…”