Another flash: the Great fast, a hazy red sun, stinging frost, a procession of school pupils. We tread snow for half a kilometer. We do this every morning. Finally, the bricks of the Zachatievsky Monastery come through, and behind the walls is the ordinary school where we are fed. We have our own food: sauerkraut and buckwheat. We are fed separately from the local schoolchildren after a recent incident when they gave us the finger from the next table, throwing pieces of sausage, and we fought with them – table against table.
After we had breakfast, we went to the monastery church – the Patriarch had come to visit – you couldn’t get through the crowd, we stand on the wooden staircase with tramps, beggars and their children. “We ran away from Chechnya, our house burnt down,” a man in a shab
