Story:

 Amalia is a teacher of Russian language and literature and she works at schools and cram schools. She explains that Russia is a big country and that she herself is originally from Dagestan, which is located north of Caucasus, Azerbaijan and Armenia, west to the Caspian sea. 

My country’s language is Russian but we all speak other languages as well. For instance, I used to speak both my mother tongue and my father’s tongue other than Russian. We have approximately 50 languages and 120 dialects. Other than the “country of the mountains”, Russia is also called the “country of the languages”. There is a tale that tells about how God had sent an angel to bring languages to the world and that, as they were crossing the Caucasus, the bag was ripped. That’s why our area now has the most languages in the world.

Talking about the glossary, she explains that it is in three languages -English, Russian and Lak. The latter is one of Caucasus’ languages and, as she explains, her mother tongue. It is one of the few things she has from Russia. Her son brought it, returning from one of his trips. She explains that she would always send him there in the summers after school to see his relatives, particularly his father.

When you leave far away you don’t carry many things with you.

The glossary was made by her son’s uncle, who works in publishing. 

In our area, each village has a different specialty, one makes carpets, another makes copper utensils, another makes silver utensils, another makes golden utensils, another makes clothes. Our villages are like that. They say that in my mother’s village they tend to study and in my dad’s village they study economics.

She tells us that she arrived in Greece in 2000. She explains that her area borders Chechnya, with which they were at war back then. 

If I was by myself I wouldn’t mind, but, back then, I had the kid and I didn’t want him to be where there is war. They would bomb schools, it happened at the one I used to work at as well. I remember it like it was yesterday.

She explains that the Chechnyan government was claiming Russian territories, among which Dagestan, as it had access to the Caspian sea, as well as resources such as oil and natural gas.

It’s a rich area, that’s why there was war. I wanted to leave for the kid, we came to Greece by chance, I just wanted to go where there was no war. When we arrived, he was 9 years old. He grew up here, went to the army here, afterwards he became a baker and now he works in Canada. 

She tells us that our son, when he visits Russia he feels Greek. She also explains that even in Canada, in Toronto, there is Greek diaspora. She has been to Russia two times since. The first time was when she returned, having visited Greece, to take her son with her and live here. The second time was when she had to renew the russian passport, in 2016.

I haven’t been back many times, life is here now.

When she meets people from Russia in Greece, they ask her how she left from there and arrived here. 

There, women don’t leave the village. I left secretly, I only had the child in my mind. For the child, not even mountains stop you. If I was alone I wouldn’t mind. I thought about a future in a place without war, only that.

Amalia, before leaving, told us a story she used to hear from her parents when she was little and which she also narrates to her kids.

There used to be a man in [Dagestan’s] mountains that was poor and worked all his life, aiming to become rich. When he was old and had acquired wealth, he realised that there was no one to inherit it. He got married and had a son. When his kid was 16 years old and he realised he was spoiled and lazy, that he had everything ready for him and that he didn’t appreciate the value of money, he understood that if he died, his son would waste all his fortune. He called his wife and kid and explained that he would leave this life soon and that if his son wanted to inherit the fortune, he would have to first go through a test. He told him to work the next day and gain, with his own effort, one ruble. He asked him to bring it home until nightfall and if he had truly gained it through hard work, he would inherit the fortune.

The next morning, his wife woke up the child, gave him a ruble and told him “go to the mountains, get some rest, sleep and return at nightfall to give it to your father”. Indeed, that was what happened. At night, he returned home, where his father was waiting for him next to the fireplace – it was cold in the mountains and he was now old. The son gave his father the ruble and he took it, smelled it, bit it and told him “it’s not yours” and threw it in the fire. The son replied “if you don’t want to believe me, I don’t care”.

The next morning, the wife woke up their son again and told him “today we will dupe your father”. She gave him another ruble, water and food and told him “go to the mountain, but this time run, so that you come back at night sweaty and tired”. And so he did. At night, he went to his father, gave him the ruble, he bit it and threw it in the fire. “It’s not yours”, he told him.

The wife, seeing the situation, thought that if her son didn’t prove that he appreciated hard work and money, they would both be left out in the streets. So, in the next morning, when she woke up her son, she told him “today you need to go work, there is no point in me giving you money”. The son went to a house, worked and, until nightfall, he had gathered a ruble in coins. When he returned home, he collapsed from exhaustion. “I can’t take it anymore, I did what you wanted”, he told his father. He took the coins, examined them and threw them in the fire. “They’re not your money”, he told him. The son immediately threw his hands in the fire to take them out. “How could you? You have no idea what I went through all day to win this one ruble, you don’t appreciate it”, he told him, crying. Then, the father replied “now I believe you, you finally understood the value of money”.