Human life
is like a huge ocean. There are so many different islands, large and small,
reefs, even huge icebergs, and without all this diversity, and even without the
pitfalls, the world would not be so beautiful and unique. That is why it seems to me that meeting many different people in this enormous
ocean of life stays sometimes
unnoticeable to anyone but firmly lasting impression sometimes accompanies you throughout life, as
a matter of course, and stored in the memory
carefully as jewelry that belong only to
you and no one else. And, perhaps, we
should not live such a small segment of life, that one day, suddenly turning back, to
remember those who are no longer in this world, but who played in your life, at times, a very unexpected role.
When I was
one year old, my mother and father went to Volgograd and left me with my
grandmother. I became sick as ate something wrong and could die. My parents quickly came back. I was in the hospital,
pediatrician Taisya Aznauryan did not
leave me any single minute. She, as my
mother told, actually saved me, even though there was little hope. Since then,
she became our family friend, and as
soon as I got high temperature, I was
taken to her. I remember her smile and manner of speaking, almost squeaking
voice and, of course, her hands. And always remember that she saved me. Many
years later, already being a mother
myself, I got into our children's hospital with my son and met her there, an old
women , but still the same intelligent and elegant. We met then, not even as
old friends, but as relatives who lost each other in some period of life.
At school,
our teacher of English Berta Lamm was one of the best, who taught us absolutely
inexplicable to love English and her special strong teaching of grammar so that even her weak students got good marks at the university. It was a teacher by vocation. She
did not miss any lesson and we respected her. But most of all I loved our teacher
of Math Nina Shcherbakova. And let none
of my classmates deny that she loved me more than anyone else. Algebra I learned
so well as only because of love and respect for her. When I entered the
department of foreign philology, she did not talk to me at school on February school parties, until one day I
was with my son and met her in the bus.
She smiled at me with so familiar kind smile and asked if my son had learned algebra
as well once I did. So she suddenly came back to me in the middle of life, in
the bus, and at that time gave me a sea of warmth and love.
But in my
life was one more person who played a crucial role at a time when I chose the
profession of litterateur. In spite of everything, often I regret that I left
my dream, and perhaps in the next life will become what I wanted then, in my 16
years. Augusta Evdokimova, a famous Sukhum English teacher, persuaded my mother to
send me to a foreign branch. I fought with my mother a few days, and suddenly
she uttered a phrase which persuaded me and I agreed. My mother said that I
would be able to read foreign literature
in the original, and I would be able to feel the beauty of it, and I would like it, and I would certainly be happy. It so happened that due to
the English language, I learned the world better, and even it helped me to survive in our hard times, I met a lot of
wonderful people. And I think: why the nationality
matters if the main is the person’s culture, education and life credo.
In the mid
eighties I went to graduate ship of TSU, and my supervisor appeared beautiful,
smart, talented scientist, intelligent to the core, noble, whose father was unjustly
killed in Stalin-Beria torture prisons with his brothers and she taught me how to know a lot to have a strong
base in order to come into science and be able to defend my own point of view.
She gently instilled
in me a love for linguistics, different courses, studied rare books, and I really fell in
love with this complicated subject and then I was strongly attracted to my thesis. On
September 30, 1993, I returned to
my spoiled and broken home. And I saw scattered, trampled pieces of papers with English and Abkhaz words, hundreds of scribbled sheets, notebooks and
so never went back to my thesis writing. But one day, when I had to lead at the university
a special course, I pulled out my notes and books, remembered my Leila Carlovna and reading students lectures about the arbitrariness of linguistic sign and the
meaning of the word I was innerly proud that I could do it easily and understanding fully that pain and suffering gained from
the damn war did not completely wiped me
out.
Later,
working in the organization "Doctors without Borders" (MSF), I met my
Elise Clement, with whom we established a program for access to free treatment for the
most vulnerable groups, and which suddenly opened up in me the ability of a social
worker. And she taught me what life summed up itself. There I learned and saw actually
what life is really, I learned that the
nationality of the person did not matter. There were people
with their troubles, hopelessness, despair, life trampled, but they did not lose dignity. I became friends
with them: with Iranian Nabiya, an Armenian Vartush, a Georgian Cleopatra
Ilinichna and 90 - year old Russian Anna Isacova, a tall old woman with big and kind blue eyes living in the a room
full of icons and icon-lamps, that God saved by sending her MSF and the ICRC. They
told me about their life, they were so surprisingly strong, but but so lonely,
women whose troubles, setbacks, and diseases could not embitter and break.
In those hard years, I was lucky to get acquainted with an amazing American lady Margery Farrar, which almost three years with her friends sent money
for running the mini-house for elderly women, in which different lonely women
found comfort, care and love. Margery hit me with her humanity and
compassion for strangers, and yet remains for me as a mystery, a person of immense
kindness and soul. She believed that the establishment of a house for elderlies, even if only for women, would make
our war-scarred society healthier and people helping the destitute, themselves
would become stronger.
But the
Internet so strangely enough, in spite
of my skeptical attitude towards internet acquaintances, by chance introduced me to a
wonderful man, an intellectual, which I had never seen in my life, but know now
quite well. He was a Spaniard. And he lives in the house with windows on the very
mountain of Segovia, which Hemingway described in his famous novel "For
Whom the Bell Tolls". So, thanks to my mother’s translation of the
Abkhazian " Little Prince” by Saint-Exupery, we met and stay friends to
this day. And I must say that this is probably the most fantastic: when someone who lives so far away, in a
distant beautiful Spain, suddenly brought into my life, into one of the most
complicated of its moments, human understanding, confidence and told me a lot
interesting things, and every day sent the best version of the classic works,
films and books. So, after the war, many years later, I began again enjoying music, Serenata of Schubert, poems, Spain, and even once in summer walked in the high mountains to the Lake of Mzy, the Abkhaz mysterious jewelry in the
mountains, which I saw only once in my happy youth.
This is so.
I do not want to say that Abkhazians did
not play an important role in my life, they have played, certainly. And it's my
unforgettable parents from whom I inherited I hope all the best - their
humanity, a true devotion to their country and the people of Abkhazia and my dearest friends.
It is not easy to say about all I met in my life. But this is life, and it is so, and it so happens that, not belonging to any nationality, but human relations, human values, dignity of the spirit is the most important and they do keep the world today.
Asida Lomia
It is not easy to say about all I met in my life. But this is life, and it is so, and it so happens that, not belonging to any nationality, but human relations, human values, dignity of the spirit is the most important and they do keep the world today.
Asida Lomia
Newspaper
Association of Women of Abkhazia "Dialogue of Cultures", December
2014
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