Table of Contents
List of Maps vii
Author's Note xiii
Introduction: Let Us Live in Freedom 1
Part 1 The Circassians, 1864
1 Are You Not a Circassian? 15
2 We Share Happiness, We Share Sadness 32
3 I Give Thee That Little Bird 44
4 Three Hundred Prime-Bodied Circassians 64
5 The Caucasus Mountains are Sacred to Me 75
6 Extermination Alone Would Keep Them Quiet 99
7 A Pear Tree in the Mountains 114
8 Here Lived the Circassians 127
9 The Circassians Do Not Appear in This List 134
Part 2 The Mountain Turks, 1943-4
10 A Read Gramphone 145
11 A Dirty Animal 154
12 Three Little Boys 162
13 The Double-Headed Mountain 167
14 I Always Fought against the Class Enemies 185
15 Liquidate the Bandit Group 195
16 The 'Unnation' was a New Phenomenon 210
17 Playing Stalin 220
Part 3 Grozny, 1995
18 War is War, But to Behave in That Way is Not Right 237
19 A Muslim Submissive to the Will of God 250
20 The Imam and the Princesses 264
21 Fire is Better Than Shame 280
22 The Old Man Shamil 293
23 People Should Not Return Ever 307
24 This is all for the Sake of Allah 323
25 Everyone was Scared of Them 340
26 My Sons were Killed 354
Part 4 Beslan, 2004
27 We Offer You Peace, and the Choice is Up to You 363
28 I Cannot Even Raise My Eyes towards Them 384
29 It was all for Nothing 400
30 The Hard Shackles of Evil 413
31 I Have Become No One 428
32 There is No Need for This Any More 445
Postscript: The Boy Who Chose an Orange, Not a Gun 453
Sources 463
Acknowledgements 477
Index 479
Photo insert between pages 244-245