Boys in Zinc: Svetlana Alexievich (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Wrong, mum. I was first. I took the boots off and ran. And I didn’t tip sand out like some of the others.’ Don't we also believe we are doing good? Don't we also believe we know what's best for others? Don't we also find all kinds of ways to deflect responsibility or rationalize brutal behavior? Don't we all have contradictory feelings tugging inside us, just like the soldiers interviewed by Alexievich? They hated their country for what it made them do, but some didn't necessarily hate what they did. Others did feel the burden of war crimes. They told us it was a just war. We were helping the Afghan people to put an end to feudalism and build a socialist society. Somehow they didn’t get round to mentioning that our men were being killed. For the whole of the first month I was there they just dumped the amputated arms and legs of our soldiers and officers, even their bodies, right next to the tents. It was something I would hardly have believed if I had seen it in films about the Civil War. There were no zinc coffins then: they hadn’t got round to manufacturing them. The authorities want to use us to clamp down on organized crime. If there is any trouble to be broken up, the police send for ‘the Afghans’. As far as they are concerned we are guys with big fists and small brains who nobody likes. But surely if your hand hurts you don’t put it in the fire, you look after it until it gets better. He loved toys to do with war, tanks, machine guns, pistols. He’d strap guns round himself and march round the house. ‘I ‘m a soldier, I’m soldier.’

I skip along to the cemetery as if I’m on my way to meet someone. I feel I’m going to visit my son. Those first days I stayed there all night. It wasn’t frightening. I’m waiting for the spring, for a little flower to burst through to me out of the ground. I planted snowdrops, so I would have a greeting from my son as early as possible. They come to me from down there, from him. But the deceit involved in war goes even deeper than governmental and military lies, distortions and cover-ups. All of these recent wars were popular in the sense that there was wide-spread public support for their prosecution. In each the stated motivations and objectives were noble: to free, to protect, to build, to develop. Families were proud to send their sons to do their patriotic duty. Everyone was re-assured by the statements of political leaders that military involvement was both necessary and essentially short-term. When the facts of the case emerged, it was clear that the public had been duped. Or rather, they had duped themselves through their naive confidence in largely vacuous concepts like justified warfare, theories of strategic vulnerability, the evil of socialism (or capitalism). They, not their governments were the real culprits. They didn’t just allow war, they promoted it. I could not fathom how some Russian civilians blamed themselves for the war. In a country where the people had no say, had no access to information about what was going on? In a nation run by a monstrous government that forced mothers to bury their sons at night so few people would take notice? They took one look at us in the Village Soviet and said, ‘Why wait two months. Go and get the brandy. We’ll do the paperwork.’ An hour later we were husband and wife. There was a snowstorm raging outside. I’ll sit with him until evening and far on into the night. Sometimes I don’t realize I’ve started wailing until I scare the birds, a whole squall of crows, circling and flapping above me until I come to my senses and stop. I’ve gone there every day for four years, in the evening if not in the morning. I missed eleven days when I was in hospital, then I ran away in the hospital gown to see my son.Alexievich serves no ideology, only an ideal: to listen closely enough to the ordinary voices of her time to orchestrate them into extraordinary books

The ninth day after he was killed a telegram arrived at five in the morning. They just shoved it under the door. It was from his parents: ‘Come over. Petya dead.’ I screamed so much that it woke the baby. I had no idea what I should do or where I should go. I hadn’t got any money. I wrapped our daughter in a red blanket and went out to the road. It was too early for the buses, but a taxi stopped. My son was in the Vitebsk parachute division. When I went to see him take his oath of allegiance, I didn’t recognize him; he stood so tall.They brought in the coffin. I collapsed over it. I wanted to lay him out and they wouldn’t allow us to open the coffin to see him, touch him, touch him….Did they find a uniform to fit him? ‘My little sunshine, my little sunshine.’ Now I just want to be in the coffin with him. I go to the cemetery, throw myself on the gravestone and cuddle him. My little sunshine…. Here in the Union we are like brothers. A young guy going down the street on crutches with a shiny medal can only be one of us. You might only sit down on a bench and smoke a cigarette together, but you feel as if you’ve been talking to each other the whole day. savaşın neden başarısız olduğu, afganların gerilla taktiği ve neden en başta savaşa lüzum görüldüğü de açıklansaydı keşke dedim bazen.

The love of a mother for her son (and sometimes daughter) has never, for me, been so strongly conveyed as in this book. The fear and idealism of the soldier never opened up so carefully, so delicately, so warmly, so precisely. The collective delusions of a society never conveyed so irresistibly as tides, as a gravity that pulls everyone to tragedy, to the inevitable implosion of one's naivete, towards one's desire to be find out that one is indeed a fool, a loving fool, but a fool.

When they return home (often without eyes, legs, and/or arms), they feel an array of emotions: pride, revulsion, guilt, sadness, longing for love and comradeship-- bonds some mythically believed had been found in the filth of the front lines. And betrayal. Many of the boys --again, think 18 to 20 year olds-- deflect responsibility for their war crimes and place it on the monstrous Soviet government. They resent the criticism launched at them by a public that has also finally learned the truth (Moscow tried to keep secret the average yearly deployment of 100,000 Soviet troops; when the zinc coffins started coming home people began to understand what really was happening). I said I wanted to choose the place in the cemetery for him myself. They gave me two injections, and I went there with my brother. There were ‘Afghan’ graves on the main avenue. The least well-known wonderful writer I've ever come across (Jenni Murray BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour) In 1986 I had decided not to write about war again. For a long time after I finished my book War’s Unwomanly Face I couldn’t bear to see a child with a bleeding nose. I suppose each of us has a measure of protection against pain; mine had been exhausted.

On 29 August I decided summer was over. I bought Sasha a new suit and a pair of shoes, which are still in the wardrobe now. The next day, before I went to work I took off my ear-rings and my ring. For some reason I couldn’t bear to wear them. That was the day on which he was killed. He bent down and kissed me, and somebody took a photograph. It’s the only photograph of him as a soldier that I’ve got. What Alexievich is doing is giving voice to the voiceless, exposing not only stories we wouldn't otherwise hear but individuals as wellCome la madre che accoglie felice e gioiosa il figlio reduce dal fronte, per poi accorgersi che è sempre più silenzioso, sempre più legato ai suoi commilitoni, sempre più portato alla violenza, come se la guerra non fosse rimasta laggiù, ma lo avesse seguito a casa. We got married in the winter, in my village. It was funny and rushed. At Epiphany, when people guess their fortunes, I’d had a dream which I told my mother about in the morning. ‘Mum, I saw this really good-looking boy. He was standing on a bridge, calling me. He was wearing a soldier’s uniform, but when I came towards him he began to go away until he disappeared completely.’ What can I tell her? How can I explain? I’m only twenty-one myself. This summer I took her to my mother in the country, hoping she’d forget him. yine de başımızın belası işid'in, el kaide'nin kökeni nerede yatıyor, abd bu işin neresinde, hepsi çıkıyor araştırılınca.