“In 2000 Basayev’s army invaded Daghestan, they plundered and destroyed the houses of Daghestani people, and the war started. The Russian Army forced Basayev to retreat into Chechnya and pursued him there. During the war the civilians suffered especially, one can say. The only women and children who stayed in a small village of Chernorechensk were killed by the soldiers who claimed they were Wahabbis. Many civilians died. I stayed with our neighbour at home. He was killed when he went to get some water. I had to bury him in my yard until his relatives came back. My family was in Moscow, then. When they returned, we started to rebuild our house again. In 2003 we managed to restore our house, but when we were away at work one day the Russian soldiers threw a flare rocket on it. The house burnt down with all our belongings in it, clothes...it is already eight years now since then, but I am still restoring what was destroyed. There is no-one to help me, though. Perhaps my children, they are adults now.“
“My grandfather was born in 1880. He studied in a cadet school, later in The Tsarist military academy and became an officer of the Tsar’s army. In Grozny he worked as the chief of police. When the Revolution broke out and the Tsar was brought down, he sided with the Bolsheviks, and in 1919 fought against the White Guards. He was a revolutionary. He later became the main accountant of the local government (Selsoviet) in Urus-Martan. When his friend Dekal was transfered to Leningrad to become the second secretary of the regional party committee (Obkom), he was encouraged by Dekal to join him. But my grandfather stayed at home in the end. In 1937 he was all of a sudden arrested, transported to the Central Committee and then he mysteriously disappeared. No-one knows if he was shot or what happened to him at all. My father tried to find out something, but the Central Committee refused to release any information. And so my grandfather disappeared without a trace. We don’t know until today if he died or if he managed to emigrate.“
Said Ahmed Sultanovich Gantimorov was born in Almaty, Kazkhstan, USSR in 1946. His father was an accountant, his mother was working at home, there were two daughters and one son in the family. He spent his childhood in difficult conditions - his family was deported to Central Asia two years before his birth. From 1957 the Chechens were allowed to return home, Said Ahmed‘s family returned two years after that. In 1965 he began working in school, but two years later he started to study in Semipalatinsk in the Jambul Institute of Technology. After graduation he worked first in a meat processing plant in Semipalatinsk, later he returned to Chechnya. He married in 1968, has two daughters and two sons. His family was affected by both Chechen wars, he had to rebuild his house three times from ruins. Syeed Ahmed lives now with his wife and his daughter in Grozny.
