Every year beginning in January, sacks full of fat green shoots appear in the markets of Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan. They are sold by tired women with weatherbeaten faces who have pulled up the stalks of wild garlic by hand from under the snow in mountain forests, which are crammed with landmines. Every year, terrible news sweeps into town of women who have been blown up, fired upon, or have just disappeared.
This year’s season was coming to an end and it seemed as though we would get by without casualties. We didn't.
It was a Saturday, the first day of the school vacation. Khaldat, an elementary school teacher, had decided to go to the forest with her sister Zalpa and Zalpa's daughter-in-law Zaira to gather wild garlic to eat and to sell.
Usually women go out for wild garlic in a panel truck, but a nights before, armed men in camouflage had entered Khaldat’s driver's house and told him not drive into the forest anymore if he didn't want to be considered an insurgent. He was reluctant to disobey, so the women set out on foot. They didn’t have very far to go anyway—about five hundred meters from the village is Blue Lake. Many people come here from the villages and dozens of paths have been trampled into the woodsy tangle around the lake.
The women left the house at 8:30.
At exactly 9:00 Zaira called her relative Vakha.
"Help!” she pleaded. “They're shooting at us and we're wounded. We're next to Blue Lake, not far from the village. Save us!"
Khaldat’s sister later described what happened by the lake.
“We'd been walking for about twenty minutes and we were still pretty close to the village,” Zalpa said. “We came out into a clearing. All of a sudden I heard a submachine gun being shouldered and then, immediately after, a burst of fire. They were shooting from different directions. First my sister fell, then my daughter-in-law Zaira. I dove to the ground. They fired for a long time. First I cried out, then I stopped. Then they hit me. I told my daughter-in-law to call home to get help. Then I told her to turn off the phone and lie there as if she were dead. My sister was already unconscious. I heard the soldiers saying something, but all I could make out was, 'Let's go.' But they didn't. I was lying with my back to them and my eyes were shut; I was afraid they'd finish me off. Then I decided to try talking to them. I was afraid that when our men came to help the shooting would start again. When I raised my head they were sitting around us, submachine guns ready. I raised up on an elbow and said, 'Why did you fire at us when we were going to pick garlic?'
"One started binding our wounds. They put my sister and daughter-in-law on a tarp, picked them up, and started down. Our men met us coming the other way.
"Their elder said, 'Now they're going to put us on trial and we shouted at you to warn you.'
"'What do you mean you shouted? I would have heard you shouting if I could hear you shouldering a submachine gun.'
"'It was foggy, we couldn't see you.' the elder said
"'There wasn't any fog, it was just cloudy. You should have looked through your binoculars. Is that any way to shoot?'"
The men got to Blue Lake in about ten minutes. Walking toward them were the soldiers. Eight of them were carrying Khaldat and Zaira; Zalpa, wounded in the shoulder, was walking unaided. Seeing the men, the soldiers lowered the stretchers, some took up battle positions, and the others scattered. The men were furious.
"What happened? Why did you shoot at women?" our men asked.
"We thought they were insurgents,” was the answer.
Khaldat was buried on Sunday. The women wailed and the men prayed. Standing pressed close together were the children, Khaldat's pupils. They were crying in horror and despair. And the school's director could do nothing to calm them down. Speaking powerless words of comfort, he agonized over who would teach these children after the vacation. There were no teachers; Khaldat had already been doing the job of two. Who would replace her?
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