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September 2005
We have been in Beslan
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 Requiem concert in Moscow |
 The teachers |
 New School |
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Before leaving for Ossezia, for the commemoration of 3rd September, like everybody else, we read newspaper and television news commemorating the tragedy of the school n° 1. What came through in the programmes was an atmosphere of hatred, desperation and desire for revenge.
When we arrived in Beslan, with Adriana Viérin, regional councillor for the Region Valle D’Aosta and President of the Coordinating Commission for aids to developing countries, we immediately went to the cemetery. The air was still, only from afar you could hear the echo of the sobbing mothers. We lit a pink candle on the tomb of a little girl, embracing and trying to console her mother, who was crying for her Elvira, and a blue candle on the tomb of a 15 years-old-boy who reminded us of our son Nathanaël, handsome, adolescent and most of all alive.
The regional television was waiting for us for a long live interview. They were waiting for the Italians who had done so much, form the very beginning of the tragedy; they wanted us to reconfirm our support, engagement and closeness.
Next day, 3rd September, in the school main hall, thousands of persons met to give their homage to the victims, dismembered by bombs and burnt alive by the fire. At 1.05 p.m. 331 white toy balloons rose up to the sky, but not immediately, they first flew over the cemetery, as if to invite the peace-less souls to rise up above with them, towards the Sky. We waited for almost two hours to be able to enter in the gym and light our candle, witnessing our affection, and to hang an angel on the door of the corridor, through which so many people had saved their lives. Then the cemetery, to inaugurate the monument dedicated, in eternal memory, to the victims of this tragedy that put a whole town in mourning. There reigned a calm, still and silent atmosphere, while above us the names of the 331 persons killed in the terrorist attack were pronounced. When the commemorating monument was unveiled, the 331 doves soaring over the tombs made all present cry tears of sorrowful grief. Lay a flower down and thoughtfully retrace your steps backwards, hoping that tomorrow will be different! Tomorrow there will be the teachers busy with their new pupils and the mothers cleaning the new school, arranging furniture, rendering it cosy for the new school year … that this year begins 5th September. The day when in Moscow a great requiem-concert was organised in the concert-hall of the Hotel Rossija, to remember all: the brave teachers, the killed men, the soldiers who die in all wars, the mothers who were bereaved of their own children, the innocent children and to remember also a new life, a new hope a new possibility of joy and merriment. The concert ended with the images of the merry faces of the children of Beslan who that morning were being welcomed in the new school.
Therefore, in spite of the indisputable difficulties that such tragedies sadly carry with them, together with the sour tears and the dismayed eyes in the vision of an infinite cemetery … we brought home the memory of a united and orderly crowd, of a respectful silence of solidarity, of the will to start over again …
Let’s hope that this immense grief can be pacified, that revenge and hatred can be purified in forgiving and in the hope for peace, peace for the whole Caucasus.
January 2005
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Ossetia-Alanija, with its capital Vladikavkaz, occupies a central strip of land in the Southern Caucasus ; it extends for about 8.000 square kilometres and has 700.000 inhabitants. It is a mountainous land, inhabited in the ancient past by Shiite tribes and by the Alanij, from which its name derives; it is rich in ancient testimonies, castles and sanctuaries preserved until today. Its people are proud of the beauty of its powerful nature, with heights that reach 5.000 metres and luxuriant torrents that draw the line of valleys of utmost and awesome beauty. This people have not forgotten the ancient traditions; for the Ossetians hospitality has to be considered sacred; therefore it is always a lesson of life and poetry to be able to sit around the same table and participate into their traditional 55 toasts!
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CHRISTMAS IN BESLAN
Beslan … a name now sadly famous recalling to our minds images of terror, desperation and death. To think that when we arrived in Ossetia we flew just over Beslan and below us an enchanted landscape stood out, with its harmonious hills and eternal glaciers shining in the sun.
Until the past winter, in those very same mountains and snow, the 172 children, now buried in graves of cold black earth below us, used to play.
From the airport, to reach Vladikavkaz, the capital, you pass exactly in front of the cemetery, expressly created after the terrorist attack actuated against school n. 1 of Beslan. Thus, no one who arrives in Ossetia will ever forget. It is right indeed, for we must never forget such terrible acts, perpetrated against our fellow human beings … This was the sense of our visit to Beslan: not to forget.
By now it is not such a scorching event for the news … and slowly one tends to forget. It is normal, besides, everybody says that time is the best medicine … the victims' relatives and the survivors we talked with during our stay repeated the same thing: "No, there is no explanation, there is no reason, it is not easy going back to our everyday life, only time, time will be able to heal us from our losses, from what we experienced, form what our eyes were obliged to see".
However, time, our time as human beings must also be used so that such events will never be repeated in the history of humanity. At least this is what we strongly felt in our hearts in front of that cemetery, where there are ditches already dug waiting for the bodies that still need to undergo the difficult process of being identified, and in front of that school that is no more a school. Burnt, bombarded, torn to pieces in every desk, every copybook: a school that seems to have lived the most devastating war … and everything in only three days. We filmed these images of death, but we also took with us resurrection. On the 7th of January, the night of orthodox Christmas, we went to a church in Beslan and we saw a crowd of young and old who were trying to take back into their broken hearts harmony and hope, through their faith, their offerings of candles and chants.
Christ the Saviour is an example of someone who died to save humanity: in every heart, that night there was the hope that the Jesus, born that night, child among children horribly massacred, could bring some joy in their families.
Under the hard ground of the cemetery, the children of Beslan had their Christmas, near every grave there was a fir adorned with balls, ribbons and many presents: emptiness in our hearts, tears fall down as a promise not to forget.
For this reason the association Where The Eagles Fly wants to create a Centre for Peace in Beslan, where, in the Caucasus, after the collapse of the Soviet Union , ethnic, religious and most of all political conflicts proliferated with a continual repetition of armed retaliations, massacres and horrible terrorist attacks.
A Centre for Peace that underlines how we must not react with violence to violence; most of all for the future of our children and grandchildren, we must stop and say enough!
Our project is to reunite the old peoples, the Ingushetans, Ossetians, Cecenians, and other 30 ethnic groups of Caucasus ; it will become a reality where children will be educated to peace and tolerance and where adults will be able to rethink about the way they can be transformed put their arms aside.
We are sure that no Ingushetan, Ossetian, and Cecenian mother wants to cry over the dead body of her child. They are tired; there too, they are tired of death and tears. Also in the Caucasus they want to be able to make projects for a future that must not be ill-omened, for a house that must not be destroyed by war, for children that must not die without any guilt or reason.
A Centre for Peace in Beslan, not to forget and to try and live in a spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood. |
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