Günel Mövlud:

It always seemed to me that since we were born a moan reached to our ears. This moan was of the huge Soviet Union that was covering the one-sixth part of the world. We were spending our childhood observing the death of that giant. A great empire was dying in front of our eyes. The empire that killed our grandfathers and took care of our fathers instead. We were the last generation of this empire. and I was one of them. I was born as one of the last Soviet children. Surprisingly, I was completely heartfelt when I took an oath of October Children and with great pleasure I pinned the star with Volodya Ulyanov's curl-haired childhood image. I deemed Stalin and Lenin as my father and grandfather. They were native to me and the life expected to be in front of me was a life of a dignified citizen of a huge country A citizen that mostly needed reading books and studying science. But suddenly everything collapsed. All the penetrated values became insulted within a year. The pages praising communism, party and Lenin were torn off our schoolbooks. The portraits of a persons we respected were taken away from the classrooms, the busts got broken. The values generated and evolved by that time became just unnecessary and forgettable. And we were face to face with such an awful emptiness. We had to survive the bitterness of this emptiness. But that was not the whole story. After a couple of years we faced with another horrible emptiness. Refugee youth know it better than the transition youth of those times. Now, we were leaving the lands we grew. You know, motherland is not just a piece of land. Happenings there and history make it motherland. It is the house where we grew up. The smells we still remember. The people we share love and hate. A tree growing up together with us. Any construction that is coeval with us Graves of blood people. We lost them all. The fact was that we did not have luxury to think of our moral losses. We were in so much misery that the food was the major problem. The major problem was how to warm up the camp classrooms where we were trying to recover our sense of learning. The major problem was to see our beds in the morning covered by snow and water. We were still not understanding the horror of emptiness that will pursue us for many upcoming years We were too young to understand it and we were busy with our daily problems. It took us 14 years to live this life. During these 14 years some of us - who shared a camp life with me became pilferers some of them got involved in unceccessful commerce despite they have abilities in other various fields, some girls got married earlier. So, the youth just got lost. Perhaps I am the luckiest one among those generation. I mean I leaved the life of luxury in compare with those who survived all the horrors. I came to the capital city and got higher education I became a writer. There are some other guys succeeded as well who could overcome the life with horror There are film directors, idea geterators leftist, revolutionist among them. And perhaps we can become really advanced people and seriously contribute new progressive ideas to the world. Maybe we can contribute masterworks to the world. We can do a lot. But we are deprived of very important thing. We don't have history. It is really awful thing. You may probably all You are all greeting your neighbor who lives next to your door about 20 years, there is a 20 year tree growing in front of your eyes, a school that embraced you 10 years. I've changed 6 schools. I don't remember any of my schoolmates I could get accustomed to non of them. Cause I had to change my school every single year Cause we had refugee life. When organizers talked to me they asked for my childhood photos. I don't have any photo of mine before 18 years old. I've left them all in my motherland. There is no any thing to prove our life in our motherland. We have lost our past even in photos. It took us 14-15 years to recover and to get over it and today we're 30. Our youth - the best years of us disappeared in poverty, misery and distress. I've taken this picture in the camp city where I lived and grew up. The camp city was demolished a couple of years ago. They disabled that area and let people move to new houses. I was there as an journalist to note the happenings there. I went there and witnessed how the camp city become liquidated during an hour and it took them a single piece of match to burn everything down. They burned the city where I spent 4 years of my life - my past with a single match. I did not live any joyous life ther however I was distressed with what happened cause it was a part of my past and it easily disappeared. I watched a film some time ago it was about 50 years old man and one day he comes in and notices a little boy in his house and this boy was his past, his childhood that he disliked and was always trying to forget and he was striving to throw the child out of his house he wanted to to get out of child but this child was not letting the man go and in the end the man hugs the child the child who was his childhood. Everyone thinks that how come a 30 years old judicious woman would miss the empire that shed the blood of millions miss the Soviet Union. I don't miss the Soviet Union. I don't miss the Empire. I miss my childhood. I just want to hug my childhood but I don't have it. I don't have a childhood to embrace. This is the last child born in the camp city. His name is Nuri. I wish happiness to him. Let him live better life. Thanks!