To Chechnya, To Chechnya!That spring, I managed to get a job at a glossy magazine – and I was given an assignment. They promised to pay me well if I brought back photographs and an article from Chechnya, where staff employees did not want to go. But I was supposed to travel all around Chechnya. Who would show me around and where I would stay – these were my problems.
And I flew to Chechnya.
It wasn’t just about money, although I really was in need of money. It was about my loneliness. Where could I live? It didn’t work out with Anya. It was also difficult with my parents. But the main thing was fatalism. “Perhaps I’ve already lived my life,” I thought easily and proudly. “And now I need to trust fate: to come under a line of machine-gun fire behind the wall of the Caucasus…” That spring
