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Narrated by Magomet Dalayev, 11 years (born on March 13, 1988)
Q: Can you tell what you remember about that day, October 29? What did you see?
A: Our convoy was fired upon by long-range artillery.
Q: What convoy was that, and where were you located?
A: It was a refugee convoy; we were near Tolstoy-Yurt (Dokar-Evl). We were hit by shells, a lot of people died.
Q: Did you see the dead and the wounded?
A: Yes, I did. There were a lot of wounded and many corpses too. Those looked different [from one another]: some were missing arms, some were missing legs, and some were missing heads.
Q: What car were you riding? What other cars were there?
A: We were riding GAZ [A Soviet make "Gorkovski Auto Factory" transl. remark]. There were cars of other makings: Zhiguli, Volga , Gazel, other GAZ. Too many were destroyed; I don't know how many exactly. I wasn't counting. It wasn't quite the moment for counting.
Q: Were there any cars on fire?
A: Yes, there were some. And there were people trapped inside.
Q: When you saw all that, what were your actions?
A: I tried to get away, to hide; my brothers, my sister, a lady named Umani and a boy named Adam joined me.
Q: Do you remember how long you were hiding in the field?
A: Yes, we spent five nights there; on the sixth day we arrived at Goryachevodsk.
Q: But didn't you realize all this time that there was a settlement nearby? Why didn't you head there earlier?
A: We were too afraid, since all this time the cannonade was going on, and after that we thought that there were checkpoints and that the Russian troops were in that town.
Q: Why were you afraid of the Russians?
A: What do you mean? It was them who kept us under cannon and sniper fire. It was them who killed Malika Emiyeva.
I saw it all myself.
Q: When you arrived at the town, what happened?
A: We were fed, cleaned up, dressed, and sent to a hospital. We had arrived all dirty, poorly dressed, hungry, wearing no shoes, since they were left in the car.
Q: What did you eat and drink all this time?
A: All this time we ate wild roses' fruits and once, when it was raining, we drank the rainwater.
Chechnya, 1999