A struggle to heal as school siege haunts Beslan

AT FIRST, Beslan’s grief seemed to surface in its children.

They were afraid to be left alone. Others cried while they slept. Some went mute. One little boy began to meow incessantly.

Their trauma began six months ago, on the morning of September 1, on what should have been the first day of a new school year. Instead, a gang of extremists swept School No 1 and took 1,200 students, parents and teachers hostage, demanding Russian troops pull out of neighbouring Chechnya.

The ensuing three-day stand-off ended in explosions, gunfire, and a blaze in the gym that burned bodies beyond recognition. In all, 336 people died, including 156 children. Twenty-four children were orphaned; 19 teachers died. Hundreds of people were injured.

Six months after what is known here as “the tragedy”, the child survivors are better, but like the parents, teachers and the rest of Beslan - they are a long way from all right.

“The whole town needs help,” said Alexander Kolmanovsky, a Moscow psychologist who is working with the traumatised.

Beslan is trying to rise from the ashes of an incomprehensible tragedy. Anger, sorrow, empathy and fear govern its emotions.

“How did people in New York feel after 9/11? That’s how we feel,” said Vladimir Khodov, head of the regional administration.

“As time goes on, we seem to have even more questions. Why? Why?”

Beslan prides itself on being a close-knit community. But the last six months have not seen it at its best.

Some people, angling for government stipends, used forged papers to claim their children - actually safe at home - had been hostages. Those who lost offspring demanded higher stipends than those whose children were injured. After heated arguments, a graduated system of cash awards was established.

Teachers also came in for criticism, even though some of the most heroic stories were of teachers shielding children from gunfire. Shell-shocked teachers who didn’t immediately return to work were not paid.

“Teachers are exhausted, not only from the actual trauma but from the situation in the society afterward,” Kolmanovsky said.

“Parents said to them, ‘How could you survive when my child died?’ The teachers know it’s irrational and the parents are traumatised, but they still get defensive and they fight.”

Principal Lydia Tsalieva, 72, a 50-year teacher and administrator at School No 1, resigned when she could no longer bear criticism, death threats, and contentions that she somehow should have prevented the school takeover.

“I can’t blame these people,” said Tsalieva, whose grandchildren were hostages and who herself was nearly killed.

“They’re so poor, they’ve lost their children and they’re in such sorrow.”

After hundreds of funerals, one charred skeleton of a child remained.

But DNA tests showed it didn’t belong to the parents whose daughter was the only child unaccounted for. Due to haste, the fog of grief or a forensic foul-up, some family had buried the wrong child as its own.

What followed was agonising and necessary: graves were dug up, more tests were done, bodies were identified again, new funerals were held.

Finally, Beslan’s dead children could rest in peace.

In the days after the tragedy, tens of millions in assistance poured into Beslan. Many of the hostages, especially children, were sent to Black Sea spas and resorts with their families. Others went abroad to Italy, Canada, the Caribbean.

Dozens of psychiatrists, psychologists and counsellors moved in, and art and play therapy have been used to great effect, trauma experts said.

“It’s for children who can’t express their fears concerning the terrorists they saw,” psychologist Alexander Venger said. “Adults talk. Kids play.”

One eight-year-old girl drew faces of attackers on balloons, then popped them one by one. When she got to the last balloon, she asked psychologist Yelena Morozova to pop it. When she did, the girl exclaimed: “How nice! You killed him!”

“These feelings demand to be released,” Venger said. “The main thing is to work out their fears, fantasies and wishes.”