Chapter Thirty-Four
The train runs like time, life, like thought:
this is an old thought, but its pain is new every time.
We drowned, covered in sins like one
of the purest of the undefiled, like one of the biggest bastards.
No I am not saying that we were all united in sin in hell,
however, to wait for hell is a bigger hell than living in hell.
I simply mutter, as one sentenced to death: this cell
is so damp compared with any other possible cells....
-Belgi
Omurbek Zhanakeev, the interpreter for the Japanese geologists taken hostage by the IMU guerrillas, tells his story:
It all happened on the night of August 22 to August 23, 1999 at about one in the morning. That evening General Shamkeev came to us with his bodyguards and stayed for the night in one of the trailers. He had se
